"We put a splitter on the internet so that we can keep our own copy in locations A, B, C, and coming soon, D. We use an automated selector-based filter to find nodes of interest in realtime, as well as tools for querying the enormous amount of data we keep in the storage facilities at said locations."
That would count as both open and honest. What could the implications possibly be? Congress isn't going to investigate them based on those statements, and if you try to enter those locations you'd get denied entry just like you would today.
So what exactly is this "nature" that prevents the NSA from publishing the paragraph I wrote above?
* the "splitter" as you call it (an useful simplification for this discussion) might be on devices of public companies without their consent against their wishes - IIRC that was part of Snowden's revelations.
* the "splitter" might have been secretly placed on an undersea cable in foreign waters, and there's a clear national security interest not to reveal that fact - the key job of NSA is to listen in to other nations and ensure that they don't know if/how it's succeeding.
* the "splitter" might include cooperation from friendly governments that's not public knowledge to their populations. Again, there's a clear foreign policy interest not to disclose that.
* the "splitter" might have been made possible by a vulnerability in something that everyone believes is secure (e.g. RSA cryptosystem), and revealing what kind of data is captured will reveal that it's possible to capture that kind of data, which (if it's a surprise) by itself might lead to it becoming useless as people worldwide deduce what component needs to be replaced.
There's obviously more. NSA can reveal that their job includes spying on everyone outside USA; but any more details would generally be harmful to that mission.
> Since at least May 2016, the surveillance agency had featured honesty as the first of four “core values” listed on NSA.gov, alongside “respect for the law,” “integrity,” and “transparency.” The agency vowed on the site to “be truthful with each other.”
Also, I'm thinking they should probably remove all of these, if they were truly honest with us. Respect for the law? Come on. They've been constantly misinterpreting what the surveillance laws actually allow them to do. And there's certainly no respect for the Constitution, because I don't think the Fourth Amendment means much to them anymore - even to the FBI, considering they can now get Americans's communications content without a warrant.