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My question would be:

How should we be able to trust them ever again?

I mean, it's been shown that people like Obama an Clapper openly lie. Nobody seems to care about that.

I'm still not sure that it's a good idea to accept the weak bone they'll throw us to make us forget about the real issue (Obama hinted at some limitations he might enforce).

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You could trust them otherwise? You can't trust politicians, period. Their interests and incentives don't align with ours. Your default mode should be to distrust them, to expect them to lie when it serves their ends. Anything else is, quite frankly, a very naive world view.

But that does not mean you should accept it when they lie. You should expect them to lie when it serves their ends, but a refusal to accept it (coupled with vigilance and systems that make it hard for them to get away with it) means it more rarely serves their ends.

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