Gov't Officials Leak Classified Info To Journalists To Discredit Snowden For Leaking Classified Info To Journalists
from the we're-from-the-government,-we-don't-do-irony dept
We already mentioned the bizarre NY Times article from over the weekend that described how Snowden apparently used some basic web crawler software to collect the documents he later leaked. As we noted, the basic story itself is unremarkable, other than for how the NY Times tried to turn "man uses basic tool" into a story. However, there is a really good quote from Snowden himself (via his lawyers) in response to the article. Since most of it involves senior government officials telling NYT reporters about security problems at some NSA facilities, Snowden was quick to point out the irony:"It's ironic that officials are giving classified information to journalists in an effort to discredit me for giving classified information to journalists. The difference is that I did so to inform the public about the government's actions, and they're doing so to misinform the public about mine."Kinda puts it all in perspective, doesn't it?
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Filed Under: classified info, ed snowden, nsa, surveillance
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Not only are they using V for Vendetta and 1984 as a playbook, it seems they also read Animal Farm.
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NYT has been doing it quite a lot lately, which is disappointing, before for a while I thought they finally "got it" and they would start being more like TheGuardian and WP and others in regards to these posts, but they still seem to mainly keep the side of the government. Shame. It's almost like it's not the same paper that protected Daniel Ellsberg several decades ago.
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As usual...
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But the story was a fairly big deal -- it showed just how incredibly mismanaged the NSA is, especially with its own security. That was the point of the story. How it makes Snowden look bad and the NSA look good has so far gone unexplained, because it simply isn't true. But it's easier to just say that the story does that than to actually, you know, demonstrate it.
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No it's not. The "tools" used to "scrape" "websites" are actually very common. I have them on servers I admin. AFAIK they're included stock with most linux distros.
It's like saying "ZOMG he used teh NOTEPADSES!!!!"
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So, basically, they leave all their documents sitting around on an intranet that Snowden had complete access to.
Seems like poor document management if you're the NSA.
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Part of an admins job is to find and move files around, make backups, etc. Without the tools they describe, he can not do his job. Period. So he automated part of the process. Guess what? That too is part of his job. Sys admins often times write scripts to handle big maintenance tasks that would take way too long to handle in a manual manner and need to be run frequently. That's not surprising. The only thing he did (which isn't new) is take content home on thumb drives the release it to the journalists. That's it. This is more a government official speaking to the NYT about stuff that isn't surprising at all and using loaded terms that they then parrot in the article to make it sound sensationalistic. The quotes are meant actually meant to diffuse backlash for using those loaded terms by effectively saying "these are their words not ours." It's a fluff piece and that is why they are getting mocked by those who see it for what it is.
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Yeesh. I mean, the NYT perhaps made a bit more of a big deal out of this than it deserved, but it's still a story, and not a minor one. It contains details we didn't know before, which is the definition of news. Yeesh.
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I wonder.
ALL that OLd stuff just takes up Room, and its a PAIN to control distribution, and regulate WHO uses it..
You cant consider that the USA is the smartest group of people, unless you make EVERYONE ELSE STUPID..
they do enough of that to the Citizens..
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much scare
excellent journalism
such tech
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actually there's a triple-standard, by design
1, you might be a nobody -- you don't get to see or do sh*t
2, you might be a current employ -- you can ask for & get granted privileges to do a whole sh*t ton of cool Top Secret sh*t
3, you might be an ex-contractor suspected of espionage -- you get all the privileges of a nobody, plus get to defend your pants-to-ankled government & armed spy agencies & their adversarial lawyers +1 elected prejudicial judge-jury-executioner drone assassin Command In Chief
Double-standards and hypocrisy are irrelevant here. We aren't having a moral debate, or battle of ideas.
This is your country. And this is your country on terrorism.
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