U.S. officials have said NSA leaker Edward Snowden was exaggerating when he indicated it was easy for even a low-level defense contractor to wiretap someone.
Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who broke the story, told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News on Sunday that abusing the surveillance would be easy because of the lack of oversight and controls.
“The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and email in their databases,” Greenwald said. “What these programs are are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things: it searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered; and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or connected to that IP address do in the future. And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst.”
If true, National Intelligence Director James Clapper may find himself in trouble. Clapper testified under oath that it would be impossible for low-level employees and others to spy on Americans because of internal controls.
