14 DAY TRIAL // Now that the NSA surveillance story has circled the world and then some, government officials have to make sure that their speeches are somewhat the same. So they created some “talking points” to use.
“The news articles have been discussing what purports to be a classified, lawfully-authorized order that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) issued under an Act of Congress – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Under this Act, the FISA Court authorized a collection of business records. There is no secret program involved here – it is strictly authorized by a U.S. statute,” was the statement politicians were supposed to base their answers on when it came to the surveillance program, according to TechDirt.
We can easily point out that if it hadn’t been a secret, everyone would have known about it, including members of the Congress and the wider public that was shocked to hear at what extent the surveillance program goes.
Other talking points featured the fact that when it comes to collecting data from phone calls, the government officials were supposed to say that they were only gathering telephone numbers and the length of the call.
As the publication points out, this fact is canceled by the documents and information previously released on this matter, namely the fact that the data collection also included call locations, times and much more.
Another thing the government is supposed to claim is that the “Congress, the Courts and the Executive Branch” review and sign off on FISA collection authorities and that everyone was briefed fully and regularly about how the law was used.
However, that proved to be untrue when one by one Congress members claimed to have never heard of such a program, some going to the extent to organize a class action lawsuit against the Obama administration.
As always, politicians tend to work with half-truths in an effort to appease the masses.