Taking a page from reddit's ask-me-anything feature and other live Q&A sessions, the country's most popular spies are burnishing their image today with a little direct outreach.

On Tumblr, Rebecca Richards the National Security Agency's civil liberties and privacy officer is tossing out casual, Internetty answers to mostly softball questions like "What is your first priority as Privacy Director?" and "What is involved in your typical day of work?"

The answers consist mainly of abstract buzzwords like "protect and safeguard personal privacy" without going into specifics.

The chat, if you can call it that, is only one hour long and was first promoted by the NSA about six hours ago. It would've been easy to miss unless you already follow the NSA closely. So far, Richards hasn't addressed last week's USA Freedom Act vote in Congress, or any other substantive policy issues which left some visibly frustrated over the event.

Richards has taken one question from Gellman and one from another journalist, but didn't directly address the first and offered few specifics on the second.

Brian Fung covers technology for The Washington Post.

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Shock: The NSAs live Q&A is totally devoid of substance