Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikemoka | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I missed it before but this looks like the first official NSA statement I heard of about the programs:

"To address this shortfall and protect the nation from future terrorist attacks like 9/11, we made several changes to our intelligence efforts and added a number of capabilities. Two of these capabilities are the programs in the news. They were approved by the Administration, Congress, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court"

View on HN

"Two of these capabilities are the programs in the news."

Sounds suspiciously like an official admission that the information available in public is both correct and reasonably complete, at least as far as those two programs go.

Also, that there are other "capabilities".

That's exactly what I thought. Just last week they put out a warning to US service members stating that confirming the leaks is against the law. Now we have the guy at the top saying the stuff in the news is accurate.

> Just last week they put out a warning to US service members stating that confirming the leaks is against the law. Now we have the guy at the top saying the stuff in the news is accurate.

The decision to declassify would come from the top.

So if it's declassified, can we see the whole slideshow now?

Confirming the accuracy of classified information is what would be against the law. the Director of National Intelligence declassified parts of what were leaked but unless Sgt. Snuffy happened to be able to remember exactly which parts those were when discussing in public then he would have a difficult time being able to (legally) talk about which is which.

The statement from the 'guy at the top', on the other hand, would have been routed through his boss and the NSA General Counsel to ensure that it's only referring to declassified programs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com