Still Lying: Obama Tells Europe NSA Isn’t ‘Snooping’ on Them

The Obama Administration appears unclear on how leaks work.

Having gotten caught red-handed lying about the NSA surveillance, insisting there was no spying on ordinary Americans despite documents showing such spying was and is taking place, the White House reiterated that lie. That was two weeks ago.

Apparently assuming that even if Americans had heard about the spying, Europeans might not, President Obama kicked off his Sweden visit today by lying some more, and insisting that no one in Europe or anywhere else in the world has the NSA snooping on their phone calls and reading their emails.

Instead, he continued the narrative that the NSA only targets “very specific areas of concern,” even though document after document has shown the exact opposite, that the NSA collects data en masse, including all phone call metadata.

Though saying whatever sounds good in spite of proof to the contrary has been the go-to strategy with respect to the NSA for quite some time, the claims are particularly bizarre in this case, since most of the defense of the NSA inside the US is that the programs are only targeting foreigners, and now, with a foreign audience, he’s trying to backtrack on that too.