NY Times 'Uses' Scare 'Quotes' To Highlight How 'They' Don't 'Understand' How Snowden 'Copied' Documents
from the wtf? dept
One of the interesting things in watching the reporting on various Snowden documents, is that a variety of publications have been bringing on actual technology and security experts to help with the reporting. The Guardian has been working with Bruce Schneier. The Washington Post has been working with Ashkan Soltani. Jacob Appelbaum has worked with Der Spiegel. However, it appears that the NY Times is above little things like actually talking to "experts." And that's why tons of folks spent the weekend laughing at the NY Times' latest reporting on how Ed Snowden got access to various documents, in which they use bizarre scare quotes around perfectly ordinary words, more or less emphasizing what the reporters clearly don't understand:Intelligence officials investigating how Edward J. Snowden gained access to a huge trove of the country’s most highly classified documents say they have determined that he used inexpensive and widely available software to “scrape” the National Security Agency’s networks, and kept at it even after he was briefly challenged by agency officials.Lots of people who read this started quickly mocking it online. Matt Blaze joked about the fact that children (children!) might download wget:
Using “web crawler” software designed to search, index and back up a website, Mr. Snowden “scraped data out of our systems” while he went about his day job, according to a senior intelligence official.
@kataclyst @csoghoian I understand wget is available on the Internet where children can download it. Children!
— matt blaze (@mattblaze) February 8, 2014
Snowden, a $120k a year sys admin, knowing how to use web scraping tools, is like a chef knowing how to use a vegetable peeler. Not A1 news.
— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) February 8, 2014
NYT: 'Snowden used "web crawler" software to "scrape" NSA networks...' http://t.co/iim4fL2Gmv
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) February 9, 2014
The gardener used a "lawn mower" to "mow" the lawn.
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) February 9, 2014
The sommelier used a "corkscrew" to "open" the wine bottle.
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) February 9, 2014
On weekends, the "venture capitalist" enjoyed "reading" the New York Times.
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) February 9, 2014
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Filed Under: ed snowden, journalism, scare quotes, scraping, web crawler
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"The journalist used a pen/keyboard to write the news"
Meanwhile at the NYT...
Full colored pictures directly from NYT offices here!
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It also doesn't make "this" article any less funny.
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Re: Journalist ...
'The journalist used a pen/keyboard to write the "news" .'
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'Cooking' spaghetti
2. Put the 'pot' on the 'stove', and turn the 'heat' up to 'boiling'.
3. Once the 'water' is 'boiling', dump in the 'noodles', and let them cook until 'soft'.
4. 'Drain' the 'water' out, and add your 'sauce' of choice, stirring until it's well 'mixed'.
5. Serve with a sprinkling of shredded 'cheese', and a slice of 'garlic' 'bread'.
6. 'Enjoy'.
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er... should we watch it as it violates the girls or run like hell? XD
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I'm a terrorist of open source!!!
Arrest me
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When talking about 3D printing, the big story was whether you could download a gun. Terms like "sintering" and "lower receiver" may be obvious to 3D hobbyists and gun enthusiasts, but not to most of the Times' readership. Remember the breadth of the readership of the New York Times isn't just skinny-tie-wearing technology types, but they do comprise a portion of the electorate.
Now, some people don't need quotes around novel jargon (I identified and figured out the jargon "A1" all by myself without them), but the NYT may have a style guide that favors them. No big deal.
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Would take a minimal amount of work to do, make the article more valuable to those that would otherwise skip over it due to the technical jargon being over their head, and would avoid situations like this, where they find themselves mocked for appearing to be trying to make the mundane look complicated.
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It would take a minimal amount of what? What's this thing you speak of?
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Of course, that's with a paper newspaper, online would be even easier, just include either the same sidebar, or have the words in question link to a page of definitions/explanations.
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1) Snowden is a super genius hacker, that against all odds compromised the most secure intelligence agency on the planet.
Or ..
2) The NSA's security is pathetic, and he typed in the following line at a command prompt
wget -r -l 0 https://nsa.gov/
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If the NYT knew what it meant, this wouldn't have been a front page story. The point isn't just the scare quotes, but the fact that this is not a newsworthy story. OMG, he used the tools everyone assumed he used because those are the tools everyone used!
It would be like the NYT writing an article excitedly highlighting that it's now been discovered that Snowden "emailed" the "reporters" he spoke to.
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If the writer doesn't use quotes on the word then the reader will think the word was chosen by the writer in what otherwise is a paraphrased sentence when in actuality the word being used is the word the government official used to describe his actions.
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Yes, because when you put "quotes" around a term your "readers" don't understand, that magically lets them know what it "means". Actually "defining" those "terms" isn't "necessary".
The only purpose that this sort of quoting can possibly serve is to make them seem scary. There's a reason they're called "scare quotes".
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Why am I not outraged?
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Re: Why am I not outraged?
* And I'd argue the audience if plenty technical. The comments to the NY Times' stories are almost always more insightful than the articles themselves. The Times has the best educated audience in the world, next to pure academic journals.
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Re: Why am I not outraged?
When using quotes to explain terms, it's kind of necessary to also provide a definition. Otherwise there's no actual explanation, ids there? and without an explanation, all you have are scare quotes.
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Wrong, all wrong!
FTFY.
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ZOMG the command line!
I frequently deal with reasonably well-educated people who are flat-out stunned when I begin diagnosing a problem by opening up an xterm on a Linux box and using tail, grep, and other common Unix utilities. And if I roll out something like find /var/log -type f -a -mtime -1 -print then they're convinced I'm a wizard...even though, not that many years ago, that was considered a rather pedestrian sysadmin skill.
Can you imagine how they'd react to tcpdump or nmap?
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Re: ZOMG the command line!
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Re: ZOMG the command line!
(What the hell is a port and why would anyone want to scan one anyway?) /sarc
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OMG, nmap port scanners are prepping for the next cyber-pearl harbor!!
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yes, prison.
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not necessarily keeping in the spirit
'Journalists' with The Times 'researched' this story and then 'honestly' 'reported' the 'facts.'
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NSA has already admitted it was his job to crawl
http://www.lawfareblog.com/the-lawfare-podcast/inside-nsa-we-brought-in-a-recording-devi ce-so-you-dont-have-to
So for anonymous sources to go to the NYT and other publications and claim that he used all these tools and did nefarious things is just part of their smear campaign. In crawling their internal network was doing exactly what he was told to do for his job.
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I detect the "helping hand" of a "TLA" in the "choice" of "words".
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When was the last time..
HE was an ADMIN..he had tons of access...which was his JOB. keeping things organized and CLEANED UP.. Making things work, and so forth.
If they were STUPID enough not to encode anything on the system, it was fair game.
WE are talking about a group(CIA/FBI/any 3 letter group) that is sending data in a BASIC FORMAT.
IMHO..
I get the feeling that this is a SCAM against other countries. A bunch of Random data and a few tidbits, to see WHO jumps on their system.
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ROFLOL!
OMG we just found out our servers have a bunch of software on it like bash, grep, wget, awk, sed, etc. That must mean we have been hacked!
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So that's why
There used to be (don't know if there still is-possibly cut)a section that dealt solely with technology, computers and all that high end stuff.
They should have turned the article over to them and had them write it in terms of simple intelligence.
But as news, it wasn't. A sys admin knows all the tricks, and that's one of the basic tools of the trade.
Nothing new under the sun, but then again, they're in it for the scare-mongering factor, too.
Just because they have some of the documents doesn't mean they're not on the side of the government.
They're just tools for the propaganda machine called the NSA.
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'cheap" headline for cheap thrills
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FTFY
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I am a Hacker
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go "snark" urself
but most people are familiar with the common connotationb of "scraping" a fender, so the nyt was entirely justified in using quotes.
mocking the nyt is typical of geeks' "arrogance" & "disdain" they hold for "muggles" so "stfu"
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but quotes? or "scare" quotes?
A newly coined word is called a neologism.
See, we don't need quotes to introduce a new term.
The skeptical author can prefix a special term with so-called. That would indicate derision, non-standard usage, abnormal or different in a somewhat threatening way.
Social activists might call it lexical Othering.
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