Spy-gate: The Saga continues . . .

[e_dog]

AP - 2 hours, 45 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - President Bush did not confirm or deny a newspaper report Thursday that the National Security Agency was collecting records of tens of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls. "Our intelligence activities strictly target al-Qaida and their known affiliates," Bush said. "We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans." USA Today, based on anonymous sources it said had direct knowledge of the arrangement, reported that AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., and BellSouth Corp. began turning over records of Americans' phone calls to the NSA shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.


Yahoo News' headline for this piece reads:

Bush Doesn't Confirm NSA Data Collection



interesting how, as yet another confirmation of my hypothesis of the (self?-)censorship of news headlines, the story's point of his neither confirming NOR DENYING the report was transfromed into the totally awkward (for journalism) and rare contortion of language "Bush does not confirm . . ." as opposed to "Bush does not deny" or "Bush neither confirms nor denies".

[Traveller13]

Yeah.
It depends what impression you want to make.
"does not confirm"="it's probably true but he doesn't want to say so"

"does not deny" doesn't give the same impression as "refused to comment"

"doesn't confirm or deny" means the same as "refused to comment", but is more indirect.
He refused to talk about it, but it's not as bad as it looks, because he didn't confirm or deny it. He didn't refuse to comment.

[jimboloco]

Well Verizon is making some extra points with it's lending out telephone numbers to the NSA etc,
We changed away from Verizon DSL.

I goota amigo in Sweden
the editor oat Nordic News Network
they ran a project on the ecocide to Vietnam, etc,

noiw there is some agreement about monitering emails from duh, America to Sweden, so I'lll have ta email Sweden one more time.

[stilltrucking]

Points? You mean like brownie points?
Oh no jim ATT and the rest are not volunteering the info. They are selling it.
They are making lots of dough
They are getting paid for their dirty work

At least that is what i think i heard on NPR

Yeah the language is subtle,

"does not confirm"

"does not deny"

Sounds like he is being advised by lawyers. Laying a trail of plausable deniability.

"What didn't he know and when didn't he know it?" I love that line from the eighties.

[e_dog]

i imagine lots of poeple are quitting their service to ATT and Verizon and BellSouth and switching to others carriers. i hope those people will explicitly say (to the companies, to the media, political representatives, etc.) that they are doing so because of the ciminal complicity of these tele companies with the NSA spying.

bet a lot are switching to Qwest which looks heroic, but its probably just a ploy arranged by the NSA to divert 'suspicious' people toward Qwest for further surveillance!