NSA Privacy Officer: 'The Agency Has No Interest In Spying On Americans'

The Hill: NSA 'not interested in' Americans, privacy officer claims

The National Security Agency’s internal civil liberties watchdog insisted on Thursday that the agency has no interest in spying on Americans under its controversial spying tools.

“Our employees are trained to not look for U.S. persons,” NSA privacy and civil liberties officer Rebecca Richards said on Thursday.

“We’re not interested in those U.S. persons. We’re trying to look away from those,” she added. “Instead, we’re looking for where are our targets?”

Richards’s comments came up during a Capitol Hill panel discussion about a new report on U.S. spying from the Brennan Center for Justice.

The analysis looks at aspects of a presidential order that dates back to Ronald Reagan and was updated by then-President George W. Bush, called Executive Order 12333.

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Update: Five Big Unanswered Questions About NSA’s Worldwide Spying (The Intercept)

WNU Editor: The NSA may publicly say that they are not interested in spying on Americans, but they have a long history of saying just that until the Edward Snowden revelations blew everything apart. I guess it all comes down to trust .... which the NSA has a problem right now.