Deceptions, Misinformation, and Word Games Used to Mislead About Surveillance

Take the term "imminent threat." In general people agree that "imminent" means that there will be an attack within the next few hours or days, and that specific plans are being acted on to carry out that attack.

But Secretary of State Rice said: the question of imminence isn't whether or not someone will strike tomorrow, it's whether you believe you're in a stronger position today to deal with the threat or whether you're going to be in a stronger position tomorrow," replies Rice. "It was the president's assessment that the situation in Iraq was getting worse from our point of view."

This is a different interpretation of that word, and that gives more power to those who can make their own definitions.

Or, take the recent military coup in Egypt. The administration is trying hard to continue to continue to send military aid to Egypt, despite a law which prohibits direct financial aid to "the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup d’état or decree or, after the date of enactment of this act, a coup d’état or decree in which the military plays a decisive role."

The law doesn't define a coup d’état, so most people would use something like the dictionary entry. Instead, the White House refuses to define the term, points out that the law doesn't specify a deadline to when the determination must be made, and so has no plans to do so any time soon.

You might reply that the laws should just define each of these terms clearly. I say again, no matter how you define those terms, there will be a way to wriggle around them. For example, the terms used to define those terms can themselves be reinterpreted.

This is an old debate: should people follow the letter of the law or the spirit of the law? Do you let rules lawyers into your game, or kick them out? Are people who game the system to be praised or punished? If you think those are problems, then the solution is not to make more rules, but to instill a obligation to follow the spirit of the law.

Why can't it be both!

You can have some outright lies, you can some lies by omission, you can have misdirection, you can have deception through using the need for "exactness" in the most surprising way possible. And the list goes on and on.

In the current situation, the NSA seems to internally justify its actions through some broad and twisted "constitutional" reasoning. But it has also justified lying to the public about anything and everything as well, so you hear the lies and the internal justification for lying simultaneously. But hey, discussions of internal justifications might themselves be lies also, justified by some other argument...