9 ms·

How do we know it's Snowden? So are more documents going to drop? If yes the the former, why can't The Guardian do an all-out dump instead of piecemealing it?

by aroch 13y ago

panacea 13y ago
How do we know you're aroch?
- XorNot 13y ago
  Why do you care unless he's making statements which depend on his authoritative experience, as Snowden is doing? The real question is why Snowden needs a secure internet connection, seeing as how everyone knows (1) who he is (2) where he is and (3) it's a public Q&A so the idea is for everyone to hear what he says. Were he really concerned about tampering, the more important issue would be distributing an authenticated public key to prove his responses weren't being quickly edited in flight. Which popping on and offline...doesn't really assure anyone about.
  - panacea 13y ago
    I don't know, maybe because an anonymous user is casting dispersions on the authenticity of someone who has very much put themselves forward as a real identity?
    - aroch 13y ago
      So because we "know" Snowden leaked the documents we should automatically "know" that he's the one responding? There's no web of trust or verification that we know of; we're taking the Guardian at its word. How do we know its not just some intern who has a list of answers given to probable questions?
      - panacea 13y ago
        The Guardian (a newspaper cum hyperblog) is inventing and impersonating a whistleblower for it's nefarious, I mean, link bait purposes now?
        aroch 13y ago
        Wow, that's not at all what I said. I like how you're deliberately taking things out of context. We, the public, have no way of knowing if indeed its Snowden answering. It could be any number of persons, we just know that The Guardian says it's Snowden (probably). I'm all for calling the USG out on this matter, but I'd like if we could get some public verification of who is answering.
        ealexhudson 13y ago
        Many papers publish reports on things where the sources are not even named; indeed, the protection of anonymous sources is one of the tenets of journalism. Requiring not only a named source, but a way of verifying that statements / correspondence were provably from that source, seems an impossibly high standard to meet (eg., he could sign each comment with a PGP key. But then, "How do we know it's his PGP key?". Etcetera etcetera, ad infinitum)
        aroch 13y ago
        > Many papers publish reports on things where the sources are not even named; indeed, the protection of anonymous sources is one of the tenets of journalism. Except this isn't the WSJ reporting on a new iPhone "rumor", this is a very public release of important information. He's already outed himself, so this isn't about protection of anonymity. It really isn't hard for the Guardian and Snowden to setup a CoT including PGP. They can verify it using a key pair they have ultimate trust in and then include that verification in their posts. It isn't asking a whole lot for them to say why or how they have trust in the responses they're getting. I trust the Guardian, what I don't trust is whether or not we're actually getting answers from Snowden that aren't being manipulated en route or otherwise not "live" and intact.
- aroch 13y ago
  We don't, but we also don't care. I'm not making substantive claims which impact millions if not billions around the world.
  - panacea 13y ago
    Substantive claims that haven't been denied by President Obama? ...other than America has nothing to worry about waves hand retreats behind curtain
    - aroch 13y ago
      What are you going on about?
      - panacea 13y ago
        President Obama stated the surveillance was good for America. Just trust him, no? Kinda has 'allies' such as myself in Australia wondering about the extent and the utility of the dragnet.
        aroch 13y ago
        And this has to do with this comment thread how? When President Obama makes a statement, we know he's the one making it. It's publicly televised, he's the one saying it and we have very little reason to doubt that he is indeed saying the thing. This thread makes no claims about whether the things the person is saying are true, it's about whether we can verify who is making the claims. But, by all means, continue to ignore what I'm talking about and interject your own sputum.
vidarh 13y ago
Because the point whether or not you believe they care about the content, or are cynical and assume it is just about their traffic, is to get maximum mileage out of it. And the way to do that is to drag it out. If they dumped everything at once, a lot of it would get drowned out by a small number of the most interesting revelations.
- aroch 13y ago
  You can dump everything and then spend the next 6 months going through it with a fine-toothed comb and writing articles daily. Is the public really better served by waiting months to hear everything?
  - akiselev 13y ago
    Yes, it gives Greenwald and Snowden the ability to exercise at least a little control of the story at the expense of Washington. So far I'm unimpressed by how revelations have played out under scrutiny but I hope they have something that allows them to just wait for the US government to back itself into a corner before they release hopefully more detailed and informative documents and primary sources. Maybe they have one really big scoop that must be released at the right time and the rest of their hand is just bad PRISM powerpoints and warrants. Yay speculation
  - guizzy 13y ago
    Other journalists would try to beat The Guardian to the scoop, with the same result. Everyone would be talking about it for two weeks, then we'd forget. By controlling the flow, they can make sure that each important revelation is allowed some time in the spotlight. The issues gets a lot more attention that way.
    - jessedhillon 13y ago
      You people are un-fucking-believable. You are literally lauding -- no, contorting yourselves to defend -- the hoarding of information you consider vital to the public good, and the slow, drawn out manipulation of the public's attention for private gain. This is, at a high level, directly analogous to whatever evil you think the NSA is committing. And the dumbest of all ironies, which I'm sure is lost on all of you, is that you are employing utilitarian ethics to defend it. That is exactly how a spy program is considered ethical. God. The humanities really are dead if this kind of clueless doublethinking represents the future thought leadership of our world.
guizzy 13y ago
We don't know it's Snowden, but The Guardian is putting its reputation at risk, so I suppose their journalists have some degree of certitude about it.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
> why can't The Guardian do an all-out dump instead of piecemealing it? I suspect they're laying a trap for the gov't; hoping to catch them in a big irrefutable lie.
Kurtz79 13y ago
"How do we know it's Snowden?" The same way you attribute credibility to any story you read (on the Internet or anywhere else), the reliability of its source. The Guardian says it's Snowden, confidently enough to make it public. It boils down to how much you trust them as a reliable news source. If they weren't sure, I believe they'd evaluate the possible backlash to their credibility and not run the story at all.
alan_cx 13y ago
"How do we know it's Snowden?" Because if it was found out that it wasn't, the Guardian would be finished. Faking this would be a scandal on a level with journalists "phone tapping". Literally, the news paper would be shut down. Not by some judge or government evil, it would become a laughing stock and its readers would abandon it. "If yes the the former, why can't The Guardian do an all-out dump instead of piecemealing it?" You publish a small amount. Let the accused say what they want to say. As they have done, they seek to minimize everything and covering their backs. Then you hit them with more, hopefully the next set of information will contradict what they have already said. Potentially they get caught lying "directly" in public. So, simply: (Leak 1)I saw you at the pub. You deny it. (Leak 2)I offer the evidence of a witness. You claim the witness is wrong. (Leak 3)I produce CCTV footage. I prove my case (assuming in this example we accept the CCTV as "fact"), and you lied twice instead of telling the truth at the first opportunity. You are then well and truly fecked.

How do we know it's Snowden? So are more documents going to drop? If yes the the former, why can't The Guardian do an all-out dump instead of piecemealing it?

by aroch 13y ago

How do we know it's Snowden? So are more documents going to drop? If yes the the former, why can't The Guardian do an all-out dump instead of piecemealing it?

panacea 13y ago

How do we know you're aroch?

XorNot 13y ago
Why do you care unless he's making statements which depend on his authoritative experience, as Snowden is doing? The real question is why Snowden needs a secure internet connection, seeing as how everyone knows (1) who he is (2) where he is and (3) it's a public Q&A so the idea is for everyone to hear what he says. Were he really concerned about tampering, the more important issue would be distributing an authenticated public key to prove his responses weren't being quickly edited in flight. Which popping on and offline...doesn't really assure anyone about.
- panacea 13y ago
  I don't know, maybe because an anonymous user is casting dispersions on the authenticity of someone who has very much put themselves forward as a real identity?
  - aroch 13y ago
    So because we "know" Snowden leaked the documents we should automatically "know" that he's the one responding? There's no web of trust or verification that we know of; we're taking the Guardian at its word. How do we know its not just some intern who has a list of answers given to probable questions?
    - panacea 13y ago
      The Guardian (a newspaper cum hyperblog) is inventing and impersonating a whistleblower for it's nefarious, I mean, link bait purposes now?
      - aroch 13y ago
        Wow, that's not at all what I said. I like how you're deliberately taking things out of context. We, the public, have no way of knowing if indeed its Snowden answering. It could be any number of persons, we just know that The Guardian says it's Snowden (probably). I'm all for calling the USG out on this matter, but I'd like if we could get some public verification of who is answering.
        ealexhudson 13y ago
        Many papers publish reports on things where the sources are not even named; indeed, the protection of anonymous sources is one of the tenets of journalism. Requiring not only a named source, but a way of verifying that statements / correspondence were provably from that source, seems an impossibly high standard to meet (eg., he could sign each comment with a PGP key. But then, "How do we know it's his PGP key?". Etcetera etcetera, ad infinitum)
        aroch 13y ago
        > Many papers publish reports on things where the sources are not even named; indeed, the protection of anonymous sources is one of the tenets of journalism. Except this isn't the WSJ reporting on a new iPhone "rumor", this is a very public release of important information. He's already outed himself, so this isn't about protection of anonymity. It really isn't hard for the Guardian and Snowden to setup a CoT including PGP. They can verify it using a key pair they have ultimate trust in and then include that verification in their posts. It isn't asking a whole lot for them to say why or how they have trust in the responses they're getting. I trust the Guardian, what I don't trust is whether or not we're actually getting answers from Snowden that aren't being manipulated en route or otherwise not "live" and intact.
aroch 13y ago
We don't, but we also don't care. I'm not making substantive claims which impact millions if not billions around the world.
- panacea 13y ago
  Substantive claims that haven't been denied by President Obama? ...other than America has nothing to worry about waves hand retreats behind curtain
  - aroch 13y ago
    What are you going on about?
    - panacea 13y ago
      President Obama stated the surveillance was good for America. Just trust him, no? Kinda has 'allies' such as myself in Australia wondering about the extent and the utility of the dragnet.
      - aroch 13y ago
        And this has to do with this comment thread how? When President Obama makes a statement, we know he's the one making it. It's publicly televised, he's the one saying it and we have very little reason to doubt that he is indeed saying the thing. This thread makes no claims about whether the things the person is saying are true, it's about whether we can verify who is making the claims. But, by all means, continue to ignore what I'm talking about and interject your own sputum.

vidarh 13y ago

Because the point whether or not you believe they care about the content, or are cynical and assume it is just about their traffic, is to get maximum mileage out of it. And the way to do that is to drag it out. If they dumped everything at once, a lot of it would get drowned out by a small number of the most interesting revelations.

aroch 13y ago
You can dump everything and then spend the next 6 months going through it with a fine-toothed comb and writing articles daily. Is the public really better served by waiting months to hear everything?
- akiselev 13y ago
  Yes, it gives Greenwald and Snowden the ability to exercise at least a little control of the story at the expense of Washington. So far I'm unimpressed by how revelations have played out under scrutiny but I hope they have something that allows them to just wait for the US government to back itself into a corner before they release hopefully more detailed and informative documents and primary sources. Maybe they have one really big scoop that must be released at the right time and the rest of their hand is just bad PRISM powerpoints and warrants. Yay speculation
- guizzy 13y ago
  Other journalists would try to beat The Guardian to the scoop, with the same result. Everyone would be talking about it for two weeks, then we'd forget. By controlling the flow, they can make sure that each important revelation is allowed some time in the spotlight. The issues gets a lot more attention that way.
  - jessedhillon 13y ago
    You people are un-fucking-believable. You are literally lauding -- no, contorting yourselves to defend -- the hoarding of information you consider vital to the public good, and the slow, drawn out manipulation of the public's attention for private gain. This is, at a high level, directly analogous to whatever evil you think the NSA is committing. And the dumbest of all ironies, which I'm sure is lost on all of you, is that you are employing utilitarian ethics to defend it. That is exactly how a spy program is considered ethical. God. The humanities really are dead if this kind of clueless doublethinking represents the future thought leadership of our world.

guizzy 13y ago

We don't know it's Snowden, but The Guardian is putting its reputation at risk, so I suppose their journalists have some degree of certitude about it.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

> why can't The Guardian do an all-out dump instead of piecemealing it? I suspect they're laying a trap for the gov't; hoping to catch them in a big irrefutable lie.

Kurtz79 13y ago

"How do we know it's Snowden?" The same way you attribute credibility to any story you read (on the Internet or anywhere else), the reliability of its source. The Guardian says it's Snowden, confidently enough to make it public. It boils down to how much you trust them as a reliable news source. If they weren't sure, I believe they'd evaluate the possible backlash to their credibility and not run the story at all.

alan_cx 13y ago

"How do we know it's Snowden?" Because if it was found out that it wasn't, the Guardian would be finished. Faking this would be a scandal on a level with journalists "phone tapping". Literally, the news paper would be shut down. Not by some judge or government evil, it would become a laughing stock and its readers would abandon it. "If yes the the former, why can't The Guardian do an all-out dump instead of piecemealing it?" You publish a small amount. Let the accused say what they want to say. As they have done, they seek to minimize everything and covering their backs. Then you hit them with more, hopefully the next set of information will contradict what they have already said. Potentially they get caught lying "directly" in public. So, simply: (Leak 1)I saw you at the pub. You deny it. (Leak 2)I offer the evidence of a witness. You claim the witness is wrong. (Leak 3)I produce CCTV footage. I prove my case (assuming in this example we accept the CCTV as "fact"), and you lied twice instead of telling the truth at the first opportunity. You are then well and truly fecked.