Secret service NSA puts reports on the misuse of spy tools online

The US Secret Service NSA has posted reports online about how its employees have abused or misused spy tools. The reports run from the end of 2001 to 2013.

The US Secret Service has put the documents online after reconsidering whether these documents should indeed remain secret, the service says. By releasing the documents, the NSA wants to demonstrate that it has a working system of surveillance for abuse of the spy tools it uses.

The documents contain many instances where Secret Service analysts have intentionally or unintentionally collected data about people on US soil or US citizens; the latter is especially sensitive in the United States and the service is not allowed to do that. These are individual cases, such as an NSA employee who wanted to keep an eye on her husband and an NSA analyst who accidentally spy on herself. The NSA has removed sensitive parts from the documents for publication.

The NSA is publishing these documents for the first time. The service put them online during Christmas, which makes it seem that the secret service does not want to attract too much attention with it: many media do not bring news during Christmas, so that the publication probably receives less attention than it would receive on a regular working day.

The activities of the NSA are receiving a lot of attention after the flood of publications about the Secret Service based on documents that former NSA employee Edward Snowden took with him.