NSA analysts deliberately broke rules to spy on Americans, agency reveals

Inspector general's admission undermines fresh insistences from president that breaches of privacy rules were inadvertent 

Dan Roberts 

US intelligence analysts have deliberately broken rules designed to prevent them from spying on Americans, according to an admission by the National Security Agency that undermines fresh insistences fromBarack Obama on Friday that all breaches were inadvertent.

A report by the NSA's inspector general is understood to have uncovered a number of examples of analysts choosing to ignore so-called "minimisation procedures" aimed at protecting privacy, according to officials speaking to Bloomberg.

"Over the past decade, very rare instances of wilful violations of NSA's authorities have been found," the NSA confirmed in a statement to the news agency. "NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and cooperates fully with any investigations – responding as appropriate. NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency's authorities."

Though likely to be a small subset of the thousands of supposedly accidental rule breaches recently revealed by the Washington Post, these cases flatly contradict assurances given by President Obama that the NSA was only ever acting in good faith.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-analysts-broke-rules-spy