Just Weeks Ago, Keith Alexander Said Review Of NSA Found Not A Single Violation; Reality: Thousands Of Violations
from the lying-will-get-you-nowhere dept
It's been clear that various defenders of the NSA program have been lying, but given yesterday's revelations, now we can show just how much and how explicitly they were lying. It was just a couple weeks ago at the Black Hat conference that Keith Alexander told an audience that a review of NSA activities showed no violations at all:Congress did a review of this program over a four-year period, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. And over that four-year period, they found no willful or knowledgeable violations of the law or the intent of the law in this program.Note the hedge in the first paragraph, that they found "no willful or knowledgeable violations." And, indeed, the Inspector General's report revealed last night notes that most of the violations they found were accidental. But, the line between "accidental" and "intentional but covered up by claiming it was an accident" is a somewhat fuzzy line. If you're an NSA analyst who wants to spy on someone, given how the agency treats "accidental" searches as no big deal, it appears that all you have to do is figure out a way to write a query that you can then claim accidentally, or "incidentally" just happened to collect the information you were looking for. "Oops."
More specifically, they found no one at NSA had ever gone outside the boundaries of what we’ve been given. That’s the fact. What you’re hearing, what you’re seeing, what people are saying is, well, they could. The fact is they don’t. And if they did, our auditing tools would detect them, and they would be held accountable.
Either way, even with those caveats in the first paragraph, in the second paragraph Alexander makes claims without such caveats. There he argues that "no one at NSA had ever gone outside the boundaries of what we've been given. That's a fact." Actually, that's a lie. As the report showed quite clearly, there are thousands of incidents in which they went outside the boundaries. That they were "accidental" or "incidental" doesn't change that fact.
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Filed Under: abuse, keith alexander, nsa, nsa surveillance, violations
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Rapid lying
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Re: Rapid lying
If we can believe snowden when he said truth was coming, then we can expect countless "they're were lying" articles. Sites like this where stories get "burried" as new ones come out gives certain characters incentive to get their names bumped down to page two. That could be good, as they compete not to have their names up front. I recant. my last post.
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I'd bookmark NSA-Dirt!
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With the WMDs.
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Perhaps his answer reveals that Congress wasn't notified of these abuses. Or perhaps even worse, maybe when he says, "no one at NSA had ever gone outside the boundaries of what we’ve been given.", he really indicating that there isn't much in the way of boundaries.
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The latest report that exposed all of these violations was an internal NSA report, rather than the Congressional one. The latter somehow missed all of these abuses, demonstrating how meaningless their system of congressional oversight is.
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It has already been established that these two can simply not be believed along with their boss, Obama. None of them have any intention now or in the future of ever telling the truth. All three have had their creditability run through the mud by the lies they have been caught in to date. At this point there should be a statement added as a comment to every public proclamation they make that these are known twisters of the truth and can never be believed.
The eventual outcome of straightening this out will at this stage require an outside independent investigator designated by congress. Already too many inconsistencies showing the real intents of these three are on record for all to see. Enough of the fancy footwork that makes a stumble bum look like a ballerina in comparison.
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I'll answer that. When the evidence builds to the point that it outrages enough people that public demands that they be arrested and held accountable for their actions. Then and only then will it be enough.
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Go ahead and lie over and over again to Congress without punishment. If that were any of us, we'd be sitting in a federal prison by now.
Clearly, this government is out of control.
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President Joe?
Of course, something a little more serious will have to come to light. Bold-faced lying seems to be expected.
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How Many queries
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