14 DAY TRIAL // The NSA, to the surprise of no one at this point, continues to lie about its practices. For a long time, it told everyone that its overpowered systems which enabled it to spy on anyone at any time were never abused and only used in the interest of fighting terrorism and only on non-Americans.
Then it was revealed that Americans were being targeted too. The NSA then admitted that, yes, sometimes Americans are involved, but the agency said that only when communications are between a source outside of the US and one in the country.
Of course, very recently, it was revealed that, for years, the NSA ran a program that syphoned huge amounts of traffic from US citizens with no outside link, a program that was even deemed unconstitutional by the more than friendly FISA Court.
This, while the NSA was claiming that there were never any problems, any errors or any abuses. That's what it told the public and what it told Congress. This was a lie too, a leaked document showed that there thousands of abuses every year.
But the NSA again defended this by saying that these weren't intentional and that humans will make mistakes, no harm done.
Of course, the fact that humans do make mistakes is precisely why many people have been against giving the NSA so much power.
But now, the NSA's defense is once again backfiring as new revelations indicate that not only are there abuses, there are serious intentional ones which not only get unreported but are actually treated quite lightly within the agency.
In the perfect example of how NSA officers are "human," it turns out that there have been a number of incidents when one agent use the power and tools of the NSA to spy on their significant others. The NSA claims that only a few of these happen every year, but "a few" is more than "none" which is the number of incidents like these that would be acceptable.