These reports are also provided to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “Executive Order 12333, as amended, requires Intelligence Community elements to report to the IOB, in a manner consistent with Executive Order 13462, as amended, intelligence activities they have reason to believe may be unlawful or contrary to Executive Order or Presidential Directive. “Every now and then, there may be a mistake,” Cole said in congressional testimony.” In June, after promising to explain the NSA’s record in “as transparent a way as we possibly can,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole described extensive safeguards and oversight that keep the agency in check. “The Obama administration has provided almost no public information about the NSA’s compliance record. “In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has authority over some NSA operations, did not learn about a new collection method until it had been in operation for many months. One feature is the system’s ability to limit what an analyst can do with a tool, based on the source of the collection and each analyst’s defined responsibilities.” Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA’s analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks.” and that there are “stringent oversight and compliance mechanisms built in at several levels. “In terms of access, an NSA press statement reads that there is no “unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data. The documents indicate that administrators have the ability to directly query the MySQL databases, where the collected data is stored, apparently bypassing the audit trail.” “Systems administrators, however, are able to run MySQL queries. “When systems administrators log into XKEYSCORE servers to configure them, they appear to use a shared account, under the name “oper.” NSA goes to great lengths to narrowly tailor and focus its signals intelligence operations on the collection of communications that are most likely to contain foreign intelligence or counterintelligence information.” As provided for by Presidential Policy Directive 28 (PPD-28), all persons, regardless of their nationality, have legitimate privacy interests in the handling of their personal information. “The National Security Agency’s foreign intelligence operations are 1) authorized by law 2) subject to multiple layers of stringent internal and external oversight and 3) conducted in a manner that is designed to protect privacy and civil liberties. “In a statement to The Intercept, the NSA said:

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