Washington: Former official at the National Security Agency and whistle-blower Edward Snowden in an interview to The Independent has said nude and sexually explicit photos that are intercepted by NSA are circulated by young officials of the agency among themselves.
“You’ve got young enlisted guys, 18 to 22 years old. They’ve suddenly been thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility where they now have access to all of your private records. Now, in the course of their daily work they 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 their co-worker and their co-worker says: ‘Oh hey, that’s great. Send that to Bill down the wayâ€.
Snowden opines that the auditing of information inside NSA is incredibly weak and such instances are never reported or taken action against.Â
He also asks why such pictures should be in a government database, “The fact that your private images, records of your private lives, records of your intimate moments have been taken from your private communications stream from the intended recipient and given to the government without any specific authorisation without any specific need is itself a violation of your rights. Why is that in a government database?â€
However, this habit of passing around personal and sexually explicit images was a routine in the agency, he added.
Instances of employees snooping on the people in their life, abusing the authority they have at hand. He recalls this instance when an NSA employee used his first day at work to read the private communications of his ex- girlfriend.Â