
Washington Post Is First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source - etiam
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/18/washpost-makes-history-first-paper-to-call-for-prosecution-of-its-own-source-after-accepting-pulitzer/
======
eadz
This is an important article and adds some real context to Washington Post's
editorial. This quote sums it up.

    
    
      But still, if the Post editorial page editors now want to
      denounce these revelations, and even call for the 
      imprisonment of their paper’s own source on this ground,
      then they should at least have the courage to acknowledge
      that it was The Washington Post — not Edward Snowden — who
      made the editorial and institutional choice to expose those
      programs to the public.
    

The Washington Post's editors decided these stories were in the public
interest and should be published, not Snowden.

~~~
lisper
Indeed, it must be emphasized that Snowden deliberately did _not_ disclose
_any_ of the information he had collected publicly. He specifically wanted
_someone else_ to make the decision about what (if anything) should be
disclosed, and he specifically wanted _journalists_ to make that decision.

For the Post to stab Snowden in the back this way is the worst treachery,
cowardice, and hypocrisy that I have ever witnessed.

~~~
20yrs_no_equity
I worked at Amazon, I interacted with Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post doing
this does not surprise me. It is effectively his political blog, where he gets
to push his agenda while being abstracted away from responsibility. (EG:
Amazon PR can continue its campaign of BS propaganda without WashPo articles
hurting them or Bezos.)

~~~
nitrogen
What does Amazon gain from an anti-Snowden article? Should we be worried about
the privacy of our purchase history and AWS instances even more than we
already were?

~~~
my-cowardly-alt
Not Amazon, but Bezos' startup Blue Origin is a defense contractor, currently
bidding to supply the rocket engines for US national security launches (Air
Force, NRO). He's one of two finalists (with Aerojet Rocketdyne), with a
decision expected in 2016 or 2017.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-lockheed-venture-
developi...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-lockheed-venture-developing-
reusable-engine-for-satellite-launches-1428958267)

I think it's reasonable to say it's a conflict of interest, trying to be both
a newspaper reporting on the intelligence industry, and a major contractor for
that industry at the same time.

(I apologize for creating a throwaway to post this; I'd prefer not to annoy
AWS).

~~~
wallace_f
Years ago I reserved this kind of level of paranoia for the tin foil hat
types, but to me now, it seems not only reasonable, but prudent.

~~~
jacquesm
It's a sobering thought that we are still thinking about some as 'tin foil hat
types', which makes you wonder what we'll think of them years from now.

~~~
nitrogen
I realize this is an old thread, but it occurs to me that one of the problems
is that implausible conspiracies are lumped together with plausible, likely
operations and dismissed as a group with a single label.

~~~
wallace_f
I agree wholeheartedly.

Apparently the CIA popularized the term 'conspiracy theory,' in the 60s,
though I don't have knowledge on the veracity of that claim. It's clear that
at least a non-pejorative term would be useful.

------
k-mcgrady
It's pretty despicable to profit from printing the information and then argue
that the person who provided it shouldn't have done so. Surely if you think
Snowden should be prosecuted for providing you with the information you should
equally be prosecuted from printing illegally obtained information that you
don't think was in the public interest. And to make matters worse that
information (specifically PRISM which they call out) is still being published
by WaPo [1]. Talk about hypocrisy.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/special/politics/prism-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/)

~~~
mikeash
It could be honest, but only if they recommend themselves for prosecution as
well. Somehow I don't think they'll be doing that.

------
raverbashing
It's a good thing for future whistleblowers to know who should get their
stories. WP just took themselves out of that list.

~~~
ScottBurson
Indeed. The newspaper of Woodward and Bernstein is dead. All that remains is
the name.

------
Aqueous
To play the devil's advocate here: this entire article rests on the assumption
that the only way public interest could be served by exposing a government
program is if that secret program is criminal. But this isn't true - the
public's interest could be served even if the program is not criminal. So in
my view, Washington Post is not being inconsistent - it is taking the view
that while it PriSM was not criminal program, it was in the public's interest
to know that it exists.

A lot of times we seem to confuse 'is illegal' with 'should be illegal' \-
these are very different concepts. Washington Post did not necessarily take
the position that PriSM was illegal in their articles, they merely supposed it
was in the public's interest to know about it. Presumably to have a public
debate about whether it _should_ be illegal.

(Watches karma points tick downwards.)

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "it is taking the view that while it PriSM was not criminal program, it was
in the public's interest to know that it exists"

How did you get to that conclusion? To me it reads that they thought PRISM was
not criminal AND not in the public's interest.

"...the Post suggests, there was no public interest whatsoever in revealing
any of the other programs. In fact, they say, real harm was done by their
exposure. That includes PRISM"

So essentially the public did not need to know about PRISM and Snowden should
not have made information about it public - when it wasn't Snowden, it was
WaPo that made it public. They're shifting the blame. Initially they thought
it was in the public interest so they printed it. Now they're saying it was
not in the public interest.

~~~
csallen
Was in the process of typing this exact response. Aqueous, I think you misread
a bit. WaPo is trying to claim that exposing PRISM served no public interest
while simultaneously publishing the information about PRISM. Whether the
program is illegal or not is irrelevant -- that's grossly hypocritical
behavior.

~~~
Aqueous
You are correct. I should have read more carefully. They do seem to have
changed their minds. I do feel that WaPo should address the inconsistency

I think my point about the difference between 'is illegal' and 'should be
illegal' still stands though. A lot of the debate was confused about whether
or not this program was illegal with a lot of people not caring very much
about the very specific ways in which the program avoided skirting the law.
Nobody examined the specifics, and everybody assumed it was illegal and
unconstitutional. This public reaction may have impeded ongoing
investigations, and so it could be that Washington Post ultimately saw that it
was _not_ in the public interest to reveal the program.

------
danso
As Greenwald himself says, the editorial board does not speak for the
reporting staff. Usually, few if any of the news editors are on the board.
That's why you'll sometimes see the editorial board of a newspaper endorsing a
candidate that their investigative reporting team just ransacked.

That said, this is probably a first.

------
conistonwater
The title is a bit clickbaity, and I think Greenwald sometimes lets his
politics get the better of him, but I think he makes a perfectly valid point
here: it is not only difficult, but also impossible, to reconcile Washington
Post's past reporting, together with their own claims of that reporting being
in the public interest, with that editorial.

That said, I'm not sure I buy the explanation that it's about "protecting
access". There are many cases where groupthink developed on its own just fine
(like maybe the support for the Iraq war way back when), so it could be narrow
self-serving interest, but it could also be incompetence. And don't attribute
to malice what can be explained by stupidity, and so on.

~~~
tome
> Greenwald sometimes lets his politics get the better of him

Sometimes? That's his whole raison d'etre. He's a political campaigner in all
but name. One may or may not like his politics, but let's not pretend that
he's a dispassionate observer.

~~~
webwanderings
There's nothing wrong with that. I'll let Will McAvoy of Newsroom (Aaron
Sorkin) answer that for you. Take a look at one of the first season's
episodes.

~~~
tome
I didn't say there was anything wrong with it. I'm just expressing surprise
that someone seemed to think that Greenwald wasn't always extremely political.

~~~
icebraining
"Let's not pretend" implies it's a purposeful deceit, not a mistake.

~~~
tome
Why does it need to be deceit? People can be a bit short sighted when it comes
to proponents of their own particular ideology.

I neither suggested that conistonwater was lying, nor that there's anything
wrong with Greenwald being an activist, just that we should openly acknowledge
the latter.

~~~
icebraining
I'm just saying what your wording implies. "Pretend" means they are trying to
"make it appear that something is the case when in fact it is not."

~~~
timv
When my kids _pretend_ to do things, they are under no illusions that anyone
believes it to be true.

When we say that people _pretend_ something is true, we're usually implying
that they're choosing to believe in their own myth, not that they're trying to
deceive others.

------
tptacek
Greenwald makes an important point and then sabotages it with over-the-top
emotional appeals.

He's right that the Editorial Page editors should acknowledge the Post's own
role in publicizing NSA foreign ops. He's probably right that Marty Baron
would disagree with the Editorial. It is hypocritical for the Post to campaign
against clemency for Snowden without acknowledging their (prominent) role in
the leaks.

But it's not enough for Greenwald to make an interesting point. Anything
interesting Greenwald has to say must be deployed in the service of his own
campaign against the Post and the New York Times, against the journalistic
establishment, and, ultimately, the US Government. So, interleaved among all
the grafs establishing the Post's hypocrisy we have a parallel story of
cowardice and betrayal, of the Post somehow setting new precedents in how
papers handle sources. _quelle horreur_.

The Post can be hypocritical and still, potentially, correct in opining about
clemency for Snowden.

The Post can be cowardly and still correct.

Criminals have been sources for newspapers for as long as there's been
newspapers. A reporter takes on some obligations --- created by norms and
barely if at all recognized by law --- when engaging a reluctant or vulnerable
source. But none of those obligations include full-throated support for the
sources interests moving forward. How would that even make sense?

Greenwald makes this critique even easier to write when he drags Frad Kaplan
into his litany of cowardice. Kaplan wasn't one of the Post's Snowden-sourced
journalists, and the piece that has Greenwald outraged is criticism of Oliver
Stone's Snowden movie --- criticism that we can quibble with, but that is
overall well-founded and seemingly absent from the discussion about the movie.
Seemingly for the sole offense of having an opinion that differs from
Greenwald's (and for being a member of the evil journalistic establishment),
Kaplan too must join the league of cowardice.

What's most maddening to me is the narrative (because everything about Snowden
needs to be a narrative, with an arc and a resolution that we all collectively
evaluate to derive the Metacritic score for this part of American history)
that Snowden has through bravery somehow transcended accountability, and that
entities like the Post through cowardice have surrendered any future claim to
reason or judgement.

We can argue all day about Snowden's bravery (the other side of the Snowden
debate has another side of the bravery argument, too, and just as
unproductive). But stipulate that he was unimpeachably courageous. So what?
Lots of brave people do counterproductive things. Abortion clinic bombers are
brave. Bank robbers are brave. The dude who phished all those celebrity iCloud
accounts and published the photos --- I don't know if he knew how "brave" that
was, but that took some stones. Firefighters are brave and so were the medics
on the beaches of Normandy. In evaluating someone's actions, we need more data
than "courage" _or even best intentions_ to come to a conclusion.

There are no doubt many good arguments for total clemency for Snowden. I
probably don't agree with them (cards on the table: in my own fictional
narrative of the Snowden story, he's convicted of something meaningful and has
his sentence immediately suspended). But none of those arguments should have
much to do with "bravery".

~~~
ScottBurson
> What's most maddening to me is the narrative [...] that Snowden has through
> bravery somehow transcended accountability

I don't know where you're getting that. It's certainly not what _Greenwald_ is
saying. He's saying (and I agree) that Snowden acted responsibly by leaving to
journalists the decision of what, of all the leaked material, to publish. He
didn't just throw the whole pile on Wikileaks. Does that not make a difference
to you? Does the _Post_ bear no responsibility whatsoever for the decisions of
their own news editors?

~~~
tptacek
The fact that Snowden didn't do the worst possible thing and just dump
everything onto BitTorrent does not for me suggest that Snowden's actions are
unimpeachable.

But I also have grave problems with the manner in which the Snowden cache was
handled. I don't think the Washington Post, the New York Times, or the
Guardian have the OPSEC chops to protect the data. But more than that, I don't
think The Washington Post, Glenn Greenwald, The New York Times, and The
Guardian can generate the right set of expertise to evaluate all these
documents. I wonder, for instance, how much sooner we'd have discovered the
Juniper backdoor --- possibly the most catastrophic backdoor in the history of
the Internet --- if a larger collection of experts was somehow allowed to
review the cache.

The whole thing, to me, seems like a giant clusterfuck animated more by egos
and clique dynamics than by a coherent public policy goal.

So I have no trouble understanding people who put forward arguments that,
despite his bravery, Snowden should be accountable for the totality of his
actions, and not just the ones that produced outcomes we're all pleased with.

~~~
ScottBurson
> I have no trouble understanding people who put forward arguments that,
> despite his bravery, Snowden should be accountable for the totality of his
> actions, and not just the ones that produced outcomes we're all pleased
> with.

I have no problem with that either, _as long as we don 't forget the
accountability of the other people involved_. That would include those who
initiated and furthered the unconstitutional NSA programs; those who kept them
hidden even from Congress; those to whom Snowden gave the documents; and, to
some extent, all the rest of us looking on, at whatever distance, and
commenting (or not).

> The whole thing, to me, seems like a giant clusterfuck animated more by egos
> and clique dynamics than by a coherent public policy goal.

Any more than, say, the American Revolution?

I suspect the creation of history is always a bit messy when it involves human
beings.

~~~
tptacek
It is just not the case that the state is obligated to withhold prosecution
until everyone who could possibly be culpable is also charged. This is logic
that is deployed constantly on HN --- most commonly in the form of "none of
the banksters went to prison so why are we prosecuting XXX" \--- and it's just
not valid. No state works that way.

I would be really happy to see NSA employees charged for (provable) abuse of
laws governing their operations. I totally believe that a lot of what NSA has
done has been abusive. I mean that in the sense of: I would feel better about
our country if that happened.

But the fact that it hasn't happened or even that it won't happen doesn't
change my feelings about whether Snowden should be accountable for his
actions.

~~~
lolc
What would be a reasonable punishment for him, by your standards? And what
would be a reasonable punishment for the Post staff, by your standards?

~~~
tptacek
Based solely on what I personally know, which is terribly incomplete, I
wouldn't be alarmed by a felony conviction but no custodial sentence.

------
kordless
The Post is in dissonance. Their comments are in conflict. They are speaking
for the public's right to reasonable privacy that is not susceptible to what
occurs when you exploit technology to gain an upper hand.

The game theory around government is that it thinks it has the right to
"protect us" at some X% cost to trustworthiness between them and the public.
Driven by that value, they will continue to rationalize higher levels of
untrustworthiness.

------
marcoperaza
There's a difference between the freedom to publish what is already leaked,
and leaking in the first place. The former is protected by the First
Amendment. The latter is not.

------
kazinator
In its defense, it has _Washington_ in its name. I.e. what's "in the box" is
what the label says.

------
aphextron
Even as a vehemently anti-Trump person, I find the Washington Post has become
insufferably partisan to the point of making the left look bad. This is the
final nail in the coffin of their legitimacy, to me.

~~~
beerbajay
The Post is not now not has it ever been "the left"

------
sunstone
Besos is a shithead. Tell us something we don't know already.

------
oneloop
Guys, we all know that Bezos is a micromanaging maniac. Because of this, he
must have known (and approved) the stance that the Washington Post was taking
on Snowden, right? What do you think?

I must say that I'm disappointed with Bezos...

(Separate point, I've recently been discovering that The Intercept is an
outstanding paper. They have some real investigative journalism)

~~~
Jerry2
Snowden's revelations cost Amazon billions of dollars in AWS fees. In fact, it
cost tens of billions of dollars to Silicon Valley companies over the past 3
years. This is why all these SV companies hate him so much.

~~~
yolesaber
Source on these claims? I don't doubt it, but i'd be interested in seeing the
data

~~~
spydum
I can say with first hand knowledge, yes, US businesses have lost out on
international contracts immediately following the leaks. There are plenty of
industries (legal ones), in which the realization of government monitoring
caused them to change course and keep business local (or at least,
significantly shift the amount of information they would trust to a US-hosted
business). Doesn't matter if it's irrational or not, real money was lost to US
businesses, and I'm sure Amazon would have been party to that (whether they
could even distinguish it in their monsterous growth or not, who knows).

~~~
fixermark
It seems oddly short-sighted for SV companies to place blame on the messenger
and not, say, the espionage system that created an ecosystem where it's
perfectly sensible for people to ask whether their data is actually secure
when stored on the servers of companies headquartered in a nation that spies
on its own people.

The US could easily have ruled the world in terms of technological
sophistication in the cloud services space if the government had been able to
keep its sticky fingers off of data that it didn't own. The fact that it
couldn't is really the government's fault, not the man that exposed it. A
secret this big doesn't stay secret.

~~~
x1798DE
> It seems oddly short-sighted for SV companies to place blame on the
> messenger and not, say, the espionage system that created an ecosystem where
> it's perfectly sensible for people to ask whether their data is actually
> secure when stored on the servers of companies headquartered in a nation
> that spies on its own people.

I don't think it's about blame, it's just that you can't trust US companies
with your data anymore.

------
williamle8300
PULITZER: "Hey WaPo you did a great service to the public with those Snowden
articles. Take this Pulitzer Price for Public Service!"

WAPO: "Sure!"

[few months later]

WAPO: "Edward Snowden didn't do this country a public service. He should be
prosecuted!"

------
draw_down
I'll agree with "ignominious".

------
justafool
.

~~~
eaurouge
I agree. And I should add that Amazon is positioned to become the one global
infrastructure layer in multiple areas. And despite Walmart's questionable
labor practices, it remains the only viable opposition to Amazon's dominance
in ecommerce. We don't know yet what Amazon would do if it achieves world
domination and becomes the one button for everything but it's equally
questionable labor practices don't leave me with much hope.

------
mtgx
WashPost has definitely been on a visible decline since Jeff Bezos bought it.
Extremely partisan and it tends to argue _for_ the government (infamous
"golden key" editorial, etc), rather than against it (in case we've all
forgotten by now, that was _supposed to be_ the job of the press). A lot of
its articles are also Buzzfeedy and factfree.

~~~
personjerry
> (in case we've all forgotten by now, that was supposed to be the job of the
> press)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the job of the press was merely to
bring relevant information to the masses?

~~~
badlucklottery
The information and narratives governments want you to hear will be freely
given in press releases.

All other information has to be found via investigation and possibly won't
support or at least add complications and caveats to the official narrative.

So the press giving the complete picture to the masses does have a adversarial
component to it.

------
jackgavigan
Glenn Greenwald clearly doesn't understand the difference between journalism
and editorialising. Does he seriously believe that the WaPo should have
ignored the Snowden revelations about legitimate overseas intelligence
operations, despite the fact that they knew that other news outlets were going
to publish them? Does he not understand that the newspaper's job is to report
the _news?_

What a douchenozzle.

~~~
voxic11
They published the documents snowden gave them. They could have chosen not to
and in fact they did in many other cases, only a small portion of the
documents were ever published. None were published by snowden himself. He
specifically wanted wapo to make the determination about what is actually in
the public interest. They decided to publish the prism documents themselves.

