>Your unsubstantiated claims do not constitute "proof". Anybody can claim to have worked for the NSA. And, if anything, for anyone to "out" themselves as former

>Your unsubstantiated claims do not constitute "proof". Anybody can claim to have worked for the NSA. And, if anything, for anyone to "out" themselves as former NSA, strikes me as fairly suspicious, since ex-NSA people (other than high profile ones like the former director) don't seem to be in a hurry to identify themselves as a rule. It's not really my concern whether or not you believe what I say, as you are not my target audience. You are already convinced of your rightness and my wrongness. I'm typing to the people who want actual facts to back the discussion. >That does not seem to jibe with the details reported here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-br.. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-br.... How would you explain that discrepancy between your claims, and those of the WaPo? Note that the WaPo story does include at least a degree of hard evidence, in the form of documentation. What they don't post is how many firings/missed promotions that has led to. Each incident would be just one phone number or piece of information, so in the case of the "20"->"202" mixup, they could have targeted 300 phone numbers and now that's 300 incidents. If that was a contractor that was responsible for that, they're already gone. If it was a government employee, they're likely not an analyst anymore. The Washington Post's story only backs what I said. If the NSA was so trigger-happy to violate American rights, why would they even keep track of the number of violations? Bragging rights at the end of the year? In the example they used, they were targeting Egyptian citizens, and the US phone numbers got caught in the crossfires. Sounds to me like people legitimately trying to do their jobs, and human error working against them.