![WE’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR A LONG TIME: The NSA has been spying on Americans for more than thirty years. New York Times writer David Burnham detailed the agency’s growing power in 1983.](https://i0.wp.com/www.hawaiireporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Screen-shot-2013-08-26-at-7.18.08-AM.png?resize=299%2C232&ssl=1)
![WE’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR A LONG TIME: The NSA has been spying on Americans for more than thirty years. New York Times writer David Burnham detailed the agency’s growing power in 1983.](https://i0.wp.com/www.hawaiireporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Screen-shot-2013-08-26-at-7.18.08-AM.png?resize=299%2C232&ssl=1)
The National Security Agency for years conducted searches of its phone-records database that violated privacy protections by not meeting a court-ordered standard, intelligence officials acknowledged Tuesday. They said the violations continued until a judge ordered an overhaul of the program in 2009.
The revelations called into question NSA’s ability to run the sweeping domestic surveillance programs it introduced more than a decade ago in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Officials said the violations were inadvertent, because NSA officials didn’t understand their own phone-records collection program.
Top U.S. officials, including NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander, have repeatedly reassured lawmakers and the public that the phone-records program has been carefully executed under oversight from the secret national security court.
– WALL STREET JOURNAL