How Can You Tell That a NSA Offical (or Johns Hopkins University Dean) Is Lying?

Because he (or she) is breathing.

The National Security Agency on Tuesday declassified a sheaf of documents that show repeated violations of its own privacy instructions for its bulk databases of Americans' phone records. ... They also indicate that US government officials, including NSA director Keith Alexander, gave misleading statements to the court about how they carried out that surveillance.

Now if you were to lie to a Federal court about something, the judge would regard that as "perjury" and you'd be off to prison for about five years.

But when Emperor Alexander lies to a judge, not so much. That's a "misleading statement" and nothing's going to happen to him.

Because obeying the law is for little people, nor for rarefied folks such as Emperor Alexander, Jimmy the Liar Clapper, and, of course, the banksters.

As for John Hopkins University, they got their tits in a wringer because a Dean ordered a blogger associated with the University to take down a blog post.

Like most inept administrators who have been caught doing something similarly stupid, their stories kept changing. First it was that the blogger was "linking to classified materials", when what he was doing was linking to news stories. Once that bit of fuckery was dragged out into the sunlight, the story changed to "we told him to take it down because he was using the NSA logos in his story." Which is where the administrators inadvertently revealed their inability to comprehend basic English:

Sec. 15. (a) No person may, except with the written permission
of the Director of the National Security Agency, knowingly use the
words 'National Security Agency', the initials 'NSA', the seal of
the National Security Agency, or any colorable imitation of such
words, initials, or seal in connection with any merchandise,
impersonation, solicitation, or commercial activity in a manner
reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such use is
approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency. (Emphasis mine)

That's pretty clear, right? Commentary about the NSA doesn't fit. Neither does satire. So this would be legal:

But Zazzle didn't see it that way. Because neither does the NSA. They skip over the part about reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency.

Weasels.

(But you can buy them from Cafe Press)