The Top 10 Most Inaccurate and Exaggerated NSA Stories (So Far) [View all]

[sheshe2]

SNIP

I hasten to note that I’m leaving out anything from Alex Jones or other well-known conspiracy theorists, though it appears as if there’s a new litter of leftie conspiracy theorists emerging, some of whom will be mentioned below. I’m also not including self-debunked stories: for example, the posts that make outrageous claims as the lede or headline, then clarify (usually about the existence of court oversight and warrants) deep within the belly of the article itself. Furthermore, some of these items follow the 24-hour Rule: once a wild claim is made, it’s often clarified within a day or so, but only after the misleading claim has circumnavigated the internet several times over. That’s exactly what happened when it was reported that…



SNIP

8) The British GCHQ collects 21 petabytes of data every day from underwater fiber optic cables.

If you recall, this story began as a wild theory — literally — published on The Guardian, which subsequently morphed into reality as it jumped from publication to publication, including The Atlantic (no correction issued) and The Young Turks show on Current. This was a stupendously aggravating example of how shoddy reporting circulates through the tubes and is eventually repeated as fact.

How a Wild Theoretical Claim About the NSA Magically Transformed Into Factual Reality
By Bob Cesca · July 19,2013 Print Friendly

SNIP
On Thursday, I watched a video monologue by Cenk Uygur via the following tweet:

“Millions Of Gigabytes Collected Daily UNDERWATER By US, England http://bit.ly/1aToyme via @CenkUygur”

There’s one major problem with Cenk’s big screamer headline: it’s simply incorrect.

Once again, however, I hasten to preface that I still consider Cenk a friend, and this really isn’t intended to bash him personally. It turns out, Cenk stumbled into a modern game of journalistic “Telephone.” In case you’re the one person in the world who’s never played “Telephone,” here’s how it works. A phrase or a word is whispered into the ear of one person, then that person whispers the phrase into another ear, and so on. By the time the phrase works its way around the room, and due to memory lapses or misheard whispers, the phrase morphs into something completely different. The internet vastly enables this process.

Based on the post by The Atlantic, Cenk reported that, yes, the GCHQ taps into underwater cables and subsequently shares its intelligence with NSA. To the credit of both Cenk and The Atlantic, each made sure to mention that underwater cable-taps have been occurring for decades. In James Bamford’s book, Body of Secrets, we learned about Operation Ivy Bells during which the USS Halibut tapped into a Soviet telecommunications cable and gathered huge volumes of signal intelligence (SIGINT) until a leaker sold details of the operation to the KGB. Elsewhere, the New York Times reported on fiber optic cable taps back in 2005.

SNIP

And where did the New Scientist get this information?

The Guardian.

Specifically, the New Scientist linked to the original Snowden bombshell article from June 21 about GCHQ tapping underwater fiber optic cables. For what it’s worth, Glenn Greenwald didn’t contribute to this post. Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball are credited in the byline.

Here’s the only mention of “21 million gigabytes” or “21 petabytes” in the entire article:

Each of the cables carries data at a rate of 10 gigabits per second, so the tapped cables had the capacity, in theory, to deliver more than 21 petabytes a day – equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours.

http://thedailybanter.com/2013/07/how-a-wild-theoretical-claim-about-the-nsa-transformed-into-factual-reality/

7) President Obama is fighting a deliberate “war on whistleblowers.”

This isn’t necessarily specific to the NSA story, but it’s absolutely one of Greenwald’s preferred frames for whenever leakers or, in this case, Edward Snowden’s name is brought up. It insinuates that the president and the Justice Department are viciously persecuting any and all whistleblowers, irrespective of circumstances. We’re to infer that if you blow the whistle on the government, you’re doomed. This is simply untrue. As Charlie Savage reported in the New York Times, the so-called “war” is simply a matter of happenstance: leftover prosecutions from the Bush years, greater ease of digitally tracking leaks and so on. On top of this inconvenient reality, the president not only signed an executive order to protect legitimate whistleblowers in the intelligence community who expose “waste, fraud or abuse” via proper channels, but he also signed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act last year.

6) The U.S. sentences whistleblowers to be tossed in “a cage for decades” and “disappeared.”

Greenwald said this on national broadcast television — twice — as a weak and false excuse for why perhaps Snowden fled the country to Hong Kong and Russia. The longest sentence handed down in this “war on whistleblowers” was 30 months, which is currently being served by John Kiriakou who blew the whistle on CIA torture, and who was prosecuted for outing the names of CIA officers. Elsewhere, yes, Bradley Manning could face up to 90 years in prison, but he hasn’t been sentenced yet. Even if he received the maximum sentence, he would be the first and only leaker to be imprisoned “for decades.”

http://thedailybanter.com/2013/08/the-top-nine-most-egregiously-inaccurate-nsa-stories-so-far/