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The Intercept Shuts Down Access To Snowden Trove (thedailybeast.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: First Look Media announced Wednesday that it was shutting down access to whistleblower Edward Snowden's massive trove of leaked National Security Agency documents. Over the past several years, The Intercept, which is owned by First Look Media, has maintained a research team to handle the large number of documents provided by Snowden to Intercept journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. But in an email to staff Wednesday evening, First Look CEO Michael Bloom said that as other major news outlets had "ceased reporting on it years ago," The Intercept had decided to "focus on other editorial priorities" after expending five years combing through the archive. "The Intercept is proud of its reporting on the Snowden archive, and we are thankful to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald for making it available to us," Bloom wrote. He added: "It is our hope that Glenn and Laura are able to find a new partner -- such as an academic institution or research facility -- that will continue to report on and publish the documents in the archive consistent with the public interest." Poitras reprimanded First Look Media for its decision to shut down its archives, and lay off 4 percent of its staff who had maintained them. "This decision and the way it was handled would be a disservice to our source, the risks we've all taken, and most importantly, to the public for whom Edward Snowden blew the whistle," she wrote.
"Late Thursday evening, Greenwald tweeted that both he and Poitras had full copies of the archives, and had been searching for a partner to continue research," reports The Daily Beast.
"Late Thursday evening, Greenwald tweeted that both he and Poitras had full copies of the archives, and had been searching for a partner to continue research," reports The Daily Beast.
Want fried with that, comrade?
What does Snowden say, Alex.
"other major news outlets had "ceased reporting on it years ago"
IMHO, Russians kept allowing him to stay only because he was bringing money & media attention!
(Think about why they never gave him permanent permission to stay!)
Hey, Ivan!
The same left-wingers who see a Russian conspiracy behind every pro-Trump vote in 2016 incredulously do not consider the possibility that Snowden might actually be a Russian asset who was recruited to cause absolute mayhem. It would have been very easy for Putin to turn Snowden over to the US and thus throw even more gasoline on the fire via discovery in federal courts if Snowden were just "some guy."
On the other hand, that's not how you want to be seen treating your assets by the people who you might want to recruit...
Greenwald tweeted that both he and Poitras had full copies of the archives, and had been searching for a partner to continue research,"
Given that Greenwald, Poitras, The Intercept and "Others" have access to the full archive, my guess is these documents have already been stolen by multiple intelligence agencies. None of these people are really security experts, and it's inevitable they haven't kept good security.
With Greenwald and Poitras looking around for other institutions, the odds these documents will get into leak out completely un-redacted just went up 10 fold.
The world has returned its short attention span to lolcats videos, news at 11.
The who shuts down what?
Let's be real. The Intercept and First Look Media didn't do this for The Greater Good. They got publicity and advertising revenue for being gatekeeper of this information and first to break the stories. "major news outlets had ceased reporting on it years ago" means "no longer profitable". So why should they be paying people to dredge through it when they aren't producing juicy bits any more? The two "journalists" whose job was to find stuff in top security documents that were illegally leaked in the hopes of bringing in web traffic shouldn't be the least bit surprised that their "research" positions have come to an end.
Better known as 318230.
I think the most important bits have been published, even if this is only a tiny fraction of the whole. The main lessons to be learned from it have been communicated. After that the cost/benefit calculation just becomes much smaller. It can live on as a reference base where journalists and historians can look up data which is relevant to current events but which has little apparent value in being published outside of these events. New Look Media simple doesn't want to invest anymore in what is mostly a symbolic openness. Resistance to that assumes that there are hugely important things being covered up.
I should add, there will be damaging information in the remaining files but the criterium is not to do damage but to publish what the public needs to know , where the government goes wrong.
Yep, the Intercept seems to be worried about becoming an Indicted co-conspirator
We can't predict what might surface and how valuable a review of who knew what and when might be.
What is important to historians? To people working on OS, crypto security?
How do we know what is not published and that is all ok now?
Cant sort it anymore? Let the world sort it for free using their own bandwidth, sites and with their own databases.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Forcing Snowden to be stuck in Russia was quite beneficial to the USA in that they have a lot of people thinking there is a connection there and they continue to smear Snowden as a traitor because he was forced into Russia by the USA. The irony of that smear today is somehow lost as I've still heard it being used against him.
The alternative was to allow Snowden to escape to a safe but neutral country. Sure they could more easily go kill him but everybody would know why and it would make him a greater hero. In Russia, they can continue to attack his character for all of time before he is completely forgotten and only their distortions are remembered.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
9/11 was obviously an inside job. ae911truth dot org
FBI guys need jail time.
No problem, there are plenty of people who will volunteer to do it for free. I would and of course I would be tempted to simply upload it to wikileaks. I mean there is the solution right there, why don't they take it.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
They already stated.... it's about money..... there is nothing news worthy coming out of it enough to justify keeping the team basically. It good Ol American capitalism
I would and of course I would be tempted to simply upload it to wikileaks. I mean there is the solution right there, why don't they take it.
(derisive laughter)
Oh, wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder.
First Look Media CEO Michael Bloom:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mi...
Previously employed by:
Guardian
Rolling Stone
Sony
Viacom
AOL
News Corp
Coincidence?
You can argue about the criteria and that other people would use other criteria for what is publishable. But the way it works now is the journalists involved and their organisation get to decide and my point is they aren't trying to cover anything up. They honestly think they published what really ought to be published. Greenwald wants to pass on the archive to historians. That means he is thinking along the same lines.
It's pretty clear they don't want to go the Wikileaks publishing way. It's out of his hands now but do you think Snowden would want that? He's very principled about that. He became a whistleblower to expose unconstitutional practices and runaway surveillance policies. He sure as hell doesn't want to expose the dirty linen of the state any more than necessary. Wikileaks will publish unless there is a very good reason not to. Snowden wants it the other way round Both because that does not match his pollitical views and because he doesn't want to be disloyal to his country or the state in any way. Assange wants to work for the citizens of the state but he opposes the system. It's a different approach
Or go see a doctor. Quickly!
No problem, there are plenty of people who will volunteer to do it for free. I would and of course I would be tempted to simply upload it to wikileaks. I mean there is the solution right there, why don't they take it.
This is precisely why they don't use the volunteers who would do it for free. The whole point was responsible journalism.
There's a lot of sensitive information in there for good reasons. Not everything secret is bad and governments have prefectly good, utterly reasonable reasons for keeping some things secret. Snowden wanted to reveal the illegal stuff (which should not have been secret) without compromosing things that should have been kept secret, like operative identities, etc.
Snowden knew he didn't have the resources to cover it all himself, so rather than go for a Manning style public infodump, he went to a responsible outlet. Wikileaks is the complete antithesis of that.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
- The reason Snowden didn't publish is not because of resources but because that was the job of journalists. He would not have published even if he had the resources.
- I certainly won't dismiss Wikileaks as easily as you do. Their position is more radical . Maybe the main difference with The Intercept is that they both think the system is fucked up but one decides to still put some trust in it, the other not. It can be a very small difference.
I certainly won't dismiss Wikileaks as easily as you do. Their position is more radical
I'm not dismissing them, but I think it's clear that their sort of leaking is not the kind that Snowden's interested in.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I had no connection to the following terms:
PRISM
Xkeyscore
Tailored Access Operations (TAO)
I hunt Sysadmins
LOVEINT
STINGRAY
and countless others. Whether these terms will vanish from my vocabulary I don't know, but they keep
Snowdens memory alive. These terms and their descriptions opened eyes, worldwide.
Snowden wanted to reveal the illegal stuff (which should not have been secret) without compromosing things that should have been kept secret, like operative identities, etc.
Well, then he failed. Many things publicly leaked have been perfectly legal. The fact that the NSA records all phone calls in Afghanistan or that they spy on our allies are good examples.