Turns out, not even the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee can figure out what’s happened to the National Security Agency (NSA) staffers who were involved in the LOVEINT spying scandal.

Back in August 2013, The Wall Street Journal introduced the world to an internal term that NSA analysts have come up with to describe the act of spying on one’s ex-partner: LOVEINT. The word is reminiscent of existing spycraft parlance like HUMINT (human intelligence) or SIGINT (signals intelligence). (LOVEINT also spawned endless Twitter jokes.)

In a letter sent Monday to the attorney general, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) described how he initially asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to explain what it was doing to address the 12 publicly known instances of this inappropriate use of NSA surveillance capability. However, the DOJ has stayed mum.

As Grassley wrote:

I asked you to provide more information about the Department of Justice’s handling of these 12 matters and requested a response by December 1, 2013. That deadline passed. However, when you subsequently appeared before the Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing on January 29, 2014, we discussed my request. You promised to provide a “fulsome response to indicate how those cases were dealt with by the Justice Department” and to “do that soon.” It has been more than a year since both my initial request and your testimony before the Judiciary Committee. Yet I have not received a response.

One LOVEINT instance, which was described in September 2013 by the NSA’s Office of the Inspector General, involved an employee who on his first day of work in 2005, “queried six e-mail addresses belonging to a former girlfriend, a US person, without authorization.” An internal NSA audit four days later revealed this violation. His punishment?

“A reduction in grade, 45 days restriction, 45 days of extra duty, and half pay for two months. It was recommended that the subject not be given a security clearance.”

Ars has a pending Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA (filed in July 2014) concerning the LOVEINT cases. So far, we have not received any substantial reply. Neither the NSA nor the DOJ immediately responded to Ars' request for comment on Monday.