Wrong turn of nsa!

Few had done it for monetary compensation, few had done it for idealism and others haven’t done it at all. The United States has witnessed several high-profile leak scandals over the time. Most recently, it rocked the whole world while a former National Security Agency (NSA) employee named Edward Snowden leaked details of the US government’s secret surveillance programs run by NSA to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. However the status of Snowden is not clear as he has been variously called a hero, a whistleblower, a dissident, a traitor, and a patriot but one thing is clear that it has enforced NSA to come under a scanner and several criticisms.
History is testimony to the fact that NSA has gone through several scrutiny over security and counter intelligence failures, failures in intelligence analysis, external investigations and document releases. However, this time it has broken all barriers. After the leaks of Snowden, the whole world came to know that how NSA is spying on US citizens by encrypting their communications under global data surveillance programs like PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora. A Wall Street Journal report stated that “the agency has the capacity to reach roughly 75 per cent of all US Internet traffic." However, NSA denied the report completely. The agency said that “The NSA does not sift through and have unfettered access to 75 per cent of the United States' online communications. In its foreign intelligence mission, and using all its authorities, NSA touches about 1.6 per cent and analysts only look at 0.00004 per cent of the world's Internet traffic.” Irrespective of NSA’s denial, several reports against NSA cannot be ignored. The Washington Post highlighted that “The May 2012 audit found 2,776 incidents of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications in the preceding 12 months.” The Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has also severally criticized NSA by saying that "Press reports that the National Security Agency broke privacy rules thousands of times per year and reportedly sought to shield required disclosure of privacy violations are extremely disturbing."

On one hand, Rasmussen Reports and Gallup poll revealed that 59 and 53 per cent of Americans respectively have disapproved NSA’s data collection. On other hand, Pew research highlighted that 56 per cent of people favoured NSA. A CNN/ORC International survey found that while 52 per cent of US citizens disapproved Snowden's leak then 44 per cent of the public approved the leaks.

Amidst several criticisms, the NSA’s director of compliance, John DeLong has recently admitted that “mistakes occur” but he has also mentioned that most of them were unintentional. Moreover, Obama administration has deployed a review panel to scrutiny NSA’s activities. Although, the committee is full of intelligence insiders but the world hopes a neutral and justified report on US’s secret surveillance programs.