- Citing an internal audit, The Washington Post counts 2,776 violations
- Material was provided to the newspaper by NSA leaker Edward Snowden
- NSA says it tries to identify incidents "at the earliest possible moment ... drive numbers down"
(CNN) -- The NSA broke privacy rules "thousands of times each year" since 2008, The Washington Post reported Thursday, citing an internal audit and other documents.
Material was provided to the newspaper this summer by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.
The audit found 2,776 incidents of "unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications,"
the Post reported in its story.
"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," it said.
The audit was dated May 2012 and looked at the prior 12 months.
Some did it for the money, some did it for idealism, others didn't do it at all. The United States has seen a number of high-profile leak scandals in the years, most recently involving former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed himself as the leaker of details of U.S. government surveillance programs run by the U.S. National Security Agency to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia after initially fleeing to Hong Kong. He has been charged with three felony counts, including violations of the U.S. Espionage Act, over the leaks.
including the Pentagon Papers during the administration of President Richard Nixon. Click through to see more high-profile intelligence leaking cases.
Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers in 1971. The top-secret documents revealed that senior American leaders, including three presidents, knew the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire. Further, they showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. Ellsberg surrendered to authorities and was charged as a spy. During his trial, the court learned that President Richard Nixon's administration had embarked on a campaign to discredit Ellsberg, illegally wiretapping him and breaking into his psychiatrist's office. All charges against him were dropped. Since then he has lived a relatively quiet life as a respected author and lecturer.
Jonathan Pollard is a divisive figure in U.S.-Israel relations. The former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst was caught spying for Israel in 1985 and was sentenced in 1987 to life imprisonment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly called for President Barack Obama to release Pollard after Pollard's wife appealed to Netanyahu.
Wen Ho Lee was a scientist at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico who was charged with 59 counts of downloading classified information onto computer tapes and passing it to China. Lee eventually agreed to plead guilty to a since count of mishandling classified information after prosecutors deemed their case to be too weak. He was released after nine months in solitary confinement. Lee later received a $1.6 million in separate settlements with the government and five news agencies after he sued them, accusing the government of leaking damaging information about him to the media.
Members of the Bush administration were accused retaliating against Valerie Plame, pictured, by blowing her cover in 2003 as a U.S. intelligence operative, after her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote a series of New York Times op-eds questioning the basis of certain facts the administration used to make the argument to go to war in Iraq.
In 2007, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was convicted on charges related to the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in connection with the case. His 30-month sentence was commuted by President George W. Bush. Cheney told a special prosecutor in 2004 that he had no idea who leaked the information.
Aldrich Ames, a 31-year CIA employee, pleaded guilty to espionage charges in 1994 and was sentenced to life in prison. Ames was a CIA case worker who specialized in Soviet intelligence services and had been passing classified information to the KGB since 1985. U.S. intelligence officials believe that information passed along by Ames led to the arrest and execution of Russian officials they had recruited to spy for them.
Robert Hanssen pleaded guilty to espionage charges in 2001 in return for the government not seeking the death penalty. Hanssen began spying for the Soviet Union in 1979, three years after going to work for the FBI and prosecutors said he collected $1.4 million for the information he turned over to the Cold War enemy. In 1981, Hanssen's wife caught him with classified documents and convinced him to stop spying, but he started passing secrets to the Soviets again four years later. In 1991, he broke off relations with the KGB, but resumed his espionage career in 1999, this time with the Russian Intelligence Service. He was arrested after making a drop in a Virginia park in 2001.
John Walker ran a father and son spy ring, passing classified material to the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1985. Walker was a Navy communication specialist with financial difficulties when he walked into the Soviet Embassy and sold a piece of cyphering equipment. Navy and Defense officials said that Walker enabled the Soviet Union to unscramble military communications and pinpoint the location of U.S. submarines at all times. As part of his plea deal, prosecutors promised leniency for Walker's son Michael Walker, a former Navy seaman.
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was convicted July 30 of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of classified documents and videos to WikiLeaks, and the counts against him included violations of the Espionage Act. He was found guilty of 20 of the 22 charges but acquitted of the most serious charge -- aiding the enemy. Manning is set to speak in his defense when he takes the stand during the sentencing phase of his court-martial on Wednesday, August 14. He could face up to 90 years in prison if the judge imposes the maximum sentence.
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks
Obama: Doing the dishes to regain trust
The NSA responded to the Post's story, saying "a variety of factors can cause the numbers of incidents to trend up or down from one quarter to the next."
Factors can include implementation of new procedures, technology or software changes and expanded access.
"The one constant across all of the quarters is a persistent, dedicated effort to identify incidents or risks of incidents at the earliest possible moment, implement mitigation measures wherever possible, and drive the numbers down," the agency said.
Snowden stepped forward publicly in June to claim responsibility for leaking to the media that the NSA had secretly collected and stored millions of phone records from accounts in the United States. The agency also collected information from U.S. companies on the Internet activity of overseas residents, he said.
Snowden fled first to China and then to Russia before Moscow granted him temporary asylum despite pressure from the Obama administration to return him to the United States to face charges.
He has been charged with three felony counts, including violations of the U.S. Espionage Act, for the leaks.
NSA: We read .00004% of Web traffic
