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FBI repeatedly overstated encryption threat figures to Congress, public
- saagarjha 8y agoHow is this legal? Wray just lied to Congress. Sure, the FBI has an excuse that they simply overcounted, but when you make no effort to correct your previously erroneous count, and it clearly is in your advantage to keep citing the old figure, I don't think you can claim that you made a statement that was, to the best of your ability, true.
- jrs95 8y agoJames Clapper blatantly lied to Congress and hasn’t even been indicted for anything as a result. These guys do this shit all the time and just get away with it.
- asimpletune 8y agoI always wondered what happened with that?
- jlgaddis 8y agoNothing. IIRC, they had 5 years in which to charge him if they wanted to, and the 5-year mark just recently passed witb, obviously, no action taken.
- strictnein 8y agoHe was asked a question he couldn't answer in open session. Not sure what you expect him to do, to be honest. Revealing a program like that would have violated far more serious laws. This is not a defense of his actions, just the reality he was presented with.
- cloakandswagger 8y agoWhat would I expect him to do? Either answer honestly, or not answer the question. Instead he lied, definitively, under oath. Are you really suggesting that his ONLY option was to lie to Congress?
- jrs95 8y agoThere are ways he can inform Congress after the fact. He did not. This whole “secret law” thing is illegitimate anyways.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago"I cannot answer this question in an open session, for reasons of national security". Was that not an option?
- Jeremy1026 8y agoComey seemed to have no problem giving that answer. So it is definitely valid.
- strictnein 8y agoThe problem with that answer is that it means yes in the context he was asked it. If the answer was no, he could say no.
- cycrutchfield 8y agoBecause perjury is a little more nuanced than just saying something that is false. Now get over it, move on.
- cloakandswagger 8y agoYou're right--the crime of perjury requires someone to lie while under oath, which is what Clapper did.
- Broken_Hippo 8y agoNo, it is much more nuanced than that. Giving false information is not the same as lying. With perjury, you have to willingly lie or give misinformation. On purpose. Being honest about not being able to answer a question in an open forum isn't perjury. That is someone trying to follow conflicting laws and erring on the side of caution. If his information was bad and he wasn't aware at the time, it isn't perjury. Misremember but try to answer? Not perjury.
- jrs95 8y agoHe didn’t say he couldn’t answer, he lied about illegal surveillance programs.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- CWuestefeld 8y agoMartha Stewart went to prison for lying to the government even when not under oath - and so have countless other people. This is now standard operating procedure for law enforcement, as it's much easier to catch a person in a random (and possibly unintentional) lie than to prove a real crime.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago“programming errors”
- whatshisface 8y agoMaking speech illegal is very dangerous ground, so while I agree that this looks suspicious I'm in the end happy that "don't lie to Congress" is being handled with soft gloves. There is also an abuse potential in accusing people of lying, that this lax enforcement reduces. /cynical/ if you could get easily prosecuted from telling Congress "incorrect" information, it might be predominantly used against lone whistleblowers who had ended up on the loosing side of a very effective information squashing campaign. That's just one example of how such a law could be abused if it was over-enforced. /end cynical/
- jrs95 8y agoIf you aren’t a D.C. insider you will be persecuted for this. But if you are, and especially if you can claim to have something to do with “national security” it seems like you can basically get away with doing whatever the hell you’d like.
- dbasedweeb 8y agoHolding perjury to account isn’t a free speech issue goddamn it.
- archgoon 8y agoDid Wray know the information he was presenting was false? That's the standard for perjury. Edit: if you're making a more general point, point cheerfully granted. :)
- arca_vorago 8y agoI can't believe this even has to be said... I wonder if he takes the same positon on the Clapper perjury, for example? Astoundingly shameful.
- whatshisface 8y agoJames Clapper is strong evidence of the point: "don't lie" laws are predominantly used against the (non-powerful) innocent because the difficulty of proving anything means the executors of the law have too much impunity. If Clapper had gotten convicted, it would have been reasonable to suggest that the law worked. As it stands it doesn't work, but it still introduces the risk of abuse. The head of the NSA and Joe Nobody should be under the same laws. It's not practical to prove that someone is lying as opposed to making a mistake if they are careful in their wording (and have good legal counsel), so there is only one thing left to do. If congressional perjury laws were repealed, the only effect would be making the level of scrutiny that is necessary now obvious (in addition to protecting people from false accusations.) In a world where disingenuous speech can accomplish everything lying can, laws against lying are winking security theatre.
- archgoon 8y agoThis was determined, or at least potentially noticed, a month ago (presumably they spent nonzero amount of time trying to figure out if the error was real) by the FBI. Wray seems to have last cited this back in December. I'm not seeing how the FBI has made no effort to correct the record here, this article is citing the FBI. Is there evidence that this is not an official disclosure?
- saagarjha 8y agoBy "correcting the record", I meant that should have changed his statement when asked again, which he clearly didn't. However, you're right: I seem to have gotten the timeline wrong here, meaning that Wray could claim that he was not aware of the error whereas I had assumed that the error had already been discovered.
- merinowool 8y agoThis is just a new reality. Even if that is indeed illegal, who would have put handcuffs on him? Law just doesn't apply to everyone, it is only to keep the plebs in control.
- koboll 8y agoPerjury laws simply don't apply to those in power anymore. Wray. Sessions. Clapper. Until Congress decides to enforce the law pertaining to lying under oath, it's fairly clear that lying with impunity is permissible.
- merinowool 8y agoIt is much more than that - just as an example I can give the so called "war on drugs". This is an entire industry built on corruption, lies and modern slavery and people are being daily brainwashed in the licensed media so that it can keep going.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoThe "War on Drugs", the "War on Terror", pretty much anything that our government goes to War with is done because of 2 reasons. 1) They're money making machines. 2) They're (re)election machines. If you're not "Tough on Terror", you're losing votes and you're losing donation money from those who stand to profit from the "war".
- mc32 8y agoSo long as they allow them to speak while not under oath, this will continue. Like Clapper. oh, I was thinking of something else when I answered incorrectly. Yeah, right.
- Bartweiss 8y agoIt's not new, though. 43 years ago, the NSA went in front of the Church Committee and claimed all of their warrantless phone surveillance against American citizens had been been closed more than a year earlier. This was a naked lie - the program was continuing unaltered even as the testimony was given. The Church Committee went further than anything we have today - there was a major investigation aiming at criminal prosecution of NSA officials. The eventual conclusion was that their actions were obviously illegal, but that prosecution was impossible; the agency's charter appeared to exempt it from following surveillance laws, and broader charges would be deflected by "buck-passing" and subpoenaing high-level officials to disrupt government operations. This is where we've been since the 1970s, if not earlier. https://theintercept.com/2014/10/02/the-nsa-and-me/ https://theintercept.com/2014/10/02/the-nsa-and-me/
- rdiddly 8y agoEDIT: AAaand... they changed the photo! What I say below is still slightly true of the current photo, but you should've seen the original one. Here's a copy somebody cached of it: http://wat-if.com/fbi-repeatedly-overstated-encryption-threat-figures-to-congress-public/ http://wat-if.com/fbi-repeatedly-overstated-encryption-threa... ------ Check out the contrasting body language in the photo. Wray looking smug, practically sauntering (reminds me of this: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/strutting-leo http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/strutting-leo), not a care in the world. On the left is someone from the Capitol Police, much lower-ranked, who actually worries about and protects things for a living and probably doesn't get as much sleep as he should. The first guy could stand to be a little more like the second, since at least in theory he's the "top law enforcement officer in the land" and a supposed protector of law and order. In reality he's presumably an expert at playing politics, doing favors, and stretching the truth to get an advantage, such as... hey, this article. Not to mention that spying on people, I suspect, has a lot less to do with guy-on-the-left/protecting-people concerns than it does with guy-on-the-right/political-jockeying concerns.
- woodruffw 8y agoThe top enforcement officer in the US is the attorney general, to whom the FBI director reports. I wouldn't read too much into the body language. Newspapers choose whatever relatively recent pictures they have, coupled with some relevant features (leading to those great pouty-face photos whenever there's bad news for the person involved).
- rdiddly 8y agoAh you mean "scandal face." Yeah those are a hoot. And yeah I'm not necessarily trying too hard to link the photo to this news in space and time; just taking it on its own, and extrapolating. I rarely pay this much attention to the art.
- Hupriene 8y agoThat seems like waaay to much to extrapolate from a single photo who's exact circumstances we don't know about. Maybe he just spotted his ex and wanted to look superior. Maybe he's just raising his arm in order to scratch his ear, which was itching real bad.
- DINKDINK 8y agoA government agency that cant even count properly wants to control a back door key to swaths of private communications. Let that sink in.
- Iv 8y ago"FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation, aka the Downtown Gang. Very good at breaking up used car rings. Kind of confused on anything more complicated. Fun to jerk with. Not fun when they jerk back." From Stratfor's leaked Glossary of Useful, Baffling and Strange Intelligence Terms [1] [1] https://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/The_Stratfor_Glossary_of_Useful_Baffling_and_Strange_Intelligence_Terms.pdf https://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/The_Stratfor_Glossary_of_Usefu...
- lallysingh 8y agoThanks for this. It's great.
- Iv 8y agoYou're welcome! I have read it a dozen of time, I never pass an occasion to post it :-)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- iooi 8y ago"ATF: Alcohol Tobacco and Fire Arms. Rednecks with a license to kill. Never, ever, ever ask for their help on anything." Wow. I always had a feeling they were useless, and this makes it really clear.
- gburt 8y agoI'm having a hard time speculating about what phones are "encrypted cellphones" by this count. Are they counting iOS devices with a strong passcode or is there some other functionality they're specifically "having trouble" with? I find it hard to believe they're talking about Phantom and specific-application "cryptophones."
- sjy 8y agoThey’re talking about ordinary phones. Before full-disk encryption became common, it was usually trivial for law enforcement to access data on phones, laptops and other devices physically seized under a warrant. That’s often impossible now that data is encrypted at rest by default. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoIf by "impossible" you mean they have to buy a GreyKey.[0] [0]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/03/greykey_iphone_.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/03/greykey_iphon...
- gburt 8y agoIf that is the case, why are there only 2000? The conditions must be more complex than that. Unless 2000 is nearly every phone they touched in that time period?
- tbyehl 8y agoI'm always bothered by the sense of entitlement. A warrant just says they're allowed to infringe someone's 4A rights in order to look for and seize evidence. It's not a promise that they'll find and be able to use whatever it is they're looking for. And I don't think the FBI has ever stated that they dropped or lost a case due to crypto.
- OliverJones 8y agoNews Flash! Executives of US federal government entity lie to executives of another US federal government entity! Videotape at ten! Tune in!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
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