In the latest example of his seemingly unending appetite for publishing misleading, fearmongering headlines, the Drudge Report is currently highlighting a Wall Street Journal article on a new cybersecurity NSA program, under the headline, “NSA Internet Grab; Spy Agency Shifts to Domestic Eavesdropping.” The NSA is about to start spying on our emails and internet traffic? Yeah, not so much. The article to which Drudge links actually reports that the NSA program, ominously dubbed “Perfect Citizen,” is aimed at protecting computer systems that control our “critical infrastructure,” like our electrical grids, nuclear power plants and subway systems. Nowhere in the article does it suggest that the NSA is going to be spying on private citizens' emails and internet traffic, as Drudge is clearly suggesting.

Drudge can count on one thing though--the right-wing media will pick right up on his suggestion and run with it. Cue Brian Kilmeade, who definitely got it. Here's his take on the Wall Street Journal story on this morning's Fox & Friends:

KILMEADE: A lot of people say that's Big Brother. They're going to be looking at us through my computer. They're going to see what I'm doing, what I'm logging on to, and my world will never be the same.

Sigh. Here's what the Wall Street Journal actually reported: “The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed 'Perfect Citizen' to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.” The article went on to report that the NSA “would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, though it wouldn't persistently monitor the whole system.” The article reports that “U.S. intelligence officials have grown increasingly alarmed about what they believe to be Chinese and Russian surveillance of computer systems that control the electric grid and other U.S. infrastructure,” and repeatedly makes clear that the program is focused on “look[ing] at large, typically older computer control systems that were often designed without Internet connectivity or security in mind” and that control systems “which run everything from subway systems to air-traffic control networks.” At no point does the article report or suggest that the NSA would be “looking at us through my computer” to “see what I'm doing, what I'm logging on to,” as Kilmeade claimed.

From Drudge:

From Fox & Friends: