Snowden and Greenwald Beginning to Self-Destruct; ‘The Nation’ and ‘Mother Jones’ Raise Questions [View all]

[flamingdem]

By Bob Cesca · June 14,2013

It’s now been more than a week since Glenn Greenwald reported that the National Security Agency attained “direct access” to servers owned by the various tech giants, Google, Facebook, Apple and so forth.
And it’s been almost a week since other sites, now including Mother Jones, The Nation and Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, began to notice significant issues with his reporting about PRISM.

I should underscore once again how consequential the “direct access” line happens to be. The implication of “direct access” is clearly that, unbeknownst to the public, the NSA and, apparently, low level IT subcontractors, enjoyed back door access to proprietary server data, horked it at will and, according to Greenwald, did so potentially without a warrant. Rick Perlstein, in a post for The Nation, quoted Mark Jaquith of WordPress who observed that the “direct access” line is “the difference between a bombshell and a yawn of a story.” (I’m sure Perlstein and Jaquith have been inundated with “Obamabot apologist!” accusations for daring to aim an incredulous post in Greenwald’s direction.)

On his Wednesday podcast, Sam Seder said in support of Greenwald and Snowden, “That guy [Snowden] revealed all of this to us.” But in terms of new news, the “direct access” description is arguably the only aspect of the PRISM item, other than the PRISM PowerPoint and the story of a guy named Edward Snowden who leaked it, that was unknown prior to last week’s reporting. And it’s not holding water under scrutiny. Furthermore, we’ve been aware of the NSA’s eavesdropping efforts, including email, for many years now. In fact, the Obama administration, only three months into its first term weeded out several instances of unwarranted NSA eavesdropping. Kurt Eichenwald covered the NSA’s counter-terrorism efforts in his bestselling book, 500 Days. But this was somehow flushed down the memory hole in lieu of hyperbole and kneejerk mass hysteria over Greenwald and others shouting “fire!” (or “Worse than Bush!”) in a virtual crowded theater.

Indeed, Greenwald continues to shout “fire!” in the face of mounting concern (see my previous posts) over the veracity of his central scoop. Perlstein also quoted open-source expert Ken Fogel who referred to the use of “direct access” as an “epic botch.” Mother Jones‘ Kevin Drum wrote yesterday, “…the ‘direct access’ claim puzzled me from the start. Even with my modest technical background, I understood immediately that it didn’t make sense.” Wednesday night on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show, Greenwald weaseled around the questions, saying essentially the same thing he’s said all week: that he summarized the line from the PRISM PowerPoint slide and therefore he’s didn’t botch the story.

http://thedailybanter.com/2013/06/snowden-and-greenwald-beginning-to-self-destruct-the-nation-and-mother-jones-raise-questions/