Wire Tapping Quotes

The reason this quotation is famous is that Clapper answered “No, Sir”. 3 months later Edward Snowden disclosed the fact that the NSA was collecting some information from EVERY telephone call and e-mail made or sent in the United States. The colloquy became famous when the government tried to capture Snowden and try him for illegally revealing classified information when others saw him as a whistle blower who had told the truth and the guys who lied to Congress and the American people wanted to prosecute him.

It is onerous for most governments to have one of their secret programs exposed by the press. But what is much worse for the government is the exposure of a secret program whose legality is not on a firm foundation.

While it is true that almost all nations have intelligence agencies and collect intelligence about both friends and foes, our allies did not bug the personal phones of leaders of friendly countries and were very distressed when they discovered that the US NSA had access to the personal calls of world leaders including the leaders of Brazil, Germany and France. Rubio and others believed that they only reason our allies had not done so is that they did not have the technical capability to do so; otherwise they would have been bugging our Presidential and cabinet level phones. President Obama ordered the practice stopped with respect to our allies.

He was referring to the testimony given before the Senate of James R. Clapper, U. S. Director of National Intelligence. He denied that the NSA was collecting data on millions of American communications. Then Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was capturing data on ALL U. S. phone calls and e-mails. See {634917} for details on the false testimony.

40 years later privacy rights were afforded to telephone calls