Techdirt has already written about the massive problems with the Sunday Times' big report claiming that the Russians and Chinese had "cracked" the encryption on the Snowden files (or possibly just been handed those files by Snowden) and that he had "blood on his hands" even though no one has come to any harm. It also argued that David Miranda was detained after he got documents from Snowden in Moscow, despite the fact that he was neither in Moscow, nor had met Snowden (a claim the article quietly deleted). That same report also claimed that UK intelligence agency MI6 had to remove "agents" from Moscow because of this leak, despite the fact that they're not called "agents" and there's no evidence of any actual risk. So far, the only official response from News Corp. the publisher of The Sunday Times (through a variety of subsidiaries) was to try to censor the criticism of the story with a DMCA takedown request.
Either way, one of the journalists who wrote the story, Tom Harper, gave an interview to CNN which is quite incredible to watch. Harper just keeps repeating that he doesn't know what's actually true, and that he was just saying what the government told him -- more or less admitting that his role here was not as a reporter, but as a propagandist or a stenographer.
[Also Covered By]: The Intercept
Original Submission
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @08:28AM
We knows for shure our news is a work o' fiction!
(Score: 2) by black6host on Tuesday June 16 2015, @08:34AM
No, y'all are kidding me. I refuse to believe that manipulation on a scale we can never quite grasp exists. Fuckers.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday June 16 2015, @05:39PM
Well, I guess if you can't grasp it...
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday June 16 2015, @08:52AM
"I am shocked, shocked, to discover that there is gambling taking place in this establishment!"
Minion: "Your winnings, sir!"
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday June 16 2015, @09:34PM
This is about the most perfect response to this :)
Thanks.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @09:22AM
"this is all lies. the gubmint can do us no harm. the gubmint will protect us from the ebil communists. now back my gubmint titty" - gewg
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2015, @09:27AM
To quote Tom Harper, "ummmm, ummmmm, uhhh, ummmm". And those beady black eyes -- he looks like a negative of a photo of a deer in the headlights in that interview. Hopefully, he's a better stenographer than public speaker.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Tuesday June 16 2015, @10:02AM
I 'd like to know if any threats were made against him or he's just lazy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @01:22PM
I'm sure it is neither. There have always been plenty of 'reporters' willing to go to bat for the official government line.
Doing the will of the powerful is generally very good for your career, otherwise people wouldn't do it. It isn't like he has much to lose directly from NSA/GCHG spying.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday June 16 2015, @09:52AM
In the entertainment industry it's known as "Feeding the Monster". That is, there is an endless need for TV and Movie scripts.
I learned in the early nineties that if one did a good job of writing a press release, alleged, uh, "journalists" would slap their own name on as a byline then print the release verbatim as if it was their own work. From time to time this lead to the ludicrous phenomenon in which reporters for distinctly different trade rags would "write" the exact same article.
I've never pulled that off myself but I do intend to sometime soon and am working on a press list.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday June 16 2015, @12:39PM
Almost all journalism works that way today. Staff at even the larger organizations is pretty thin on the ground. If you manage to get the interest of a journalist, they will expect you to have a pre-written text for them to use. They may change around a couple of words, but if it gets used, it will likely be almost exactly what you wrote.
It's no different on the news front. Pick any news article, big or little. Copy a key sentence and put it into google. You'll find the same article appearing all over the place. Someone wrote it, and everyone else printed it. The interesting bit is trying to figure out where it originated, and why it was written.
Certainly any article with a political angle was written with a specific political goal in mind. Neutral reporting pretty much doesn't exist. The same in this case: this is a pretty obvious attack on Snowdon and the credibility of his whistleblowing. Scripted by the UK government, likely at the behest of the US government.
Tom Harper was a sock puppet - no surprise at all. The interesting question is: why he has now admitted this?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:28PM
>Tom Harper was a sock puppet - no surprise at all. The interesting question is: why he has now admitted this?
Maybe he began to consider the long-term implications of the policies he was helping to whitewash? Did he maybe have a child recently? Or perhaps his conscience just finally started bothering him? Sure, those are typically surgically removed when joining the modern media, but the procedure usually isn't as thorough as when performed on major politicians, and sometimes it does grow back.
Or, to be more cynical, how have his ratings been doing lately? Has he fallen out of the limelight? Could just be a classic case of "there's no such thing as bad publicity" thinking.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Tuesday June 16 2015, @11:24AM
Can we just pay Australia to take Rupert Murdoch back?
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @11:39AM
With one condition, deliver him cold.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @03:20PM
The entire body or just his heart?
(Score: 4, Touché) by efitton on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:52PM
What heart?
(Score: 1) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday June 16 2015, @10:30PM
Can we just pay Australia to take Rupert Murdoch back?
No, you don't have enough money.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AnonTechie on Tuesday June 16 2015, @01:43PM
The Sunday Times sends DMCA notice to critics of Snowden hacking story:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/sunday-times-sends-dmca-notice-to-critics-of-snowden-hacking-story/ [arstechnica.com]
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 2) by threedigits on Tuesday June 16 2015, @02:01PM
I guess we can always read The Sun to get real news.
But, seriously, I'm astonished indeed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Tuesday June 16 2015, @03:20PM
I trust the Sunday Times more or less as much as I trust the Intercept and Greenwald. Both are propagandist, just on different sides.
After reading the Techdirt article one can only conclude that their critique of the Sunday Times article also seemed filled with unknown source information, innuendo and guesswork. They are clearly not better in any way, shape or form.
Lets just assume that the original story was true for the sake of argument. Nobody would come out and admit that, no analyst or employee within the British intelligence community would go out with name and confirm the story, unless instructed to do so. So the source would be anonymous. Even if it was false they wouldn't go out and say that. It's just so much better having the outsiders believe whatever they want to believe. That way they'll never be sure what is true.
If they had evidence of it being true they would just save it until they can get their hands on Snowden. That evidence plus the stealing and spreading of documents is more or less a slam dunk case for an eternity behind bars.
If Russia and China have or had cracked it they wouldn't say anything either. They would just use the information in the best way they could. But they would not share that with the Sunday Times or CNN or whomever.
The smear campaign is nothing new. That started as soon as they found out whom he was. Landing in Moscow just made it so much worse, for him. Now he is literally sitting in the lap of the enemy. If you don't believe he has been repeatedly interrogated by some Russian intelligence agency you are extremely naive. He is completely dependent on their good will. They could just come and grab him one night, or day, and expel him from the country if they wished.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @03:41PM
>hat evidence plus the stealing and spreading of documents is more or less a slam dunk case for an eternity behind bars.
Everything is. They can put you away for 5, 10, 20, for anything.
Your only recourse is to shoot them dead.
Which is why they've been taking away the guns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @09:54PM
In that case, to prove your point, I'll get a platoon from the local National Guard to come after you, and you can fight them off by yourself, with one firearm (you get to choose, but it must be one that you legally and presently own). Then we'll see how keeping your firearms is going to stop the government from stamping all over your face. Protip: it won't.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:21AM
uhhh... isn't there numerous accounts of when you can still fight a fairly realistic war even if one side is way under equipped in firepower. Its called a guerrilla warfare..
Of course if you just stand there trying to match firepower.. then yea face stamping, but then its a well deserved Darwin award.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:20PM
Both are propagandist, just on different sides.
And are far different in severity. A reporter making propaganda pieces for the government is far worse than someone making ones that go against the government; governments are powerful and can easily ruin your life, so they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. They have enough power as it is and don't need more.
That evidence plus the stealing and spreading of documents is more or less a slam dunk case for an eternity behind bars.
Copying, not stealing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:24PM
What has The Intercept got wrong?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Non Sequor on Tuesday June 16 2015, @05:09PM
What has The Intercept got wrong?
No one knows what they have wrong. You have a mixture of anonymous sources and expert opinion which different reporters assign different levels of credibility which either align with or differ from your personal assessments of credibility.
Look back at the Cold War. The right was correct in that Soviet documents have corroborated the assertion that Soviet espionage and influence in western left wing politics were extensive. The left was correct that the case for an aggressive stance against the USSR was substantially overstated since they were as afraid of direct conflict as we were. Russian communism collapsed and Chinese communism mutated and ultimately being right about either of these things had little impact on world events.
The same clash along polarized responses to a threat has migrated to other fronts. Everyone thinks history is on their side and that their opponents are completely deluded. The truth is, everyone is partially deluded.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @05:27PM
The truth is, everyone is partially deluded.
What scientific evidence of this do you have? Are you claiming it is logically impossible for someone to be correct?
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:24AM
I read it as it is logically impossible for someone to be entirely correct. Which kind of makes sense. It is hard to trivialize complicated matters down to a binary right vs. wrong. It is often various shades and depending on which viewpoint you're standing in it changes as well.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday June 16 2015, @05:29PM
No one knows what they have wrong.
The articles point out a few specifics that are wrong. It's just a coincidence that every independently verifiable fact included in the story is false, I'm sure.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:39AM
What makes disassembling a narrative a more reliable procedure than assembling a narrative? You have a mass of assertions from different parties. One group of journalists sorts through the pile and puts the ones that sort of fit together in a row and says "there, this shows what happened" while other journalists line up the ones that don't fit together and says "that can't be right".
You can't uncover the truth or reveal lies through these kinds of processes. Consistency isn't a proof of truth and inconsistency isn't a proof of lying. Witnesses are unreliable. Experts have personal allegiances. Stories shift over time organically or are deliberately massaged to be more consistent with an emerging narrative. The news isn't a logic puzzle where you win if you use deductive reasoning to construct a consistent set of axioms. Contradictions can coexist due to incomplete explanations and consistency may be an illusory byproduct of artificially filling in incomplete explanations.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @06:16PM
The right was correct in that Soviet documents have corroborated the assertion that Soviet espionage and influence in western left wing politics were extensive.
What? I will agree that they tried but hell no did they succeed on any significant level.
That's like saying the CIA funding of much modern art contributed to the downfall of the USSR when all it really did was pay for a bunch of artsy-fartsy types to enjoy a bohemian life-style.
(Score: 1) by andersjm on Tuesday June 16 2015, @05:05PM
Lets just assume that the original story was true for the sake of argument. Nobody would come out and admit that, no analyst or employee within the British intelligence community would go out with name and confirm the story, unless instructed to do so.
And why wouldn't they be instructed thusly? The agents are already exposed, and the "enemies" already know that we know, so there's really nothing more to hide. Given how eager the UK and US governments are to paint Snowden a traitor, there must be immense political pressure to present whatever damning evidence can be found; so even if it does go against the grain of how the intelligence agencies like to work, the information would find a way out, leaked if necessary.
At the very least, if any of this were true, high-ranking officials would say so off the record to their news media contacts, and other media would jump at the story.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by twistedcubic on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:43PM
I was a little shocked that the interviewer, George Howell, rightly showed skepticism, and asked the right questions. I hope he's allowed to keep his job after this.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Tuesday June 16 2015, @07:32PM
I couldn't find out what to enable to watch the video. Is there a more direct way to get it?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @07:58PM
99%100% of the time can stand up to the government and say no. I almost feel bad for the pleb forced to write that.