28 ms·

What we can deduce from a leaked PDF

251 points by winkywooster 4y ago

tmaly 4y ago
>should court deliberations be confidential? Or should justices be required to post drafts of opinions to the judicial equivalent of GitHub? I think they should. The court has been granted extreme power to decide the nuances of our rights.
- cgrealy 4y ago
  I'm guessing you mean they should post drafts of opinions to github (your sentence could mean either). I think it's entirely reasonable not to post drafts until they're ready. Hell, even on github, you (generally) don't put up a PR until it's ready for review.
  - tmaly 4y ago
    Oh, yeah I see that. I would like to see the whole history of the opinion github style. Would also like to be able to use git blame.
tablespoon 4y ago
> (This dynamic isn’t limited to political reporting. In 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published a story called “The Big Hack” that was vigorously denied by Apple and Amazon. Based on these denials, certain tech bloggers became convinced that the story was false. The fact that neither Apple nor Amazon sued Bloomberg for defamation—despite being extremely rich, finicky, and litigious—made nary a dent.) That's an interesting point! > But Politico has a strong incentive to protect their source. By making their own scan from a paper original, they wouldn’t open themselves up to the disclosures of confidential information that have tripped up others. (That said, printed documents are not necessarily free of metadata, as Reality Winner found out the hard way.) If you color-scan a printed document at low-enough resolution, will it corrupt the color-printer dot patterns or are they resilient to that? > I conclude it must be someone who only had access to a stapled, printed copy of the draft opinion. (If the person had access to the underlying digital file, they wouldn’t have printed & stapled it just to unstaple it.) IMHO, the author is reading too much into that and many other things. The impression I get is he already has a favored suspect (who is obvious though he doesn't name her), and his whole analysis is looking to find a path to finger that person. It's totally plausible to me that a moderately savvy leaker with a digital file would leak a printed copy to protect themselves from metadata, and that Politico just used lesser equipment that the author assumes they would have. Quick and dirty is more often the rule than careful and perfect. Even the meaning of the staple may be very unclear: at work I print everything stapled, because I set it as a default in my print settings. If for some reason I realize I don't want it, it's actually easier for me to remove it than to go back to my desk to print another copy after changing the setting and go back to the printer.
- er4hn 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code The visibility section of the wiki link suggests that they may be resilient. They are printed using a low visibility color (light shade of yellow) which can be made visible via post processing. While they do note using a high resolution scanner, I suspect that could be made less important by building redundancy into the MIC, a la how QR codes can function well despite having portions be damaged or missing.
  - Someone1234 4y ago
    I wonder if anyone has looked at the leak for a MIC/yellow dots. It contains a color channel (see highlighting) so it is plausible it could, even if re-scanned.
    - micromacrofoot 4y ago
      I quickly isolated the blue channel of the document and ramped up the saturation (which should emphasize yellows), but I can't find any obvious dots (even at 10x zoom). AFAIK it's not the only method in use though, just the most well known.
    - nullc 4y ago
      I checked it and failed to find any. Though if it was scanned from a color print its very likely that they were there in the paper version-- they just may not have survived scanning.
- zerocrates 4y ago
  I was thinking along those Reality Winner lines that if I were an organization today getting a leaked document like this, what I would do would be to print it and then scan it grayscale and post that. Thereby being sure to avoid issues of embedded metadata and probably making it at least harder to read things like sneaky printer codes. Not that I'd really expect the Supreme Court to use something like that, but just as a general principle. Obviously this wouldn't be foolproof (something as simple as having a subtly different version of that office routing "stamp" on page 1 for different recipients would suffice to narrow things down a lot) but good practice anyway. Other than it being color, that's what I would have assumed was done here, except the staple holes and relatively decent image quality do seem to argue against it.
vmception 4y ago
On rewatching L’s deductive reasoning on Death Note, it is interesting that the viewer sees 100% of the investigation and assumptions on Light while we never see any of L’s other investigations, despite L repeatedly mentioning outloud and in his own head that Light’s probability of being the culprit was less than 5%. In this case, I think this author ruled out the clerks and other parties too quickly. It is interesting insight to consider that there is a lack of consensus amongst the majority opinion justices and a leak could be to move them back towards the draft, but it has to consider all people with access.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  Nice to see a Death Note fan.
TameAntelope 4y ago
> In sum—I’d suppose it’s a friend, spouse, or family member of a Supreme Court justice who has consistently opposed Roe v. Wade, acting with something between autonomy and plausible deniability. So I'm curious if he wrote this with knowledge about what's been going on around Justice Thomas and his wife's behavior [0]. It fits pretty perfectly with that narrative, though is totally bereft of any actual evidence. [0] https://apnews.com/article/elections-donald-trump-presidential-elections-election-2020-clarence-thomas-4d160eb611e4d6a07053082b301818f8 https://apnews.com/article/elections-donald-trump-presidenti...
- ianferrel 4y ago
  Near certainty. Someone familiar with the typography of the Supreme Court would definitely also be aware of high visibility current events around it.
- philjohn 4y ago
  Same as lots of other people writing that it's definitely, 100% a liberal clerk, and even linking to their supposed suspects LinkedIn with 0 evidence?
  - mhh__ 4y ago
    No one ever learns from the "We did it Reddit" incident.
    - tsol 4y ago
      The only thing social media loves more than rampant speculation, is mob justice
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I thought those type of comments were supposed to be flagged to maintain high quality discussion or some nonsense.
ribosometronome 4y ago
In speaking with a biologically female friend, she commented how she knows many men who are upset by the draft, always vote on the "right" side of issues, etc., but none cried with her hearing about this draft. The author's being a straight, white male could potentially also lead him into dismissing justices or clerks too quickly. >Justices understand that they don’t always end up in the majority. Clerks rely on these jobs as a calling card for the rest of their careers. To be exposed as a leaker would amount to setting that future career on fire. It’s not worth the risk. To Matthew Broderick, certainly, this risk isn't worth it. To a woman or minority who is genuinely afraid of the consequences for either themselves or can immediately put themselves in the shoes of those who it could harm? I don't know. Maybe it is worth it if they think that public outcry could sway a justice, particularly one who has previously and recently talked about it being settled precedent even if it may come at the cost of her career.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  It is harder for men to cry due to their biology, this is supported by first hand experiences of trans women. This is not to say that men don't experience emotions or are not as empathetic or that women are emotional, but that the physical process itself is hindered.
  - glandium 4y ago
    Age is a factor that changes things, though. I rarely had emotional responses to movies in my 20s, but now in my 40s the lachrymal canals are wide open.
  - twevty 4y ago
    - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
      > How does that work? Their brain's chemistry and structure is closer to cis-women than to cis-men due to hormone replacement therapy, and there are consistent differences in the microstructures of the brain. > Given that transwomen are just men While they are male in some regards, trans women have a different endocrine system due to HRT. They are not "just men". > that's what they believe they should be doing more of while performing womanhood. That's a very demeaning belief about how trans women experience the world, to reduce everything to a performance erases all the struggle and issues these women have gone through as a consequence of "being different" while presenting as boys or men. I am sorry but your comment just ... reeks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruence
umvi 4y ago
> I believe it’s much more likely that the leaker is someone who supports the opinion rather than an opponent > If [the majority bloc in favor of the opinion has held together], there’s no reason for a supporter or an opponent to leak an old draft now. I don't find the reasoning behind this convincing at all. It would make for a good plot twist in a book, but in my opinion the leaker was most likely an opponent wanting to spark national outrage ahead of the final ruling, in an effort to either pressure judges if the outcome can still be changed, or as an act of vengeance against the court in retaliation for a ruling they feel extremely strongly about.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- drewcoo 4y ago
  It's not about reasoning. It's about excuses for partisan squabbling.
- philosopher1234 4y ago
  This models the leaker as unsophisticated/naive. It’s not clear to me that’s warranted given they were likely part of the Supreme Court staff. The actual effect of leaking this as opposed to waiting for it to be announced seems beneficial for supporters of the decision not detractors.
  - Terry_Roll 4y ago
    The actions after the leak, like the barricades going up I think was more telling. The intelligence was good enough to prompt a knee jerk reaction to protect the building, yet the intelligence is not good enough to find the leaker. Something doesnt add up!
    - nl 4y ago
      That makes no sense. Anyone can predict that this could prompt protests. It's a no-brainer to put up barricades.
    - 4y ago
aksss 4y ago
Some of Author's conclusions just seem like failures of imagination: * "it must be someone who only had access to a stapled, printed copy of the draft opinion (If the person had access to the underlying digital file, they wouldn’t have printed & stapled it just to unstaple it.)" * "I don’t think the leaker was an opponent of the opinion, because there would be no tactical value in doing so." On the former, that assumes it's less risky to grab a digital copy (copied to some medium plugged into some machine, likely audited, maybe rights protected), than to smuggle out (and smuggle back in?) a physical copy. The latter is super low-tech and in an environment where (as demonstrated by Roberts' press release) the trust level is super high, I wonder how hard it is to smuggle out paper copies. There's all sorts of potential black magic in a digital copy that the tech unsavvy may (rightfully) be afraid of. So even if you had access to both, low-tech may be best. On the latter, it's usually not wise to put your own rational thoughts into the head of a suspect. You need to understand *their* "rational" thoughts. It's not too hard for me to imagine some perceived benefits that an opponent or proponent of the opinion would see in the leak.
nbbbshmbdy 4y ago
- aerovistae 4y ago
  > This website is the worst subreddit Then stop visiting the site
philjohn 4y ago
My money is on Ginny Thomas, seeing the tides shifting and not supporting this, decided to put it out. That news agencies and commentators on the right IMMEDIATELY communicated in Lockstep about "this leak is an egregious affront to the court" points to that.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > My money is on Ginny Thomas, seeing the tides shifting and not supporting this, decided to put it out. My money is on "no one knows a damn thing," and everyone who says otherwise is just pointing fingers at their partisan hate-objects.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  I would push against using how quickly commentators commentate as an example of a leaker allied with a certain side. Tweeting takes seconds. A group chat can decide what to do in minutes. It likely takes less than an hour to have an emergency press release ready to go and instantly disseminate on the internet. (Fwiw: I don’t care who leaked or how leaked. I think people should focus more importantly that the legal opinion in the draft uses reasoning applicable to any sense of personal privacy. It’s more than just reproductive rights here, because the reasoning is that any rights logically derived from a right to privacy are illegitimate.)
  - philjohn 4y ago
    Disparate news agencies?
    - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      Yes. They each maybe have one, maybe two big editors, and there are only a few major conservative news agencies, then they all can definitely be in a group chat! I doubt that list of contacts would be over two dozen people and I definitely have discord chats bigger than that. News media if you think about it is a really small world. If you’re a conservative reporter on national beats how many companies can you work for, actually? The national review, Fox News, Wall Street journal, OAN? Maybe Cato institute? That’s only a small handful of possible employers.
Imnimo 4y ago
I'm somewhat skeptical of attempts to play out the game theory of what the leaker's motivations would have been. While I generally agree that the author has identified the correct incentives, I'm not so convinced that we can sure the leaker would have arrived at the same conclusions. I'd still count this sort of reasoning as evidence, but I'd give it significantly lower weight than the author seems to.
marcodiego 4y ago
Beware of leaked PDF's. It is very easy to distribute documents with small modifications among workers of a company. If any of these is leaked, it is easy to track down who leaked it.
- rhexs 4y ago
  Are there services that provide this? If so, what are they called and who are the vendors?
  - Dma54rhs 4y ago
    You can just share a document with small differences to suspected moles. You don't jsv to even change the text, typo or comma here and there sufficient. Football (soccer) coaches have used the tactic to identify who from their own team leaks stuff to the press etc, it's s very old tactic.
  - munificent 4y ago
    The technique is called a "canary trap" or "barium meal test": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap No idea if anyone offers it as a service. It's unlikely because the primary consumer of the service would be someone trying to prevent documents from leaking, so trusting them to the service is itself a major point of failure.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    I don't know any services, but I do remember years ago that someone was stealing Google's map data so they left a mistake in their map and sued the thieving company with proof in their mistake being in the thief's mapping system. It might not have been Google, but hopefully someone can chime in and remind me. lol
    - jdougan 4y ago
      As I understand it, that is a traditional thing for map publishers to do.
  - 4y ago
ksherlock 4y ago
SCOTUS rules require submissions use the Century family (Century Schoolbook, etc) font, and it seems reasonable that's what their opinions use (as opposed to CMR which would imply LaTeX).
ParksNet 4y ago
This is all just a wedge issue to distract from the disastrous management of the US economy, the US border with Mexico, and failed COVID policies. The timing - 6 months before midterms - is deliberate.
- vmception 4y ago
  The final opinion would come out 2 or 3 months before midterms either way, because all opinions come out over summer. Have you consider grasping at different straws?
  - tsol 4y ago
    But it gives time to shift the narrative-- create lots of anger and then start with the "donate to our side, we'll fight to maintain this/undo this". I mean I don't have any reason for thinking this is more likely than any other possibility, but really at this point there's not enough evidence to narrow it down at all. Hell maybe it was Putin-- who can really say at this point
    - vmception 4y ago
      there are lots of opportunities and lots of opportunists who have initially nothing to do with the action or thought process and coordination leading up to the action there is a group of people susceptible to the idea of trying to tie them all together and there are opportunities to lead those kind of people on too I mainly caution against being one of the people susceptible to connecting unrelated strings, and providing an alternate framework on how random things happen in reality
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- throwmeariver1 4y ago
  the economy was up before the war in Ukraine, dow had its best time ever even through covid, the caravans never arrived and covid killed itself. Are we living in different countries or are you just mad?
jtc331 4y ago
> In 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published a story called “The Big Hack” that was vigorously denied by Apple and Amazon. Based on these denials, certain tech bloggers became convinced that the story was false. The fact that neither Apple nor Amazon sued Bloomberg for defamation—despite being extremely rich, finicky, and litigious—made nary a dent. No, people concluded that because there were so many holes in the Bloomberg reporting that didn't make any sense conceptually.
- gwern 4y ago
  And because the people sourced for the story disagreed with it, and all the tech & security experts disagreed (as well as bloggers), and the journalists in question never followed up this incredible bombshell with all of the additional bombshells it should've lead right to as further implants were discovered, and neither did anyone else ever follow it up, and IIRC, didn't some of the journalists quietly leave Bloomberg later? Really, quite a lot of things. While against all this, the absence of a lawsuit says very little, given how horrible the PR from suing is and how pointless it is suing the very rich Bloomberg corporation in an American jurisdiction for nebulous damages. Butterick is being silly here.
  - threepio 4y ago
    > the journalists in question never followed up this incredible bombshell They did publish more stories on the topic, which are collected here: https://www.bloomberg.com/2018-the-big-hack https://www.bloomberg.com/2018-the-big-hack > IIRC, didn't some of the journalists quietly leave Bloomberg later? AFAIK the authors of The Big Hack, Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley, are still employed by Bloomberg. Riley was even promoted about a year later: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg-reporter-challenged-big-hack-story-gets-promoted/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg... > how horrible the PR from suing is and how pointless it is suing the very rich Bloomberg corporation in an American jurisdiction for nebulous damages Based on what? This past year, for instance, Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News and certain individuals for defamation and claimed billions in damages
macinjosh 4y ago
I think the author is spot on when he said the leaker is probably a non-professional close to someone who has legitimate access to these documents. Maybe a soon to be ex-spouse or a politically passionate young family member. WFH would have meant a lot of potential for unauthorized access.
jliptzin 4y ago
No one seems to have considered the possibility that it’s just a leak in the classic sense - maybe a janitor or electrician or painter came across a copy of the document, recognized its value and sold it to politico purely for monetary gain.
- dzmien 4y ago
  That this was the work of an otherwise uninvolved opportunist is always a possibility (it came to mind while considering that the document was from Feb 10, unmarked, and had been stapled), but I am almost certain it was not done for financial gain. Maybe I am naive, but I do not think news organizations pay their confidential sources very much for their trouble. So it just seems unlikely in this case.
  - jliptzin 4y ago
    I agree, probably not, but at least worth mentioning
ComradePhil 4y ago
- eCa 4y ago
  As a western (but non-US) male, anyone who thinks that women and couples that discover that they are having an unwanted pregnancy, won’t (sometimes) go to extreme lengths to end such pregnancy, if it isn’t lawfully available, is, and I quote: > absolutely insane to me
  - ComradePhil 4y ago
js2 4y ago
As long as we're using a divining rod to try to derive the source, what does it tell us that the document was leaked to Politico and not the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Wikileaks or some other org?
- mmmpop 4y ago
  Sure, right next to the Hooli phone.
teslabox 4y ago
I don't post on reddit much, but I've gotten more off-channel messages asking for details about my quip in a post about how my friend realized her period was 2 weeks late, and how she got her period to come back. Then she went to Planned Parenthood for a free blood test. She was told she'd had a miscarriage, and don't do that again. The essential oil of the plant that Nirvana sang about is highly toxic. The tea is relatively safe. My friend used a 3-prong approach to inducing her period, not just the tea. This tweet makes the case that the leaker was probably Justice Bryer's clerk: https://twitter.com/willchamberlain/status/1521685968939630592 https://twitter.com/willchamberlain/status/15216859689396305...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- buerkle 4y ago
  You would hope a lawyer would know better than to name names with absolutely zero evidence other than speculation. Hopefully this will not lead to her harassment, but based on history, I wouldn't be surprised if she's already received threats.
- dvt 4y ago
  Absolutely insane thread. And any speculation is extremely premature and dangerous at this point. But, hey, whatever gets you that "social engagement," right? Can't believe Mr. Chamberlain is a lawyer; I'd fire him on the spot. I am a bit surprised that Justice Bryer's clerk is allowed to have a LinkedIn, though. An old classmate of mine clerked for a justice on the Supreme Court of California, and they had to disable all their social media by policy.
  - neuronexmachina 4y ago
    > Can't believe Mr. Chamberlain is a lawyer; I'd fire him on the spot. I don't think the sort of organizations Chamberlain affiliates with are the sort who'd object to premature and dangerous behavior, as long as it targets the right people: https://fedsoc.org/contributors/will-chamberlain https://fedsoc.org/contributors/will-chamberlain
res0nat0r 4y ago
If I was leaking something of this magnitude I would be *extremely* paranoid, and frankly require that Politico cannot publish the PDF itself, but must retype the entire document in-full and display it on their website. (Let's hope there aren't different versions of the document floating around with slightly altered sentences to track down a leaked version). Reality Winner was caught partly by The Intercept's poor opsec, and investigators reviewing the microdots on the PDF scan. https://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-reality-winner.html https://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-reali...
- cozzyd 4y ago
  If I were leaking something of this magnitude, I'd "forget" a copy at a DC Starbucks frequented by journalists.
- supernova87a 4y ago
  I was just thinking similarly! I would be pretty impressed if the Court had systems where the authoring justice's / clerk's software would insert various difficult-to-detect variations into each copy distributed to the other justices. For example, slight differences in the footnotes / case reference numbers that would be very hard to detect on casual glance. Or even traps like displaced punctuation marks unique to each copy. But somehow I doubt it.
rayiner 4y ago
> Therefore, I don’t think the source is someone who works at the Supreme Court, like a justice or a clerk. Justices understand that they don’t always end up in the majority. Clerks rely on these jobs as a calling card for the rest of their careers. I think people underestimate how ideological the legal profession has become. On an increasing number of social issues, liberal lawyers (which is 90% of them) believe that their position is not only correct, but above debate and above the political and legal process. They begrudgingly accept that economic issues are subject to political debate, but moral issues are their exclusive domain, and politics and law are merely vehicles for imposing the moral views of highly educated professionals on the unwashed masses. It doesn’t matter that Roe is so bad that numerous prominent liberal legal scholars are unable to defend its reasoning: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/honest-pro-choicers-admit-roe-v-wade-was-a-horrible-decision https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/honest-pro-choicers-admit.... It must be the law of the land forever because it’s proponents are right and it’s opponents are “on the wrong side of history.” The arc of history bends towards justice, after all, and no institutional norm can override the march of progress. A breach of trust like this is obviously a serious offense in a profession where keeping people’s confidences is fundamental to the job. But nonetheless there’s plenty of corporate law firms where these leakers will be feted, not condemned.
- xenadu02 4y ago
  > liberal lawyers (which is 90% of them) What is the basis for this claim? > believe that their position is not only correct but above debate and above the political and legal process You seem to be accusing everyone who disagrees with you of malice and abandonment of all principles - more or less evil. I would counter that this kind of argument is only ever made in bad faith in an attempt to demonize those who don't agree with you. > politics and law are merely vehicles for imposing the moral views of highly educated professionals on the unwashed masses. And one could likewise say that much of conservative thought is an attempt to force people to adhere to certain religious values using state coercion. But that would just be an opinion, not a fact. What is fact is that many (possibly most?) conservative policies and doctrines do not enjoy majority support in the United States, yet are being rammed down our throats regardless because those policies are a) supported by those in power and b) convenient wedge issues or rallying cries for a small minority of the voting base - a minority that happens to be highly motivated. Even the current composition of the court was a blatant power grab to deny Obama's constitutional right to appoint a justice with a made-up rule that it was "too close" to an election. Then immediately discarding that so-called rule when Trump was in the same position. In that sense the current conservative majority is illegitimate. Regardless of how you think any specific SCOTUS decision should go I hope you'd agree that a court that the majority of Americans believe to be illegitimately stacked is not a good thing for the stability of our separation of powers. For that matter the overall tilt toward conservatives in House representation thanks to gerrymandering along with over-representation of conservative thought in the Senate due to the 2-senators-per-state rule undermines the legitimacy of Congress and the entire government. You can only get away with preventing the majority from being able to enact any significant policies for so long before a representative government collapses. Granted that might take tens or hundreds of years but in the long term it erodes the very foundation of our society. I find that very concerning personally but some people would rather win at any cost (witness Trump's recent loss and the fact that some conservatives attempted to sacrifice free & fair elections for a single win of a single presidential term. How cheaply they were willing to sell out!)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
chasd00 4y ago
The pdf was probably left on a bar table and a reporter from Politico happened to find it before the waiter cleared the table. That's about as probably as anything else...
avs733 4y ago
> the bad news for those who contend that the recent leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion is “unthinkable” or, in the words of Chief Justice Roberts, a “singular and egregious breach”—the horse is long out of the barn. I mean…people know that. The lie is the point. The distraction is by intention the point of making the false claim.
livinginfear 4y ago
Although this might be a bit too conspiratorial for the tastes of many. I suspect that this is an act in a larger piece of political theatre. Someone showed me this: https://who.is/whois/jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org https://who.is/whois/jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org It's an incredible coincidence that someone knew to have this website up and running just ahead of the draft leak: https://web.archive.org/web/20220426203219/https://jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220426203219/https://jewishral... It could be totally unrelated to this abortion controversy, however that would be amazing coincidence. The site maintained by this group: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-council-of-jewish-women/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-council-o... I'm aware of the fact that it's run by Jewish organisations will make me the butt of many accusations. All I'm alleging is that rumours have probably been moving around the right circles for a long time.
- evan_ 4y ago
  Everyone has known for months, even years that there would be an opinion on Roe this summer.
benmmurphy 4y ago
If Politico knows the identity of the leaker then I think that reduces the chance that it was conservative aligned. You have to be either mad or have very little to risk to put your trust in Politico. If they are 4D chess enough to come up with this game theory strategy then I assume they would use washington post securedrop (https://www.washingtonpost.com/securedrop/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/securedrop/) or something similar or at least leak through a non-mainstream liberal/non-conservative reporter that can be trusted like Greenwald.
octoberfranklin 4y ago
Or, option (d), the court intends to neither overturn Roe nor the lower court ruling in Dobbs, and deliberately leaked a draft written by the most inflammatory member of the court in order to show people "look it could have been worse". These are, after all, seven of the smartest people in the legal profession. I suspect that they intend to overturn only some very technical aspect of Dobbs appeal and remand it back to the appellate court for further proceedings. I can almost imagine the conversation between Roberts and Alito: "hey Sam, the debate is pretty evenly split here; why don't you draft us up the text that you'd publish if things lean your way? Then we'd have something tangible to pick through."
- poofsoda 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, who are the two that you don’t consider the smartest people in the legal profession? I have my ideological qualms with a few justices but would likely consider all nine to be among the smartest people in the legal profession.
smitty1e 4y ago
Questions of the timing of the Politico story need to look beyond the decision itself to what other news (documentaries, primaries, economic reports, whatever) are having the oxygen sucked out of them by this leak. Since our goverment behaves like so many Olympian gods in a perpetual bunfight over the news cycle, one must understand that defelection has a lot to do with the timing.
wyldfire 4y ago
Do scanners mark pages with tracking pixels like the printers do?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
baskethead 4y ago
> I don’t think the leaker was an opponent of the opinion, because there would be no tactical value in doing so. This is terrible reasoning. Of course there's tactical value. It would create an outrage before the opinion was official and could potentially turn the tide if justices saw a huge reaction from Americans. The Justices aren't stupid. They know if they release a very unpopular opinion on abortion, it could completely destroy the faith in the Supreme Court. So there's a huge amount of tactical value. For the author to dismiss this is horrible reasoning.
ck2 4y ago
It doesn't matter, supreme court justices aren't influenced by anything except what they wanted to do in the first place. They have lifetime high salary employment, lifetime high salary retirement, lifetime security protection, they openly break laws that other federal judges have to obey (like not associating with political groups) Point is they do whatever they want. Leaks will annoy them but it's not going to change anything. They do not have to respond to anyone, nor do any interviews, explain themselves, etc. The time to prevent this was 50 years ago by making it law but then being undone was cemented in 2016 when there were a dozen other more qualified candidates but someone inexplicably was chosen otherwise. This country is beyond comprehension.
ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
> I conclude it must be someone who only had access to a stapled, printed copy of the draft opinion. (If the person had access to the underlying digital file, they wouldn’t have printed & stapled it just to unstaple it.) That's precisely why, if I were the one who did this, I would have printed, stapled, stressed, and finally unstapled the pages before re-scanning them.
nullc 4y ago
I'm just glad to see someone else saying they love the supreme court's typesetting.
- supernova87a 4y ago
  Well, they've had 200+ years to get it right!
supernova87a 4y ago
On a purely technical note about the leak, I would be pretty impressed if the Court had systems where the authoring justice's / clerk's software would insert various difficult-to-detect variations into each copy distributed to the other justices. For example, slight differences in the footnotes / case reference numbers that would be very hard to detect on casual glance. Or even traps like displaced punctuation marks unique to each copy. But somehow I doubt it.

251 points by winkywooster 4y ago

>should court deliberations be confidential? Or should justices be required to post drafts of opinions to the judicial equivalent of GitHub? I think they should. The court has been granted extreme power to decide the nuances of our rights.

cgrealy 4y ago
I'm guessing you mean they should post drafts of opinions to github (your sentence could mean either). I think it's entirely reasonable not to post drafts until they're ready. Hell, even on github, you (generally) don't put up a PR until it's ready for review.
- tmaly 4y ago
  Oh, yeah I see that. I would like to see the whole history of the opinion github style. Would also like to be able to use git blame.

tablespoon 4y ago

> (This dynamic isn’t limited to political reporting. In 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published a story called “The Big Hack” that was vigorously denied by Apple and Amazon. Based on these denials, certain tech bloggers became convinced that the story was false. The fact that neither Apple nor Amazon sued Bloomberg for defamation—despite being extremely rich, finicky, and litigious—made nary a dent.) That's an interesting point! > But Politico has a strong incentive to protect their source. By making their own scan from a paper original, they wouldn’t open themselves up to the disclosures of confidential information that have tripped up others. (That said, printed documents are not necessarily free of metadata, as Reality Winner found out the hard way.) If you color-scan a printed document at low-enough resolution, will it corrupt the color-printer dot patterns or are they resilient to that? > I conclude it must be someone who only had access to a stapled, printed copy of the draft opinion. (If the person had access to the underlying digital file, they wouldn’t have printed & stapled it just to unstaple it.) IMHO, the author is reading too much into that and many other things. The impression I get is he already has a favored suspect (who is obvious though he doesn't name her), and his whole analysis is looking to find a path to finger that person. It's totally plausible to me that a moderately savvy leaker with a digital file would leak a printed copy to protect themselves from metadata, and that Politico just used lesser equipment that the author assumes they would have. Quick and dirty is more often the rule than careful and perfect. Even the meaning of the staple may be very unclear: at work I print everything stapled, because I set it as a default in my print settings. If for some reason I realize I don't want it, it's actually easier for me to remove it than to go back to my desk to print another copy after changing the setting and go back to the printer.

er4hn 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code The visibility section of the wiki link suggests that they may be resilient. They are printed using a low visibility color (light shade of yellow) which can be made visible via post processing. While they do note using a high resolution scanner, I suspect that could be made less important by building redundancy into the MIC, a la how QR codes can function well despite having portions be damaged or missing.
- Someone1234 4y ago
  I wonder if anyone has looked at the leak for a MIC/yellow dots. It contains a color channel (see highlighting) so it is plausible it could, even if re-scanned.
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    I quickly isolated the blue channel of the document and ramped up the saturation (which should emphasize yellows), but I can't find any obvious dots (even at 10x zoom). AFAIK it's not the only method in use though, just the most well known.
  - nullc 4y ago
    I checked it and failed to find any. Though if it was scanned from a color print its very likely that they were there in the paper version-- they just may not have survived scanning.
zerocrates 4y ago
I was thinking along those Reality Winner lines that if I were an organization today getting a leaked document like this, what I would do would be to print it and then scan it grayscale and post that. Thereby being sure to avoid issues of embedded metadata and probably making it at least harder to read things like sneaky printer codes. Not that I'd really expect the Supreme Court to use something like that, but just as a general principle. Obviously this wouldn't be foolproof (something as simple as having a subtly different version of that office routing "stamp" on page 1 for different recipients would suffice to narrow things down a lot) but good practice anyway. Other than it being color, that's what I would have assumed was done here, except the staple holes and relatively decent image quality do seem to argue against it.

vmception 4y ago

On rewatching L’s deductive reasoning on Death Note, it is interesting that the viewer sees 100% of the investigation and assumptions on Light while we never see any of L’s other investigations, despite L repeatedly mentioning outloud and in his own head that Light’s probability of being the culprit was less than 5%. In this case, I think this author ruled out the clerks and other parties too quickly. It is interesting insight to consider that there is a lack of consensus amongst the majority opinion justices and a leak could be to move them back towards the draft, but it has to consider all people with access.

Dracophoenix 4y ago
Nice to see a Death Note fan.

TameAntelope 4y ago

> In sum—I’d suppose it’s a friend, spouse, or family member of a Supreme Court justice who has consistently opposed Roe v. Wade, acting with something between autonomy and plausible deniability. So I'm curious if he wrote this with knowledge about what's been going on around Justice Thomas and his wife's behavior [0]. It fits pretty perfectly with that narrative, though is totally bereft of any actual evidence. [0] https://apnews.com/article/elections-donald-trump-presidential-elections-election-2020-clarence-thomas-4d160eb611e4d6a07053082b301818f8 https://apnews.com/article/elections-donald-trump-presidenti...

ianferrel 4y ago
Near certainty. Someone familiar with the typography of the Supreme Court would definitely also be aware of high visibility current events around it.
philjohn 4y ago
Same as lots of other people writing that it's definitely, 100% a liberal clerk, and even linking to their supposed suspects LinkedIn with 0 evidence?
- mhh__ 4y ago
  No one ever learns from the "We did it Reddit" incident.
  - tsol 4y ago
    The only thing social media loves more than rampant speculation, is mob justice
- the_only_law 4y ago
  I thought those type of comments were supposed to be flagged to maintain high quality discussion or some nonsense.

ribosometronome 4y ago

In speaking with a biologically female friend, she commented how she knows many men who are upset by the draft, always vote on the "right" side of issues, etc., but none cried with her hearing about this draft. The author's being a straight, white male could potentially also lead him into dismissing justices or clerks too quickly. >Justices understand that they don’t always end up in the majority. Clerks rely on these jobs as a calling card for the rest of their careers. To be exposed as a leaker would amount to setting that future career on fire. It’s not worth the risk. To Matthew Broderick, certainly, this risk isn't worth it. To a woman or minority who is genuinely afraid of the consequences for either themselves or can immediately put themselves in the shoes of those who it could harm? I don't know. Maybe it is worth it if they think that public outcry could sway a justice, particularly one who has previously and recently talked about it being settled precedent even if it may come at the cost of her career.

PartiallyTyped 4y ago
It is harder for men to cry due to their biology, this is supported by first hand experiences of trans women. This is not to say that men don't experience emotions or are not as empathetic or that women are emotional, but that the physical process itself is hindered.
- glandium 4y ago
  Age is a factor that changes things, though. I rarely had emotional responses to movies in my 20s, but now in my 40s the lachrymal canals are wide open.
- twevty 4y ago
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    > How does that work? Their brain's chemistry and structure is closer to cis-women than to cis-men due to hormone replacement therapy, and there are consistent differences in the microstructures of the brain. > Given that transwomen are just men While they are male in some regards, trans women have a different endocrine system due to HRT. They are not "just men". > that's what they believe they should be doing more of while performing womanhood. That's a very demeaning belief about how trans women experience the world, to reduce everything to a performance erases all the struggle and issues these women have gone through as a consequence of "being different" while presenting as boys or men. I am sorry but your comment just ... reeks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruence

umvi 4y ago

> I believe it’s much more likely that the leaker is someone who supports the opinion rather than an opponent > If [the majority bloc in favor of the opinion has held together], there’s no reason for a supporter or an opponent to leak an old draft now. I don't find the reasoning behind this convincing at all. It would make for a good plot twist in a book, but in my opinion the leaker was most likely an opponent wanting to spark national outrage ahead of the final ruling, in an effort to either pressure judges if the outcome can still be changed, or as an act of vengeance against the court in retaliation for a ruling they feel extremely strongly about.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
drewcoo 4y ago
It's not about reasoning. It's about excuses for partisan squabbling.
philosopher1234 4y ago
This models the leaker as unsophisticated/naive. It’s not clear to me that’s warranted given they were likely part of the Supreme Court staff. The actual effect of leaking this as opposed to waiting for it to be announced seems beneficial for supporters of the decision not detractors.
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
  The actions after the leak, like the barricades going up I think was more telling. The intelligence was good enough to prompt a knee jerk reaction to protect the building, yet the intelligence is not good enough to find the leaker. Something doesnt add up!
  - nl 4y ago
    That makes no sense. Anyone can predict that this could prompt protests. It's a no-brainer to put up barricades.
  - 4y ago

aksss 4y ago

Some of Author's conclusions just seem like failures of imagination: * "it must be someone who only had access to a stapled, printed copy of the draft opinion (If the person had access to the underlying digital file, they wouldn’t have printed & stapled it just to unstaple it.)" * "I don’t think the leaker was an opponent of the opinion, because there would be no tactical value in doing so." On the former, that assumes it's less risky to grab a digital copy (copied to some medium plugged into some machine, likely audited, maybe rights protected), than to smuggle out (and smuggle back in?) a physical copy. The latter is super low-tech and in an environment where (as demonstrated by Roberts' press release) the trust level is super high, I wonder how hard it is to smuggle out paper copies. There's all sorts of potential black magic in a digital copy that the tech unsavvy may (rightfully) be afraid of. So even if you had access to both, low-tech may be best. On the latter, it's usually not wise to put your own rational thoughts into the head of a suspect. You need to understand *their* "rational" thoughts. It's not too hard for me to imagine some perceived benefits that an opponent or proponent of the opinion would see in the leak.

nbbbshmbdy 4y ago

aerovistae 4y ago
> This website is the worst subreddit Then stop visiting the site

philjohn 4y ago

My money is on Ginny Thomas, seeing the tides shifting and not supporting this, decided to put it out. That news agencies and commentators on the right IMMEDIATELY communicated in Lockstep about "this leak is an egregious affront to the court" points to that.

tablespoon 4y ago
> My money is on Ginny Thomas, seeing the tides shifting and not supporting this, decided to put it out. My money is on "no one knows a damn thing," and everyone who says otherwise is just pointing fingers at their partisan hate-objects.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
I would push against using how quickly commentators commentate as an example of a leaker allied with a certain side. Tweeting takes seconds. A group chat can decide what to do in minutes. It likely takes less than an hour to have an emergency press release ready to go and instantly disseminate on the internet. (Fwiw: I don’t care who leaked or how leaked. I think people should focus more importantly that the legal opinion in the draft uses reasoning applicable to any sense of personal privacy. It’s more than just reproductive rights here, because the reasoning is that any rights logically derived from a right to privacy are illegitimate.)
- philjohn 4y ago
  Disparate news agencies?
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    Yes. They each maybe have one, maybe two big editors, and there are only a few major conservative news agencies, then they all can definitely be in a group chat! I doubt that list of contacts would be over two dozen people and I definitely have discord chats bigger than that. News media if you think about it is a really small world. If you’re a conservative reporter on national beats how many companies can you work for, actually? The national review, Fox News, Wall Street journal, OAN? Maybe Cato institute? That’s only a small handful of possible employers.

Imnimo 4y ago

I'm somewhat skeptical of attempts to play out the game theory of what the leaker's motivations would have been. While I generally agree that the author has identified the correct incentives, I'm not so convinced that we can sure the leaker would have arrived at the same conclusions. I'd still count this sort of reasoning as evidence, but I'd give it significantly lower weight than the author seems to.

marcodiego 4y ago

Beware of leaked PDF's. It is very easy to distribute documents with small modifications among workers of a company. If any of these is leaked, it is easy to track down who leaked it.

rhexs 4y ago
Are there services that provide this? If so, what are they called and who are the vendors?
- Dma54rhs 4y ago
  You can just share a document with small differences to suspected moles. You don't jsv to even change the text, typo or comma here and there sufficient. Football (soccer) coaches have used the tactic to identify who from their own team leaks stuff to the press etc, it's s very old tactic.
- munificent 4y ago
  The technique is called a "canary trap" or "barium meal test": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap No idea if anyone offers it as a service. It's unlikely because the primary consumer of the service would be someone trying to prevent documents from leaking, so trusting them to the service is itself a major point of failure.
- xeromal 4y ago
  I don't know any services, but I do remember years ago that someone was stealing Google's map data so they left a mistake in their map and sued the thieving company with proof in their mistake being in the thief's mapping system. It might not have been Google, but hopefully someone can chime in and remind me. lol
  - jdougan 4y ago
    As I understand it, that is a traditional thing for map publishers to do.
- 4y ago

ksherlock 4y ago

SCOTUS rules require submissions use the Century family (Century Schoolbook, etc) font, and it seems reasonable that's what their opinions use (as opposed to CMR which would imply LaTeX).

ParksNet 4y ago

This is all just a wedge issue to distract from the disastrous management of the US economy, the US border with Mexico, and failed COVID policies. The timing - 6 months before midterms - is deliberate.

vmception 4y ago
The final opinion would come out 2 or 3 months before midterms either way, because all opinions come out over summer. Have you consider grasping at different straws?
- tsol 4y ago
  But it gives time to shift the narrative-- create lots of anger and then start with the "donate to our side, we'll fight to maintain this/undo this". I mean I don't have any reason for thinking this is more likely than any other possibility, but really at this point there's not enough evidence to narrow it down at all. Hell maybe it was Putin-- who can really say at this point
  - vmception 4y ago
    there are lots of opportunities and lots of opportunists who have initially nothing to do with the action or thought process and coordination leading up to the action there is a group of people susceptible to the idea of trying to tie them all together and there are opportunities to lead those kind of people on too I mainly caution against being one of the people susceptible to connecting unrelated strings, and providing an alternate framework on how random things happen in reality
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
throwmeariver1 4y ago
the economy was up before the war in Ukraine, dow had its best time ever even through covid, the caravans never arrived and covid killed itself. Are we living in different countries or are you just mad?

jtc331 4y ago

> In 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published a story called “The Big Hack” that was vigorously denied by Apple and Amazon. Based on these denials, certain tech bloggers became convinced that the story was false. The fact that neither Apple nor Amazon sued Bloomberg for defamation—despite being extremely rich, finicky, and litigious—made nary a dent. No, people concluded that because there were so many holes in the Bloomberg reporting that didn't make any sense conceptually.

gwern 4y ago
And because the people sourced for the story disagreed with it, and all the tech & security experts disagreed (as well as bloggers), and the journalists in question never followed up this incredible bombshell with all of the additional bombshells it should've lead right to as further implants were discovered, and neither did anyone else ever follow it up, and IIRC, didn't some of the journalists quietly leave Bloomberg later? Really, quite a lot of things. While against all this, the absence of a lawsuit says very little, given how horrible the PR from suing is and how pointless it is suing the very rich Bloomberg corporation in an American jurisdiction for nebulous damages. Butterick is being silly here.
- threepio 4y ago
  > the journalists in question never followed up this incredible bombshell They did publish more stories on the topic, which are collected here: https://www.bloomberg.com/2018-the-big-hack https://www.bloomberg.com/2018-the-big-hack > IIRC, didn't some of the journalists quietly leave Bloomberg later? AFAIK the authors of The Big Hack, Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley, are still employed by Bloomberg. Riley was even promoted about a year later: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg-reporter-challenged-big-hack-story-gets-promoted/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/bloomberg... > how horrible the PR from suing is and how pointless it is suing the very rich Bloomberg corporation in an American jurisdiction for nebulous damages Based on what? This past year, for instance, Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News and certain individuals for defamation and claimed billions in damages

macinjosh 4y ago

I think the author is spot on when he said the leaker is probably a non-professional close to someone who has legitimate access to these documents. Maybe a soon to be ex-spouse or a politically passionate young family member. WFH would have meant a lot of potential for unauthorized access.

jliptzin 4y ago

No one seems to have considered the possibility that it’s just a leak in the classic sense - maybe a janitor or electrician or painter came across a copy of the document, recognized its value and sold it to politico purely for monetary gain.

dzmien 4y ago
That this was the work of an otherwise uninvolved opportunist is always a possibility (it came to mind while considering that the document was from Feb 10, unmarked, and had been stapled), but I am almost certain it was not done for financial gain. Maybe I am naive, but I do not think news organizations pay their confidential sources very much for their trouble. So it just seems unlikely in this case.
- jliptzin 4y ago
  I agree, probably not, but at least worth mentioning

ComradePhil 4y ago

eCa 4y ago
As a western (but non-US) male, anyone who thinks that women and couples that discover that they are having an unwanted pregnancy, won’t (sometimes) go to extreme lengths to end such pregnancy, if it isn’t lawfully available, is, and I quote: > absolutely insane to me
- ComradePhil 4y ago

js2 4y ago

As long as we're using a divining rod to try to derive the source, what does it tell us that the document was leaked to Politico and not the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Wikileaks or some other org?

mmmpop 4y ago
Sure, right next to the Hooli phone.

teslabox 4y ago

I don't post on reddit much, but I've gotten more off-channel messages asking for details about my quip in a post about how my friend realized her period was 2 weeks late, and how she got her period to come back. Then she went to Planned Parenthood for a free blood test. She was told she'd had a miscarriage, and don't do that again. The essential oil of the plant that Nirvana sang about is highly toxic. The tea is relatively safe. My friend used a 3-prong approach to inducing her period, not just the tea. This tweet makes the case that the leaker was probably Justice Bryer's clerk: https://twitter.com/willchamberlain/status/1521685968939630592 https://twitter.com/willchamberlain/status/15216859689396305...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
buerkle 4y ago
You would hope a lawyer would know better than to name names with absolutely zero evidence other than speculation. Hopefully this will not lead to her harassment, but based on history, I wouldn't be surprised if she's already received threats.
dvt 4y ago
Absolutely insane thread. And any speculation is extremely premature and dangerous at this point. But, hey, whatever gets you that "social engagement," right? Can't believe Mr. Chamberlain is a lawyer; I'd fire him on the spot. I am a bit surprised that Justice Bryer's clerk is allowed to have a LinkedIn, though. An old classmate of mine clerked for a justice on the Supreme Court of California, and they had to disable all their social media by policy.
- neuronexmachina 4y ago
  > Can't believe Mr. Chamberlain is a lawyer; I'd fire him on the spot. I don't think the sort of organizations Chamberlain affiliates with are the sort who'd object to premature and dangerous behavior, as long as it targets the right people: https://fedsoc.org/contributors/will-chamberlain https://fedsoc.org/contributors/will-chamberlain

res0nat0r 4y ago

If I was leaking something of this magnitude I would be *extremely* paranoid, and frankly require that Politico cannot publish the PDF itself, but must retype the entire document in-full and display it on their website. (Let's hope there aren't different versions of the document floating around with slightly altered sentences to track down a leaked version). Reality Winner was caught partly by The Intercept's poor opsec, and investigators reviewing the microdots on the PDF scan. https://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-reality-winner.html https://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-reali...

cozzyd 4y ago
If I were leaking something of this magnitude, I'd "forget" a copy at a DC Starbucks frequented by journalists.
supernova87a 4y ago
I was just thinking similarly! I would be pretty impressed if the Court had systems where the authoring justice's / clerk's software would insert various difficult-to-detect variations into each copy distributed to the other justices. For example, slight differences in the footnotes / case reference numbers that would be very hard to detect on casual glance. Or even traps like displaced punctuation marks unique to each copy. But somehow I doubt it.

rayiner 4y ago

> Therefore, I don’t think the source is someone who works at the Supreme Court, like a justice or a clerk. Justices understand that they don’t always end up in the majority. Clerks rely on these jobs as a calling card for the rest of their careers. I think people underestimate how ideological the legal profession has become. On an increasing number of social issues, liberal lawyers (which is 90% of them) believe that their position is not only correct, but above debate and above the political and legal process. They begrudgingly accept that economic issues are subject to political debate, but moral issues are their exclusive domain, and politics and law are merely vehicles for imposing the moral views of highly educated professionals on the unwashed masses. It doesn’t matter that Roe is so bad that numerous prominent liberal legal scholars are unable to defend its reasoning: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/honest-pro-choicers-admit-roe-v-wade-was-a-horrible-decision https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/honest-pro-choicers-admit.... It must be the law of the land forever because it’s proponents are right and it’s opponents are “on the wrong side of history.” The arc of history bends towards justice, after all, and no institutional norm can override the march of progress. A breach of trust like this is obviously a serious offense in a profession where keeping people’s confidences is fundamental to the job. But nonetheless there’s plenty of corporate law firms where these leakers will be feted, not condemned.

xenadu02 4y ago
> liberal lawyers (which is 90% of them) What is the basis for this claim? > believe that their position is not only correct but above debate and above the political and legal process You seem to be accusing everyone who disagrees with you of malice and abandonment of all principles - more or less evil. I would counter that this kind of argument is only ever made in bad faith in an attempt to demonize those who don't agree with you. > politics and law are merely vehicles for imposing the moral views of highly educated professionals on the unwashed masses. And one could likewise say that much of conservative thought is an attempt to force people to adhere to certain religious values using state coercion. But that would just be an opinion, not a fact. What is fact is that many (possibly most?) conservative policies and doctrines do not enjoy majority support in the United States, yet are being rammed down our throats regardless because those policies are a) supported by those in power and b) convenient wedge issues or rallying cries for a small minority of the voting base - a minority that happens to be highly motivated. Even the current composition of the court was a blatant power grab to deny Obama's constitutional right to appoint a justice with a made-up rule that it was "too close" to an election. Then immediately discarding that so-called rule when Trump was in the same position. In that sense the current conservative majority is illegitimate. Regardless of how you think any specific SCOTUS decision should go I hope you'd agree that a court that the majority of Americans believe to be illegitimately stacked is not a good thing for the stability of our separation of powers. For that matter the overall tilt toward conservatives in House representation thanks to gerrymandering along with over-representation of conservative thought in the Senate due to the 2-senators-per-state rule undermines the legitimacy of Congress and the entire government. You can only get away with preventing the majority from being able to enact any significant policies for so long before a representative government collapses. Granted that might take tens or hundreds of years but in the long term it erodes the very foundation of our society. I find that very concerning personally but some people would rather win at any cost (witness Trump's recent loss and the fact that some conservatives attempted to sacrifice free & fair elections for a single win of a single presidential term. How cheaply they were willing to sell out!)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

chasd00 4y ago

The pdf was probably left on a bar table and a reporter from Politico happened to find it before the waiter cleared the table. That's about as probably as anything else...

avs733 4y ago

> the bad news for those who contend that the recent leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion is “unthinkable” or, in the words of Chief Justice Roberts, a “singular and egregious breach”—the horse is long out of the barn. I mean…people know that. The lie is the point. The distraction is by intention the point of making the false claim.

livinginfear 4y ago

Although this might be a bit too conspiratorial for the tastes of many. I suspect that this is an act in a larger piece of political theatre. Someone showed me this: https://who.is/whois/jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org https://who.is/whois/jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org It's an incredible coincidence that someone knew to have this website up and running just ahead of the draft leak: https://web.archive.org/web/20220426203219/https://jewishrallyforabortionjustice.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220426203219/https://jewishral... It could be totally unrelated to this abortion controversy, however that would be amazing coincidence. The site maintained by this group: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-council-of-jewish-women/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-council-o... I'm aware of the fact that it's run by Jewish organisations will make me the butt of many accusations. All I'm alleging is that rumours have probably been moving around the right circles for a long time.

evan_ 4y ago
Everyone has known for months, even years that there would be an opinion on Roe this summer.

benmmurphy 4y ago

If Politico knows the identity of the leaker then I think that reduces the chance that it was conservative aligned. You have to be either mad or have very little to risk to put your trust in Politico. If they are 4D chess enough to come up with this game theory strategy then I assume they would use washington post securedrop (https://www.washingtonpost.com/securedrop/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/securedrop/) or something similar or at least leak through a non-mainstream liberal/non-conservative reporter that can be trusted like Greenwald.

octoberfranklin 4y ago

Or, option (d), the court intends to neither overturn Roe nor the lower court ruling in Dobbs, and deliberately leaked a draft written by the most inflammatory member of the court in order to show people "look it could have been worse". These are, after all, seven of the smartest people in the legal profession. I suspect that they intend to overturn only some very technical aspect of Dobbs appeal and remand it back to the appellate court for further proceedings. I can almost imagine the conversation between Roberts and Alito: "hey Sam, the debate is pretty evenly split here; why don't you draft us up the text that you'd publish if things lean your way? Then we'd have something tangible to pick through."

poofsoda 4y ago
Out of curiosity, who are the two that you don’t consider the smartest people in the legal profession? I have my ideological qualms with a few justices but would likely consider all nine to be among the smartest people in the legal profession.

smitty1e 4y ago

Questions of the timing of the Politico story need to look beyond the decision itself to what other news (documentaries, primaries, economic reports, whatever) are having the oxygen sucked out of them by this leak. Since our goverment behaves like so many Olympian gods in a perpetual bunfight over the news cycle, one must understand that defelection has a lot to do with the timing.

wyldfire 4y ago

Do scanners mark pages with tracking pixels like the printers do?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

baskethead 4y ago

> I don’t think the leaker was an opponent of the opinion, because there would be no tactical value in doing so. This is terrible reasoning. Of course there's tactical value. It would create an outrage before the opinion was official and could potentially turn the tide if justices saw a huge reaction from Americans. The Justices aren't stupid. They know if they release a very unpopular opinion on abortion, it could completely destroy the faith in the Supreme Court. So there's a huge amount of tactical value. For the author to dismiss this is horrible reasoning.

ck2 4y ago

It doesn't matter, supreme court justices aren't influenced by anything except what they wanted to do in the first place. They have lifetime high salary employment, lifetime high salary retirement, lifetime security protection, they openly break laws that other federal judges have to obey (like not associating with political groups) Point is they do whatever they want. Leaks will annoy them but it's not going to change anything. They do not have to respond to anyone, nor do any interviews, explain themselves, etc. The time to prevent this was 50 years ago by making it law but then being undone was cemented in 2016 when there were a dozen other more qualified candidates but someone inexplicably was chosen otherwise. This country is beyond comprehension.

ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago

> I conclude it must be someone who only had access to a stapled, printed copy of the draft opinion. (If the person had access to the underlying digital file, they wouldn’t have printed & stapled it just to unstaple it.) That's precisely why, if I were the one who did this, I would have printed, stapled, stressed, and finally unstapled the pages before re-scanning them.

nullc 4y ago

I'm just glad to see someone else saying they love the supreme court's typesetting.

supernova87a 4y ago
Well, they've had 200+ years to get it right!

supernova87a 4y ago

On a purely technical note about the leak, I would be pretty impressed if the Court had systems where the authoring justice's / clerk's software would insert various difficult-to-detect variations into each copy distributed to the other justices. For example, slight differences in the footnotes / case reference numbers that would be very hard to detect on casual glance. Or even traps like displaced punctuation marks unique to each copy. But somehow I doubt it.