| > If it's coming directly from the NSA what makes you think it's trustworthy? They've lied under oath. I love this assertion - it gets tossed around so much when someone just wants to shut an argument down. Because James Clapper (who is not part of the NSA) gave a statement on the NSA to Congress which turned out to be false, every subsequent piece of information on the NSA from a government official that disagrees with your opinion must therefore be a lie - no evidence necessary. Who needs to examine official testimony when we can just say the opposing argument is all lies and call it a day? > Curious about your reading ability as well. Classy. > They seem to be talking about the exact same numbers you're citing as unassailable truth. You're the one that introduced the numbers with your "party line" comment, not me. My point was that your cited article claims to show Gen Alexander caught in a lie over the '54' number, admitting finally that it was only one or two, when that was never his claim to begin with. For that matter, Sen Leahy isn't questioning the number, either - he released a rather long statement on the matter[1] in which he stated that his issue was that the number of successes for the Section 215 (bulk cell records) and the Section 702 (PRISM) programs were being lumped together. Gen Alexander gave public testimony in June stating that 53 of those 54 successes were from PRISM, but that fact wasn't being adequately conveyed to the public. You'll note that Sen Leahy states in that document that he did, in fact, have access to the complete classified list. > Sorry this doesn't make sense. Allow me to break it down for you: you have never been to any of the classified briefings given to either of the two congressional intelligence committees, so you don't know what was briefed to them. You have no idea how much access the congress has been given to classified information. When you say "Elected US officials don't have access to enough information to verify those claims," you have no way to back that statement up. That's the nature of classified information - the government gets to keep secrets, too. That's why we have intelligence committees to oversee agencies like the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. If you don't like it, just be honest and make an argument against state secrecy or degrees of transparency instead of making up credibility claims that you can't back up. [1] https://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/senate-judiciary-committe... |
Every single criticism you just made could apply to your claims as well. Not that you seem particularly interested in examining your own opinions.