NSA lexicon: How James Clapper and other U.S. officials mislead the American public without lying. - Slate Magazine

NSA lexicon: How James Clapper and other U.S. officials mislead the American public without lying. - Slate Magazine:

Collect. If an intelligence official says that the NSA isn’t “collecting” a certain kind of information, what has he actually said? Not very much, it turns out. One of the NSA’s foundational documents states that “collection” occurs not when the government acquires information but when the government “selects” or “tasks” that information for “subsequent processing.” Thus it becomes possible for the government to acquire great reams of information while denying that it is “collecting” anything at all.