[Snowden]...Showed Hong Kong Newspaper Documents Revealing US Hacking Attacks On China (updated 2x)

[MADem]

288. It wasn't a "guest speech," he was the pet liberal at the

benefactors' party.

The Exiled folks have absolute credibility regarding this story. They have chapter and verse. There is more, all over the net, too. GG shouldn't tell falsehoods in the digital age.

Here's CATO praising GG and touting some of their past history together--they even threw a "book event" for him (way back in 2007) ...hardly a casual relationship:

http://www.cato.org/blog/hat-tip-glenn-greenwald

I'm not the only one who is noticing that something is amiss:

http://thedailybanter.com/2013/06/greenwald-sticks-with-his-story-in-spite-of-growing-questions/

...1. Why hasn’t Greenwald clarified his “direct access to servers” language from last week’s PRISM report?

Multiple other news outlets have provided information debunking the notion that the NSA had unfettered back door access to servers belonging to the various tech giants named in the PRISM slides. The New York Times described a process whereby the various tech companies, after receiving a FISA court approved request from the NSA and vetting it through their legal departments, gather the information and post it in a virtual “mailbox” for the NSA to retrieve: “It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data.”

You know what this is? It sounds like an FTP server to me, not unlike Dropbox. This is how many of us transfer digital files that are too large for email. The NSA apparently doesn’t enjoy a free pass to directly grab up server data at will — instead, it merely downloads it from an FTP server (or similar) after it’s been placed there by the tech company that set it up for them. Again, this undercuts one of the most outrage-inducing aspects of Greenwald’s story, not to mention the initial Washington Post reporting as well. The NSA doesn’t have “direct access” to anything other than an innocuous file transfer “mailbox.” But “direct access” sounds sexier and therefore feeds the outrage agenda.

2. Why hasn’t Greenwald posted more technical details?

This is perhaps one of the most frequently discussed head-scratchers circulating around these stories. Greenwald has been communicating with an ostensibly tech savvy source who could easily summarize some of the above details about mailboxes and data transfers. Maybe not all of the incomprehensible computer jargon, but at least an overview of the IT side of the process. It seems to me that a story this dependent upon complex technology would include a sidebar with more specifics about the operation’s functionality, enabling IT experts to vet Snowden’s claims, further legitimizing his role and status. Technical vetting might also answer other questions: Could Snowden wiretap anyone including the president? Could Snowden really access any CIA station (only slightly less far-fetched-sounding than saying he’s bionic, too)? This disclosure of key technical specifications never happened. In fact, Greenwald hasn’t said whether Snowden’s information was subjected to any technical vetting at all, independent or otherwise.

Additionally, Snowden chose to speak with two separate news outlets. So why didn’t he also contact one of the many tech news sites like BoingBoing, Slashdot or Wired? Why did he choose someone, Greenwald, who’s admitted to being an IT neophyte? If a whistleblower from Big Pharma came to me with information about a drug that was chemically castrating people, I would take the whistleblower’s information to an expert for at least cursory technical vetting to make sure the source wasn’t a crank. Journalism 101. But it didn’t happen here. Why?

3. Why did Greenwald exaggerate the scope of his Verizon story?

Yesterday on Twitter, Greenwald wrote that nobody thought the USA PATRIOT Act enabled “bulk collection of all Americans’ records.” Another Twitter user replied, “You mean “some of” not “all”. Unless you have something else to share?” Greenwald’s response? “The program we exposed is the collection of all American’s phone records.” Unless I missed a revelation in Greenwald’s reporting, and I don’t think I have, this is an untrue statement. The program he described last week, prior to his PRISM reporting, had to do with the NSA’s collection of Verizon phone records for a span of three months. Unless “all Americans” take Verizon as their phone provivder, Greenwald was wrong. But this is how his agenda seeps into his reporting. It begins with Verizon customers then morphs into everyone, and outrage ensues with hyperbole growing rapidly into groupthink reality. Yes, other reports indicate that the NSA likely collected mobile data from other carriers, but again, this is hardly indicates “all Americans.”

More questions....

His reporting is poor, his bias is evident, and his associations are suspect. He's hit a trifecta with me, and he's in the "Heckuvajob" club, AFAIAC. He's not an honest broker.