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The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
11–20 of 49 posts
Re: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
#12Talk about click-baiting ...
Based on what we know so far, the stories have at a minimum gotten significant press coverage about the volume of FISA requests and (per the NY Times and Marc Ambinder) the cooperation of many US tech companies (though not Twitter) in building a streamlined approach to surveillance of nonUS persons. With public discussion, it ay be harder to invoke the state secrets clause. And we're not done yet. "Collapse" seems a litte overstated.
Re: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
#13Washington Post did revise the story. And yes, they should have issued an explicit correction. But this is still a major story:
> Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who had classified knowledge of the program as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, were unable to speak of it when they warned in a Dec. 27, 2012, floor debate that the FISA Amendments Act had what both of them called a “back-door search loophole” for the content of innocent Americans who were swept up in a search for someone else.
> “As it is written, there is nothing to prohibit the intelligence community from searching through a pile of communications, which may have been incidentally or accidentally been collected without a warrant, to deliberately search for the phone calls or e-mails of specific Americans,” Udall said.
US Senators with classified knowledge of the program don't have knowledge of what exactly it entails or how it is being used. I can forgive the Post for getting some of the details wrong.
Re: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
#14Yes, journalism truly has collapsed. That's why these scandals were outed by Reddit and Twitter users, not journalists working at more-than-a-century-old newspapers.
Re: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
#15As long as we are talking about jumping to conclusions, the author does the same thing here:
Declan McCullagh of CNET examined the Washington Post story independently and concluded that the Post story was wrong.
The Cnet "analysis" depends on the credibility of their unnamed source. The reader is left to decide whose source sounds more believable, Cnet's or the WaPo's, and which version of the story they find likely.
The problem inherent to secrecy (which isn't an argument for abolishing it) is that the public is left to draw conclusions from partial facts and an unverifiable amount of misdirection.
Re: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
#16I don't know about the collapse of journalism. What it seems to me is the collapse of credibility. Here we have major publications publishing something and then major corporations denying it. Then the publications step back from it, but not entirely. At the same time, this is an issue about which the parties involved may be under a legal obligation to lie . If there is a room at Facebook that does the same thing as t…
If the story was 100% correct then they wouldn't have to alter it, even if said companies were somehow forced to lie to the public. It would stand up on its own merits.
Re: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
#17Just saw the "Page One" documentary about the NYT and came to the same conclusion. While the NYT staff spent most of their time talking about how technology is affecting their "interests" there were only two people in the documentary who mentioned the importance of a free press for promoting justice and disseminating truth: Julian Assange and Markos Moulitsas. So we see shots of NYT reporters checking Google News and…
Not sure if you really mean 'social justice' or the less controversial good-old-fashioned 'justice'. The overreach by various government agencies has been an injustice that needs to be addressed but the issue doesn't have to be clouded by pulling in the complicated disputes about 'social justice'
You're right. Assange uses the term "justice" in the documentary. It just surprised me that he and Markos were the only two people quoted in the documentary who actually referenced moral values when talking about why society needs a free press.
Re: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
#18Washington Post did revise the story. And yes, they should have issued an explicit correction. But this is still a major story: > Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who had classified knowledge of the program as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, were unable to speak of it when they warned in a Dec. 27, 2012, floor debate that the FISA Amendments Act had what both of them called a “back-doo…
They had the knowledge but they could not publicly disclose a classified program. That's what "unable" means here.
Re: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
#19Welcome to the Web 3.0.1984. It is the read-write-rewrite one.
Re: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism
#20It has become a topic but once again, Orwell to the rescue: "the past is alterable." 1984. How true, in this case. But it has been the Post, not the Government, who altered it. Sad, shameful and pathetic.
In the US conditions censorship does not come from outer pressure, but from inner servility.
To add: it is not a cage for what you call free speech, it is its skeleton.