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Watching this play out was painful, but as much as I like the comments about unicorns and being the Queen of England, for a moment let's assume that most or all

Watching this play out was painful, but as much as I like the comments about unicorns and being the Queen of England, for a moment let's assume that most or all of the fifty cases were real threats on some level or another, and this information played a role. The problem that I see in the way these questions get asked or answered is in the speculation they leave up to the answerer to interpret. Asking the FBI whether an attack would haven't been thwarted if this tool didn't exist allows the FBI to answer from the imaginary perspective of having no tool at all. I feel like that's what we started seeing this morning. It's a harder, longer conversation (than I suspect congress has patience for) to thoroughly evaluate whether alternative tools could have done the same job. I also feel like we saw a very selective use of speculation. When asked whether this tool would have prevented 9/11 we got [paraphrased, barely] "We'll never know, but I can tell you this tool didn't exist back then". But when asked whether PRISM was essential in thwarting threats, or whether this leak has affected national security ongoing... the speculation was suddenly reasonable.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
>The problem that I see in the way these questions get asked or answered is in the speculation they leave up to the answerer to interpret. It's not an accident, they receive the questions for these public briefings in advance. The questioners receive guidance on what questions they may not ask, and how to ask the ones they can.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
It is painful, and typically the reasoning for not revealing details is that it will compromise the method used to acquire said details. However that reasoning completely fails when the point of the conversation is that we already know about how the information was acquired, so telling us what it prevented doesn't change the status quo.
- famousactress 13y ago
  Exactly! If there's a solid argument to be made here, you'd think the silver lining here is that this would provide an opportunity to be forthcoming with evidence of it's value. To be fair, Alexander seemed to think this way when it came to talking about the policy safeguards in place. At one point he was kind of falling all over himself with joy for how certain he thought it was that the American public would be pretty gosh-darned impressed at what a tight ship they're running over there (once they figure out how to release only information that will steer public opinion in that direction).
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  I'm not all that interested in how the information was acquired, but metadata goes both ways. 'We acquired important information by reading ChuckMcM's HN posts' tips off other people involved in conversations with you such as FamousActress and myself, so open discussion of the details is tricky.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

>The problem that I see in the way these questions get asked or answered is in the speculation they leave up to the answerer to interpret. It's not an accident, they receive the questions for these public briefings in advance. The questioners receive guidance on what questions they may not ask, and how to ask the ones they can.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

It is painful, and typically the reasoning for not revealing details is that it will compromise the method used to acquire said details. However that reasoning completely fails when the point of the conversation is that we already know about how the information was acquired, so telling us what it prevented doesn't change the status quo.

famousactress 13y ago
Exactly! If there's a solid argument to be made here, you'd think the silver lining here is that this would provide an opportunity to be forthcoming with evidence of it's value. To be fair, Alexander seemed to think this way when it came to talking about the policy safeguards in place. At one point he was kind of falling all over himself with joy for how certain he thought it was that the American public would be pretty gosh-darned impressed at what a tight ship they're running over there (once they figure out how to release only information that will steer public opinion in that direction).
anigbrowl 13y ago
I'm not all that interested in how the information was acquired, but metadata goes both ways. 'We acquired important information by reading ChuckMcM's HN posts' tips off other people involved in conversations with you such as FamousActress and myself, so open discussion of the details is tricky.