
Two Senators Say the NSA Is Still Feeding Us False Information - nealabq
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/2-senators-say-the-nsa-is-still-feeding-us-false-information/277187/
======
adventured
Senator Wyden has been remarkable in how far he has been willing to legally
stick his neck out while so many other politicians either quietly cower in
fear or hop on the mass surveillance bus. He'll be getting both my public
support and campaign contributions for as long as he's in office.

~~~
danso
Just in case people forgot, he was also the primary Senate opponent of the
PROTECT-IP Act (the Senate's version of SOPA)

[http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/W000779](http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/W000779)

~~~
mtgx
He's been the opponent of pretty much all recent privacy breaching
legislation.

~~~
rz2k
I wonder what he's hiding? /s

------
jdmitch
I think the subtitle gets to the heart of the issue: "How can a democratic
republic function when the bureaucrats are constantly misleading the people?"

It feels more and more like a deceptive charade that the US is actually a
democratic republic. It is increasingly clear that in a number of significant
areas the shady bureaucracy is taking action without the public's consent.

~~~
nwh
From an outsiders view, that's my interpretation too. Have to wonder just how
many people are under gag orders for various secret things. An uncharitable
view would be that the democracy bit is just to keep the public from realising
they have no control.

I often wonder how the US will be seen in history books, and it's quickly
slipping further into the evil section.

~~~
redblacktree
> I often wonder how the US will be seen in history books, and it's quickly
> slipping further into the evil section.

That will depend upon who wins.

------
DanielBMarkham
It seems like the root of the problem here is using intelligence sources to
target all civilians. As the senators point out, there's no way the NSA is
going to automatically be able to tell from an email address or random
internet packet the citizenship status of the person sending it. This should
have been pointed out and addressed years ago, but instead they deliberately
lied to Congress and then forbade Congress from coming clean with the public.
What a mess.

But there might be an even deeper problem, if you can believe it. I really
don't see the purpose of electing people as representatives to serve on a
committee if _the committee is not given all of the relevant details, is
sometimes lied to, and is forbidden from releasing any of the details to the
public_. I think the executive branch and specifically the president is taking
on waaaaaay too much power here. In times of war, this might be
understandable, but a democracy cannot endure a never-ending state of war. I
hope that many are beginning to see this.

------
rz2k
I thought this _New Yorker_ cartoon[1] about the all of the iceberg being
above the surface was pretty apropos, and I'm not sure the licensors got the
point when they gave it the keywords "global warming" and "sea ice"[2].

(Also, it's really difficult to permalink to _New Yorker_ cartoons in a way
that they get credit)

[1]
[http://www.newyorker.com/images/2013/07/01/p465/130701_daily...](http://www.newyorker.com/images/2013/07/01/p465/130701_daily-
cartoon-monday-2_p465.jpg)

[2]
[http://cartoonbank.licensestream.com/LicenseStream/Store/con...](http://cartoonbank.licensestream.com/LicenseStream/Store/contentView.aspx?id=ae125fc4-ec5a-41b9-b068-2042b8c8940c)

------
ScottBurson
The NSA fact sheet claims: "Any inadvertently acquired communication of or
concerning a US person must be promptly destroyed if it is neither relevant to
the authorized purpose nor evidence of a crime."

Even if this were true -- and Wyden and Udall are saying it's not -- it should
not be good enough. All communications obtained without a lawful warrant
should be destroyed _even if_ they are evidence of a crime, I submit, and I
would even go farther to say that no information obtained by the NSA about US
persons should ever be able to be used as evidence in a court of law.

This is not because I want people to be able to commit crimes with impunity;
it's because Federal criminal law is so far out of control that the government
can find a charge to hang on anyone it doesn't like. Also, the NSA is an arm
of the DoD; as such, its job is to keep the country safe from external
attackers. If the kind of massive, invasive data collection we are reading
about is necessary to do that job -- a point I am not conceding, but one that
many people seem to believe -- at the very least we must make sure it is never
used for any other purpose.

------
SeanDav
What sort of coverage is this getting in the USA?

I had a quick look at nytimes.com and didn't see anything. I realize that HN
is kind of an echo chamber, especially about these events, so it would be nice
to know as a non US resident how this is all panning out in major news
centres.

~~~
revscat
When it is discussed -- which is rare -- the American media is focusing on
Snowden and his whereabouts. There is almost no discussion about what he has
exposed.

As it typically is, the media is aligned with the bureaucracy.

~~~
pvnick
This is infuriating. What can we do?

~~~
VladRussian2
Nothing.

~~~
pvnick
I don't accept that.

~~~
VladRussian2
you're accepting it. Just by mere being present while your freedoms and rights
are being raped, you're accepting it. Something along the lines of "estoppel"
and "laches" concepts. What you're thinking while it happens - doesn't matter
as you'll get used to it with time.

------
logn
Referenced in the article is an NSA PDF. See this instead:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xiyLnPk...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xiyLnPkueBgJ:www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/press_releases/section_702_protections.pdf)

The actual PDF can't be requested at the moment.

[http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/press_releases/section...](http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/press_releases/section_702_protections.pdf)

 _Internal Server Error - Read The server encountered an internal error or
misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request._

~~~
nathas
And now an error notice: "It seems you have experienced an error."

I guess they took it down. It responds with a 404 according to Fiddler.

Edit: Here's a Pastebin'd version of the text in case the Google cached
version expires: [http://pastebin.com/5d7rHmYe](http://pastebin.com/5d7rHmYe)

~~~
logn
Thanks for that edit. I have a feeling this was a deliberate removal of that
doc. And actually their error message looks like it was written by a lawyer,
"it seems you have experienced an error"... as in, maybe it wasn't an 'error',
but appears to be one.

------
mpyne
Am I the only one who thinks the headline is at least slightly misleading?

I had assumed the NSA was caught in a lie, but that wasn't what either Senator
said.

They said instead (to paraphrase) that the NSA mentioned they must promptly
destroy information inadvertently collection about American citizens, but the
NSA _failed to mention_ that they have no reasonable way to figure out whether
a given file belongs to an American or not.

While I agree that this is something important that the NSA should include for
transparency's sake with any list of talking points covering minimization,
it's not the same thing as "feeding us false information" either.

This may help clues into what the scope of NSA copying of Internet traffic is;
if they were only tapping into international/domestic transfer sites then
they'd be able to fairly easily tag information as "probably not U.S." and
discard the rest.

Given the difficulty in determining what's what it would seem they are instead
at the very least copying everything going to/from major cloud providers,
which certainly sounds different in scope.

~~~
peripitea
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, this seems worse than lying to me. The
primary concern addressed by this point is: as an American citizens, will they
store my information? The intellectually honest answer to that question is
something along the lines of "yes, there's a very good chance we will", but
they've worded this point to make it seem like the answer is "no". In doing
so, they get away with lying while being able to claim they are not. On
balance, this seems more likely to deceive the electorate than a straight-out
lie would be; such a lie would be more likely to be called out and uncovered.

I'm not even close to a lawyer, so again, I may be misunderstanding. But
that's how I read it.

~~~
mpyne
> Unless I'm misunderstanding something, this seems worse than lying to me.

Well, isn't it good that I pointed it out then! ;)

There's no way to move forward on these types of discussions if we always talk
past each other, words mean things and we should use them appropriately.

------
jdp23
Marcy Wheeler suggests that the inaccuracy "has to do with the US person
contact info collected along with targets. Even a comparison of the
minimization order and the NSA’s claims make it clear US person communication
can be swept up more easily than they claim."

[http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/24/wyden-udall-to-
alexande...](http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/24/wyden-udall-to-alexander-
why-do-you-people-keep-lying/)

------
graycat
It's called the 'mushroom treatment': Keep in the dark and feed BS.

------
jmadsen
I wonder if Senator Wyden or others like him have noticed the irony of
learning first-hand how frustrating it is to deal with an entrenched
bureaucracy that puts up obstacles to protect itself from outside
interference, even when it is working against the well-being of the people it
is supposed to be working FOR.

Some might be excused for thinking I was describing the Congress...

------
wahsd
Lying liars trained to lie, cheat, manipulate, steal, and deceive are lying,
cheating, manipulating, stealing, and deceiving.

I'm shocked!

The enemy is within.

------
lifeisstillgood
Anyone have the link to the 15 talking points mentioned.

~~~
sailfast
I was unable to find them and it doesn't appear there's a press release with
that file on the NSA's public site. If there was a working link it appears to
have been changed or removed.

~~~
pyre
Posted elsewhere: [http://pastebin.com/5d7rHmYe](http://pastebin.com/5d7rHmYe)

