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Comment by JunkDNA | Hacker News Reader

If you are the sort of person who is surprised by this, you need to get out from under the rock you live under. This is what any self-respecting intelligence gathering organization is going to say. Not revealing whether or not information exists (let alone the actual information itself) has been a staple of the trade from the very beginning of the intelligence community. This response would be identical regardless of current events.

edit: typos

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I'm no fan of the NSA, but you're right, the response made perfect sense to me. There's really no other way they could respond.

This isn't an exact parallel, but when I read their response and the reason for it, the first thought that came to mind was, "Oh, of course - it would be like a JavaScript timing attack."

I have gotten the same responses from the FBI many times for a FOIA request, though I have many associates questioned by the FBI, and I was detained in Ireland for possible hacking in the United States, so I assume I have a file. But anyway, same response of neither confirm nor deny from FBI about 4-5 times in last 10 years.

When applying for a foreign visa, they will probably require police records from your country of origin/citizenship. If you send in a request for records from the FBI, do they just send back a "Does Not Compute" answer, and then you're out of luck for preparing your visa application?

(assuming you're a US citizen)

Don't know the answer to that one, as I have never asked for a formal background check.

IIRC, it's $18 + submitting your fingerprints to the FBI in the US. Might be interesting to see what you get back if FOIA requests for their records on you return a "Huh? What records?" response.

Here's how I interpreted the letter: "We cannot confirm or deny the thing you requested exists because that thing you requested is classified". Unless all FOIA fail, it seems to me, in some broad sense, that they just confirmed the existence of the requested material.

I think it's more of "The information you requested, were it to exist, would be highly classified (due to its type), and therefore we can neither confirm nor deny its existence."

I'm pretty sure that actually means that even the knowledge of existence is classified, as per the "details about them remain classified and/or protected from release..."

Read as "We cannot confirm or deny the thing you requested exists because if it exists/existed it would be classified, and that includes your request of whether it exists."

I read it this way: "we are asserting our 5th amendment right to neither confirm or deny we violated your 4th and 5th amendment rights so you can't sue us and have some uppity judge make us follow the law."

It's sometimes worth doing something you know will fail, just to find out exactly how it will fail.

They could have just offered the least untruthful answer instead.

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