NSA’s love affair: employees spied on girlfriends, spouses, husbands, lovers
The National Security Agency's employees misused the agency's surveillance power and eavesdropped on the phone calls of girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives and spouses and engaged in other "intentional" abuses of their authority on "12 occasions" since 2003, according to a newly released letter by the agency’s inspector general. ● According to a letter by NSA inspector general Dr. George Ellard, the NSA employees at times have been caught in collecting intelligence on love interests. But until now, the specific examples and the frequency of such cases have never been disclosed by the NSA. The practice is known as LOVEINT. Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of 'INT,' such as 'SIGINT' for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and 'HUMINT' for human intelligence, or spying, the WSJ reports.
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