4 ms·

I'm surprised there is more noise about her story than about the content of the leak. "Is it fair to prosecute her? Was she wrong? Should there be laws to make

I'm surprised there is more noise about her story than about the content of the leak. "Is it fair to prosecute her? Was she wrong? Should there be laws to make this information public to the people?" Shouldn't the question be: What about the content of the leak? Same thing with Snowden. The question turns from how is the government spying on you, to is it fair to prosecute him? Is he a hero? Should he be pardoned? What about "is the government still spying? Did we shut down the program?" I think this is a perfect example of information control.

zosima 5y ago
News and discussions tend to eventually move their focus onto single individuals. I guess one can learn two things from that: 1. If you want an issue discussed, find a person who can symbolize it. i.e. who is the single individual spying on us? Should he be allowed to do that? 2. If you want to avoid having what you're doing discussed, make sure there isn't a single identifiable individual available to blame. Works wonders to avoid focus.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  This is why many big events in civil rights history involve carefully picked individuals working with a rights organization doing a protest. It's easier to win if the person brings the right stuff for the empathy of people who make the decision.
ssalka 5y ago
The content of the leak is where all the real blame is – for those near the top crafting narratives, that is arguably something they actively want to avoid :) If I wanted to be real cheeky, I would say the government has an incentive to not investigate things that would cause it to make self-incriminating statements.
xwolfi 5y ago
No it's the perfect example of trust (misguided or not) electors have. So since nobody care about the police policing (heavily preemptively or not), the paper saleemens ink them with more enjoyable individual stories.
listenallyall 5y ago
This "information control" continues in present time. Remember a few months ago when an elected official lying was a big deal? Then K. Harris goes on tv last week in a major network news interview and says "we've been to the border." (Kudos to Lester Holt for immediately calling her out). Where's the condemnation? Or consider the narrative around Hunter Biden's laptop. Mainstream news would have you think the "story" is that Russians are planting disinfo with Rudy Giuliani's help. Never mind the fact that there are photos of him smoking crack, discussions of business deals juicing in "the big guy", tax fraud investigations, and now, casually tossing around the n-word. NYT or MSNBC simply chooses not to report this information, despite reporting on the previous president's children at every possible opportunity.
- chillwaves 5y ago
  HN is not the place to post conspiracy nonsense.
  - listenallyall 5y ago
    Thanks for proving my, and "foxfired" above's point. Anything inconvenient is simply not covered, and when it is brought up, labeled as a conspiracy theory. Actual truth is not determined, investigated, or reported, simply ignored. Instead, simply mentioning Kamala Harris's very clear statement on NBC has now become a conspiracy, according to "chillwaves"
    - chillwaves 5y ago
      Nothing of the sort happened, but I am sure you can take any reply and make it "prove your point". So this is the real reason why I said don't post conspiracy nonsense -- because frankly, no one cares. And it's annoying to sit here and reply with logic when you clearly do not care about the merit of whatever I have to say. No one covered those stories? Fox News is the number one rated cable news station. Tucker Carlson has the number one rated show on that number one station and he covered it for weeks on end before the election. So that point of yours is as ridiculous as it is baseless. Secondly, hello we live in the modern era. Post a blog if you care so much. If the story had merit, if you had evidence, then what is stopping you from making this huge scoop? There are definitely financial incentives to do so. The reason is because you, just like Tucker Carlson on Fox News, are full of shit. The difference between you and him is at least Tucker Carlson knows he is lying and at least he's getting paid to do so. I assume you are doing this for free.
pessimizer 5y ago
Because the content of the leak was not interesting, it was pretty much just an executive summary of previous public releases. I've always suspected that they let her leak it (or even tricked her into leaking it) in order to get lefty support for Russiagate allegations. The Intercept's bad handling of the documents would be a sort of material parallel construction (especially with Esposito on the receiving end of them, an obvious spook.)

zosima 5y ago

News and discussions tend to eventually move their focus onto single individuals. I guess one can learn two things from that: 1. If you want an issue discussed, find a person who can symbolize it. i.e. who is the single individual spying on us? Should he be allowed to do that? 2. If you want to avoid having what you're doing discussed, make sure there isn't a single identifiable individual available to blame. Works wonders to avoid focus.

mkr-hn 5y ago
This is why many big events in civil rights history involve carefully picked individuals working with a rights organization doing a protest. It's easier to win if the person brings the right stuff for the empathy of people who make the decision.

ssalka 5y ago

The content of the leak is where all the real blame is – for those near the top crafting narratives, that is arguably something they actively want to avoid :) If I wanted to be real cheeky, I would say the government has an incentive to not investigate things that would cause it to make self-incriminating statements.

xwolfi 5y ago

No it's the perfect example of trust (misguided or not) electors have. So since nobody care about the police policing (heavily preemptively or not), the paper saleemens ink them with more enjoyable individual stories.

listenallyall 5y ago

This "information control" continues in present time. Remember a few months ago when an elected official lying was a big deal? Then K. Harris goes on tv last week in a major network news interview and says "we've been to the border." (Kudos to Lester Holt for immediately calling her out). Where's the condemnation? Or consider the narrative around Hunter Biden's laptop. Mainstream news would have you think the "story" is that Russians are planting disinfo with Rudy Giuliani's help. Never mind the fact that there are photos of him smoking crack, discussions of business deals juicing in "the big guy", tax fraud investigations, and now, casually tossing around the n-word. NYT or MSNBC simply chooses not to report this information, despite reporting on the previous president's children at every possible opportunity.

chillwaves 5y ago
HN is not the place to post conspiracy nonsense.
- listenallyall 5y ago
  Thanks for proving my, and "foxfired" above's point. Anything inconvenient is simply not covered, and when it is brought up, labeled as a conspiracy theory. Actual truth is not determined, investigated, or reported, simply ignored. Instead, simply mentioning Kamala Harris's very clear statement on NBC has now become a conspiracy, according to "chillwaves"
  - chillwaves 5y ago
    Nothing of the sort happened, but I am sure you can take any reply and make it "prove your point". So this is the real reason why I said don't post conspiracy nonsense -- because frankly, no one cares. And it's annoying to sit here and reply with logic when you clearly do not care about the merit of whatever I have to say. No one covered those stories? Fox News is the number one rated cable news station. Tucker Carlson has the number one rated show on that number one station and he covered it for weeks on end before the election. So that point of yours is as ridiculous as it is baseless. Secondly, hello we live in the modern era. Post a blog if you care so much. If the story had merit, if you had evidence, then what is stopping you from making this huge scoop? There are definitely financial incentives to do so. The reason is because you, just like Tucker Carlson on Fox News, are full of shit. The difference between you and him is at least Tucker Carlson knows he is lying and at least he's getting paid to do so. I assume you are doing this for free.

pessimizer 5y ago

Because the content of the leak was not interesting, it was pretty much just an executive summary of previous public releases. I've always suspected that they let her leak it (or even tricked her into leaking it) in order to get lefty support for Russiagate allegations. The Intercept's bad handling of the documents would be a sort of material parallel construction (especially with Esposito on the receiving end of them, an obvious spook.)