Haystack and the Myth of the Boy Wizard

Jamie sent in an interesting writeup about The Myth of the Boy Wizard. No, it's not about Hogwarts, but rather about Haystack and its creator, Austin Heap. Last summer the media covered the programmer, the software, and its supposed effect on Iranian censorship. But as is often the case, truth is less interesting than reality. What happened is that the story managed to press some magic buttons, and the media ran with it. This one is worth a read.

Comments

Not surprising

[hedwards]

Journalists tend to be bad at covering tech news. It's not really surprising that they'd get it this wrong. Perhaps rather than having people cover everything at various points, they should move individuals around within the realm of technology. At least that way they can get some expertise in the subject.

Re:Not surprising

[MozeeToby]

Even the journalists that focus their entire career on tech subjects often don't gain any appreciable expertise in the field. Besides, journalists aren't meant to be experts, they're meant to know exactly enough that they know when they should be asking questions. That usually isn't that much but for whatever reason (maybe they don't want to look stupid, maybe they don't want to appear to be dumbing down the article) journalists are quite reluctant to do so when it comes to technology issues.

Look at it this way, if someone had claimed to have invented something that... I don't know, neutralized the pepper spray that the riot police were using to break up the demonstrations. Do you really think that the journalist would have just taken them at their word, published stories to the effect that they were saving the world from tyranny? They would have wanted pictures of it in use, to talk to people who had used it successfully, maybe even interviewed a local chemist for his take on it. For whatever reason, technology stories just don't get the same level of scrutiny that other topics do.

Re:Not surprising

[Darkness404]

The problem is then the people in management don't understand it so they force the tech people to "dumb it down" to the point where it becomes essentially false. For example:

Cookies can store data about where you have been and what ads you have seen. Therefore, cookies can be used to track you.

Soon becomes:

Cookies track data about people.

Eventually becomes:

Cookies are a privacy threat.

Which gets read by the masses as:

Cookies are viruses.

Re:Not surprising

[Darkness404]

Look at it this way, if someone had claimed to have invented something that... I don't know, neutralized the pepper spray that the riot police were using to break up the demonstrations. Do you really think that the journalist would have just taken them at their word, published stories to the effect that they were saving the world from tyranny? They would have wanted pictures of it in use, to talk to people who had used it successfully, maybe even interviewed a local chemist for his take on it. For whatever reason, technology stories just don't get the same level of scrutiny that other topics do.

Yes they probably would take his word for it. The level of scrutiny in mass media is less than the level of scrutiny on Wikipedia. The mass media doesn't care about "following up" on stories, they just want to tell you that (in the words of Ross Noble) "Bad Shit is happening in the world, there's loads of shit happening in the world". They don't care if you understand it, Americans are so used to seeing fancy things on TV and then forgetting about it. It seems like every month there is some new breakthrough that "cures cancer" that we never hear another word about.

The masses have a really, really short memory.

Re:Not surprising

[D Ninja]

The masses have a really, really short memory.

No we don't. It's really a product of the media capitalizing on... ...wait...

What were we talking about again?

Re:Not surprising

[morgan_greywolf]

But the problem in this case isn't with engineers that don't know tech, it's with journalists that don't know journalism. Consider what the article's author asked Newsweek:

In your article "Computer Programmer Takes On the World's Despots" you appear to have taken the author of the supposed Haystack program at his word. There are no quotes from people who've used the software, nor from people who've seen the software. How do we know that Austin Heap is telling the truth, and, more importantly, how do we know that the software works as advertised?

Surely, it's very basic journalism to have talked to more than one person about this subject.

There John Graham-Cumming hits the head right on the nail: they spoke only to Austin Heap and failed to get a second source. That isn't a failure to understand tech, that's a failure to understand Journalism 101.

Re:Not surprising

[nbauman]

Even the journalists that focus their entire career on tech subjects often don't gain any appreciable expertise in the field. Besides, journalists aren't meant to be experts, they're meant to know exactly enough that they know when they should be asking questions. That usually isn't that much but for whatever reason (maybe they don't want to look stupid, maybe they don't want to appear to be dumbing down the article) journalists are quite reluctant to do so when it comes to technology issues.

I'm one of those tech journalists. You're right that the job is to ask questions, even when they sound stupid.

The simple solution to getting your facts right (the Principia Mathematica of journalism, as it were) is to check your facts with an independent expert in the field (preferably more than one).

There are single-source stories and multiple-source stories. If a dermatologist claims at a scientific meeting or in a journal article that his method cures baldness, I want to call another dermatologist who treats baldness and get his reaction. Even if the first guy is basically correct, the second guy can usually add some important qualifications. In the ideal situation, after I've interviewed 3 or 4 experts, I usually have a reasonably good understanding of the story. Then when I talk to the *next* expert, I can usually ask him really good questions. I may not be able to get the truth, but I can get as close as humanly possible by deadline.

When I decide whether a news source is worth reading, the first thing I look for is whether they quote a single source, or get a reaction from a second source. Why should I waste my time reading an article that's wrong, when I can read an article that got its facts right? Why should anybody?

I once gave a journalism course and told my students to look up stories in the New York Times. For example, here's a science story http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/science/earth/14fuel.html Did they just take the promoter's claims at face value, or did they check with an independent expert?

One of the magazines I worked for would pay me $50 extra for every additional source I interviewed, up to about 2 or 3 sources. That reflected on the quality of the story, and the effort required, pretty well.

The big problem today is that the pay for these stories has gone down. You used to have reporters on staff who could spend a full week working on a major story. Now newspapers have laid off half their staff and doubled up the work for the remaing staff. Freelance writers used to get $1,000 or more for a 2,000-word story that would take a week, and give them time to read the literature and interview a lot of people. Now they're lucky to get $500, and sometimes $150. You can't interview a lot of people for $150.

Re:Not surprising

[DragonWriter]

Even the journalists that focus their entire career on tech subjects often don't gain any appreciable expertise in the field. Besides, journalists aren't meant to be experts, they're meant to know exactly enough that they know when they should be asking questions.

The problem here is that you are saying that they are supposed to be ~A but B, when ~A -> ~B.

Being able to understand new events in a field well enough to explain them usefully to non-technical audiences requires both skill at communication and substantial expertise in the field. The job of a journalist is essentially to act as a teacher without the luxury of substantial lead time to develop a lesson plan, and usually via a static medium where there is no feedback from the audience.

Re:Not surprising

[WillDraven]

Look at it this way, if someone had claimed to have invented something that... I don't know, neutralized the pepper spray that the riot police were using to break up the demonstrations.

This is largely unrelated to your point, and I'm going to disappoint you by not providing any sources, but there is a common remedy for pepper spray. It is, somewhat ironically, called LAW, which stands for Liquid Antacid and Water. Basically mix one part unflavored (as in not mint!) Maalox (or equivalent) and one part water. Apply liberally to the affected mucous membranes and skin. I try to keep a couple water bottles full of it on me when attending protests.

Of course it would be better to find a preventative solution but at least this provides some quick relief from the horrible burning once you've been sprayed.

The Media

[sonicmerlin]

Getting the media to "run with it" isn't much of an accomplishment in this era of 24 hour news cycles. I don't assign a great deal of respect to their integrity or seriousness.

hypocrites

[Mike Kristopeit]

This one is worth a read.

But as is often the case, truth is less interesting than reality.

TV vs. Newspapers vs. Radio vs. Blogs

[Ltap]

Another example of why I take network news no more seriously than I do blogs, /., BoingBoing, etc.

Why Is He Upset?

[quangdog]

The author seems shocked to read a news article that did not receive enough research from the reporter before being published. Why is he upset about this? It happens all the time.

Maybe I'm just jaded, but I always approach news stories as only containing a grain of truth, with a heavy slant towards the agenda of the reporter / reporting agency.

Re:OK So...

[gstoddart]

I'm still not sure what exactly the fatal flaw was in the test version that got everyone all in an uproar.

I've just re-checked the linked articles from Tuesday ... nobody explicitly says what about the software is flawed.

This post, however, contains a much more detailed description of the issue. Essentially, the techniques it employed didn't work the way they said it did, and it wasn't -- and those using it were a lot more vulnerable than claimed.

It appeared that Haystacks administrator did not or could not effectively track unofficial users and that the methods he believed would lock them out were ineffective. More brutally, it also demonstrated that the CRC did not seem able to adequately monitor nor administrate their half of the live Haystack circumvention service.

When you're skirting around a government like Iran's doing things they don't like, broken security is a very risky undertaking.

From the sounds of it, this got over-hyped, never adequately reviewed, and people just ran with it believing it was secure.

short version "you should have listened to me"

[YesIAmAScript]

Actually a very boring article. The author spends most of this time just telling you that he's smarter than the press. Including a mea culpa for "letting" the Guardian get away with misreporting without falling under his wrathful hammer.

The sole piece of information here that isn't self-aggrandizement is a nice little whiff of info explaining what the metaphor of "The Boy Wizard" means. This part is nice, but it gets drowned out in the "I told you so" parts.

Re:Why Is He Upset? -- Because it's dangerous

[rs1n]

The author seems shocked to read a news article that did not receive enough research from the reporter before being published. Why is he upset about this? It happens all the time. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I always approach news stories as only containing a grain of truth, with a heavy slant towards the agenda of the reporter / reporting agency.

Why is this being modded insightful? Did you completely ignore the last bit? From the article itself: "It's not just bad journalism to take someone at their word and publish glowing articles, in this case it's downright dangerous. Real people inside Iran could have been endangered by this over-hyped piece of software."

Worth the read?

[Frizzled]

The Slate write-up was much better:

http://www.slate.com/id/2267262/

Re:Way off the mark

[Ash Vince]

First, like pretty much everyone he's very confused about what journalists do. Journalists write news stories, and the need to feed the public's (including much of Slashdot, though they think otherwise) unending gluttony for input. Seriously, the exceptions are rare and notable - the horsecrap about "what journalists are supposed to do" is a fantasy right alongside Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I can't understand how anyone over the mental age of twenty can continue to believe in any of the three.

Maybe this is widely accepted as being the case where you live, but here in the UK a great many people still cling to the belief in the concept of journalism. This is especially true of all the Grauniad readers I know since it really does have the image amongst those on the left in the UK as being the last bastion of journalistic integrity.

So why some unknown English paper did not check its facts might be a non-question to someone who has never heard of it (are you American?), but to many people in the UK it is an interesting question. Personally I have not bought the Guardian in years but I do come from a family of ardent fans so will be using this as a stick to beat them with as soon as an opportunity arises :)

The second miss is in understanding why the media leapt all over the story of Haystack. It has nothing to do with the Boy Wizard - and everything to do with the public's (especially[1] including much of Slashdot, though they think otherwise) uncritical desire to hear about anything related to 'fighting back' against Iran.

The full full article made great mention of the Guardian running this story because it is completely unlike your description. It is generally far more Iran friendly then much of the English press. It spends far more column inches on the "evil US of A" and how Iran desperately needs nukes to defend itself from the "terrorist state of Israel". Please note the quotation marks, I am not stating an opinion on Israel at all in this post as it is so far off topic its not even funny.

The only thing you may get slightly right is that the Guardian is apparently popular amongst young techies but since I have not been one of them in many years I am not really qualified to say.

Finally, if you have such a problem with the Slashdot demographic, then just leave. Delete your account and do not come back. Maybe you were just trolling for a million angry responses from the young people you describe, but if that is the case you should try and do more research about things first as the best trolls often know something about the subject.

The full article was less about Haystack, and far more about the Guardian and BBC's coverage of Haystack. Both of these are widely respected news sources in the UK and hence this sort of basic journalism failing is actually worthy of comment, although maybe not to people outside the UK.