I’m guessing that this “leak” was fully intentional – there’s value in telling ISIS “we’re in your base, killin your doodz.” It may be disinformation, for that matter.
Whereas Snowden’s leak embarrassed the powers that be, because US citizens aren’t supposed to know they’re also in our base spying on our doodz.
Yeah, you’re missing the point that most of Snowden’s information revealed to the enemy that they were being spied on in the first place. Until then, the enemy had been mostly unaware because there had been no reason for their citizens the enemy to distrust what they were being told.
Snowdens leaks did not serve MILGOV propaganda efforts in CONUS.
This leak serves MILGOV propaganda efforts in CONUS.
Simple, really.
In other words, you have the wrong definition of “sensitive.” Sensitive information does not get our spies killed. That’s collateral damage. Sensitive information discredits the Administration. Cf. Valerie Plame.
Yes, absolutely. But…
You’re tilting at windmills; or rather, at a force much greater than the truth- rhetoric, sound-bites and media superficiality.
Don’t get me wrong- I’m a big fan of the truth. Only History will tell, however, which version wins out, although I suspect (hope) it will be the Truth. Until History arrives, however, no one will get those currently responsible for creating and disseminating “the news” to adopt this version.
They say that the victors write the History. We don’t know, yet, who the victors are.
Despite that, it is important that we continue to record these facts and opinions, and spread them around as much as possible. Sometimes, popular opinion is the victor.
Which just goes to show that “they” have never heard of either World War II (the history of the Eastern Front, especially, was written by ze Germans) or the US Civil War (the history of which somehow managed to make the South the Good Guys™)
“OMG HIPPOCRITS!!1!!!” screams the author of this post.
Funny, I didn’t hear any screaming.
But I suppose we can just label facts as obtrusive and dismissable yelling, and its almost like all those shitty things our govt does don’t really exist - neato!
As the comments in the boing boing facebook post say, this is not really the same as snowden.
-
Its not really a secret that informants, drone/sat surveillance and communications intercepts exist
-
Classified information is not per se forbidden to be be released. It can be released by the owner of the information if there is some payback. For example,
If the wrong classified info is released or the info is released when the owner is not ready to take advantage of the released info the the release causes more harm than good.
- It may even be untrue or psyops
But seriously, you can tell the difference between propaganda and an actual leak, right?
you’re just making an attempt at changing the discussion from “here’s an example of glaring government hypocrisy” to “I don’t like the author”. not sure how that relates to gov propaganda vs unauthorized leaks…
the whole thing may very well be intentional propaganda, but that seems totally unrelated to “look at the shrieking author!!1!!!11!”
MarjaE put it very simply. Concerning “Either leaks exposing the “sources and methods” of surveillance are damaging to national security or they are not. Administration officials can’t have it both ways.” I say, silly rabbit! Of course you can. It’s practically a definition of government.
Why, it’s almost as if the entity that has the authority to classify information also has the authority to release information it had previously classified.
SHOCKING
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
