The Washington Post’s article detailing the fourth amendment abuses by the NSA got some push back from the administration who attempted to “edit” the article before publication. The internal audit referenced in the article was obtained by the WaPo from Edward Snowden. The details of the audit indicated repeated and growing privacy violations by the NSA, violations which included obtaining thousands of American citizen’s communications records and using methods of information collection that were later deemed unconstitutional by a court.

The Post was able to interview John Delong, NSA director of compliance for the article and they were initially informed “DeLong and members of the NSA communications staff said he could be quoted ‘by name and title’ on some of his answers after an unspecified internal review.” However, the WH subsequently changed their minds. The Washington Post included the following statement with their article: