In the face of anger over government spying, the nation’s top intelligence official yesterday stressed that a previously undisclosed program for Internet data surveillance was authorized by Congress and can’t intentionally target US citizens.
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, also blasted the media’s exposure of the government intelligence-gathering program last week, calling it “reckless.”
“Disclosing information about the specific methods the government uses to collect communications can obviously give our enemies a playbook of how to avoid detection,” he said in a statement.
For the second time in three days, Clapper took the rare step of declassifying details of intelligence-gathering efforts in order to counter media reports that he said had failed to provide context.
He added, however, that some “inaccuracies” cannot be publicly corrected “without further revealing classified information.”
Clapper emphasized that the surveillance activities fall under the strict supervision of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
He also said the Internet service providers — including Apple, Google and Microsoft — knew that e-mail, video and other data were being collected.