Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 783 posts

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#671

Post by bdowling »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #562
bdowling wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe isn’t blackmail. Blackmail is offering the celebrity the chance to keep you from offering the story to the others, in exchange for a fee. If you actually had a setup as you described, all of the news outlets would publish the facts of your story, without paying you anything, because facts aren’t protected by copyright. The only thing you could sell would be an exclusive interview.

So it's an ordering problem? It's only blackmail if I offer to sell my silence before making offers to other parties? So if I have an offer from a movie studio for the rights to my story and then allow the celebrity to make a counter-offer, that's not blackmail? When I said publishing house I meant book publishers like Penguin Random House. I don't know where news outlets come into it.

You’re not offering the same thing to the publisher and the celebrity. To the publisher, you’re offering your version of certain currently unknown events that they may be interested in publishing. You’ll need to disclose the basic facts first before they will know if they even want to buy. To the celebrity, you’re offering the promise not to disclose even those basic facts to anyone, even to explain what it is you’re offering to other parties.

Whether the medium is a book or a newspaper or a website is legally immaterial. Thinking about the information as news is just useful because no one owns the facts, only their particular descriptions of them.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#672

Post by malvosenior »

awb wrote: post #668
malvosenior wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly the era we're living in is that which blames Trump for every thing that goes wrong with no evidence whatsoever and many, many people cheer. That is dangerous as hell. I'm happy to be proven wrong but to also be clear: there is zero evidence that Trump had anything to do with this.

> Sadly the era we're living in is that which blames Trump for every thing that goes wrong with no evidence whatsoever Before a crime is proven, there's usually speculation. Just like people suspected Nixon of being involved in Watergate before there was actual proof. The truth can come slowly. I agree that we need to follow due process, but it's just as dangerous to categorize any suspicion of criminal activity as "…

You're right, there's obviously a spectrum. I feel it's gone too far in one direction. There's literally no proof on this particular issue that Trump had anything to do with the NE story on Bezos so it seems like quite a leap to start creating conspiracy theories that he used national intelligence agencies to dig up the dirt.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#673

Post by creaghpatr »

abrahamepton wrote: post #661
nerdponx wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing strange about it is how much easier it is to learn about these conspiracies now that we have the Internet. People are acting all shocked like this is a new state of affairs. It's not. We are just far more empowered now to actually learn about these things.

No, that's not "the only thing strange" about this. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with American history, but this is wildly without any remote precedent. Not to say that previous Presidents haven't done bad things, abused laws, etc, (shit, even launched disinfo campaigns, used the press to attack enemies, etc) but this is just gobsmackingly different from what has come before. Obviously caveat "if this is true" blah blah…

You need to read about the measures great past Presidents like Abraham Lincoln, amongst others, took. It's gonna be an eye-opening experience for you if your comment is in good faith.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#674

Post by AndrewKemendo »

jessaustin wrote: post #665
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many reasons why these devices persist not only in DC but all across the country. One is resource management and risk evaluation (aka, there are bigger problems), another is knowledge of FIS operations and many others...

We got from "total fabrication" to "resource management" pretty quickly...

Incorrect inference.

You've incorrectly attributed the argument from a specific offshoot (that foreign spy tools persist because of limited counterintelligence resources) and applied it to the root supposition (that nation states utilize parallel construction, through a conspiracy with known adversaries as a matter of course and that spy infrastructure is built specifically for that purpose).

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#675

Post by cstross »

lunchables wrote: post #556
creaghpatr wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be a plausible explanation. Can you refute the argument besides just calling it BS? Otherwise, it's an interesting theory.

No Five Eyes member is going to randomly tap some US citizens phone because the Saudis asked without some serious investigation.

The Saudis are positioned as our allies in the war on terror. More accurately, they're regional enemies of Iran, and the western powers tend to run on the rubric "the enemy of my enemy is my ally" (even when a closer look at the situation would suggest that just ain't so).

They are huge customers for British arms sales (look up the Al Yamamah deal — roughly US $100Bn in business). They're known to have bought surveillance and intelligence monitoring software from Israel. They're in everybody's back pockets, and in their wallets.

As a Brit, I find your belief that US citizens are immune from monitoring by the intelligence services of other nations (when that kind of money is passing hands) touching ...

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#676

Post by rrix2 »

auiya wrote: post #579
jorblumesea wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

House of Saud, maybe, they are dumb enough to think this would work. Given their inept handling of the Khashoggi I wouldn't be surprised. I doubt anyone in the US intelligence profession would think Bezos would call off the WaPo because of some scandalous photos. "Just blackmail the richest man on the planet, that will totally work!"

> the richest man on the planet That we know of. The money coffers owned by the house of Saud run way deeper than many realize.

okay so second richest man? third? tenth? how does that change the calculus?

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#677

Post by coryfklein »

nerdponx wrote: post #595
danhak wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really puts this tweet from POTUS last month in a crazy new context: "So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post. Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!" https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/10846274519830732... Stran…

The only thing strange about it is how much easier it is to learn about these conspiracies now that we have the Internet. People are acting all shocked like this is a new state of affairs. It's not. We are just far more empowered now to actually learn about these things.

> People are acting all shocked like this is a new state of affairs.

Wait, they are? Who?

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#678

Post by neaden »

mc32 wrote: post #561
ltc5505 wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, you'll still find people (even in this thread) that claim "of course Trump's campaign wasn't meant to be taken literally." With statements like "if you took what Trump said on the campaign literally, then you missed the point." So then if _The Wall_ was figurative, why did he shut down the government over its funding? "No he meant that one literally." Okay... So what about the fact that the wall would be funde…

Like any politician, the "Mexico would pay for it" was an "argument" to get support. Did supporters care if Mexico itself would pay? No. But it fit their sentiment. It's win-win for him because the only people who would "care" would be people against the wall who politically don't matter. It's like when Dems say they want to abolish ICE. That's what their base want to hear. Do they really think ICE is going to be abo…

ICE as an organization was created in 2003, many people literally want to abolish it. The equivalence you are trying to draw here in no way exists.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#679

Post by coryfklein »

awb wrote: post #644
mikeash wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Beyond a reasonable doubt” does not apply to removing the President from office. The applicable standard is “whatever will convince half of the House and two thirds of the Senate.”

Yeah, which feels like a slippery slope into political takeovers, especially since the speaker of the house is 3rd in line. If Republicans were guaranteed to keep the President and VP slot, you'd see an impeachment much more easily. I don't think any Republican will want Pelosi a heartbeat away from the Presidency unless Trump's crime was so clear and egregious that 2/3 of the country wanted him gone.

It's pretty damn hard to slip down a slope that requires 2/3 of the senate to agree with each other.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#680

Post by coryfklein »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #461
paxys wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politically motivated - 100% Government entity accessed them? I'd say it is much more likely that someone got the texts off his mistresses phone (whether willingly or not).

I don't understand, isn't a government entity someone who can get the texts off his mistress' phone?

If you select for all instances of phone hacking and then split it into two parts:

1. Government hacked

2. Not government hacked

I'd wager that count(2) is by far the largest. Sure governments do it, but they literally don't have nearly as much human-attention and interest available as the rest of the entire human race.

Post reply on HN