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US Director of National Intelligence Admits He Was Wrong About Data Collection
Gunkerty Jeb writes "In a highly unusual move, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said Tuesday that he misspoke when he told a Congressional committee in March that the National Security Agency does not collect data on millions of Americans. Clapper said at the time that the agency does not do so 'wittingly,' but in a letter to the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Clapper admitted this statement was 'erroneous.' Clapper, the top U.S. intelligence official, has been quite vocal in his defense of the NSA's now-public surveillance programs such as PRISM and the metadata collection program. In statements published shortly after the leak of classified documents by Edward Snowden about those collection efforts Clapper said that they both have been repeatedly authorized by Congress and the executive and judicial branches over the years."
And WTF does 'wittingly' means ? That you are trying to drown a fish ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Well, he's had his passport revoked, is being hunted around the world, and is being vilified in almost all public media.
Oh, wait....
May the Maths Be with you!
Whatever.
The story isn't that the GCHQ/NSA spied on everybody and shared data to circumvent checks and balances. At least it isn't anymore.
Now the story has become what the Western World truly is. And I find the sight horrifying.
It is a safe assumption that ALL secret service type of organisations have directly or indirectly profited from this jolly old mess. The mass snooping on private citizens barely got a reaction from head politicos of all parties involved. But once the story broke that official buildings may have been bugged everybody scrambled to voice their indignation.
Meanwhile the guy who unearthed what we all suspected but never had proof for is handled like a hot potato. Hong Kong let him go because extradition papers were not only late but also weren't filled out properly. The US officials couldn't be arsed to put passport number or his full and korrekt name in the form. If you were that sloppy with your tax forms you would be potentially facing a prison sentence.
Russia offers political asylum and smugly adds that it is conditional on him not further embarassing "our US partners".
France, Spain and Portugal refused the president of Bolivia to pass their air space because he might have Snowden on board. Yet everybody complains about what he had published. Meanwhile every western country declines to offer asylum based on technicalities. Yet when they buy stolen bank records for hefty sums they also grant the whistleblowers immunity and possibly a new identity. The sheer two-facedness is ghastly.
Reading today's news reads like a declaration of bankruptcy of the western ideals and we will all have to do our homework in the aftermath of this mess. When this is all over the only ones without egg on their face will be Russia and China of all places!
And we, the people, discuss Snowden's girlfriend's tits and now about who lied when about what instead of taking responsibility of our elected dear leaders.
20 minutes into the future
"telling Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein that his statement was "clearly erroneous.""
You mean it was clearly a lie, and you were caught. Clapper should be charged with perjury, they've done so when baseball players lied to congress about taking performance enhancing drugs how can lying to congress about illegal/unconstitutional activities that adversely effect millions of Americans merit any less? By the way, I'm noticing no official response yet on the "Pardon Snowden" White House petition. Not that I'm expecting much, I'm just curious to see what BS they parade about to justify their imprisonment of a person for minor classification violations when they do nothing about the thousands of illegal/unconstitutional acts that the whistle-blower reveals.
...and in the end only China and Russia will emerge from this dungheap smelling of roses.
Can't we simply say that the Western Ideals have been abandoned so we can safely watch "$COUNTRY Got Talent", wave our flags and pretend we are still worthy to be proud of? Surely?
20 minutes into the future
No, you won't. You have no power. They have the power. They are laughing at all of you impotent citizens. Go ahead, vote away, it won't change anything. Don't even think about rebellion - that's not an option any more. It used to be, long, long ago; but those in power have solved that problem.
They are watching you (and me too, of course), listening to you, noting with whom you communicate. They can shut you up whenever they like, up to and including disappearing you, your family and everyone you've ever known.
Stop being an idiot, get your head down and carry on working yourself to death to make somebody else rich, like a good obedient American. And smile, and smile, and smile.
Don't try anything, and stop talking like somebody who doesn't want their passport (or liberty) any more. Silly turkey.
Wyden's people submitted that very question to Clapper days before the hearing even began. He was invited to append and revise his remarks after the hearing. He did neither.
If he still has his job a few weeks from now, that will be confirmation that neither Congress nor the White House have any effective control over the US Organs of Security.
However, pertaining to his immediate future...isn't he bound to current laws dealing with lying under oath to Congress?
Should he not be getting a "Go To Jail" card, and bypass Go"?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Most US public media, Snowden is getting mostly neutral or positive press everywhere else.
While that is true, the balance between reports on Snowden and the actual leaks is disturbingly focused on Snowden rather than the leaks themselves. While I empathize with Snowdens current situation and admire his courage I am not of the opinion that the girlfriend he left behind and similar material that belong in gossip columns is more news worthy than the actual leaks.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Clapper is still lying.
He says "erroneous" when it is evident the correct term is "mendacious" or "duplicitous".
Who thinks they will ever get close to a real answer, when questioning spies and their masters?
This guy is in charge of the Ministry of Lies. Testimony means nothing to him.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
OK look if we're at this point with career NSAers being put in a position where they believe they're best option is systematically, categorically and knowingly lie to Congress then we have a very specific problem that we need make right; the problem of divergent world views.
The world view of those in the intelligence community has radically diverged from those of both the general public and the lawmakers. That divergence is a side effect of necessary secrecy the intelligence community operates under. Over time, they've been exposed to, reasoned about and concluded more about the world using more and different information than anyone else. This had led them to assume a world view which, if it details were laid bare, most Americans would find alien, suspect and somewhat threatening to the democracy if not outright treasonous .
Naturally, this has also led them to campaign for and take actions which are aligned with their world view.
Some of these actions have been exposed and Americans are understandably upset.
That's where we are now.
The NSA's whole SOP has been to rely on the cover of secrecy to do what they think needs to be done and never mind making a case for what you do in the world of public opinion. Their only real "plan" if any of that world view got out , aside from successive attempts at damage control through limited disclosures, lies and plausible deniability - is to tighten the control over information more tightly and step up the threats against leakers. Since that has brought us to this point, and all worse points forward of this which have yet to materialize, you have to wonder if it's really the best plan.
I don't doubt that Clapper et. al. are doing anything other than what they take to be their duty to this country *the way I can't doubt that Snowden is doing same*. To do otherwise in either case would just be to maintain a destructive, partisan lie about people and their motivations. Snowden is not a traitor who hates the US. He's not Aldrich Ames. You can close your ears and yell "NA NA NA NA I can't heeaaaar you", but the truth is the truth is the truth. So face it. Admit it. The real goal has to be to get at the root of the problem, understand it and fix it.
The root of the problem is that one part of our defense forces (widely considered) is either in an echo chamber ala The Rand corporation and Vietnam ala '60-'75 or they do actually know better and more than the rest of us. Or both. It's not a fiction that technology is delivering to the world new threats which are potentially grave and far reaching and the prospects for counter-measures against those threats are meager.
One unpleasant fact may be that we need to organize ourselves on a world-wide basis very very differently than we do now. It's hard to think clearly about, but it needs to be done.
What can't go on is this schizophrenia involving a highly informed, highly serious, highly capable, highly motivated intelligence community that listens only to itself and Everybody Else, which by the way includes people who don powder wigs and tri- corner hats and seriously believe they can take America back to the 18th century without ill effect because *some things never change*....
The danger is the NSA et al are exactly where the Rand corporation was- overly certain of their methods, reasoning and conclusions and considering every oppositional voice to be naive, unpatriotic and idiotic all the while becoming narrower and narrower in their world view, their thinking and their goals.
It's the HAL9000 issue, right? You're an entity that knows more, you have secret knowledge about a critical secret mission. You cannot tell the mere humans or they'd screw it up. You're feeding on yourself in a way that you're not programmed to be aware of and the only structural checks in place are internal, or friendlies.
Meanwhile, outsiders, (even those on the inside apparently), can see you're getting weird. You're starting to lie, even to your minders. In response, you use you
And why exactly do you think the petty, vengeful, scatalogical, murderous, genocidal, torturing-anyone-he-doesn't-like-for-all-of-eternity Bronze Age nightmare hellspawn known as Yahweh is any sort of moral basis? Anyone with a working moral compass who believed Yahweh existed would be trying to KILL it, not worship it!
Disclaimer: I am not an atheist. But I know for damn sure who I'd rather hang out with, and it's NOT the people who think their God sacrificing himself TO himself to stop himself from throwing his own creations, whom he knew would sin, into the hell he created (but didn't mention for 4000+ years) for the sins he knew they would commit before he created them makes any kind of sense. Fuck that. No one blasphemes like a Christian.
Let me break this down into bite-sized little chunks: the is-ought problem is a smokescreen. It does not exist. All our logic, all our understanding, all our morality, everything except what we definitionally create (some parts of maths, and even then...) is Godel-incomplete. It may be internally consistent and complete, but from within it, we cannot know. There are G-sentences in it, along the same vein as "this sentence is false." It's like trying to look at the back of your head by rolling your eyes up into your skull.
HOWEVER, we are a social species, and we evolved from a social species, and social behavior is far older than the primate lineage, let alone humanity. Over the eons, for hundreds of thousands of years, we've developed this further as culture and memetics began to supersede genetics. These are emergent developments, not separate ones, and in times of stress or fear, we will regress as the higher functions shut down while the body deals with adrenal overload.
And in the present? Huge, huge force multipliers exist that didn't in the environment we evolved in. Technology, global communications, massive energy and transport infrastructure...all of it is invented. And there are people with tremendous intellect but no real fellow-feeling at the reins, people who understand how powerful and useful Fear is.
People who, ironically, are existentially terrified deep down. Greed is a kind of fear. Hatred is fear backed into a corner. Prejudice is fear. Living beings which can feel fear do what they can to eliminate it. What do you think happens when sociopaths and the easily-led mix in conditions like this? What did you expect?
Even in cases where someone lies in court, you are generally allowed to restate answers, without immediately being hit with perjury charges.
Clapper got a chance to restate his answers. As is normal with Congressional testimony, he was given the questions a day in advance and had the opportunity to object to the them. He could have, for example, asked that the question be moved to a closed-door hearing so classified information could have been given. He also was offered the chance to amend his answers the day after the testimony, just in case he "misspoke". He declined.
Clapper did not "misspeak". He didn't misunderstand the question, or get confused about which program was spying on whom. He flat up lied. Under oath. To the same elected representatives whom he cites as his support for the proposition that these programs have been properly authorized.
The only pity here is that there is zero hope that anyone above him will call him on it. At least someone below him called him out.