4 ms·

Am I the only one who thinks the headline is at least slightly misleading? I had assumed the NSA was caught in a lie, but that wasn't what either Senator said.

by mpyne 13y ago

Am I the only one who thinks the headline is at least slightly misleading? I had assumed the NSA was caught in a lie, but that wasn't what either Senator said. They said instead (to paraphrase) that the NSA mentioned they must promptly destroy information inadvertently collection about American citizens, but the NSA failed to mention that they have no reasonable way to figure out whether a given file belongs to an American or not. While I agree that this is something important that the NSA should include for transparency's sake with any list of talking points covering minimization, it's not the same thing as "feeding us false information" either. This may help clues into what the scope of NSA copying of Internet traffic is; if they were only tapping into international/domestic transfer sites then they'd be able to fairly easily tag information as "probably not U.S." and discard the rest. Given the difficulty in determining what's what it would seem they are instead at the very least copying everything going to/from major cloud providers, which certainly sounds different in scope.

peripitea 13y ago
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, this seems worse than lying to me. The primary concern addressed by this point is: as an American citizens, will they store my information? The intellectually honest answer to that question is something along the lines of "yes, there's a very good chance we will", but they've worded this point to make it seem like the answer is "no". In doing so, they get away with lying while being able to claim they are not. On balance, this seems more likely to deceive the electorate than a straight-out lie would be; such a lie would be more likely to be called out and uncovered. I'm not even close to a lawyer, so again, I may be misunderstanding. But that's how I read it.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > Unless I'm misunderstanding something, this seems worse than lying to me. Well, isn't it good that I pointed it out then! ;) There's no way to move forward on these types of discussions if we always talk past each other, words mean things and we should use them appropriately.
Uhhrrr 13y ago
Wyden and Udall discuss the point where the NSA is misleading, but the point where they lie is covered in a "classified attachment": http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/blog/post/wyden-and-udall-to-general-alexander-nsa-must-correct-inaccurate-statement-in-fact-sheet http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/blog/post/wyden-and-udall-t...

by mpyne 13y ago

peripitea 13y ago

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, this seems worse than lying to me. The primary concern addressed by this point is: as an American citizens, will they store my information? The intellectually honest answer to that question is something along the lines of "yes, there's a very good chance we will", but they've worded this point to make it seem like the answer is "no". In doing so, they get away with lying while being able to claim they are not. On balance, this seems more likely to deceive the electorate than a straight-out lie would be; such a lie would be more likely to be called out and uncovered. I'm not even close to a lawyer, so again, I may be misunderstanding. But that's how I read it.

mpyne 13y ago
> Unless I'm misunderstanding something, this seems worse than lying to me. Well, isn't it good that I pointed it out then! ;) There's no way to move forward on these types of discussions if we always talk past each other, words mean things and we should use them appropriately.

Uhhrrr 13y ago

Wyden and Udall discuss the point where the NSA is misleading, but the point where they lie is covered in a "classified attachment": http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/blog/post/wyden-and-udall-to-general-alexander-nsa-must-correct-inaccurate-statement-in-fact-sheet http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/blog/post/wyden-and-udall-t...