Slashdot Mirror
NSA To Scientists: We Won't Tell You What We've Told You; That's Classified
MojoKid writes One of the downsides to the news cycle is that no matter how big or hot a story is, something else inevitably comes along. The advent of ISIS and Ebola, combined with the passing of time, have pushed national security concerns out of the limelight — until, that is, someone at the NSA helps out by reminding us that yes, the agency still exists and yes, it still has some insane policies and restrictions. Earlier this year, the Federation of American Scientists filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA. The group was seeking information it thought would be relatively low-key — what authorized information had been leaked to the media over the past 12 months? The NSA's response reads as follows: "The document responsive to your request has been reviewed by this Agency as required by the FOIA and has been found to be currently and properly classified in accordance with Executive Order 13526. The document is classified because its disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security." The NSA is insisting that it has the right to keep its lawful compliance and public disclosures secret not because the NSA is made of evil people but because the NSA has a knee-jerk preference and demand for secrecy. In a spy organization, that's understandable and admirable but it's precisely the opposite of what's needed to rebuild American's faith in the institution and its judgment.
And this is Obama's NSA, not even Bush's. Go figure.
Screw "American's Faith." You need to start worrying about the world's opinion about your intrusive spies.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Lately Obama has been making Bush seem tame in regardless to trampling Americans' rights (the NSA spying on Americans, Obamacare forcing people to buy healthcare, including coverage they don't need, etc.)
The NSA is the NSA. They were there before the president, and will be there many more presidents to come. They don't care about the president because he's only there for 4 years, maybe 8 at the most. Really, do you think any president "controls" the NSA? The best they can hope to do is reign in their worst activities on a good day.
Telling people (including 'enemies') which 'leaks' were authorized and which ones were really leaks could give people all sorts of interesting information -- including which disinformation^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H leaks to trust and which ones not to.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
The president can fire the head honchos at NSA and put Ron Paul or even somebody sane in charge if he wanted to.
Somebody who reads too many blogs will reply "civil service act". The civil service act forbids firing a covered employee because they didn't donate to your campaign. He can fire them for any other reason. The act is only about one page, read it if you like.
Why confirm what is true instead of leaving people wondering what might be speculation?
Exactly. This is about authorized leaks, namely leaks that the powers that be authorized to be LEAKED, but since they are leaks versus announcements, meaning no official confirmation publically, it leaves doubt in the public about their validity and I think this is part of why they were leaked versus announced. I am not sure it is right for the NSA to use this way of releasing the information but hat is what they did.
To recap, they deliberately released the info by a leak so it wasn't tracable to the NSA, then the FAS comes along and says give us a list of all the information that the NSA leaked, namely disclose what information was released by the NSA that the NSA didn't want attributed to the NSA being the source, amd the NSA has said such a list would be classified becuase it would have the effect of disclosing WHY it was released by leaking versus announcing and those reasons are classified. I can see their side.
Just cause you dye the sock puppet black doesn't mean you have to change the play.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.