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> In response to questions from The Intercept on Tuesday, the NSA played down the alterations. Thomas Groves, a spokesperson for the agency, said: “It’s nothing
by pweissbrod 9y ago
> In response to questions from The Intercept on Tuesday, the NSA played down the alterations. Thomas Groves, a spokesperson for the agency, said: “It’s nothing more than a website update, that’s all it is.”
^^ Updating the wordage on the website was a task placed on the queue of a website administrator which was requested by the manager as a takeaway from an internal meeting reviewing core values.
This explanation is nowhere near acceptable to me as a taxpayer. I'd love to see the reporter push for a more lucid explanation than this.
- krisives 9y agoDoubt you will find many such reporters in America remaining
- nraynaud 9y agoThe journalist reporting it is French, his boss lives in Brasil.
- pwaivers 9y agoThere are lots of great reporters in the USA with integrity. I am sad to see this general sentiment that quality journalism is dead.
- krisives 9y agoAny good names? A lot of them get a big hit then disappear or become complacent in “news journalism”
- krisives 9y agoSeems lame to downvote and move on - you said yourself there are lots of great reporters I'm interested in any of them!
- thg 9y agoCan't downvote replies to ones own comment. Your comment was downvoted by others due to the "A lot of them get a big hit then disappear or become complacent in “news journalism”" remark and your accusing comment above is just inviting further downvoting.
- pwaivers 9y ago[1] Here is the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ), which worked on the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers. It is based in Washington, DC and works closely with news organizations in the US and around the world. [2] Here is a specific story that came to mind, where a Washington Post journalist would not release a scandal story because there was not enough evidence. In fact, they even investigated the source and discovered that it was sting operation trying to prove the the Post has low integrity. [1] https://www.icij.org/ https://www.icij.org/ [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approached-the-post-with-dramatic--and-false--tale-about-roy-moore-sje-appears-to-be-part-of-undercover-sting-operation/2017/11/27/0c2e335a-cfb6-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html?utm_term=.8c5a4df592e4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approa...
- criley2 9y agoAs a taxpayer, I find the entire idea that the NSA pretended to be for honesty and openness to be funny. What's next, the CIA is about hope and change? As a taxpayer I accept that the NSA is the SIGINT side of America's spyforce, while the CIA is more of the HUMINT side of our spyforce. The entire idea that the techie side of our spyforce claimed to care about "openness and honesty" is rather absurd and hilarious in the first place. As a side note: the kind of journalism being requested here appears not to be the "hard hitting, fact filled, context-aware" news we should desire, but some kind of biased political hackjob attacking America's spies for engaging in the nature of spies? Where are the journalists pointing out that spycraft, by definition, is dishonest and closed!
- pweissbrod 9y agoSpycraft employed on innocent americans is where I start to have the problem. Maybe you're right that I'm being silly to hope this, but I aim to have more transparency on what level of surveillance I as an american citizen not (aware) subject of any investigation I can expect. Or in other words some clarity around my rights to privacy as an innocent tax-paying citizen. In many countries your right to privacy is legally stated in clear facts and law enforcement is required to notify you if you are the subject of an investigation and your privacy rights change.
- willstrafach 9y agoKeep in mind, the concern does not apply if you are a US Person. It is not possible to query for your calls or traffic.
- tambienben 9y agoYou're going to have to qualify that claim.
- willstrafach 9y agoHow would you like the comment to be qualified? Most direct public confirmation I can think of would be the IG report regarding violations, I believe it was one of the Snowden documents, in which multiple people who tried to “test” search themselves or others and it failed to allow the query (They were disciplined either way, of course). I don’t think there was a claim to the contrary, unless you’re thinking of targeted / secret FISA by FBI, which is a different issue yet a possibly valid point (due to lack of normal search warrant).
- Kalium 9y agoHow interesting would you find an article detailing all the ways a reporter was told "No comment."? What kind of more lucid explanation would you consider acceptable? The NSA is, in many ways, a bureaucracy like many others. Odds are very good that the more lucid explanation is that some internal bureaucrat decided to convene a committee to review the Core Values, and after a multi-year review process the primary result was a minor website update. Honestly, I'm bored just typing that. Do you think it would be interesting reading?
- pweissbrod 9y agotransparent government is boring but highly desirable. you could dismiss sytem logs or open source kernels are boring but youre greatful for them when unexpected things start happening
- Kalium 9y agoIndeed! You're absolutely right. And documents on this whole boring process could almost certainly be FOIA'd by anyone with a desire to be bored to death. But a spokesperson isn't likely to know the details of a minor verbiage update.
- ryandrake 9y agoI think the point was we're not talking about a "minor verbiage update." This isn't a wording correction on some TPS report fifty links deep within the Accessibility section. This is the public-facing expression of a major government agency's core values statement.
- Kalium 9y agoYou're right! This is a change to a major government agency's core values statement. I don't think I've ever been a place where public-facing statements about core values are considered important or major. They're generally treated as on par with mission statements or mottos - something nice to have but not particularly significant. I've even done government contracting, including for the NSA. Core values don't generally get checked on a regular basis much of anywhere. You're absolutely right. This is a change to the small public face of a major intelligence agency. Yet, I believe this is a minor verbiage update of no particular import.
- jrochkind1 9y agoWait, they are saying that "website administrators" get to write their "core values" statement? OK, I guess we know how much that "core values" statement matters.
- Tepix 9y agoI guess the spokesperson is already implementing the new policy by not being honest.
- nkrisc 9y agoThat's like an assassin claiming what they did was no more than move their trigger finger.