Don't worry your little head about a thing, the nation's top intelligence chiefs say, because
it's all about your privacy.
NEW YORK (CNN) —The leaders of the top three U.S. intelligence agencies made an unusual joint public appearance Thursday to make a pitch for companies to cooperate more with the government in cybersecurity efforts, and defended the work their agencies do amid controversy over vast data mining programs that critics say invade Americans' privacy.
National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander, FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director John Brennan said the government does its best to ensure the work their agencies do is focused on protecting the nation from harm, while respecting privacy. [...]
Alexander won applause when he said the NSA programs have been "grossly mischaracterized in the press" and that the system the U.S. government has come up with, working with the courts and Congress, works better than anywhere else in the world.
He cited President Barack Obama's comments on a late night talk show, saying of the controversial NSA programs: "this isn't a domestic spy program" but rather a program to protect the nation from terrorists.
He apparently missed the
blockbuster New York Times article revealing that the "National Security Agency is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans' e-mail and text communications into and out of the country." In other words, a domestic spy program.
But it might all be in the semantics, again. Like when Director of National Intelligence Clapper lied to a senator and then tried to say that really, it was all about how they defined the word "collect" differently. As in the dragnet collection of cell phone data isn't really collecting. Turns out, our intelligence officials also have their own definition of "privacy."
The word "privacy" wasn't mentioned until the last few minutes of the 90-minute program. When asked whether Americans had any expectation of privacy nowadays, Brennan said, "I do believe privacy is important, but privacy can be defined in different ways."
Don't you feel better about being spied on now? Your privacy
TM, as defined by the CIA and NSA and FBI, is completely protected.