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Comment by Bartweiss

8 years ago

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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Bartweiss

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mannykannot  8 years ago

You are responding as if I claimed that Greenwald's association with the Intercept implies that therefore it is insecure, but I did not. There seems to be a problem with logical quantification under negation in your response.

  • Bartweiss  8 years ago

    I think you misunderstood me - I'ma actually making a stronger statement than you think, so there's no issue with negation here.

    As I read you, you did not say that Greenwald's association with The Intercept implies it is insecure. You did say that Greenwald's delays in adopting PGP mean "that Greenwald's association with the Intercept cannot be used to imply that it practices good security".

    I didn't miss that distinction, but I'm making a stronger assertion - I think his presence does (weakly) imply good security. I think that "Greenwald's association... cannot be used to imply" is false.

    If we're resorting to logic for this, you're suggesting that Greenwald's presence should not raise our expectation of good security (which is, as you point out, different than saying it should lower our expectation). I'm saying that it should raise that expectation, so we really do disagree.