Food missing from NSA fridge? Ask Zelda!

Spies at the National Security Agency (NSA) have their own Dear Abby.

According to a report from the Intercept based on documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, an NSA official going by “Zelda” answers staffers’ personal and workplace etiquette questions. The lighthearted “Ask Zelda!” columns are reportedly distributed via the agency’s intranet and only accessible to people with the proper security clearance.

{mosads}The reported subjects tended to be common office nuisances, like a coworker who steals food out of the communal refrigerator or concerns about colleagues dressing too casually, but have occasionally included more ironic topics.

One person wrote in in 2011 worrying that their boss is spying on them through a series of “snitches” that report the details of every conversation.

“Wow, that takes ‘intelligence collection’ in a whole new — and inappropriate — direction,” Zelda responded.

The column began in 2010 as part of a regular agency bulletin and has become popular at the NSA, according to the Intercept.

The NSA has come under fire for its broad data collection programs, which were exposed by documents leaked by Snowden.

President Obama has taken a series of steps to rein in some of the agency’s most controversial practices, and has ordered a more thorough review to determine what else can be changed. Those recommendations are due out by the end of the month.

Despite a number of concerns that the agency’s operations intrude on people’s privacy, almost all of its critics have said that its employees are nonetheless hard-working professionals committed to their job.

For instance, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a small government watchdog, this year determined that the NSA’s collection of bulk records about millions of Americans’ phone calls was illegal, but Chairman David Medine said that did not affect his opinion about the agency’s workers.

Intelligence community officials “work tirelessly to protect this country while maintaining our values,” he said at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last month.

“We have the highest regard for them,” Medine said.