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techdirt.com<\/strong><\/a> It was fairly amazing in the wake of the initial leaks on NSA surveillance efforts that we saw folks in DC \u2013 including many in the press \u2013 try to claim that it was (a) no big deal and (b) everyone knew it was going on anyway. Soon after this came out, Steve Worona pointed out that many of the arguments appeared to be the equivalent of alternative pleading<\/a>, in which people (normally) lawyers try to plead things that are clearly contradictory<\/a>. In this case, Worona noted the alternative pleading went this way, demonstrating the ridiculousness of the attempted \u201cdefense\u201d of the program:<\/p>\n In fact, to this day, we still see plenty of people making these kinds of arguments \u2013 a Rep. Mike Rogers\u2019 specialty<\/a>. However, as we\u2019ve seen, while many people have suspected that this kind of extensive program was going on, they were often mocked or brushed aside as conspiracy theorists. However, as more and more evidence has come out, it\u2019s served to confirm that these programs do exist, that they go beyond what \u201ceveryone has known\u201d and that they don\u2019t appear to reveal anything that is a major threat to national security.<\/p>\n Read more<\/a><\/p>\n <!– <\/p>\n –><\/p>\n This article was posted: Monday, July 1, 2013 at 4:55 pm<\/p>\n Tags: domestic news<\/a>, domestic spying<\/a>, police state<\/a><\/p>\n
July 1, 2013<\/p>\n\n
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