Bruce Schneier wrote a must read piece for the Guardian explaining why the NSA heads feel comfortable lying to the American people about their surveillance program.  Turns out that NSA and UK robots are collecting millions of webcam images from Yahoo users—many of them sexually explicit.  According to the NSA, however, that doesn’t count as “collecting data.”

A 1982 procedures manual (pdf; page 15) says: “information shall be considered as ‘collected’ only when it has been received for use by an employee of a DoD intelligence component in the course of his official duties.” And “data acquired by electronic means is ‘collected’ only when it has been processed into intelligible form”.

So, they claim that just having the data isn’t bad, and it only counts as collection if they actually look at it.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper likened the NSA’s accumulation of data to a library. All those books are stored on the shelves, but very few are actually read. “So the task for us in the interest of preserving security and preserving civil liberties and privacy,” says Clapper, “is to be as precise as we possibly can be when we go in that library and look for the books that we need to open up and actually read.” Only when an individual book is read does it count as “collection”, in government parlance.

This is why Clapper could pretend to be telling the truth when he told Congress that no, the NSA wasn’t collecting data on all Americans.  This is another reason why statement analysis is so important.  The operational definitions, so to speak, are what allow someone to lie with plausible deniability.  This is why Bill Clinton could claim that he “never had sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky—because his definition of sex didn’t include oral sex.  It’s why Nixon could claim that he was not a crook; his definition of corruption did not extend to what he did.  If the NSA simply changes the definition of collection, then they can claim they aren’t collecting things and the American people will shrug and go back to the mall.  In reality, they’re collecting every last shred of anything you say or do.

Schneier says that the NSA’s definition makes no sense.  To us, however, it makes perfect sense, because we know what they’re up to.  Total control, total erosion of individual liberty.  They’re playing for keeps.  Are we?