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Comment by SideburnsOfDoom | Hacker News Reader

There's GCHQ's usual silence - at most they say "we don't comment, can neither confirm nor deny, etc."

There's a denial.

And there's saying it's "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" which goes beyond a mere denial. For GCHQ, this is very strong language.

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The problem is why should I trust them, they exist to lie cheat and spy.

If they did do it, they'd just keep quiet. When POTUS proves it, they just smile smugly.

To say they didn't, and then get found to have done, will be infinitely worse.

It just makes no sense.

Indeed, there's nothing to be gained from denying it. They could have kept totally quiet, and everyone would just assume 'that's what spy agencies do'. A denial, especially in these very strong terms, never happens.

It wasn't infinitely bad for James Clapper to have lied under oath about NSA's data collection. It wasn't infinitely bad for the US to have been caught spying on Merkel. Etc. etc.

Everybody spies on everybody, everybody accuses everybody, everybody lies about both, gets caught and mostly doesn't care. The allegations prove just as much as the denials - nothing. Eventually one side will be caught lying, and nothing will happen to them.

You should not trust GCHQ. But if you decide that they are definitely lying, you are trusting Donald Trump. Do you?

It's possible for broken clocks to be right every once in a while, depending on the type of clock.

Like if Donald Trump said "to most people in our area right now, the sky appears blue", he would probably be right, despite his general propensity for lying and manipulating other topics

> It's possible for broken clocks to be right every once in a while

Trump's nonsensical wiretap allegations, are on the other hand a quite obvious attempt to "throw a dead cat on the table" to divert from other issues. Deflective bluster is what he does.

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2013/11/24/the-dead-cat-stra...

You're probably right - although saying the accusations are "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" isn't strictly speaking the same as saying that they're untrue. GCHQ could believe that (although they happen to be true) it's nonsense and utterly ridiculous for commentators to be asserting so without any evidence, and it would be much better for everyone to ignore the accusation.

> although saying the accusations are "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" isn't strictly speaking the same as saying that they're untrue.

I would think that "nonsense" implies "untrue". I.e. it is "The subset of untruths that also are logically inconsistent"

We are splitting hairs of the fine parsing of the wording from GCHQ, when words of any kind are highly unusual.

I think saying they're "nonsense" is saying they're untrue.

> isn't strictly speaking the same as saying that they're untrue.

It's way beyond just stating that they're untrue.

I'm British, we don't like to overstate things. When you see GCHQ call something "nonsense" and "utterly ridiculous" you can be assured that they are denying it.

And I think there's something more. I would read into their statement that they are very angry.

> I would read into their statement that they are very angry.

This is my interpretation too (as a fellow Brit). As far as diplomatic language goes, it's one step short of saying "He's a bit of a twat".

Yes, this is exactly that I took from it. It's a massive slap in the face. We aren't even going to bother with protocol, you a being a major bell-end.

It's funny how you, me and louthy (in a sibling comment) all read into this "You are a total buffoon (or similar words)". I can imagine someone sitting in Cheltenham just shaking their head.

American's need to start using bell-end as an insult.

It would be welcome relief from 'ass-hat'

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