if they have the information, says the USG, they have it, full stop. Everybody hopes that that's true, but there is a problem with this story. The Director of

if they have the information, says the USG, they have it, full stop. Everybody hopes that that's true, but there is a problem with this story. The Director of National Intelligence told Congress that the NSA hadn't "collected" information that it did, in fact, have. When this came to light he, instead of admitting that he lied to Congress and resigning, announced that he was actually using the newspeak definition of "collect" - you know, the one where it has literally no meaning. This is the problem with lying to the public and getting caught. There is no way to tell if anything else you say contains any meaning at all, let alone the truth, even if it happens to be the truth. This goes triple if you happen to have sworn on penalty of perjury that said lies were the truth and still get away with it.