This is almost a continuation of the pattern from 2013 in which senior officials made claims that were quickly and devastatingly revealed to be false or mislead

This is almost a continuation of the pattern from 2013 in which senior officials made claims that were quickly and devastatingly revealed to be false or misleading in comparison to what NSA and its partners were actually doing in practice. It's not an exact continuation of the pattern, since we "just" learned that NSA and GCHQ undermined what Obama claimed were shared goals on a massive scale. Maybe we were all supposed to infer from Obama's concerns about "a bunch of people compromising that process" that he really meant encryption was a NOBUS (No One But Us) issue for the administration. Maybe we were supposed to know that when Obama said "there’s no scenario in which we don’t want really strong encryption" that he was talking about "really strong encryption our partners can't compromise and share with us." I would have expected the administration to become much more cautious about making falsifiable or undermine-able statements after these leaks started.