{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=74496C45-733E-4D06-95FF-B4D11D8673C1", "The Washington Post: NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds", "2013-08-16", "2013", "2013-08", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to\u00a0an internal audit\u00a0and other top-secret documents.\r\nMost of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In\u00a0one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn one instance, the NSA decided that it need not report the\u00a0unintended surveillance of Americans. A notable example in 2008 was the interception of a \u201clarge number\u201d of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused the U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt, according to a \u201cquality assurance\u201d review that was not distributed to the NSA\u2019s oversight staff.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=74496C45-733E-4D06-95FF-B4D11D8673C1"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6916599813848734, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}