8 ms·

Chaos Computer Club congratulates Netzpolitik.org

256 points by muhpirat 11y ago

dvdkhlng 11y ago
For context, see also these HN submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9980741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9980741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9981239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9981239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976043 [edit]: added more links to other overlapping HN articles.
- justaman 11y ago
  https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccc.de%2Fde%2Fupdates%2F2015%2Fccc-verratsdatenspeicherung https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=h... [English]
sschueller 11y ago
This may become the tipping point for Germany to do something about the whole spying situation and its relationship with the United States. Similar to what happened in 1962 after Spiegel Journalists where imprisoned [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_scandal
- realityking 11y ago
  I wouldn't hold my breath. If I see protests in the street and there are more participants than just nerds, than I'll believe change is possible.
  - allendoerfer 11y ago
    The decision was criticized by members of FDP, Greens, the Lefts and even SPD (which is in government). Associations of journalist, legal professions and IT professions are against it. There are really only some members of the CDU and the agencies, who are defending the prosecution. I would not underestimate the press here. They love to talk about themselves and have nothing else to talk about in the summer break anyway.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    Indeed. At best, over the next couple of years, it will become commonly acknowledged that almost all of the world that matters is a US empire, where even the most compliant vassals are monitored with a paranoid fervor. We have bred a neoliberal monoculture, and we'll be fucked when that proves to be brittle and we have no alternative models being practiced. We were promised an End of History and we're determined to have it.
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
      That is pretty insulting to other nations and demonstrably false as they clearly have agency.
      - Zigurd 11y ago
        Who is being insulted? How is a nation "insulted." You have the deep state, who are willing participants in this system of managing the people, and you have politicians who are the window dressing, who consent as well. Then you have the people, who are not to blame. Who, in this picture, would be "insulted?"
        happyscrappy 11y ago
        People could elect politicians that choose to reduce ties with the US but they do not out of self interest. You are claiming they are all victims of a worldwide conspiracy.
        Zigurd 11y ago
        Are you claiming Germany does not have a history with a deep state? To be more specific, are you claiming the US has not been effective in steering the direction of German domestic politics?
        happyscrappy 11y ago
        Germany is a special case due to severe restrictions on them after the holocaust, you claimed "almost all of the world that matters is a US empire". A claim which should be laughed at.
  - chinathrow 11y ago
    Don't underestimate the power of nerds. We're quite good at explaining other folks what is going on these days.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    Or how about maybe close US military bases on German soil.
    - DasIch 11y ago
      Nobody in Germany wants those to be closed. They are often very important to the local economy of the areas in which they are located. It's also convenient way to make sure it's in the interest of the US military to defend Germany, which means that at least one military that can be taken seriously is interested in that.
      - dmichulke 11y ago
        I know quite a lof of Germans that want them to be closed. Local politicians are usually not among them for the reasons you stated but instances of US military are not exactly admired these days and tolerated at best. There is also a group of people that considers Germany not sovereign and still US-occupied territory. Googling for "Deutschland Souveräner Staat" brings up some 75k hits and the top 10 are all related to this very question. I doubt these people are in favor of "US occupation"
        DasIch 11y ago
        Well, sure there are quite a few people that are very critical of the US and some go as far as wanting to see theses bases go, but they are a minority. There is also no political party (worth mentioning) that has any interest in getting rid of them and there isn't any discussion of the topic in the media either. I don't see at all how it matters that there are conspiracy theorists who believe Germany not to be a sovereign state.
    - joeyspn 11y ago
      ... or getting back the mysteriously missing german gold reserves... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-05/germany-s-gold-repatriation-activist-peter-boehringer-gets-results http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-05/germany-s-...
- rbehrends 11y ago
  It is (so far) nothing like the Spiegel Affair. The Spiegel Affair started with the Spiegel offices being raided and several Spiegel journalists being arrested. In the netzpolitik.org case, so far we have merely an investigation that appears to be DOA.
  - pluma 11y ago
    Also, barely anyone in Germany knows netzpolitik; nearly everyone knew the Spiegel.
    - pluma 11y ago
      I guess I have to eat my words: today I found out that even my mother in law (who still sees no point in owning a mobile phone and only uses computers for work and casual games) is aware of this. She heard it on the radio and there were several articles in the local(!) newspaper -- in between the usual reports about global politics and coverage of small-scale local events (i.e. "cake competition at the local high school" level news) -- I think she's quite representative of the readership demographic. So I guess it is making waves. Not sure many people actually care but it is getting significant news coverage.
k__ 11y ago
The general prosecutor stopped investigations [0], because the "freedom of press is a high good" [0] [GER] http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/generalbundesanwalt-stoppt-ermittlungen-gegen-netzpolitik-13728725.html http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/generalbundesanwalt-stopp...
- mxfh 11y ago
  They are not stopped, they are only paused, if anything.
  - k__ 11y ago
    "stopped" is was the article says. I don't believe it either, just didn't have other sources ;)
- dvdkhlng 11y ago
  Attempting to translate the statement: "The attorney general Harald Range intends to rest his investigation for the time being. Considering the importance of the freedom of press he is refraining from executive measures allowed by the code of criminal procedure." I wouldn't call that a "stop of investigations". It's more like an attempt at backpedalling without completely loosing his face :)
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Or wait until there is something more newsworthy occupying the rest of the journalists and then re-open the investigation.
- Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 11y ago
  Nothing has changed. They are waiting for the same legal report today as they were waiting for yesterday. This is just PR.
jacquesm 11y ago
Quickie translation, corrections by German natives appreciated: After examining a complaint by the secret service the Attorney General is investigating the editors of netzpolitik.org. The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) congratulates the editors for receiving this rare journalistic honor and promises support in both action and funds. We ask them to give Attorney General Harald Range more occasions for intimidation campaigns against journalists. Only extensive mandatory data retention will allow the attorney general to keep track of: - Which journalists report on anti-constitutional practices of secret services? - Who has expressed themselves against surveillance fetishists? - Who prevents the under-cover operatives/informers of the secret service from constructing and supporting extreme right-wing structures? - Who removed the water taps from major construction sites? "We have finally figured out how to dislodge mr. Range from his lethargy" says Dirk Engling, CCC spokesman. "For a long time we thought that the leaking of data about citizens and institutions did not bother the attorney general, but we realize now that we were mistaken. Let us make sure that he has plenty of work!" Mr. Range has the chance to enter history. During the Spiegel affair in 1962 the sum total of arrest days for journalists was about 190. A nice chance to take the lowly two digit placement of the German Republic in the ranks of press-freedom to a solid three digit place. The Chaos Computer wants to reward people, who have caused investigations by the attorney general against journalists and their sources in 2015 each with a free ticket for the next congress (32C3). Participants are encouraged to contact journalists, the CC or a whistleblowing platform of your choice. We are looking forward to receive contributions in the following domains: - Secret services and mass surveillance as well as their commercial partners - Covert investigations and liaison officers, - Reconstructions of shredded documents - Aiding and abetting of right-wing terrorists - Surveillance operations involving unpopular opposition parties. A special prize will be awarded for any revelations that cause the attorney general to reactivate the since spring 2014 weakened prosecutions against foreign and domestic secret services as well as the German government.
- PinguTS 11y ago
  V-men = under cover men To explain the joke with the "removed water taps". It happened that the water taps in the new building in Berlin for the secret service had been removed, which resulted in a large damage because of the flowing water. The curiosity is, that anything relating to this construction site is classified. and all the people having access to it are monitored. But they still have no glue who removed the water taps.
lispm 11y ago
Notice also the 'Preis für Verratsdatenspeicherung'. Win a free ticket for the next 32C3, the legendary Chaos Communication Congress, in Hamburg/Germany. ;-) Meet 10k other hackers in December 2015 for four days in a parallel universe. Notice also the slight difference between 'Verratsdatenspeicherung' vs. 'Vorratsdatenspeicherung'.
- digital-rubber 11y ago
  Will you finally filter outgoing traffic from the temporary RIPE net block instead of letting all your visitors scan the internet every time and again during the event?
endymi0n 11y ago
Context for non-Germans: The small political blog netzpolitik.org is currently being sued for national treason (for releasing some inside insights on the Internal handling of the NSA whistleblowing scandal), something unseen in Germany since the 80s. In contrast, all accusations on treason for the unconstitutional passing of information to the NSA have been dropped so far for "lack of evidence". The CCC is sarcastically congratulating them for receiving this "award" now as a badge of honor. On an unrelated funny sidenote, netzpolitik.org has received the (real) national award "Land of Ideas" the same day they received their formal note of opening investigations.
- ralfruns 11y ago
  They are not being sued. They are listed as suspects, and the DA is determining if there is a case or not.
  - kpcyrd 11y ago
    For updates: http://istdasverfahrengegennetzpolitikschoneingestel.lt/ http://istdasverfahrengegennetzpolitikschoneingestel.lt/ (is the case against netzpolitik already dropped) Nein -> No Ja -> Yes
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
rbehrends 11y ago
Relevant legal analysis (in German, by a lawyer): http://www.internet-law.de/2015/07/ist-das-landesverrat.html http://www.internet-law.de/2015/07/ist-das-landesverrat.html The key point is that state secrets can only be those pieces of information that must be kept secret in order to prevent a grave danger to the external security of the Federal Republic of Germany. Netzpolitik.org published information about the internal structure and plans of Germany's domestic intelligence service, which is highly unlikely to affect Germany's external security.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
z02d 11y ago
Someone ran an automatic pentesting tool and dumped the sql database of generalbundesanwalt.de . http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.golem.de%2Fnews%2Fsql-dump-aufgetaucht-generalbundesanwalt-de-gehackt-1507-115526.html&sandbox=1 http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt...
dang 11y ago
Posts to HN have to be in English. We have enormous respect for other languages, but HN is an English-language site. Also, the story was discussed yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976043.
- lawl 11y ago
  I get that. But I'm wondering, I've seen translate.google.com links reach the front page every once in a while. Which is fine if it so happens that it spits out a somewhat sane translation. This doesn't seem to be the case here, so a community member provided a translation. What I'm wondering is, this was voted to the top very quickly when it was submitted. Were these all german speaking upvoters, or was there some interest from people who did not understand the content without translation? It just seems kind of weird to me that this would be allowed if it was submitted as a google translate link. You could make the case that the google translation sucks and OP should have translated it himself to a pastebin and then submitted or something. But I've actually started translating it myself and it's quite hard, jacquesm definitly did a better job than I could have done. I really don't want HN to become spammed with german (or other non-english content for that matter), but I think there should be exceptions where there's obvious interest for the community. I also can't fully follow the argument that this story was already discussed yesterday, because this is a statement from the CCC that includes stuff your linked story doesn't. For example how to get free 32c3 tickets.
  - dang 11y ago
    If you're arguing that translate.google.com posts should be treated the same way, I agree, and they mostly are. We don't see all of them, of course. It's impossible to say whether the upvoters of this story were mostly German speakers, but that's plausible. HN is fortunate to have many German-speaking users. There are exceptions to every rule, but I wouldn't say this post was exceptional. Fine as it is in its genre, it adds no major information about the story. And HN generally eschews political tracts, not because we disagree with them politically, but because they're not what the site is for. Not all articles on the same story are strict replicas of one another, but once HN has a major thread on a story, we treat subsequent posts as dupes unless and until one adds significant new information. We figured this out after the original Snowden/NSA deluge, when the frontpage was inundated with both kinds of story: ones that contained major new info, and ones that were simply piling on. There were an order of magnitude more of the latter. Teasing the one class apart from the other does require judgment calls, but not wild ones, and in my view HN has benefited greatly from the distinction. It optimizes for the diversity of the frontpage while still allowing for ongoing stories. An example is the recent events at Reddit. I think HN got that roughly right: a fresh thread for each major new development, while treating the more ephemeral stories as dupes.

256 points by muhpirat 11y ago

For context, see also these HN submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9980741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9980741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9981239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9981239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976043 [edit]: added more links to other overlapping HN articles.

justaman 11y ago
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccc.de%2Fde%2Fupdates%2F2015%2Fccc-verratsdatenspeicherung https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=h... [English]

sschueller 11y ago

This may become the tipping point for Germany to do something about the whole spying situation and its relationship with the United States. Similar to what happened in 1962 after Spiegel Journalists where imprisoned [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_scandal

realityking 11y ago
I wouldn't hold my breath. If I see protests in the street and there are more participants than just nerds, than I'll believe change is possible.
- allendoerfer 11y ago
  The decision was criticized by members of FDP, Greens, the Lefts and even SPD (which is in government). Associations of journalist, legal professions and IT professions are against it. There are really only some members of the CDU and the agencies, who are defending the prosecution. I would not underestimate the press here. They love to talk about themselves and have nothing else to talk about in the summer break anyway.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Indeed. At best, over the next couple of years, it will become commonly acknowledged that almost all of the world that matters is a US empire, where even the most compliant vassals are monitored with a paranoid fervor. We have bred a neoliberal monoculture, and we'll be fucked when that proves to be brittle and we have no alternative models being practiced. We were promised an End of History and we're determined to have it.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    That is pretty insulting to other nations and demonstrably false as they clearly have agency.
    - Zigurd 11y ago
      Who is being insulted? How is a nation "insulted." You have the deep state, who are willing participants in this system of managing the people, and you have politicians who are the window dressing, who consent as well. Then you have the people, who are not to blame. Who, in this picture, would be "insulted?"
      - happyscrappy 11y ago
        People could elect politicians that choose to reduce ties with the US but they do not out of self interest. You are claiming they are all victims of a worldwide conspiracy.
        Zigurd 11y ago
        Are you claiming Germany does not have a history with a deep state? To be more specific, are you claiming the US has not been effective in steering the direction of German domestic politics?
        happyscrappy 11y ago
        Germany is a special case due to severe restrictions on them after the holocaust, you claimed "almost all of the world that matters is a US empire". A claim which should be laughed at.
- chinathrow 11y ago
  Don't underestimate the power of nerds. We're quite good at explaining other folks what is going on these days.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  Or how about maybe close US military bases on German soil.
  - DasIch 11y ago
    Nobody in Germany wants those to be closed. They are often very important to the local economy of the areas in which they are located. It's also convenient way to make sure it's in the interest of the US military to defend Germany, which means that at least one military that can be taken seriously is interested in that.
    - dmichulke 11y ago
      I know quite a lof of Germans that want them to be closed. Local politicians are usually not among them for the reasons you stated but instances of US military are not exactly admired these days and tolerated at best. There is also a group of people that considers Germany not sovereign and still US-occupied territory. Googling for "Deutschland Souveräner Staat" brings up some 75k hits and the top 10 are all related to this very question. I doubt these people are in favor of "US occupation"
      - DasIch 11y ago
        Well, sure there are quite a few people that are very critical of the US and some go as far as wanting to see theses bases go, but they are a minority. There is also no political party (worth mentioning) that has any interest in getting rid of them and there isn't any discussion of the topic in the media either. I don't see at all how it matters that there are conspiracy theorists who believe Germany not to be a sovereign state.
  - joeyspn 11y ago
    ... or getting back the mysteriously missing german gold reserves... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-05/germany-s-gold-repatriation-activist-peter-boehringer-gets-results http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-05/germany-s-...
rbehrends 11y ago
It is (so far) nothing like the Spiegel Affair. The Spiegel Affair started with the Spiegel offices being raided and several Spiegel journalists being arrested. In the netzpolitik.org case, so far we have merely an investigation that appears to be DOA.
- pluma 11y ago
  Also, barely anyone in Germany knows netzpolitik; nearly everyone knew the Spiegel.
  - pluma 11y ago
    I guess I have to eat my words: today I found out that even my mother in law (who still sees no point in owning a mobile phone and only uses computers for work and casual games) is aware of this. She heard it on the radio and there were several articles in the local(!) newspaper -- in between the usual reports about global politics and coverage of small-scale local events (i.e. "cake competition at the local high school" level news) -- I think she's quite representative of the readership demographic. So I guess it is making waves. Not sure many people actually care but it is getting significant news coverage.

k__ 11y ago

The general prosecutor stopped investigations [0], because the "freedom of press is a high good" [0] [GER] http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/generalbundesanwalt-stoppt-ermittlungen-gegen-netzpolitik-13728725.html http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/generalbundesanwalt-stopp...

mxfh 11y ago
They are not stopped, they are only paused, if anything.
- k__ 11y ago
  "stopped" is was the article says. I don't believe it either, just didn't have other sources ;)
dvdkhlng 11y ago
Attempting to translate the statement: "The attorney general Harald Range intends to rest his investigation for the time being. Considering the importance of the freedom of press he is refraining from executive measures allowed by the code of criminal procedure." I wouldn't call that a "stop of investigations". It's more like an attempt at backpedalling without completely loosing his face :)
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Or wait until there is something more newsworthy occupying the rest of the journalists and then re-open the investigation.
Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 11y ago
Nothing has changed. They are waiting for the same legal report today as they were waiting for yesterday. This is just PR.

jacquesm 11y ago

Quickie translation, corrections by German natives appreciated: After examining a complaint by the secret service the Attorney General is investigating the editors of netzpolitik.org. The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) congratulates the editors for receiving this rare journalistic honor and promises support in both action and funds. We ask them to give Attorney General Harald Range more occasions for intimidation campaigns against journalists. Only extensive mandatory data retention will allow the attorney general to keep track of: - Which journalists report on anti-constitutional practices of secret services? - Who has expressed themselves against surveillance fetishists? - Who prevents the under-cover operatives/informers of the secret service from constructing and supporting extreme right-wing structures? - Who removed the water taps from major construction sites? "We have finally figured out how to dislodge mr. Range from his lethargy" says Dirk Engling, CCC spokesman. "For a long time we thought that the leaking of data about citizens and institutions did not bother the attorney general, but we realize now that we were mistaken. Let us make sure that he has plenty of work!" Mr. Range has the chance to enter history. During the Spiegel affair in 1962 the sum total of arrest days for journalists was about 190. A nice chance to take the lowly two digit placement of the German Republic in the ranks of press-freedom to a solid three digit place. The Chaos Computer wants to reward people, who have caused investigations by the attorney general against journalists and their sources in 2015 each with a free ticket for the next congress (32C3). Participants are encouraged to contact journalists, the CC or a whistleblowing platform of your choice. We are looking forward to receive contributions in the following domains: - Secret services and mass surveillance as well as their commercial partners - Covert investigations and liaison officers, - Reconstructions of shredded documents - Aiding and abetting of right-wing terrorists - Surveillance operations involving unpopular opposition parties. A special prize will be awarded for any revelations that cause the attorney general to reactivate the since spring 2014 weakened prosecutions against foreign and domestic secret services as well as the German government.

PinguTS 11y ago
V-men = under cover men To explain the joke with the "removed water taps". It happened that the water taps in the new building in Berlin for the secret service had been removed, which resulted in a large damage because of the flowing water. The curiosity is, that anything relating to this construction site is classified. and all the people having access to it are monitored. But they still have no glue who removed the water taps.

lispm 11y ago

Notice also the 'Preis für Verratsdatenspeicherung'. Win a free ticket for the next 32C3, the legendary Chaos Communication Congress, in Hamburg/Germany. ;-) Meet 10k other hackers in December 2015 for four days in a parallel universe. Notice also the slight difference between 'Verratsdatenspeicherung' vs. 'Vorratsdatenspeicherung'.

digital-rubber 11y ago
Will you finally filter outgoing traffic from the temporary RIPE net block instead of letting all your visitors scan the internet every time and again during the event?

endymi0n 11y ago

Context for non-Germans: The small political blog netzpolitik.org is currently being sued for national treason (for releasing some inside insights on the Internal handling of the NSA whistleblowing scandal), something unseen in Germany since the 80s. In contrast, all accusations on treason for the unconstitutional passing of information to the NSA have been dropped so far for "lack of evidence". The CCC is sarcastically congratulating them for receiving this "award" now as a badge of honor. On an unrelated funny sidenote, netzpolitik.org has received the (real) national award "Land of Ideas" the same day they received their formal note of opening investigations.

ralfruns 11y ago
They are not being sued. They are listed as suspects, and the DA is determining if there is a case or not.
- kpcyrd 11y ago
  For updates: http://istdasverfahrengegennetzpolitikschoneingestel.lt/ http://istdasverfahrengegennetzpolitikschoneingestel.lt/ (is the case against netzpolitik already dropped) Nein -> No Ja -> Yes
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

rbehrends 11y ago

Relevant legal analysis (in German, by a lawyer): http://www.internet-law.de/2015/07/ist-das-landesverrat.html http://www.internet-law.de/2015/07/ist-das-landesverrat.html The key point is that state secrets can only be those pieces of information that must be kept secret in order to prevent a grave danger to the external security of the Federal Republic of Germany. Netzpolitik.org published information about the internal structure and plans of Germany's domestic intelligence service, which is highly unlikely to affect Germany's external security.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

z02d 11y ago

Someone ran an automatic pentesting tool and dumped the sql database of generalbundesanwalt.de . http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.golem.de%2Fnews%2Fsql-dump-aufgetaucht-generalbundesanwalt-de-gehackt-1507-115526.html&sandbox=1 http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt...

dang 11y ago

Posts to HN have to be in English. We have enormous respect for other languages, but HN is an English-language site. Also, the story was discussed yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976043.

lawl 11y ago
I get that. But I'm wondering, I've seen translate.google.com links reach the front page every once in a while. Which is fine if it so happens that it spits out a somewhat sane translation. This doesn't seem to be the case here, so a community member provided a translation. What I'm wondering is, this was voted to the top very quickly when it was submitted. Were these all german speaking upvoters, or was there some interest from people who did not understand the content without translation? It just seems kind of weird to me that this would be allowed if it was submitted as a google translate link. You could make the case that the google translation sucks and OP should have translated it himself to a pastebin and then submitted or something. But I've actually started translating it myself and it's quite hard, jacquesm definitly did a better job than I could have done. I really don't want HN to become spammed with german (or other non-english content for that matter), but I think there should be exceptions where there's obvious interest for the community. I also can't fully follow the argument that this story was already discussed yesterday, because this is a statement from the CCC that includes stuff your linked story doesn't. For example how to get free 32c3 tickets.
- dang 11y ago
  If you're arguing that translate.google.com posts should be treated the same way, I agree, and they mostly are. We don't see all of them, of course. It's impossible to say whether the upvoters of this story were mostly German speakers, but that's plausible. HN is fortunate to have many German-speaking users. There are exceptions to every rule, but I wouldn't say this post was exceptional. Fine as it is in its genre, it adds no major information about the story. And HN generally eschews political tracts, not because we disagree with them politically, but because they're not what the site is for. Not all articles on the same story are strict replicas of one another, but once HN has a major thread on a story, we treat subsequent posts as dupes unless and until one adds significant new information. We figured this out after the original Snowden/NSA deluge, when the frontpage was inundated with both kinds of story: ones that contained major new info, and ones that were simply piling on. There were an order of magnitude more of the latter. Teasing the one class apart from the other does require judgment calls, but not wild ones, and in my view HN has benefited greatly from the distinction. It optimizes for the diversity of the frontpage while still allowing for ongoing stories. An example is the recent events at Reddit. I think HN got that roughly right: a fresh thread for each major new development, while treating the more ephemeral stories as dupes.