While more and more data is revealed about NSA surveillance programs, senior U.S intelligence and surveillance officials are being exposed and held accountable for things said in the past. James Clapper is the head of the U.S national intelligence and during a hearing in March (well before the NSA PRISM program was compromised by Edward Snowden) he stated that the NSA was not collecting data on millions of Americans. Now with the PRISM leaks clearly proving the total opposite, James Clapper has sent a letter to the U.S congress apologising for his answer which was “clearly erroneous”
James Clapper stated that he misunderstood the question and didn’t realise they were discussing metadata not content data. Furthermore he said he could not answer the question fully due to the classified nature of the programs in question. He then stated that he answered the questions in the “least untruthful” manner possible given the constraining circumstances he was under.
Since all the leaks occurred the U.S government has now taken steps to declassify much of the information surrounding data collection and expect backtracking from a few more high ranking officials as the legal restrictions are lifted.
Image courtesy of REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
at last?? 😛