Comment by ckastner
8 years ago
Here's how Greenwald initially handled Snowden's leak [1]:
Snowden anonymously sent him an e-mail saying he had documents he wanted to share, and followed that up with a step-by-step guide on how to encrypt communications, which Greenwald ignored. Snowden then sent a link to an encryption video, also to no avail.
“It’s really annoying and complicated, the encryption software,” Greenwald said as we sat on his porch during a tropical drizzle. “He kept harassing me, but at some point he just got frustrated, so he went to Laura.”
From another source [2] I cited in another comment:
"it took Greenwald several more months and help from experts before he could learn relatively basic tools like PGP encryption."
That's not exactly trust-inspiring, I'd say.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno...
[2] https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/edward-snowden-gpg-for-journ...
1. That doesn't refute or otherwise respond meaningfully to parent's points.
2. It makes clear that providing better channels to enable legitimate whistleblowers to find a publication channel was critically important.
3. It's exceedingly easy for anyone to ignore a critical insight -- whether it's some annoying anonymous leaker, or an odd set of lab results, monitoring readings, etc. Those insights are critical in large part because they fall outside norms and expectations. (This is, generally, a major block to creativity.)
4. There are a lot of contacts which aren't of mind-blowing significance. Filtering the noise is another problem.
5. Greenwald and The Intercept were specifically created to address these shortcomings. Among The Intercept's staff is Micah Lee, technologist with the EFF. (I've pinged Lee on Mastodon over the Intercept's gross failure here -- it is a massive fuckup.)
>That doesn't refute or otherwise respond meaningfully to parent's points.
It shows that Greenwald's association with the Intercept cannot be used to imply that it practices good security.
This seems pretty untrue. The excerpt shows that at one point, pre-Snowden, Greenwald was an unsophisticated user who didn't want to deal with PGP, just like 99% of reporters. But it's responding to a point about Greenwald, post-Snowden, establishing The Intercept specifically to handle security reporting and anonymous leaks. That's not a claim that he's Moxie Marlinspike, it's a claim that The Intercept has much more emphasis on security than news orgs without those origins.
And, more broadly, citing his pre-Snowden behavior seems unreasonable. For literally all people, there was a point where they didn't know PGP, and another point where they were confused and just learning to use it. If you trust their current knowledge of it, that's hardly a serious criticism.
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I don't see that as the argument being made, which renders it a strawman.
It's possible for someone, without a specific talent X, to create an institution to ensure proper application of some talent X, when the need for competent execution of X makes itself apparent.
Again: you're not arguing a relevant point, despite the truth value of your statements. This is an irrelevant discussion.
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