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Serious question, why are the Snowden leaks so revered and not the reporting of James Risen several years earlier? Risen exposed operation Stellar Wind which wa

by tootie 3y ago

Serious question, why are the Snowden leaks so revered and not the reporting of James Risen several years earlier? Risen exposed operation Stellar Wind which was the grossest abuse of spying apparatus approved by the Bush admin over the express objections of their own DOJ. Risen also appeared in court for every summons about his activities and was dutifully defended by the NYT until he was ultimately exonerated.

colordrops 3y ago
Because you had journalists and documentarians like Greenwald and Poitras doing an amazing job of getting the story out there.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> Serious question, why are the Snowden leaks so revered and not the reporting of James Risen several years earlier? Because, historically, the US Press is compulsively deferential to the NatSec state. It's the same reason the press twistered themselves to report the Mark Klein revelations as a warrantless wiretapping issue - instead of the NSA live cloning internet backbone traffic in a room custom built by AT&T for the purpose. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein That the US press was loudly silent over US Gov's revenge campaign against - not only James Rosen but also James Risen and other journalists who outed NatSec wrongdoing - is for me one of US Journalism's most defining (non)actions. ref: US Gov's persecution of James Risen https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/03/james-risen-anonymous-source-government-battle https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/03/james-risen-anonymou... ref: US Gov's persecution of James Rosen https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/05/james-rosen-named-a-co-conspirator-why-is-barack-obamas-justice-department-going-after-a-national-security-reporter.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/05/james-rosen-name...
- hgsgm 3y ago
  The US major media reported on this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > The US major media reported on this. There were some one-off stories but by the time we got to the point where PotUS candidates were pausing their campaigns so they could return to DC to vote in favor of amnesty for AT&T, 99% of the coverage was about the ancillary warrantless wiretapping issue; NSA's bulk collection of US citizen's data was soundly ignored. Every bit of this process was stunning to witness.
viktorcode 3y ago
IMO because of the impact they had in the media. I would argue Snowden revelations put privacy and data protection questions on top of the list across the world, for instance.
edge17 3y ago
I think because one day everyone woke up and heard about PRISM, including a lot of the tech companies, which had to go into damage control to deny their involvement. It was big news with brands that every American was familiar with.
- lern_too_spel 3y ago
  That explains why Snowden was a big deal, but as soon as we all figured out that PRISM wasn't what he claimed it was (and Greenwald stupidly believed without running the docs he was given by experts) and instead just a data integration project for processing communications from targeted foreigners, Snowden should have become a smaller deal.
hgsgm 3y ago
2004, far less Internet connectivity to sustain awareness and outrage, and less impact. Our lives weren't nearly as completely mediated by online services. "Total Information Awareness" made a splash in the news around 2004 also, but then faded. Also, Bush's team was busy outraging everyone so many other ways, like blowing up Iraq for oil money, and making up nonsense legal defenses for kidnapping and physical torture of civilians.
- tootie 3y ago
  I don't think that's it. I think it's more that the public was just more accepting of this kind of thing closer to the wake of 9/11. But regardless, that may explain the muted reaction when the story broke, but not why everyone seems to have forgotten about it. I honestly have a hard time understanding what it is that Snowden even exposed given that the PATRIOT ACT was public record.
monetus 3y ago
Not to diminish anything he did, risen pushing the NYT to eventually publish was really cool, but delaying that push himself until he could monetize it in a book always bothered me. I always thought snowden, hale, and the "insider" whistleblowers were looked at kind of differently; they faced prosecution. Really wild what has become of bill binney and kiriakou; they aren't like snowden IMO either.

by tootie 3y ago

colordrops 3y ago

Because you had journalists and documentarians like Greenwald and Poitras doing an amazing job of getting the story out there.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> Serious question, why are the Snowden leaks so revered and not the reporting of James Risen several years earlier? Because, historically, the US Press is compulsively deferential to the NatSec state. It's the same reason the press twistered themselves to report the Mark Klein revelations as a warrantless wiretapping issue - instead of the NSA live cloning internet backbone traffic in a room custom built by AT&T for the purpose. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein That the US press was loudly silent over US Gov's revenge campaign against - not only James Rosen but also James Risen and other journalists who outed NatSec wrongdoing - is for me one of US Journalism's most defining (non)actions. ref: US Gov's persecution of James Risen https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/03/james-risen-anonymous-source-government-battle https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/03/james-risen-anonymou... ref: US Gov's persecution of James Rosen https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/05/james-rosen-named-a-co-conspirator-why-is-barack-obamas-justice-department-going-after-a-national-security-reporter.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/05/james-rosen-name...

hgsgm 3y ago
The US major media reported on this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > The US major media reported on this. There were some one-off stories but by the time we got to the point where PotUS candidates were pausing their campaigns so they could return to DC to vote in favor of amnesty for AT&T, 99% of the coverage was about the ancillary warrantless wiretapping issue; NSA's bulk collection of US citizen's data was soundly ignored. Every bit of this process was stunning to witness.

viktorcode 3y ago

IMO because of the impact they had in the media. I would argue Snowden revelations put privacy and data protection questions on top of the list across the world, for instance.

edge17 3y ago

I think because one day everyone woke up and heard about PRISM, including a lot of the tech companies, which had to go into damage control to deny their involvement. It was big news with brands that every American was familiar with.

lern_too_spel 3y ago
That explains why Snowden was a big deal, but as soon as we all figured out that PRISM wasn't what he claimed it was (and Greenwald stupidly believed without running the docs he was given by experts) and instead just a data integration project for processing communications from targeted foreigners, Snowden should have become a smaller deal.

hgsgm 3y ago

2004, far less Internet connectivity to sustain awareness and outrage, and less impact. Our lives weren't nearly as completely mediated by online services. "Total Information Awareness" made a splash in the news around 2004 also, but then faded. Also, Bush's team was busy outraging everyone so many other ways, like blowing up Iraq for oil money, and making up nonsense legal defenses for kidnapping and physical torture of civilians.

tootie 3y ago
I don't think that's it. I think it's more that the public was just more accepting of this kind of thing closer to the wake of 9/11. But regardless, that may explain the muted reaction when the story broke, but not why everyone seems to have forgotten about it. I honestly have a hard time understanding what it is that Snowden even exposed given that the PATRIOT ACT was public record.

monetus 3y ago

Not to diminish anything he did, risen pushing the NYT to eventually publish was really cool, but delaying that push himself until he could monetize it in a book always bothered me. I always thought snowden, hale, and the "insider" whistleblowers were looked at kind of differently; they faced prosecution. Really wild what has become of bill binney and kiriakou; they aren't like snowden IMO either.