And by extension: what else don't WE know?
I said a few weeks ago that the drip, drip drip of embarrassing revelations from Edward Snowden would send the White House into a virtual tizzy. Looks like my assertion is bearing out. It's their own fault. If we would have had that "debate" Mr. Obama claimed he wanted to have with the American People about the surveillance state before Snowden went public, we may have been beyond all this hoopla by now. Most Americans would probably have forgot about it by now, and got back to watching The Kardashians.
But the administration took the coward's way out, in my opinion. They decided that full disclosure wasn't worth it. We the People weren't worth it. And, apparently, Congress wasn't worth it either.
The White House declined to say on Wednesday whether the administration ever briefed the US Congress about a top-secret NSA spy program that, according to documents, allows analysts to to search through huge databases of emails, online chats and the browsing histories without prior authorisation.
The Guardian revealed on Wednesday how the NSA describes in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.
The disclosure, which came from documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, comes as the fallout over US surveillance tactics threatens a deepening problem for the White House.
A problem of their own making, I might add.
Of course, The Guardian has the story. (and the video, which was surprisingly easy to embed)
White House press spokesman Jay Carney said he could not give an assurance that Congress had been informed about the surveillance capability. "I am saying I don't know the answer to that," he said, referring questions to the office of the director of national intelligence.
When pressed, he claimed the Guardian's article contained inaccuracies, adding that "informing people about false claims isn't necessarily what we do". He did not specify which part of the report the White House believes to be inaccurate.
'Cuz when you're claiming inaccuracies, who needs specificity when you can give canned speeches chock full of generalizations? (or what's better known in the real world as telling lies)
Of course, Jay Carney had backup. Corporate stooges, House Intelligence Committee Republican Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, and his sidekick, Democratic Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland also chided in against the validity of Snowden's revelation.
"The latest in the parade of classified leaks published today is without context and provides a completely inaccurate picture of the program," they said in a joint statement.
They said XKeyscore was "simply a tool used by our intelligence analysts to better understand foreign intelligence".
They throw around the term "tool" as if they didn't actually know they themselves define what a tool really is.
However, the day wasn't a complete waste of time. We actually did learn a lot by watching the hearing held by Democratic Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
At a heated Senate judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday, members questioned the truthfulness of the US intelligence community,
Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, said: "We need straightforward answers, and I'm concerned we're not getting them."
Leahy, joined by ranking Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, criticised director of national intelligence James Clapper for making untruthful statements to Congress in March about the bulk phone records collection on Americans, and NSA director Keith Alexander for overstating the usefulness of that collection for stopping terrorist attacks.
Grassley called a recent apology to senator Ron Wyden and the intelligence community "especially disturbing".
"Nothing can excuse this kind of behavior from a senior administration official," Grassley said. "Especially on a matter of such importance."
Under increasing pressure, Clapper voluntarily declassified various previously classified documents about the bulk collection of phone records earlier in the day. Fortunately, those documents will not be the last to be declassified and subsequently released to the public. Carney mentioned that the president had encouraged senior national security officials to "look at programs and see where we can be as transparent as possible."
However, in a testy exchange, he was unable to say whether any members of Congress had been informed about XKeyscore or its capabilities. That would seem to be the first stumble by Carney in defending both the NSA programs and congressional oversight efforts. He would surely have been briefed on such an integral part of the pushback to the implementation of these programs -- if Congress had indeed been fully briefed.
Asked about whether Congress had been briefed about the program, Carney did not answer, instead repeating the NSA's formal response. "As we've explained, and the intelligence community has explained, allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are false," he said.
"Access to all of NSA's analytic tools is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks. There are multiple technical, manual and supervisory checks and balances within the system to prevent those who don't have access from achieving that access."
Then why has no one come out and explained those "checks and balances?" I'm no geek but even I can see there is no "technical" barrier to a motivated analyst gaining access to anyone's data when access is available from a pull-up screen that's more or less the equivalent of a webpage that comes up every time a user wishes to sign up for email notices from the website they're visiting by typing their email address in the little box with the 'Submit' button.
Asked again whether Congress had been informed, Carney referred the question to the office of the director of national intelligence. However he eventually conceded that he did not know whether lawmakers were made aware of the program.
Previously, the White House said the fact it briefed some members of Congress on the NSA's surveillance programs, such as its bulk collection of phone data, justified the spy agency's work, because lawmakers knowingly authorised its activities.
I wonder if Mr. Carney realizes that for every member of Congress supposedly "briefed" on these programs, there are multiple members who say they weren't. And I don't really mean to tell committee chairpersons how to carry out their duties of oversight. But can you really call it congressional oversight when only a bare minimum of members get the full versions of the programs, and the rank & file members are forced to take the time to go to a closed room to view the material in a tightly defined amount of time without the benefit of taking notes and such? Members are taken to these closed off rooms -- sometimes briefed in person, sometimes not -- and are then forced to scour hundreds or thousands of pages of materials in a short time, monitored all the while by 'minders'.
On another note: After yesterday's disclosures, can we now discard the insidiously misleading term, "metadata?" They're collecting ALL data. Believe it.
And it's wrong.