Trevor Timm at the indispensable Electronic Frontier Foundation has
your guide to understanding when the government is lying to you about NSA surveillance. Which is pretty much most of the time.
Some of his examples:
- What does "bulk collection" mean? An intelligence official says it's "when we collect and retain for some period of time that lets us do retrospective analysis." We've seen this in action before, when Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was trying to twist his way out of admitting that he lied to Congress. The actual act of hoovering up of millions of communications from Americans, without a warrant, isn't "collecting," according to the administration.
- Then there's the word "target."
When government officials can’t directly answer a question with a secret definition, officials will often answer a different question than they were asked. For example, if asked, “can you read Americans’ email without a warrant,” officials will answer: “we cannot target Americans’ email without a warrant.” As we explained last week, the NSA’s warped definition of word “target” is full of so many holes that it allows the NSA to reach into untold number of Americans’ emails, some which can be purely domestic.
- Here's another favorite: the "not under this program" dodge.
Another tried and true technique in the NSA obfuscation playbook is to deny it does one invasive thing or another “under this program.” When it’s later revealed the NSA actually doesdo the spying it said it didn’t, officials can claim it was just part of another program not referred to in the initial answer. [...]
Now we’re likely seeing it as part of the telephone records collection debate when administration officials repeat over and over that they aren’t collecting location data “under this program.” Sen. Ron Wyden has strongly suggested this might not be the whole story.
- Of course, there's also just the statements that are demonstrably, transparently, obviously false.
The night before the New York Times story on “vast” warrantless searches of Americans’ communications came out, Obama told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, “We don't have a domestic spying program.” Mr. President, what do you call collecting the phone records of all Americans and searching any email sent by an American that happens to cross the border? That sounds a lot like a domestic spying program.
Similarly, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently said this: "[T]he government cannot listen to an American’s telephone calls or read their emails without a court warrant issued upon a showing of probable cause." Leaked documents and, honestly, the FISA Amendments Act itself show Feinstein’s statement simply isn’t true—if Americans are talking to a “target” their telephone calls are listened to and their emails can be read without a warrant (and that doesn’t even include the searching of Americans’ communications that are “about a target”). All of those searches are done without a court order, much less a warrant based on probable cause.
When so many of the statements from the administration and the defenders of its surveillance program are playing so fast and loose with the dictionary, with existing law, and with the facts "just trust me" isn't going to work. It's time for real transparency.
Sign our petition urging Congress to declassify the FISA Court’s rulings so we can find out what else the court has decided about the Fourth Amendment.