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

The FBI tried to ambush my source

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 164 posts

Re: The FBI tried to ambush my source

#81

Post by markovbot »

zionic wrote: post #2

It’s saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of abuse from the department of “justice”, FBI, and NSA. I hope any employees of the above that read my post understand that you’re working for the wrong side. Absolutely none of their justifications hold water, and it doesn’t matter that they catch a few bad guys. Their very existence is antithetical to a free and open society. Edit: To expound upon this further…

> It’s saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of abuse from the department of “justice”, FBI, and NSA.

what do you suggest we do about it? We have no meaningful recourse against the myriad of government abuses.

Re: The FBI tried to ambush my source

#82

Post by alamortsubite »

chatmasta wrote: post #47

In Bruges is a fantastic film, one of my favorites as well, and makes for a poignant backdrop to this story, wherein the reporter unknowingly manifests its plot from his semi-ironic suggestion of meeting there. The imagery of the FBI guys waiting around in Bruges is just too perfect. Life imitates art.

As I prepared to travel to Bruges, I tried to take a few precautions to avoid detection. I planned to fly from Washington to Paris, then pay cash for a train ticket to Bruges. I hoped that would reduce the digital evidence of my travel.

I love that movie, too, but wouldn't it make more sense to fly into Schiphol with a Brompton and pedal up to Haarlem to meet the source? It seems like it'd be a lot harder for the FBI guys to track you, and it'd be a lot quicker, too, and you'd still get to see the canals and old cobble streets and buildings and all that.

Re: The FBI tried to ambush my source

#83

Post by anonporridge »

robonerd wrote: post #74
anonporridge wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally slightly prefer approval voting (e.g. select all candidates you like, no ranking, most votes wins). It's simpler for voters and RCV is more likely that people will be lazy and only select one choice. But it does have the problem that many people will think it violates one person, one vote. There are municipalities and states that have implemented both. Voters handle them fine. More importantly, a large m…

> I personally slightly prefer approval voting (e.g. select all candidates you like, no ranking, most votes wins). Yes, I like this one a lot more. > There are municipalities and states that have implemented both. I think for low-stake elections that most people don't vote in anyway, experimentation is relatively safe. But I wouldn't want to try anything new with fiery federal elections, particularly not the presiden…

> Yes, but they tolerate it for the most part.

Arguable after the 2020 election.

Re: The FBI tried to ambush my source

#84

Post by natch »

alasdair_ wrote: post #27
robonerd wrote: post #5

> [the lawyer] told me that he was sometimes involved in international arms deals. [...] The lawyer seemed to be an adrenaline junkie, someone who had found a home on the dark side of international intelligence. [...] While the FBI knows who the lawyer is, I will not name him, even though he betrayed me.) Why protect this asshole? Because he got cold feet and gave warning? This guy seems like 'quite a character' and…

> Why protect this asshole? Because future sources need to trust you. Protecting sources needs to be absolute, or some of them will wonder what it takes to constitute “betrayal” in the future. Not betraying a source that has wronged you is fantastic signalling to future sources.

> Because future sources need to trust you.

Makes sense in principle, but who would ever trust James Risen after his reporting on Wen Ho Lee?

I mean let’s see, Taiwanese person is going to spy for mainland China? Really? And the evidence for this is that blueprints not available to the suspect, generated well downstream from where the suspect works or has access, are leaked to China… Right, let’s sensationalize some bs theories in the NYT even though there is nothing there, at the expense of a man who, oh well, is Taiwanese, so who cares? Not James Risen.

Re: The FBI tried to ambush my source

#85

Post by Volundr »

missedthecue wrote: post #79
the_only_law wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was massive societal backlash against the NSA in the Snowden leak fallout but it's not like a bunch of angry people on the internet can unilaterally shut down a government agency. Idk part of my is still convinced that the Chauvin decision was in part a way to placate the absolute destruction proceeding it. Particularly as much more cut and dry cases that don’t attract as much of a visocus response end with t…

Convicting an unpopular guy is easy. Shutting down a government institution is not. Even Obama failed to shut down Gitmo, despite being the most powerful person in the country for 10 years.

Did he try? I always counted it among many broken promises never even attempted.

Re: The FBI tried to ambush my source

#86

Post by lapcat »

tootie wrote: post #45
tgv wrote: post #8

The piece is pretty vacuous. It lacks so much information, it reads as a made-up story. Does anybody know what documents he’s talking about?

It's surprising to see Risen write for The Intercept but honestly this piece would probably not get printed by NYT. It's definitely an incomplete story without any conclusive proof of who did what or why and is something of a personal narrative. I guess Risen just wanted this on the record somewhere since people were telling their side of the story elsewhere.

Risen said the NYT killed his story about the CIA, which was later published in his book and caused the Obama administration to subpoena him for his sources.

Re: The FBI tried to ambush my source

#87

Post by arminiusreturns »

The Intercept and James Risen have almost no credibility left with anyone who has payed attention to their devolution over the years, culminating in them forcing Glenn Greenwald's hand in resigning, funnily enough over the now known to be true Hunter Biden laptop story. [1]

Risen has long been a mouthpiece for military industrial complex CIA-esque talking points, and nobody should trust anything he says. I wouldn't be surprised if this story is some strange cover for him designed to make him seem like a "real" journalist, but even in this story he admits he used this dubious lawyer frequently. He says he doesn't know when the lawyer started informing on him, but an educated guess would say he always was! Was the source ever even real, or a honeypot in the first place? (source didn't go to this meeting why?) Risen fails to do even fundamental reporting on how he got the information in this story (he obtained audio recordings... how?!)

Risen says this lawyer gave a masterful performance to the FBI. Risen could at least try to do the same when trying to blow smoke at the public. This story makes no sense and Risen should be considered useless as journalist.

For what it's worth, I've been reading The Intercept since it started and he was always raked across the coals in the now disabled-unless-logged-in comments for methods like this since he came over from the NYT. The Intercept itself is now barely even a shadow of it's former self.

1. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-bide...

Re: The FBI tried to ambush my source

#88

Post by [deleted] »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #87

The Intercept and James Risen have almost no credibility left with anyone who has payed attention to their devolution over the years, culminating in them forcing Glenn Greenwald's hand in resigning, funnily enough over the now known to be true Hunter Biden laptop story. [1] Risen has long been a mouthpiece for military industrial complex CIA-esque talking points, and nobody should trust anything he says. I wouldn't b…

[deleted]

Re: The FBI tried to ambush my source

#90

Post by JKCalhoun »

rzz3 wrote: post #78
JKCalhoun wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe it’s a fundamentally American viewpoint to prefer freedom over security Hmmm, I'm not convinced. I would have had no problem agreeing with that sentiment over two decades ago, but some extremely bad actors have made it clear that "allowing a few bad things to happen" can be orders of magnitude more brutal than I once thought possible.

Or perhaps you’re just getting older, and your income level is rising, and you don’t operate near any edges of the bounds of the law. Due to your perspective, freedom may have become less important that security. Of course there is always a balance to be found, and everyone’s perspective is different, but personally I’m a 1 or a 2 in the `freedom |—————| safety` scale.

I don't think I follow your point about income level. At first blush it sounds like you are suggesting the poor care more about freedom (or have more to fear from the FBI/CIA?).

I am personally not worried about my own safety at all. Or maybe it's more fair to say that I worry no more about my safety than anyone would living under the nuclear sword of Damocles (never mind an environment out of kilter) — or that I worry no more about my safety than I would about any other's safety.

If I am older I suspect it has given me the perspective to see that we live in a time when people can do horrendous things on a scale where thousands die in a single evil event and that we should not accept this as a society — we should not hold instead to some hard-line idealism of requiring everything to be free and open.

Again, I am not personally afraid of being the target of some sort of random act of terror, nor am I naive to think that a secretive government organization given a blank check could completely eliminate such a threat. But when something horrible happens again, if our leaders were asleep at the wheel and did nothing, we could be well expected to be also enraged with them, to have expected more from them.

I don't think I even agree with your continuum of "freedom safety". We're never truly "safe". To allow for bad actors to do harm is more an affront to justice if you ask me.

Post reply on HN