Quotes can be used to alert the reader that words or phrases are being used in non-standard ways, and I think that is what is happening here - scraping is jargon that the average NY Times reader probably hasn’t seen in that context before. Software engineer here - If I was writing documentation for a non-technical audience I wouldn’t assume they’d know what scraping means in that context either. If you look past the syntax they are saying how a web crawler is an everyday tool of someone like Snowden. The snark on boingboing and techdirt is extraordinary.
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