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Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

wired.com

11–20 of 232 posts

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#11
post #3

So there's a bigger story here: good lord is the web-design here irritating. They've overridden scroll events so they at best don't work properly. Scrolling on a laptop gives you a weird non-mapping slide animation. This is seriously one of the most unreadable articles, from a design sense, that I've ever seen.

Yep, I've only scrolled down to the first page and I already know theres no way I'm doing going to read through this.

The whole fading / animating images in and out thing is at least as annoying too, it seems to slow the scroll down even further.

I also find it hilarious how they've paid so much attention to constructing this look and feel and then it's so severely broken with the way they incorporate the ads.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#12

"Among other things, I want to answer a burning question: What drove Snowden to leak hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents, revelations that have laid bare the vast scope of the government's domestic surveillance programs?" if the article presents a different answer than what's already known, through snowden statements communicated to laura poitras and greenwald, then they're probably not true, and if it repe…

I, too, have the exact same cynicism as you do (and I haven't yet read the article)...however, seeing James Bamford as the author changes things a bit. Bamford is the independent researcher who, back when the NSA was mostly unheard of and beyond reproach, cracked the organization through classic reporting and research. Of all the investigative reporters, Bamford is one that has my highest respect...he didn't have a news organization behind him, or any institutional privileges...this is not to say that someone like Greenwald is a lesser reporter (IMO, Greenwald worked incredibly hard to be in a position, years later, for someone like Snowden to trust)...but Bamford was really working in the wilderness and is not a lightweight in this field.

Some more background here: http://www2.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=17031

Anyway, that's just my bias going into this piece.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#15
I read through all the comments here before beginning to read the article. The comments that say that the usability of the article format is very bad are correct. The online format is too cute by half, and impairs readability. But the article is well worth reading. As Danso points out, the journalist who did the reporting on this article is a renowned independent investigative reporter, James Bamford, who has broken many important stories about NSA in previous years. The writing is worth reading and discussing here, and it's too bad Wired's editors mucked up the reader experience so much with the strange user interface and formatting.

"I confess to feeling some kinship with Snowden. Like him, I was assigned to a National Security Agency unit in Hawaii—in my case, as part of three years of active duty in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Then, as a reservist in law school, I blew the whistle on the NSA when I stumbled across a program that involved illegally eavesdropping on US citizens. I testified about the program in a closed hearing before the Church Committee, the congressional investigation that led to sweeping reforms of US intelligence abuses in the 1970s. Finally, after graduation, I decided to write the first book about the NSA. At several points I was threatened with prosecution under the Espionage Act, the same 1917 law under which Snowden is charged (in my case those threats had no basis and were never carried out). Since then I have written two more books about the NSA, as well as numerous magazine articles (including two previous cover stories about the NSA for WIRED), book reviews, op-eds, and documentaries."

As a substantive comment on the article, let me say that I find it interesting that Snowden himself thinks it is appalling that NSA's internal security auditing is so poor that NSA can't even tell which documents Snowden disclosed to journalists, nor can it tell how many other leakers may still be on its staff. This seems to be a completely plausible claim, and that would be a reason why many American voters or leaders of countries allied to the United States might desire the current leadership of NSA to resign and be replaced with more competent leaders.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#16
What the hell. I start scrolling with my mouse wheel, but nothing moves. I'm thinking my mouse must be broken, until 30 seconds later, I notice the "cover image" fade in and out. I swear, crappy flash intros are alive and well. They just don't use flash anymore.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#17
post #3

So there's a bigger story here: good lord is the web-design here irritating. They've overridden scroll events so they at best don't work properly. Scrolling on a laptop gives you a weird non-mapping slide animation. This is seriously one of the most unreadable articles, from a design sense, that I've ever seen.

I actually don't mind this kind of scrolling - I think it can be useful for storytelling. In this example the scrolling over text doesn't seem to be messed with, which is good.

I think what's frustrating about this example in particular is that there is no feedback for scrolling when the page 'pauses' on an image. There should at least be an element moving so that the user knows the page isn't freezing.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#18
Two key 'new' things from this article, that were previously unknown:

1. The NSA exploited the firmware of a Syrian core internet router, and bricked it by mistake. This was an "oh shit" moment (sic). So in it's eagerness to scoop up all digital communications, it killed the majormost way for citizens to communicate while in the midst of a civil war. Great.

2. There is a project called "MonsterMind", which 100% automates adversarial hacking in retaliation to detected attacks. Very Strangelove-ian, as the article says.

EDIT: Typo, thanks to not having had coffee in time.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#19
post #5
post #3

So there's a bigger story here: good lord is the web-design here irritating. They've overridden scroll events so they at best don't work properly. Scrolling on a laptop gives you a weird non-mapping slide animation. This is seriously one of the most unreadable articles, from a design sense, that I've ever seen.

Horrible to scroll on mobile as well. With chrome on android, you first see Snowden's face with a bunch of numbers on the top. If somehow you figure out that you need to scroll (on mobile, the scrollbar is usually not visible until you scroll), you have to go through seemingly pages of nothingness. AND IF SOMEHOW you still don't give up, there, CONTENT! On firefox for android, I actually see "The most wanted man in t…

> Horrible to scroll on mobile as well

That's interesting. I came here to say that it looks and works great on mobile, specifically chrome on android. Sounds like it's wildly inconsistent between devices.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#20

"Among other things, I want to answer a burning question: What drove Snowden to leak hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents, revelations that have laid bare the vast scope of the government's domestic surveillance programs?" if the article presents a different answer than what's already known, through snowden statements communicated to laura poitras and greenwald, then they're probably not true, and if it repe…

Exactly. Snowden has answered this many times. He has said (and I paraphrase) that the public of the USA needs to know what is being done to them and in their name so that they can get to choose and have a decision on the scope and limits of these programs. In other words Snowden has said effectively that if the public could get a direct vote on these issues and the public chose the status quo then he'd go along with that.

I don't doubt that Snowden doesn't want the status quo, he'd like to see the more (in his opinion) egregious civil liberty over-stepping practices rolled back but if his views differed from public majority he'd go along with that. He just wants the public to know and have a say, he's made this point a bunch of times and I'll cite it for you if you really insist :)

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