The NSA Is Totally Passing Around Your Sexy Selfies

In an extensive new interview with The
Guardian, National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower

Edward Snowden emphasized the need for “lawyers, journalists,
doctors, accountants, priests,” and others with a duty to protect
confidentiality to ditch unencrypted communication. He also
confirmed what many people have joked about since the NSA’s
surveillance was first revealed: Yes, agents are totally looking at
and passing around your “sexually compromising” photos. 

According to Snowden, looking at O.P.P. is a “routine” part of
NSA life, and one that’s considered “a fringe benefit of a
surveillance position.” 

From the interview:

Snowden: During the course of their work, (NSA employees)
stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work
in any sort of necessary sense, for example, an intimate nude photo
of someone in a sexually compromising situation. But they’re
extremely attractive.

So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and show a
coworker who says, ‘Hey that’s great. Send that to Bill down the
way.’ Then Bill sends it to George, who sends it to Tom, and sooner
or later this person’s whole life has been seen by all of these
other people.

It’s never reported. Nobody every knows about it because the
auditing of these systems is incredibly weak. The fact that your
private images, records of your private lives, records of your
intimate moments have been taken from your private communication
stream, from the intended recipient and given to the government
without any specific authorization or need is a violation of your
rights. 

Some Americans will freak out over this in particular, I
think—and they should freak out, sure, as they should about
all of the secret surveillance the NSA is doing—but it
makes NSA agents look more like a bunch of frat boys than super
spies. Frankly, I’m more worried about just about anything else the
NSA is electronically eavesdropping on. 

Anyway, an NSA
spokeswoman told Forbes that this kind of thing
is, you know, totally frowned upon. “NSA is a professional
foreign-intelligence organization with a highly trained workforce,
including brave and dedicated men and women from our armed forces,”
she said. “As we have said before, the agency has zero tolerance
for willful violations of the agency’s authorities or professional
standards.”