I can understand disagreeing with the premise. I don't understand citing lack of evidence and then making the claim that it is is "extremely unlikely" based als

I can understand disagreeing with the premise. I don't understand citing lack of evidence and then making the claim that it is is "extremely unlikely" based also on no evidence. That's a very whimsical notion of probability. It seems far simpler to me to tolerate the uncertainty of the circumstances than make baseless assumptions either way. The original author managed this just fine. I don't see why TechDirt feels the need to, or why they felt it appropriate to mis-attribute the statement to "officials" in their headline. By comparison: a month ago people here[1] and elsewhere were claiming Lulzsec might be a false flag operation by the CIA. Why would one consider that a reasonable possibility, and expect others to do so, but then consider an analogous statement a "propaganda campaign"? [1] For example, nextparadigms, you expressed that possibility yourself:"Could LulzSec actually be working for the Government to help create that "civilized" Internet Sarkozy was talking about." -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2659640 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2659640