Obama NSA collection efforts declared unconstitutional by FISA Court in Oct. 2011, ordered him to stop. Obama is fighting a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking to obtain a copy of the Court's decision against him

.
Scroll down for FOI lawsuit reference, p. 3 of 4 in Wash. Post article:

8/15/13, "NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds," Washington Post, Barton Gellman

(parag. 3): "The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance....

(parag. 7): The NSA audit obtained by The Post, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

In a statement in response to questions for this article, the NSA said it attempts to identify problems “at the earliest possible moment, implement mitigation measures wherever possible, and drive the numbers down.” The government was made aware of The Post’s intention to publish the documents that accompany this article online.

“We’re a human-run agency operating in a complex environment with a number of different regulatory regimes, so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line,” a senior NSA official said in an interview, speaking with White House permission on the condition of anonymity....

(p. 1, parag. 1) The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls....

(p. 2), "But the more serious lapses include unauthorized access to intercepted communications, the distribution of protected content and the use of automated systems without built-in safeguards to prevent unlawful surveillance. 

The May 2012 audit, intended for the agency’s top leaders, counts only incidents at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters and other ­facilities in the Washington area. Three government officials, speak­ing on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters, said the number would be substantially higher if it included other NSA operating units and regional collection centers....

Despite the quadrupling of the NSA’s oversight staff after a series of significant violations in 2009, the rate of infractions increased throughout 2011 and early 2012. An NSA spokesman declined to disclose whether the trend has continued since last year. 

One major problem is largely unpreventable, the audit says, because current operations rely on technology that cannot quickly determine whether a foreign mobile phone has entered the United States. 

In what appears to be one of the most serious violations, the NSA diverted large volumes of international data passing through fiber-optic cables in the United States into a repository where the material could be stored temporarily for processing and selection.

The operation to obtain what the agency called “multiple communications transactions” collected and commingled U.S. and foreign e-mails, according to an article in SSO News, a top-secret internal newsletter of the NSA’s Special Source Operations unit. NSA lawyers told the court that the agency could not practicably filter out the communications of Americans.

In October 2011, months after the program got underway, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the collection effort was unconstitutional. The court said that the methods used were “deficient on statutory and constitutional grounds,” according to a top-secret summary of the opinion, and it ordered the NSA to comply with standard privacy protections or stop the program. 

(p. 3) James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has acknowledged that the court found the NSA in breach of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but the Obama administration has fought a Freedom of Information lawsuit that seeks the opinion.

Generally, the NSA reveals nothing in public about its errors and infractions. The unclassified versions of the administration’s semiannual reports to Congress feature blacked-out pages under the headline “Statistical Data Relating to Compliance Incidents.”...

Fewer than 10 percent of lawmakers employ a staff member who has the security clearance to read the reports and provide advice about their meaning and significance....

A single “incident” in February 2012 involved the unlawful retention of 3,032 files that the surveillance court had ordered the NSA to destroy, according to the May 2012 audit. Each file contained an undisclosed number of telephone call records....

(p. 4) The large number of database query incidents, which involve previously collected communications, confirms long-standing suspicions that the NSA’s vast data banks— with code names such as MARINA, PINWALE and XKEYSCORE — house a considerable volume of information about Americans. Ordinarily the identities of people in the United States are masked, but intelligence “customers” may request unmasking, either one case at a time or in standing orders.
.
In dozens of cases, NSA personnel made careless use of the agency’s extraordinary powers, according to individual auditing reports....

Once added to its databases, absent other restrictions, the communications of Americans may be searched freely.

In one required tutorial, NSA collectors and analysts are taught to fill out oversight forms without giving “extraneous information” to “our FAA overseers.” FAA is a reference to the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which granted broad new authorities to the NSA in exchange for regular audits from the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and periodic reports to Congress and the surveillance court....

“I realize you can read those words a certain way,” said the high-ranking NSA official who spoke with White House authority, but the instructions were not intended to withhold information from auditors."... graph from Washington Post. via Lucianne

========================

An Obama intelligence official who apologized for making a false statement or lying to congress, James D. Clapper, was initially said to be leading the "independent review by outside experts" of the NSA. That's been clarified to say Clapper won't pick the reviewers or direct their methods, that the "reviewers" will be appointed by Obama. Updates at Atlanticwire link:

8/12/13, "Obama's Intelligence Chief Will Head Up the Promised NSA Review," Atlanticwire, Abby Ohlheiser

"Last Friday, President Obama promised a review of current government surveillance practice by an independent group of outside experts. Turns out that the review group will be established by the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who's come under fire from Congress for erroneously telling legislators that the U.S. doesn't "collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of million of Americans." 

Here's the memo from Clapper: 

"At the direction of the President, I am establishing the Director of National Intelligence Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies to examine our global signals-intelligence collection and surveillance capability."...

In a memo, the White House further notes that Clapper, and not the review group, will brief the President on its findings. The extent to which Clapper will (or won't) participate in developing those expectations, however, isn't clear (Update: the DNI clarified this point in a statement to the Wire, which you can read in full below)."...

Update Tuesday, 4:03 p.m.: Shawn Turner, Director of Public Affairs for the DNI sent the Atlantic Wire a statement on Clapper's role in the independent review, clarifying that the intelligence chief will not direct the findings or methods of the group of experts. 

Here's the statement: ...

Update Tuesday, 6:35 p.m.: The White House has now said, according to the Guardian, that Clapper won't select the members of the committee established by the DNI — the White House will. Here's the Guardian: 

"the White House national security council insisted on Tuesday that Clapper's role would be more limited.

"The panel members are being selected by the White House, in consultation with the intelligence community," national security council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

The DNI had to be involved for administrative reasons, because the panel would need security clearance and access to classified material, she added.""

========================

8/12/13, "As Head Of NSA Review Group Obama Appoints Same Person Who "Apologized" For Lying To Congress," Zero Hedge, Durden

"A question arises: how does one know they are living in an unmitigated disaster of a banana republic where not even an attempt at hiding the crime and corruption takes place? Well, we are not absolutely certain, but we have a distinct feeling that when the president appoints as his impartial "reviewer" of the ultra top secret NSA's policies and capabilities the one man who was caught and exposed and subsequently apologized for lying to Congress, that may be a pretty damn good sign.

Sadly, that is precisely what just happened. And speaking of comedy and banana republics, here is the memo from the president:"...


.