Clapper... how about firing his ass for starters..
He should be fired and charged with perjury to Congress. Instead, we get spin, spin, and more spin.
Relevant link: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1621
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper now has a fifth reason for why he lied to the US Congress over the NSA's spying program: he just plain forgot it existed. Speaking during a panel discussion last week, Clapper's general counsel Robert Litt said that Clapper had not had time to prepare an answer to the question …
He should be fired and charged with perjury to Congress
Not going to happen. As proven with Valerie Plame, if you're high enough you can always count on keeping the game in court long enough to pick up a presidential pardon when the guy in charge leaves.
if you're high enough you can always count on keeping the game in court long enough to pick up a presidential pardon when the guy in charge leaves.
I must add a caveat here: unless you piss off high end people by reducing their ability to make war money by developing reasonably decent international relations and reduce the nation's deficit. That's why Clinton had to go.
They are only in that position to be the public face on a rather private "enterprise".
Clapper probably doesn't know much about his agency except for which hallway and which door has his own personal crapper.
The spook industry is so corrupt and riddled with careerists that it is no surprise they couldn't find out an answer to a question that was given them a day before.
Fortunately the agencies of lots of other anti-US/5Eyes organizations actually Give A Sht about results. Maybe they can teach US something, if we survive.
While normally I'd go with Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."), this time I'm going to assume that he was just lying, or at least being deliberately misleading. Nobody is that flipping incompetent.
If a program can be so insignificant to effective intelligence gathering that the relevant director can totally forget its existence even after being forewarned of the question and yet is so offensively invasive to innocent people, it does beg the question about why it isn't shut down.
Surely those funds could be used for other worthwhile causes?
@Adam 1
"If a program can be so insignificant to effective intelligence gathering that the relevant director can totally forget its existence..."
...it begs the question just what other things the NSA have been up to that would make the director forget something as insignificant as merely gathering data on all Americans' phonecalls.
Why isn't that lying sack of shit, that oath betraying motherfucker, NOT in a maximum security, "pound me in the ass", Federal prison, for a LONG time?
Goddamn traitor, betrayer of the Constitution he swore to uphold... that's what he is (and so many others are).
Wow, glad I was able to vent...
I'm shocked; SHOCKED; that the intelligence community doesn't know what they're doing and lies about it. More to the point, they don't have a good reason why they're doing it, other than to build budgets and bureaucratic empires (and to curry favor with the right wing extremists in Congress).
How come most (in some articles, all) the comments agree with the position that the NSA is a tool of oppression and that Snowden is a hero, yet Clapper remains rich and free, and our hero is in exile?
And it's been that way for a couple of years now. Nothing changes really.
Because the US is only a democracy in name, even the voting process is rigged (Man of the Year is in this context more a documentary).
A true democracy demands transparency - opaqueness in government decision and budget processes is a sign that not all is well.
Because Clapper and all those like him are doing what the government wants.
Snowden exposed the truth about the unfettered surveillance of our digital lives. He will never be forgiven for that by this US administration or any that follow. But Snowden is "guilty" of exposing an even greater truth: the government, by lack of action against Clapper and those like him, endorses that wholesale collection.
There will never be even a wrist slap for people like Clapper. He can lie through his teeth over and over, under oath or not, without a care because the government will do nothing about it. Hearings such as this are just a show for the American public. Nothing more.
To the US government the surveillance is justified. It doesn't matter if that surveillance did nothing to thwart the attack in France and now another in the US itself. It doesn't matter that this surveillance runs counter to the US law. It doesn't matter if US businesses lose market share internationally because they can't protect their own data. It doesn't matter that even the US public, as clueless as it historically has been, is actually more aware of all of this.
So the real question is not why Clapper and people like him are not being punished for lying. The real question is what the government gets out of the surveillance.
They lie. So often, it becomes a habit. And they're in even bigger trouble if they reveal the existence of a classified program.
Not saying it's right, or justified, just that they live and work in a different world, where the rules are different, and they can easily convince themselves that the normal rules don't apply to them.
Also, they tend to have a mentality that they are the last bastion of defense for a peaceful country. So, "civilians" (including congresscritters) aren't capable of even comprehending the momentous consequences of the work they do every day to protect this country. Therefore, the opinions and wishes of the "general public" (i.e.: those without Top Secret Codeword clearances) are mere distractions, and not to be taken very seriously. Honest. You got a little peek into that world during the Watergate scandal: "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal."
He answered fast, being the Director of National intelligence does not mean he knows everything that goes on. There are 17 Intelligence community (IC) agency's that fall under him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community
Maybe the problem really is we have too many of them and they are getting too big and out of control.
Ben Franklin said it best over 200 years ago.
"They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserver neither liberty or safety".
"Civil servants" like Clapper fall into thinking they're our lords and masters. The U.S. Constitution begins thus: "We the people..." We the people are the lords and masters. Jerks like Clapper are only the hired help. He should be out on his ass for good. At least.
Clapper cleverly interpreted the Senator's choice of language using his profession's secret definition of it. to "Collect" means that a human analyst personally examines recordings or metadata which has been intercepted* (*this word also has special meaning to NSA), stored, filtered by computer and flagged for potential interest. We peasant folk would of course consider this data as "collected" before it's considered "Collected" by NSA. "Intercepted" in NSA language also means something happens after information is intercepted. IIRC, it's about the appearance of search results which they were consciously looking for. So you understand, all that data they intercept and collect is only Collected and Intercepted when they look at it and like it. They can do virtually anything they desire to get it, find it, and use it, but none of that exists until they define it into existence.