The National Security Agency (NSA) has apparently deleted surveillance data it was under court orders to preserve in relation to lawsuits filed against the agency during the George W. Bush presidency. The lawsuits were in regard to data collected after it was revealed that President Bush ordered wireless wiretapping of international communications after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. in 2011.
The agency also revealed that backup tapes that may have provided a failsafe for the data were deleted in 2009, 2011 and 2016. The agency had been keeping the court informed on how it was complying with orders and properly safeguarding the data.
But the NSA told U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White this week that agency had in fact, not been storing the data collected under the Bush-era programs. “The NSA sincerely regrets its failure to prevent the deletion of this data,” the agency said in a statement. “NSA senior management is fully aware of this failure, and the Agency is committed to taking swift action to respond to the loss of this data.”
In an updated statement this past Thursday, a NSA official said the data were deleted during a large, housecleaning effort meant to clear up space for new information and was not specifically targeted for deletion. An internal investigation into the episode has found that NSA officials had conducted a “physical inspection” of the tapes to confirm compliance with the court’s orders. But those tapes contained only metadata, such as titles, dates, and who had access to the data, and not the contents of communications themselves.