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posted by on Monday January 02 2017, @10:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the poor-sources-of-information dept.

Glenn Greenwald reports via The Intercept

The Washington Post on Friday [December 30] reported a genuinely alarming event: Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. power system through an electrical grid in Vermont. The Post headline conveyed the seriousness of the threat:
[Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say]

The first sentence of the article directly linked this cyberattack to alleged Russian hacking of the email accounts of the DNC and John Podesta--what is now routinely referred to as "Russian hacking of our election"--by referencing the code name revealed on Wednesday by the Obama administration when it announced sanctions on Russian officials: "A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials."

The Post article contained grave statements from Vermont officials of the type politicians love to issue after a terrorist attack to show they are tough and in control.

[...] The article went on and on in that vein, with all the standard tactics used by the U.S. media for such stories: quoting anonymous national security officials, reviewing past acts of Russian treachery, and drawing the scariest possible conclusions ("'The question remains: Are they in other systems and what was the intent?' a U.S. official said").

The media reactions, as Alex Pfeiffer documents, were exactly what one would expect: hysterical, alarmist proclamations of Putin's menacing evil.

[...] The Post's story also predictably and very rapidly infected other large media outlets. Reuters thus told its readers around the world: "A malware code associated with Russian hackers has reportedly been detected within the system of a Vermont electric utility."

What's the problem here? It did not happen.

There was no "penetration of the U.S. electricity grid". The truth was undramatic and banal. Burlington Electric, after receiving a Homeland Security notice sent to all U.S. utility companies about the malware code found in the DNC system, searched all its computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid.

Apparently, the Post did not even bother to contact the company before running its wildly sensationalistic claims, so Burlington Electric had to issue its own statement to the Burlington Free Press, which debunked the Post's central claim (emphasis in original): "We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization's grid systems."


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @11:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @11:54PM (#448701)

    Roughly speaking, "wrong" news falls into one of the following categories:

    +-----------------+----------------+----------------+
    |                 | ACCIDENTAL     | DELIBERATE     |
    +-----------------+----------------+----------------|
    | IDEOLOGICAL     |     (1)        |      (2)       |
    +-----------------+----------------+----------------+
    | NON-IDEOLOGICAL |     (3)        |      (4)       |
    +-----------------+----------------+----------------+

    Category (3) is what happens when sites like the WaPo fuck things up (e.g., this). Category (2) is the stuff that your drunk uncle gets in his FB feed and rants about over holiday meals. Category (4) is for-entertainment-only stuff, like the late lamented Weekly World News.

    Category (1) is Greenwald for most of the last decade. He's accustomed to being the smartest person in the room (or at least thinking he is) and so he genuinely cannot see how far around the bend he's gone.

    One thing that separates the ACCIDENTAL column from the DELIBERATE is that publishers in the first column issue corrections/retractions. The WaPo story was corrected within 12 hours of publication. No publisher can expect to have a perfect record because humans are imperfect. How they handle their errors is at least as important as the stories they write in the first place.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @12:14AM (#448710)

    Where is Greenwald wrong, ie. reporting nonfacts and not just a biased interpretation? As long as he is using facts, unlike WaPo, he is not a Cat 1 Fakenado in The Matrix. If he is called out for being wrong, does he provide a rebuttal or apology, or just a little-seen editor's note like WaPo does?

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 03 2017, @02:44PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 03 2017, @02:44PM (#448911)

    That's a nice graph and explanation AC

    However I fail to see how this is non-ideological when "Russian election hacking" is exclusively a left wing conspiracy theory. The right has their own fascinating conspiracy theories, but whats relevant is this particular meme is purely a fever dream of the left.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @03:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @03:38PM (#448934)

      > However I fail to see how this is non-ideological when "Russian election hacking" is exclusively a left wing conspiracy theory

      You are pretty much a failure all around.

      Lots of republicans think its a serious issue. That includes John McCain, Lindsey Graham, [foxnews.com] Tom Cotton [washingtontimes.com] and the republican speaker of the house Paul Ryan. [breitbart.com]

      The real question here is why are you such a failure?
      No seriously, I am asking you why you have so utterly failed to understand this issue?