Washington Post Is First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
But still, if the Post editorial page editors now want to
denounce these revelations, and even call for the
imprisonment of their paper’s own source on this ground,
then they should at least have the courage to acknowledge
that it was The Washington Post — not Edward Snowden — who
made the editorial and institutional choice to expose those
programs to the public.
For the Post to stab Snowden in the back this way is the worst treachery, cowardice, and hypocrisy that I have ever witnessed.
re-edit: I did originally call it a throwaway comment, which while I still kind of feel to be the case, recanted when I saw he put effort lower in the thread.
Clearly, the Post's Editorial has quietly excused a lot of its own conduct. I'm less interested in the argument about the Post's hypocrisy --- because I'm sure I'll end up agreeing with you about that.
No. There is no dissonance here whatsoever.
Editorial just cost WaPo an unfathomable number of sources. If you're playing the right move game and consider solely the masthead's interest, carpetbombing loyalty to sources is an extremely stupid move for a masthead to make. I think this is something Greenwald missed given his characterization of WaPo acting in its own self interest; the editorial is inexplicable in that frame of reference.
There is more to it, without question.
I bet Barton Gellman is having a good day.
They have this opinion for a reason and were willing to bite a source to advance it. Follow the reason.
WaPo considered its network of government-friendly sources against a single, prominent government-unfriendly source. That's the calculus and why they can't advocate his pardon. I'm not writing a Dan Brown novel here and I'm pretty annoyed with you straw manning me to your preferred target. This would be like Barbara Starr biting Defense.
Is this really news to you, that the Washington Post tends to maintain formation with the city in its name?
I do not understand this cui bono logic.
I think it's the role of an Editorial Page to take positions on matters of current events and public policy, and do so so in good faith (ie, to relate the genuinely held and reasonably informed opinions of the staff). My take on the role of an Editorial Page seems like it's pretty much the opposite of your take, which is that the Editorial Page exists to advance the interests of the paper itself.
Do you mean: is it possible that the Post is correct that Snowden should not be pardoned? Yes, that's possible. There are reasonable arguments to be advanced against a pardon. IMHO these arguments are wrong, but as I said in my blog post, reasonable people can disagree.
But even if one suspends disbelief and concedes for the sake of argument that Snowden should not be pardoned (is that what you meant?) that in no way excuses what the Post did. The Post is not an disinterested observer here, it is an active participant in the events, at best a co-conspirator, and at worst the actual culpable party. The editorial is entirely self-serving, and worse (because this is supposed to be a newspaper) it doesn't acknowledge that it is entirely self-serving. And it is self-serving at the expense of a man who (and there can be no reasonable dispute over this) has taken great personal risk to bring wrong-doing by the government to light.
So no, I don't see any possibility of any kind of redemption here. There are only two possibilities: either the release of the information was a crime that should be punished, or it was not. If the former, then the Post is at least as culpable as Snowden if not more so, and it needs to turn over the people who made the decision to publish for prosecution (or at least advance an argument as to why they should not be prosecuted while Snowden should be -- I can't wait to hear that argument), and it probably needs to close its doors like the News of the World did. On the assumption that releasing the Snowden documents was illegal, what the Post did was much worse than what NoW did.
Maybe another way to put this is: is there an editorial they could have written that would advance their opinion about clemency and not been treacherous?
It obligates them not to do it as an isolated act. If they want to reverse course now they certainly can (it's always OK to admit you were wrong). But then they need to admit that they are culpable along with Snowden, submit the responsible parties (some of whom are surely on the editorial board) for prosecution, return the Pulitzer, and close up shop (or at the very least resign and turn over control to a completely new set of people).
At any rate: am I adequately summarizing your belief by saying that regardless of what they write, if the Washington Post Editorial Page genuinely believes that Snowden shouldn't be given clemency, then they should also believe that the Washington Post itself should be shuttered (or turned over to a different team)?
Suppose the U.S. manages to exfiltrate Snowden from Russia somehow. Do you seriously believe that, in the absence of clemency, there is less than a 100% chance he'll be prosecuted? Being against clemency without taking a position on prosecution is kind of like advocating jumping off a cliff but not taking a position on whether or not you fall to the ground. There may be a semantic distinction, but no practical one.
> am I adequately summarizing your belief by saying that regardless of what they write, if the Washington Post Editorial Page genuinely believes that Snowden shouldn't be given clemency, then they should also believe that the Washington Post itself should be shuttered (or turned over to a different team)?
And that they should also be charged and prosecuted as Snowden's willing accomplices. Yes. At least if they want to be honorable (and logically consistent).
Look at the Post's justification for opposing clemency:
"The complication is that Mr. Snowden did more than that. He also pilfered, and leaked, information about a separate overseas NSA Internet-monitoring program, PRISM, that was both clearly legal and not clearly threatening to privacy. (It was also not permanent; the law authorizing it expires next year.) Worse — far worse — he also leaked details of basically defensible international intelligence operations: cooperation with Scandinavian services against Russia; spying on the wife of an Osama bin Laden associate; and certain offensive cyber operations in China."
It was the Post (and the Guardian) who made the decisions to publish these documents, not Snowden! He had neither the time not the inclination to make these kinds of editorial decisions. He grabbed what he could and ran. (And let's not forget that before he did this, he tried to address the problem -- which everyone concedes was a real and very serious problem -- through the "proper channels" and was smacked down.) He then relied on others, including the Post, to filter what he had and decide what should be published and what should remain secret. If things were published that should not have been, then the Post is at least as culpable as Snowden if not more so.
I think I understand where you're coming from.
I don't agree: I don't think the Post's culpability in spreading Snowden's leak controls the appropriateness of charging Snowden. I think the two are separable issues. I understand why you don't.
Further, I'm closer to the Post editorial's position on clemency for Snowden than to the ACLU's (absent substantial new information about what Snowden did, I'd be unhappy if he spent time in prison). While I could quibble with the examples the Post chose to illustrate their position, I find the logic mostly agreeable.
Regardless of what they've reported, I think it's incumbent on the Post's editorial team to publish their genuinely held opinions on public policy issues. If they believe what they wrote, I think it's important that they published it, instead of pretending that their opinion is different to retain consistency.
But after reading everything you've written, I've come to the conclusion that regardless of the Post's position, it's a badly written editorial:
* It uses dumb examples (like PRISM) that don't fully support its argument and so you can't really reach an informed conclusion about it without a lot of previous context.
* By failing to mention the Post's own role in the story, the Post loses more or less all its credibility, which make the Editorial toothless.
Like I said, I get why we disagree. Thanks for taking the time to talk about this!
You're welcome.
I think the nature of the opinion itself makes it an unavoidable binary of betrayal / non-betrayal here, since to say now that the leaks were unjustified, is a complete reversal from their prior implicit stance.
Given that Snowden approached them for editorial oversight, and they made the executive decisions to publish some documents, to declare later that those same reports were illegal would have to be a betrayal of their source's trust by definition, regardless of whether it is justified, moral or correct.
I agree that hypocrisy is an independent dimension. They could do a complete moral cleansing by taking responsibility for their actions, but even that wouldn't negate the betrayal.
As an aside, I am not put off by the treachery or disloyalty as much (since that can be inevitable at times - Snowden himself betrayed his employers out of his moral convictions), just WaPo's intellectual dishonesty as they went about it.
Donald E. Graham, The Post's publisher, and Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times, said they jointly decided to publish the document "for public safety reasons" after meeting last Wednesday with Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh. [...]
"From the beginning, the two newspapers have consulted closely on the issue of whether to publish under the threat of violence. We have also consulted law enforcement officials," Graham and Sulzberger said in a joint statement. "Both the attorney general and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have now recommended that we print this document for public safety reasons, and we have agreed to do so." [...]
"Neither paper would have printed this document for journalistic reasons," Graham said in an interview. "We thought there was an obvious public safety issue involved and therefore sought the advice of responsible federal officials. We are printing it for public safety reasons, not journalistic reasons." [0]
Okay, this doesn't explicitly support my impression that the possibility of getting a lead in the case was specifically suggested in prospect as a reason to publish, though some Wikipedia editor thinks that was the case ("[Freeh and Reno] recommended publication out of concern for public safety and in hopes that a reader could identify the author" [1]; it's not clear what citation this is based on). But it does seem to indicate that if their motives were as you suggest, they managed to keep that fact to themselves.
[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Industrial_Socie...
Simply put, you can say WaPo initially betrayed Snowden by (in their mind) publishing sensitive info (betrayal by incompetence). If their present thesis is correct, then they were intimately involved in increasing public harm from the leaks. At this juncture they had a number of options to make things right by their perception, but the one they chose was to attribute all blame to him (betrayal by deception).
Not that Snowden had some special right not to be betrayed. He engaged with a lot of media actors, laid a lot of trust by their sense of journalistic ethics, and had to have accepted the risk of whatever fallout could happen from some of the outlets not acting in a trustworthy manner (mitigated by how selectively he involved people). That one of them "betrayed" him by not doing their job well, or pointing fingers at him is not really interesting. Again, I find the WaPo's dishonesty about their own role more interesting.
That's too broad. The question is whether the Post assumed an obligation not to advocate for Snowden to be prosecuted for leaking the specific material they chose to publish.
I don't know what "evidence" would apply to a moral argument, but it seems like common sense to me. If I help you commit a crime, what moral standing do I have to publicly call for your prosecution?
If you do something that you regret either immediately or after a delay, that is customarily communicated by means of an apology. That reconciles the two inconsistent behaviors.
Without an apology, their own participation is what makes it impossible for this to be considered a non-treacherous editorial.
Now add: what the Post did was more severe and "damaging" (assuming you hold that view, which I don't) than what Snowden did. It's like a murderer writing an editorial saying "no clemency for the knife salesman!" Those knife salesmen! They really should be behind bars forever, so innocent and virtuous murderers aren't tempted to use those knives, which of course they must!!!
Non linear digression - snowden the movie was way better then the rotten tomatoes review.
I only worked there a couple years but I had more interaction with him than I would like (though he never chewed me out) and usually, I'm eager to get close to the CEO and learn what I can.
Can you elaborate, please, on why you feel this way?
>If you told me you thought Bezo's was a sociopath I'd suspect you're right
How and what did I take out of context and what was the intended meaning that I transformed into something else?
News of PRISM et al is probably one of a few root causes behind underpinning this newfound federation of internet authority
By attacking the messenger they show how little they care about their users.
Whether Bezos is a True Believer in the American empire, or whether he just wants to curry favour with the government to make money is beside the point: Amazon is definitely a partisan in these things. It will be interesting how that fact will play out in Europe and Asia over time.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-lockheed-venture-developi...
I think it's reasonable to say it's a conflict of interest, trying to be both a newspaper reporting on the intelligence industry, and a major contractor for that industry at the same time.
(I apologize for creating a throwaway to post this; I'd prefer not to annoy AWS).
Apparently the CIA popularized the term 'conspiracy theory,' in the 60s, though I don't have knowledge on the veracity of that claim. It's clear that at least a non-pejorative term would be useful.
I bet Bezos isn't too comfortable about the Trump presidency after the way WaPo has behaved
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/18...
WaPo is D.C.'s paper after all. That describes business as usual here.
As you say, the Post is responsible for publishing it, but the Post's actions do not absolve Snowden of his responsibilities.
I didn't know that PRISM was legal, and in that light I guess I'd agree with the Post Editorial.
Howerver, I do respect and admire Snowden for releasing what he did.
This is something I'm seeing more and more - "Snowden is a hero, but should stand trial and face his responsibilities." It's an oxymoron as far as I can figure, and I'm deeply disturbed by it. Either we should know what was revealed, and our government needs checking, or not. But if so, outing that information is heroic and extralegal. If you truly want no one to ever take the same risk Snowden took for the citizens of the US, let the citizens be the ones to throw him to the dogs.
That Snowden appears to be trying to run away from the consequences of his actions makes him less of a hero in my eyes.
Would you also say that James Clapper should stand trial for perjury?
Would it be OK to leak documents from there and then flee their judicial systems?
It doesn't mean that he's not a hero, though, because many people didn't even know it was the law until he did. And that it is a bad law.
But no, he doesn't have an obligation to suffer to prove that he had a point.
See especially the case of a British leaker: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Ponting
It happens every once in a while and is an important feature, not bug of the American judiciary.
Then why are you pushing this lie forward? You should be doing your part to inform Americans of their rights, not mislead and disempower them.
(I wouldn't do so - but I wouldn't consider myself impartial, either.)
In US courts, the letter of the law itself is one of the disputants. It is just as vulnerable to questioning as the prosecutor's case and the defendant's case. That's why court rulings actually do affect the law itself (judicial precedence), they don't only affect a particular case. Again, this is all by design.
Regardless, your response is totally irrelevant. I didn't ask about the morality of anything. Your statement that a jury is obligated to find in any direction is totally false. There is no such obligation in the US, nor will there ever be.
[1] Impartial: Treating all rivals or disputants equally
"You must not substitute or follow your own notion or opinion as to what the law is or ought to be. It is your duty to apply the law as I explain it to you, regardless of the consequences"
So when a juror nullifies, they break that oath. Insofar as that oath exists, it sets society's expectations of what the jury does.
"Impartial" was perhaps not the best choice of word for this, I agree.
Yet when I surrendered to arrest in Boston, having given out my last copies of the papers the night before, I was released on personal recognizance bond the same day. Later, when my charges were increased from the original three counts to 12, carrying a possible 115-year sentence, my bond was increased to $50,000. But for the whole two years I was under indictment, I was free to speak to the media and at rallies and public lectures. I was, after all, part of a movement against an ongoing war. Helping to end that war was my preeminent concern. I couldn’t have done that abroad, and leaving the country never entered my mind.
There is no chance that experience could be reproduced today, let alone that a trial could be terminated by the revelation of White House actions against a defendant that were clearly criminal in Richard Nixon’s era — and figured in his resignation in the face of impeachment — but are today all regarded as legal (including an attempt to “incapacitate me totally”).
[...]
He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during his three years of imprisonment before his trial began recently. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture described Manning’s conditions as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” (That realistic prospect, by itself, is grounds for most countries granting Snowden asylum, if they could withstand bullying and bribery from the United States.)
The legal and political ecosystem has fundamentally shifted post-9/11, and I don't know it's fair to hold a modern whistleblower to a standard that existed in the '70s.
(That's a long-winded way of saying "I wouldn't trust the government either." ;) )
Columnists and staff writers working for the same paper can have divergent opinions, and in the case of WaPost, this editorial was not written by the same group of people responsible for breaking the leaks. With some caveats, journalistic autonomy within a paper is a good thing--it helps push back against top-down bias from editors and owners (although, as others have pointed out, maybe WaPost isn't a good example). So there is a tension between Greenwald's monolithic indictment of WaPost and the ideal of journalistic integrity, where an individual journalist can freely publish an informed opinion without outside influence, including from the paper hierarchy.
But this still doesn't excuse the Washington Post. Publicly disagreeing with a colleague is categorically different from protecting a colleague's source. Usually this means protecting anonymity, but in the case of Snowden it's about protecting his safety and well-being: things indirectly threatened by calling for his prosecution if he returns to US soil. Protecting a source should be considered transitive and inherited by the parent publication, taking precedence over the above-mentioned journalistic autonomy. While maybe not an ethical universal, WaPost being one of four publications to receive the leaks, then publishing them extensively, then winning a Pulitzer for having done so does not make for an exculpatory edge case.
The infuriating part is that they're not admitting to the fact that they're publicly disagreeing.
Sure, it's obvious if you know the facts - their paper published the details of PRISM. If publishing those details was wrong, then the editors who chose to run that story were wrong.
But they never say that.
If this editorial said "Snowden should be charged, and those journalists from this paper who chose to publish the details of programs such as PRISM should be fired and be investigated by the relevant authorities" then it would at least be honest (and also a horrible betrayal of both the paper's source and its staff)
But they won't admit that when they claim Snowden caused ' “tremendous damage” to national security', that they need to level that same charge at their own colleagues.
If Snowden acted against the national interest in providing documents to journalists, then an even stronger claim can be brought against the journalists who published those stories to the public. That The Post chooses to ignore that is pure cowardice.
You think so? I disagree - I don't see such a problem with Greenwald's indictment of the post. The editorial column was written by the Post's editorial board--not an individual journalist as you wrote.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-...
A lot of times we seem to confuse 'is illegal' with 'should be illegal' - these are very different concepts. Washington Post did not necessarily take the position that PriSM was illegal in their articles, they merely supposed it was in the public's interest to know about it. Presumably to have a public debate about whether it should be illegal.
(Watches karma points tick downwards.)
How did you get to that conclusion? To me it reads that they thought PRISM was not criminal AND not in the public's interest.
"...the Post suggests, there was no public interest whatsoever in revealing any of the other programs. In fact, they say, real harm was done by their exposure. That includes PRISM"
So essentially the public did not need to know about PRISM and Snowden should not have made information about it public - when it wasn't Snowden, it was WaPo that made it public. They're shifting the blame. Initially they thought it was in the public interest so they printed it. Now they're saying it was not in the public interest.
I think my point about the difference between 'is illegal' and 'should be illegal' still stands though. A lot of the debate was confused about whether or not this program was illegal with a lot of people not caring very much about the very specific ways in which the program avoided skirting the law. Nobody examined the specifics, and everybody assumed it was illegal and unconstitutional. This public reaction may have impeded ongoing investigations, and so it could be that Washington Post ultimately saw that it was not in the public interest to reveal the program.
That said, this is probably a first.
That said, I'm not sure I buy the explanation that it's about "protecting access". There are many cases where groupthink developed on its own just fine (like maybe the support for the Iraq war way back when), so it could be narrow self-serving interest, but it could also be incompetence. And don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity, and so on.
Sometimes? That's his whole raison d'etre. He's a political campaigner in all but name. One may or may not like his politics, but let's not pretend that he's a dispassionate observer.
I neither suggested that conistonwater was lying, nor that there's anything wrong with Greenwald being an activist, just that we should openly acknowledge the latter.
When we say that people pretend something is true, we're usually implying that they're choosing to believe in their own myth, not that they're trying to deceive others.
He's right that the Editorial Page editors should acknowledge the Post's own role in publicizing NSA foreign ops. He's probably right that Marty Baron would disagree with the Editorial. It is hypocritical for the Post to campaign against clemency for Snowden without acknowledging their (prominent) role in the leaks.
But it's not enough for Greenwald to make an interesting point. Anything interesting Greenwald has to say must be deployed in the service of his own campaign against the Post and the New York Times, against the journalistic establishment, and, ultimately, the US Government. So, interleaved among all the grafs establishing the Post's hypocrisy we have a parallel story of cowardice and betrayal, of the Post somehow setting new precedents in how papers handle sources. quelle horreur.
The Post can be hypocritical and still, potentially, correct in opining about clemency for Snowden.
The Post can be cowardly and still correct.
Criminals have been sources for newspapers for as long as there's been newspapers. A reporter takes on some obligations --- created by norms and barely if at all recognized by law --- when engaging a reluctant or vulnerable source. But none of those obligations include full-throated support for the sources interests moving forward. How would that even make sense?
Greenwald makes this critique even easier to write when he drags Frad Kaplan into his litany of cowardice. Kaplan wasn't one of the Post's Snowden-sourced journalists, and the piece that has Greenwald outraged is criticism of Oliver Stone's Snowden movie --- criticism that we can quibble with, but that is overall well-founded and seemingly absent from the discussion about the movie. Seemingly for the sole offense of having an opinion that differs from Greenwald's (and for being a member of the evil journalistic establishment), Kaplan too must join the league of cowardice.
What's most maddening to me is the narrative (because everything about Snowden needs to be a narrative, with an arc and a resolution that we all collectively evaluate to derive the Metacritic score for this part of American history) that Snowden has through bravery somehow transcended accountability, and that entities like the Post through cowardice have surrendered any future claim to reason or judgement.
We can argue all day about Snowden's bravery (the other side of the Snowden debate has another side of the bravery argument, too, and just as unproductive). But stipulate that he was unimpeachably courageous. So what? Lots of brave people do counterproductive things. Abortion clinic bombers are brave. Bank robbers are brave. The dude who phished all those celebrity iCloud accounts and published the photos --- I don't know if he knew how "brave" that was, but that took some stones. Firefighters are brave and so were the medics on the beaches of Normandy. In evaluating someone's actions, we need more data than "courage" or even best intentions to come to a conclusion.
There are no doubt many good arguments for total clemency for Snowden. I probably don't agree with them (cards on the table: in my own fictional narrative of the Snowden story, he's convicted of something meaningful and has his sentence immediately suspended). But none of those arguments should have much to do with "bravery".
False dichotomy. They could have simply refrained from editorializing collectively on the matter at all.
As much as the editorial board members may not like it, they write under the same masthead as the newspeople who published the PRISM material. They get paid out of the same page views. If they really feel their news desk did something that was grossly irresponsible, they should quit.
I agree that the editorial was hypocritical and should have made mention of the Post's own role.
If the members of the editorial board who feel this way had quit, they would then be in a position to express their opinion in another venue without hypocrisy.
Anyway, it's a sad day for American journalism. They've guaranteed that the Post will never again be offered leaked material. I will be very surprised if they don't lose some of their newspeople over this.
I don't know where you're getting that. It's certainly not what Greenwald is saying. He's saying (and I agree) that Snowden acted responsibly by leaving to journalists the decision of what, of all the leaked material, to publish. He didn't just throw the whole pile on Wikileaks. Does that not make a difference to you? Does the Post bear no responsibility whatsoever for the decisions of their own news editors?
But I also have grave problems with the manner in which the Snowden cache was handled. I don't think the Washington Post, the New York Times, or the Guardian have the OPSEC chops to protect the data. But more than that, I don't think The Washington Post, Glenn Greenwald, The New York Times, and The Guardian can generate the right set of expertise to evaluate all these documents. I wonder, for instance, how much sooner we'd have discovered the Juniper backdoor --- possibly the most catastrophic backdoor in the history of the Internet --- if a larger collection of experts was somehow allowed to review the cache.
The whole thing, to me, seems like a giant clusterfuck animated more by egos and clique dynamics than by a coherent public policy goal.
So I have no trouble understanding people who put forward arguments that, despite his bravery, Snowden should be accountable for the totality of his actions, and not just the ones that produced outcomes we're all pleased with.
I have no problem with that either, as long as we don't forget the accountability of the other people involved. That would include those who initiated and furthered the unconstitutional NSA programs; those who kept them hidden even from Congress; those to whom Snowden gave the documents; and, to some extent, all the rest of us looking on, at whatever distance, and commenting (or not).
> The whole thing, to me, seems like a giant clusterfuck animated more by egos and clique dynamics than by a coherent public policy goal.
Any more than, say, the American Revolution?
I suspect the creation of history is always a bit messy when it involves human beings.
I would be really happy to see NSA employees charged for (provable) abuse of laws governing their operations. I totally believe that a lot of what NSA has done has been abusive. I mean that in the sense of: I would feel better about our country if that happened.
But the fact that it hasn't happened or even that it won't happen doesn't change my feelings about whether Snowden should be accountable for his actions.
That's true, but it's not a license to scapegoat one person and let everyone else off scot-free. A legitimate attempt must be made to bring the other involved people to justice.
You know as well as I do that no one besides Snowden will ever be prosecuted in this connection. Everybody already knows that James Clapper perjured himself before Congress, and he hasn't even been fired.
You'd love it if the powerful were brought to justice for breaking the law but you're largely unfussed by it brazenly being stifled. This has no influence on your belief of the necessity of going after the one who exposed them? This will result in it being less likely that we're going to find out about criminality by these people abusing their power. This gives the optics of the prosecutor's office being in support of the rampant, flagrant, totally illegal abuse of power.
There is this idea about the rule of law and equality before it. Baying for the prosecution of the whistle blower while not tying it to the prosecution of all those utter crooks he exposed. It's straight up support of corruption. It's the same prosecutors' office deciding whether to prosecute both of these things it found out about simultaneously from the same source, isn't it?
The rule of law and equality before it is a thing. Some find it worthwhile and have fought, died and killed for it. Supporting it in both theory and practice seems admirable to me. I have trouble in seeing a similarly admirable quality in what you've written here.
So you're claiming that he should be prosecuted and convicted for the leaks, but simultaneously that he should have allowed more people to have access to the leaks? This position doesn't seem very consistent.
1. Let's assume that the information obtained from the NSA was illegally acquired by Snowden.
2. The Washington Post purposely disseminated such illegally obtained information.
3. Following examination of the materials, it is difficult to believe that the Washington Post did not know that such material was classified, confidential, held state secrets, or was illegally obtained.
4. Therefore, the Washington Post knowingly and purposely disseminated illegally obtained information.
5. Arguably, the Washington post profited from the publishing of such illegally obtained information.
Given the above, shouldn't the Washington Post receive whatever punishment Snowden receives? If point #5 is true, it seems that the Washington Post should receive a greater punishment.
I'm not here to argue that the Post wasn't hypocritical. They clearly were.
I'm just saying:
* Hypocrisy doesn't invalidate the Post's argument. We can despise the Post's Editorial Page editors as much as Greenwald wants us to and still reach the conclusion that the editorial is valid (though incomplete).
* Greenwald is so eager to cast aspersions at journalists who disagree with him that he roped Fred Kaplan into his piece, despite his having nothing (that I know of) to do with the Post's handling of Snowden. Simply because Kaplan is also a journalist, Greenwald believes he's not entitled to correct the record on Oliver Stone's terribly flawed movie.
Even if we concede the improper revelations, how do we characterize this lesser culpability?
The game theory around government is that it thinks it has the right to "protect us" at some X% cost to trustworthiness between them and the public. Driven by that value, they will continue to rationalize higher levels of untrustworthiness.
I must say that I'm disappointed with Bezos...
(Separate point, I've recently been discovering that The Intercept is an outstanding paper. They have some real investigative journalism)
>“It’s clear to every single tech company that this is affecting their bottom line,” said Daniel Castro, a senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, who predicted that the United States cloud computing industry could lose $35 billion by 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/business/fallout-from-snow...
The US could easily have ruled the world in terms of technological sophistication in the cloud services space if the government had been able to keep its sticky fingers off of data that it didn't own. The fact that it couldn't is really the government's fault, not the man that exposed it. A secret this big doesn't stay secret.
I don't think it's about blame, it's just that you can't trust US companies with your data anymore.
And in any case, if it's true that AWS lost billions, that's the US government's fault, not Snowden.
WAPO: "Sure!"
[few months later]
WAPO: "Edward Snowden didn't do this country a public service. He should be prosecuted!"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the job of the press was merely to bring relevant information to the masses?
All other information has to be found via investigation and possibly won't support or at least add complications and caveats to the official narrative.
So the press giving the complete picture to the masses does have a adversarial component to it.
What a douchenozzle.
Actually leaking the details themselves isn't a neutral act, they willfully participated in the process that their editorial board is now condemning.