You can too. C-SPAN does not spread cooties, despite what some say.

What matters is that they got people all day to talk about it. How many even went back and checked the article to see if it was updated? I'm sick of our journalists.

Still up, with no retraction. Curious new reportage standards - pull the plug at the parent site, but let the little kiddies continue throwing poop.

be held responsible for even the appearance of honesty?

or a RFID chip that unlocks the capability?

if they were trying to track the location of the phone itself and yes they would need a warrant for that to though its not exactly rocket science that if a criminal doesnt want to be tracked they can either buy some cheap throw away phones and or just turn off the phone and or remove the battery.

“I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, as I have always believed, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans’ phone calls without a specific warrant.”

He didn't say whether he heard it wrong, whether he heard it right or said it wrong to the reporter, or whether the reporter misquoted him.

He said he was pleased to hear the administration say that it needed a (secret, never refused) warrant to listen in to us.

Is he happy because that takes the pressure off him? Is he happy because he wanted to believe that all along?

That's hardly a retraction. He didn't say who was or it was his error. He simply repeated the Obama Administration's public claims. Given that lying before Congress is apparently preferable to giving away secrets, I have no way of telling if that's true. Nobody does.

the content of Americans' phone calls without a warrant." He is telling what he has always believed. It is a denial of what the reporter claimed. That's all that is necessary, "always believed' means "always believed".

You cut off the first clause of what he said.

"I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that. . ."

Shame on you. It's that kind of sloppy, self-serving reporting that people on this thread have complained about.

Sorry, if he said the administration has reiterated it, that means that he knew what the administration said before he went into the meeting. So, what he heard in the meeting shook his expectations. So, why would hearing the administration say the same thing again make him pleased? Hearing the same thing twice-- what they already said when he went into that meeting-- put his mind at ease?

I don't understand how you can read a "retraction" like that and be encouraged. He didn't correct anything. He didn't even tell you who was being corrected. He reported that the administration set him straight, and he was pleased because he always wanted to believe them. Just like you.

How about a little dispassionate evaluation, here? Put this through an Orwell filter. Saying anything a second time doesn't makes it any truer than the first time, and the pleasure you take in hearing it is irrelevant.

That seems pretty unambiguous.

You think you heard that right? I've never heard "pulling the plug" being applied to a story retraction before. Ever. It's a strange way to say they're retracting, and it sounds a lot like an example Orwell would give in Politics and the English Language. Tell me, what does it mean, exactly?

In this context, is this old metaphor like, pulling the plug on a bathtub, or pulling the plug on an electric appliance? How well do either of those fit the meaning of retracting a story? If you said, not at all, one can't be applied to the other, you'd be correct. It's duckspeaking. A phrase taken out of its original context, one that means nothing in the context where it's being used.

It could mean that they're just not working on it anymore. It could mean it's gone haywire, has short, threatens to burn their building down, so they "pulled the plug." I might get paranoid and ask what was threatening to burn their place down, but that's putting too much meaning into the duckspeak.

So, you didn't hear what you thought you heard.

Half of Congress can't skip classified briefings and expect to know what is going on. Nadler said he was startled. Hello? Is this the first time your hearing about this - Nadler? Same with Sanchez. She was startled as well. That tells me they don't know what is going on.

Don't blame me. I was just ignorant!

It is all word play and obfuscation. Clapper lied under oath in previous testimony by not answering the question as asked and he continues to prevaricate. The growing list of whistle blowers and others with actual insider experience dispute the claims of so called "regulated" NSA operations and data collection. Just ask Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe.

Richard Clarke has pointed out how the President and Congress have been misled by those in the "community" with an interest in secrecy and control. This is not a new scenario and many of those so concerned to protect the NSA are the same ones who expanded the program under Cheney and Rumsfeld.

We have been presented with no reason why the NSA needs to operate like the East German Stasi: collecting every bit of information about everyone. This has always sounded like a hollow excuse for paranoia.

We have yet to hear who is watching the watchers, and who is watching those who watch them in turn. The FISA court appears to be staffed with the most conservative of justices who are presently appointed to the position by Chief Justice Roberts. I think we cannot trust that FISA rules as independently as we would wish or expect, nor with an expectation of applied civil liberties. No independent authority regulates or reviews FISA judgments.

"I am happy to hear someone say something that I always believed" is quite a word salad, isn't it? It isn't saying the belief is correct or that the person speaking is being honest. It just says that they are happy about someone saying something.

Besides, what good is a claim of "warrants" if they are always in secret, based on secret laws and secret interpretations, from a secret court that, in essence, is a "warrant-o-matic" machine. I think the number of warrant requests denied by this secret court can be counted on one hand.

the magician in the living room. Secret courts. We should all feel so much better that a top secret (classified) court is making these rulings? Who does that? A republic of the People government?

The patriot Act makes it illegal for anyone who is served with one of these warrants (including banks and libraries - what non-'American' has a library card in this country?) to ever mention it, ever. That makes all claims of innocence from service providers null. They can't tell you without risking really big prosecution. Treason.

AP's done a study. So far, it's the only reliable piece to date. I'm sure not going to have a panty-twist tailspin because of what a politician said, didn't say, thinks. Who cares. The ghastly thing is that the Act and FISA were set in place by the worst president in history. And Obama extended both sets of laws. He signed them.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/06/heres-almost-whole-truth-about-how-prism-works/66272/

system and listen to calls. I wonder whether this reporter has spent much time in a phone company technical unit.

1800 times last year?

300+ million Americans, and they only used the rubber stamp court ~1800 times.

The reason the number is so low is because very few investigations require using the FISA court in the first place. Most of the time, the level of secrecy needed does no rise to the level of national security.

have happened? My point is the Potemkin village of FISA courts is meant to distract us from monitoring by government that was insidious enough that Congress felt required to legislate the telephone companies away from liability for their cooperation in spying on all of us. They have privatized spying. And the spy industry has a interest in keeping it to the max.

The FISA court has existed since 1978. It was created for exactly this purpose. It was proposed by Ted Kennedy, and signed into law by Carter.

Now ... I'm pretty sure that everyone on DU agrees those guys were not Fascists.

You said ...

Now ... the only way that could be true is if Kennedy and Carter were in on the insidious plot.

In reality, the legislation regarding the telcos has a different purpose. If the information is secret, the telecos CAN'T know how its being used. If they know, its not secret. The telcos can't be involved in the actual data collection.

Richard Clarke actual makes this point in an article many on DU have used to blast the President.

In it Clarke describes a model in which (GASP), the telecos maintain the data, but have no knowledge of when or why the government looks into it (with a warrant).

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/worry-nsa-article-1.1369705

how they got there. Where they are now is in the category "good intentions gone south".

Sen Clinton supported W's programs more than a lot of Republicans did. I don't think she's a fascist either. I don't think the President is a fascist but I don't know why he thought this issue would get him in solid with the right and that the left would let it ride.

The choice here isn't whether the President is Dick Chaney jr or not. The issue is what the original framers of FISA intended and whether the people will stand for it where it has evolved and will Congress respond to the people's concerns. This just might be the first genuine bipartisan issue where there will be real cooperation.

you the crime." The GOP doesn't scare me as much as blue dogs do. And even Sen Feinstein seems all right with monitoring everyone.