
U.S. Government: Reports About PRISM Contain “Numerous Inaccuracies” - Lightning
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/06/u-s-government-reports-about-prism-contain-numerous-inaccuracies/
======
icambron
> The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens
> potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify
> and respond to the many threats facing our nation.

> The article omits key information regarding how a classified intelligence
> collection program is used to prevent terrorist attacks and the numerous
> safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties.

The dissonance between those two sentences, which appear consecutively in the
statement, could not be mores striking. "Transparency damages your security!
Yet your lack of information makes us seem unreasonable!"

So convince us! Don't hide behind a wall of unconvincing secrecy and then tell
us it's good for us. We're the People; we're happy to decide how much you can
spy on us for the sake of our security.

You know what I think? I think you kept this all a secret because your case
for doing it utterly sucks, and you knew we'd object. And I think you've
earned precisely that level of trust.

Edit: minor expansion

~~~
mtgx
I love their circular logic: "The disclosure of our illegal spying threatens
our illegal spying in the future".

Hey at least they don't use the "we don't tell you we're spying on you so we
don't infringe on your privacy" line, anymore.

These comments go to the top, along with FBI's last year's quote "Warrants
make our job hard" i.e. check and balances make their job harder, which is
kind of the point, I think.

~~~
anigbrowl
Put yourself in the spooks' position. You may know for a fact that parts of
the story are simply inaccurate, but you're sworn not to reveal unclassified
material without authorization, and you can't know for sure how good the
criteria for classification are due to compartmentalization.

Only a few people, like the President and the DNI, are in a position to make
those determinations, and they're in a somewhat similar double-bind insofar as
selective declassification may later turn out to be a mistake. If you talk to
a lot of conservatives, you soon find that when the administration increases
transparency or answers a FOIA request with meaningful information, there are
plenty of hawks ready to criticize the administration for compromising
security, putting American lives at risk, and so on.

~~~
jlgreco
Oh those poor spooks. What are they to do! Life must be rough for them; we
should be more considerate.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not asking you to feel sorry for them; I'm just asking what you would do
if you had their job. Saying you wouldn't take that job is beside the point;
they literally don't have the option of explaining themselves fully. The
number of people who are empowered to _de_ classify information is very small
in comparison to the number of people who are empowered or mandated to
classify it.

~~~
jlgreco
If I were a spook, I would throw myself under a bus.

Barring that, I would just keep my mouth shut if I were in an unprivileged
position like that. If I don't have permission to declassify it, what business
is it of mine to say that the public does not have the full picture? I can't
imagine even saying that much isn't frowned upon. No, I imagine any official
statement to the effect of _"you don't know everything"_ is only authorized
very carefully.

There is no real "partial explanation" option here. There are only full
explanations, and unverifiable PR spin. Nothing in between. Unverifiable PR
spin is the only option? Tough shit, I am not satisfied.

~~~
anigbrowl
_If I were a spook, I would throw myself under a bus._

Are you saying that you don't believe that governments (at any level) should
engage in any kind of intelligence-gathering or espionage, ever? Or that there
is ever any role for secrecy? If so, I regard that as a valid position, but
also a naive one.

~~~
jlgreco
Being a spook is incompatible with who I am. If I were forced to be a spook,
"drafted into spook-dom", I would do anything necessary to end the coercion.
If necessary, I would throw myself under a bus. I believe this to be a
principled response to coercion.

Actually on second thought, that is short-sighted. I would leak everything
that I could, _then_ I would throw myself under a bus.

If you are asking me what I think spooks, who are not me, should do in this
situation, then I think I have answered that. They should either expect the
criticism they will receive for their worthless PR spin responses, or they
should respond in a way that would not cause such a reaction. I don't care if
they think the later is not an option, or even if it _actually_ is not an
option. That is their problem, not mine.

Shitty position for a spook to be in? They don't have any other options? So
fucking what. They made their bed. Criticism of what they said should not be
tempered just because you think it is the only think they could say.

~~~
anigbrowl
OK, but what about the question I asked? I get that _you_ would never
voluntarily go to work for the NSA, CIA, or similar, but my question is
whether you think organizations like that should be allowed to exist at all,
not whether you would choose to work there.

I'm pointing out a practical limitation on what they can say arising of how
such agencies function, you're talking about how they should feel about it on
a personal level. I have no interest in how they feel about it as individuals.

~~~
jlgreco
You are saying that they cannot release everything. I am saying that I don't
care, I will still criticise them for a piss poor response even if that is all
that they are capable of giving.

If I require something of them that they cannot provide, I do not stop
requiring it of them. If they cannot satisfy me, I will remain unsatisfied. I
will not change my standards to accommodate them.

I've answered your question now three times. Are you going to pretend not to
hear me again?

~~~
anigbrowl
So basically you're just throwing a temper tantrum. It seems to me that your
_problem_ is with the way these organizations are constituted by law, but your
_reaction_ is to make moral criticisms of the individuals who work there and
are trying to operate within the law.

I think in this case that there are strong arguments for changing the law, but
it seems utterly pointless to blame people for following it when that is what
they are sworn to do.

------
einhverfr
Reading it carefully, what they are saying is this:

    
    
        The press is complaining that we are spying on Americans.
        This is very inaccurate.  We are mostly trying to spy on
        foreigners.  We have a robust legal framework in place, 
        rubber stamped by the Star Chamber (aka FISC) which 
        protects your liberties.   The fact 
        that the media reports did not report on our secret
        procedures makes the reports grossly inaccurate.  
        Please trust us. kthxbye

------
fianchetto
> It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S.
> person, or anyone located within the United States.

"Intentionally" is a weasel word. Clapper also used the word "wittingly",
another weasel word, when questioned by Congress.

The takeaway: They still don't deny that they're collecting the info.

~~~
wavefunction
"oops, this just happened to fall into our pockets

finders keepers!"

------
jakobe
What worries me most is that they don't even deny spying on foreigners. With
so many international websites and services located in the US, what does that
mean for us in Europe? What difference do our European privacy laws make, if
we use websites with servers in the US?

~~~
danso
The NSA's primary mission is to look at foreign communications. The
controversy that is erupting here is because that mission inevitably involves
surveillance of US data centers

------
danielki
Okay, NSA, so how about some transparency to clear up these supposed
"inaccuracies"? Nobody believes you if you just deny something without
providing evidence to back it up.

~~~
sounds
Take it to the courts.

The only way the NSA/FBI/Obama administration are actually going to give up
any hard evidence is if compelled to.

The EFF is certainly attempting to do just that:
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-
spying-m...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-spying-
millions-americans)

------
coldtea
> _U.S. Government: Reports About PRISM Contain “Numerous Inaccuracies”_

Yes, that would be the case for any leak of "in the dark" government activity.
It's not like everything is out in the open to be reported upon freely and in
detail. As long as they got the gist right, I'm covered.

> _The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens
> potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify
> and respond to the many threats facing our nation._

How is the use of "top secret U.S. court documents" not a threat to the very
idea of democracy itself? And a threat to the people from such covert
activities?

------
coldcode
Why would any foreign company or government do business with a US company any
more. All your secret belong to US.

------
jandrewrogers
The idea that PalTalk was a top-tier data collection target up there with
Google and Facebook does stretch credibility. I'd never even heard of them
before.

(Alternate theory: the slides are an awesome marketing hoax by PalTalk.)

------
drivebyacct2
How does this, in their response, not confirm the PRISM info in at least some
way? Or am I meant to take this as "any confidential info is potentially
dangerous"? And even then, are they admitting this is authentic confidential
info?

>The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens
potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and
respond to the many threats facing our nation.

>The article omits key information regarding how a classified intelligence
collection program is used to prevent terrorist attacks and the numerous
safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties.

And that's exactly the transparency we're interested in. Help establish a bit
of trust, because right now I trust the least trustworthy person I know more
than the NSA.

And their last defense is FISA/FISC and they're still pretending that only
applies to foreign nationals? Or is "only meant to be used on... foreign
nationals"?

