Move over, cyber-stalking, and say hello to LOVEINT.
Analysts at the National Security Agency have a sexy code-name for what us civilians call “cyber-stalking,” The Wall Street Journal revealed on Friday evening.
Termed “LOVEINT,” some analysts have occassionally engaged in willfully abusing the authorities and capabilities entrusted by the public to the NSA in order to spy on love interests.
“Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of ‘INT,’” such as “SIGINT” for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and ‘HUMINT’ for human intelligence, or spying,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman.
Unfortunately, those on the receiving end of a LOVEINT operation cannot block their stalkers like they could with someone who is using Facebook to creep on them.
President Barack Obama attempted to make the case on CNN this week that oversight over the nation’s largest intelligence agency worked, contradicting a confession by the NSA that agency analysts have willfully violated NSA authorities in ‘very rare instances.'”
“Over the past decade, very rare instances of willful violations of NSA’s authorities have been found,” the NSA said to Bloomberg News in a statement Friday.
Officials told the Wall Street Journal that the “LOVEINT examples constitute most episodes of willful misconduct by NSA employees.”