Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
washingtonpost.com
Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
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Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
#2As with every headline that poses a yes/no question, the answer is usually "no".
EDIT: I'm also unsure what the point of shifting the focus onto The Intercept's alleged "mishandling" of the leaker's identity is. It seems like a smear job meant to discredit a publication that the natsec community and mainstream media like WaPo dislike. It also removes the focus from the substance of the leaks and puts it on the "character" of the publication.
Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
#3Yes, or maybe no. It doesn't really matter, because this is just one of many battles being waged in the current cyber-war gripping our lives.
I mean, we have to just see it in the larger context: there is very definitely a war going on among various, nefarious, otherwise, or indeterminate, hostile parties.
It seems that if we must dismantle the military-industrial state, it is going to be through info-wars. The key targets are all secrets. (Curious that both sides seem to want the same thing though, i.e. "the info wants to be free", isn't it?)
Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
#4As with every headline that poses a yes/no question, the answer is usually "no". EDIT: I'm also unsure what the point of shifting the focus onto The Intercept's alleged "mishandling" of the leaker's identity is. It seems like a smear job meant to discredit a publication that the natsec community and mainstream media like WaPo dislike. It also removes the focus from the substance of the leaks and puts it on the "chara…
Except it sure seems like in this case, yeah, they bungled it. At the very least a total lack of awareness or care towards infosec to help protect sources (regardless of the fact that the lack of awareness extends to the source - I'd want a journalist to be better at this than I am if I were leaking information). [ The article doesn't mention this, but I wouldn't be surprised if these microdots, rather than "a crease" were the smoking gun: https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/871883733032415236 ]
Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
#5Have we learned nothing about the NSA's tactics? The Intercept publishes reporting that they would rather not have been printed, and the very day the DOJ unseals charges where they try to say they learned about the leak from a paper crease from what can be reasonably inferred to be The Intercept. Meanwhile the alleged leaker allegedly used her work computer to contact The Intercept (in contradiction with their recommended best practices).
It has all the appearances of the government trying to smear a news outlet and ensure no one leaks to them again.
Do we still really trust the NSA? It was disappointing yet expected from the WaPo that they took as fact everything the DOJ alleged about how the case proceeded.
Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
#6As with every headline that poses a yes/no question, the answer is usually "no". EDIT: I'm also unsure what the point of shifting the focus onto The Intercept's alleged "mishandling" of the leaker's identity is. It seems like a smear job meant to discredit a publication that the natsec community and mainstream media like WaPo dislike. It also removes the focus from the substance of the leaks and puts it on the "chara…
It seems clear they should've redacted the printer microdots - they're a known concern. It sounds like their source was caught in other ways, but that's not an excuse.
Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
#7As with every headline that poses a yes/no question, the answer is usually "no". EDIT: I'm also unsure what the point of shifting the focus onto The Intercept's alleged "mishandling" of the leaker's identity is. It seems like a smear job meant to discredit a publication that the natsec community and mainstream media like WaPo dislike. It also removes the focus from the substance of the leaks and puts it on the "chara…
Are you saying that, having read the article, you think the answer is no? If so, having read the article, would you trust The Intercept to deal with a hypothetical leak by yourself?
Or are you saying "I didn't read the article, but the answer is usually no"?
Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
#8It's getting complicated managing 25 year olds at work these days. Lot of mistrust and entitlement issues I have never seen before. If you are a manager any suggestions about how to handle this stuff?
Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
#9As with every headline that poses a yes/no question, the answer is usually "no". EDIT: I'm also unsure what the point of shifting the focus onto The Intercept's alleged "mishandling" of the leaker's identity is. It seems like a smear job meant to discredit a publication that the natsec community and mainstream media like WaPo dislike. It also removes the focus from the substance of the leaks and puts it on the "chara…
Are you saying that, having read the article, you think the answer is no? If so, having read the article, would you trust The Intercept to deal with a hypothetical leak by yourself? Or are you saying "I didn't read the article, but the answer is usually no"?
It's a common adage, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?
#10The yellow dots thing was certainly a mistake on their part. But there's a much bigger issue I haven't seen anyone point out yet.
One thing that the Intercept--and Glenn Greenwald in particular--have been very critical of is news organizations that blindly publish leaks as verified facts. Here[0] is just one example where Greenwald writes:
> THE WASHINGTON POST late Friday night published an explosive story that, in many ways, is classic American journalism of the worst sort: The key claims are based exclusively on the unverified assertions of anonymous officials, who in turn are disseminating their own claims about what the CIA purportedly believes, all based on evidence that remains completely secret.
Now, in this case they at least have a document, which they verified was a real document created at the NSA. But even the Intercept's own article[1] admits:
> A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.
So, are they living up to their own standard here? I don't think the answer is black and white. But I am certainly tired of hearing all this talk without seeing the technical details.
If the U.S. election system was hacked--even just one voter registration company--the American public deserves to get the details. Period.
What were the IP addresses used, and what ties them to Russia? What does the malware actually look like, and has it been seen before? How was this whole thing discovered?
For now, all we have to go off of is what the NSA says may have happened. That it was a leaked document doesn't make it any more revealing than if it was a phone conversation with another unnamed official.
[0] https://theintercept.com/2016/12/10/anonymous-leaks-to-the-w...
[1] https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top-secret-nsa-report-de...