I’m shocked. SHOCKED that the Greenwaldians once again lead with BOMBSHELL HEADLINES and bury the fact that the actual evidence and facts don’t actually support the headlines.

This latest report does the same thing that countless other Greenwald screeds have done. Make assertions that the NSA is doing all kinds of nefarious things, and burying the fact that they’re plausible as there’s no evidence that the actions were taken.

They’ve waited 2 weeks between screeds, and this is what they came up with? Really? Thousands of documents, and this is what they’ve got? That the Brits asked for greater access to NSA databases, but there’s no evidence the US let them.

How this actually matters:

If the British government were able to look at the NSA data, they could potentially look at what British citizens were doing inside the UK, which could circumvent whatever civil liberties protections are in place. It’s a concern that has been in place for a long time - reciprocity on access to the data would be a workaround on civil liberties in the US as well - as the NSA or CIA could look at what the British (or other foreign government) had collected on US citizens in the US in going through the data.

But that’s not what’s being claimed here. This isn’t the NSA doing anything wrong, but an attempt to go after the British intel services for potentially doing something that may let them circumvent civil liberties protections.