Nude photos intercepted by NSA are passed around by young officials as ‘fringe benefit’ says Edward Snowden

The News Minute | July 19, 2014 | 1:55 PM IST Former official at the National Security Agency, former US intelligence agency and whistle –blower Edward Snowden in an interview to The Independent has said that nude and sexually explicit photos that are intercepted by the NSA are circulated by young officials of the agency among themselves.He told The Independent, “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 way”.Snowden opines that the auditing of information inside NSA is incredibly weak and such instances are never reported or taken action against. Snowden 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 authorization without any specific need is itself a violation of your rights. Why is that in a government database?”However, this habit of passing around personal and sexually explicit images was a routine in the agency, Snowden says. He says - “These are seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions."He also says that 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. Apparently, officials at the NSA call this behaviour LOVEINT (Love Intelligence), drawing inspiration from other NSA jargons like HUMINT (Human Intelligence) and SIGINT (Signals intelligence).