The headline for this new story from Guardian writer Dan Roberts is … I hope you’re sitting down … highly misleading:

US Surveillance Guidelines Not Updated for 30 Years, Privacy Board Finds.

The subheading continues the deceptive theme:

Privacy watchdog points out in letter to intelligence chiefs that rules designed to protect Americans are severely outdated

Wow, that sure sounds like the NSA’s whole rulebook is 30 years out of date. I can feel the outrage growing, growing… but then I remember I should probably read the whole article before I blow a gasket because it’s the Guardian, and sure enough, tossed off in the fifth paragraph, well below the fold, we find:

It said the board had “learned that key procedures that form the guidelines to protect ‘information concerning United States persons’ have not comprehensively been updated, in some cases in almost three decades, despite dramatic changes in information use and technology”.

That’s right, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was not complaining about the whole thing being three decades old — just “some cases.”

The Guardian somehow fails to let you in on this little detail, but the board was specifically criticizing the Reagan-era executive order 12333, which has never been superseded by newer legislation.

And it’s a valid complaint in some ways, but this one executive order is a long, long way from being the entirety of the NSA’s domestic surveillance guidelines as the Guardian clearly wants you to believe.

Here’s the Privacy Board’s letter: