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Comment by andrewljohnson | Hacker News Reader

Is the only source for this guy being Unix Terrorist and Jim Jones Kevin Mitnick? Couldn't they have said "according to Kevin Mitnick" rather than stating it as fact?

That's one reason I appreciate newspaper journalism even today. The standards they use to convey the level of credibility in the presentation of facts is something a lot of blogs, and even Wired, could learn from.

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The author may have many sources for that identification; she says he "was known in hacker circles" by those names, which suggests there are many people who could (and possibly did) confirm the nyms to her.

I don't infer the same from the quote. It just as easily could have been her single source, Mitnick, that are the 'hacker circles'. The wording alone does not suggest multiple sources.

I read it differently; but since there's no suggestion Watt disputes this, or that Mitnick is unreliable on this, I don't understand the greatgrandparent post implication this is somehow indicative of shoddy journalism.

It's background info confirmed by at least one and probably multiple sources, and journalists specifically don't want to or need to footnote their stories with multiple named sources like a research paper or legal brief.

The author does say neither sides' lawyers acknowledge it. That indicates to me there's some reason to dispue it. If Watt doesn't dispute it, why isn't he quoted as saying so?

If it's not shoddy journalism, then it's shoddy writing.

Sounds to me like Watt and his lawyers have neither confirmed nor denied it -- it hasn't come up in the case, and there'e no reason to go on record either way. Quite possibly, she asked Watt's team, and they said something like "I have no information on that" or "I can't comment on things not part of this case".

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