We’re Too Big and Disorganized to Comply With Court Orders, Says NSA

You know what’s in the vending
machines at the National Security Agency (NSA)? High-octane
chutzpah, to judge by a recent court filing. In response to a court
order that the spook agency preserve evidence as part of a
long-running lawsuit, the NSA’s shysters responded with a “so
sorry, we’re just too big to get with the program.”

Just try that at home.

It’s all part of the Jewel vs. NSA
lawsuit, in which the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
represents AT&T customers who want the snoops to stop pawing
through their communications. As the EFF puts it, “Evidence in the
case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T
telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has
routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco
controlled by the NSA.”

There’s plenty more too, including testimony by NSA
whistleblowers.

Apparently finding the claims in the case at least somewhat
compelling, the judge ordered the NSA to preserve all relevant
evidence.

No can do, says the NSA. The very next day, the NSA’s attorneys

filed a response complaining, “Assuming that the Court’s June
5, 2014 order requires an immediate halt to destruction of all
Section 702 materials, that order creates an extremely significant
operational crisis for the National Security Agency.”

An extremely significant operational crisis? Do tell.

it may not be possible to comply immediately or in the near term
with the Court’s order without shutting down all systems and
databases that collect and store Section 702 communications data,
which will have enormous adverse consequences for NSA’s ability to
perform its foreign intelligence mission. In the long term, NSA
could not comply with this preservation mandate without violating
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)-ordered minimization
procedures that are essential to the program’s compliance with
statutory and constitutional requirements, and without potentially
severe operational difficulties that could jeopardize national
security.

Basically, the NSA’s argument is that preserving evidence that
it is violating people’s privacy would violate people’s privacy
because there’s just too much to parse through to make sure the
important stuff is preserved. And national security. Did we mention
national security? National security.

Cuz we know the NSA just isn’t in the business of hoarding and
storing massive quantities of information. Uh uh.

“If the NSA does not have to keep evidence of its spying
activities, how can a court ever test whether it is in fact
complying with the Constitution?,”
asks Patrick C. Toomey of the American Civil Liberties
Union.

He may be on to something there.

The NSA’s headquarters, pictured above, actually is very
big.