Glenn Greenwald Stands by the Official Narrative | Hacker News Reader

Glenn Greenwald Stands by the Official Narrative

counterpunch.org

15 pointscinquemb3 comments

One thing I don't understand about this article is, it talks about groups assisting in surveillance while acting as if they are opposing it, and questioning whether current companies might be doing the same.

This could be a valid concern, but if it is, I do not know how to address it, and it seems like an accusation which doesn't have much of a way to defend against. What standards of evidence would it want, to conclude that a company was not secretly assisting in surveillance?

"Yes, they might look like a well adjusted person, but so did <person that was secretly a serial killer>! So maybe they are one!" Is not sufficient to conclude that a random, seemingly well adjusted person is likely to be a serial killer. Thats not really quite whats going on here, but it seems possible that it isn't /entirely/ unlike it?

This seems to be sort of a wink-nudge thing accusing greenwald of being a pawn of the govt, and I don't think it provides sufficient evidence to justify making that accusation.

Even if Greenwald's claim about what the prime motivations of the nsa et all are is false, that would not necessarily mean that it is deceptive.

And then it ends with a "oh he probably wont respond to this because he is a TOOL OF THE POWERS THAT BE" type thing.

I do wonder if some of the points it makes at the beginning might be good, but I got a sort of, feel from it, reminiscent of either tabloids or , well, I hesitate to use the term "conspiracy theory", because a prediction that there is a conspiracy about something is not necessarily incorrect or unjustified. So, I don't mean "conspiracy theory" in the literal sense, but in the figurative sense of, /relatively unjustified/ idea of a group being involved in a bad conspiracy.

I also don't understand what is surprising here or why do they think there is some "conflict" in this case. Companies can comply with laws and regulations while being against them in principle this is how most politics works. Companies may also find that some "surveillance" laws benefit them as they might allow them to gain protection against attacks by foreign state actors or organized crime as well as some protection against liability for cooperating with the US government which they have to do so anyhow. So yeah the whole proving a negative part is kinda silly, but so is the entire premise. Microsoft, Google, Facebook can work on thwarting surveillance while having to continue to cooperate with the US government and while still be in need of it's protection and knowledge to thwart attacks against their own corporate resources and interests, or in short politics. And yes the criticism of Greenwald for saying, yes most likely US spies care about national security and do their job rather than attempt instituting some shadow government on the behest of shape shifting lizard aliens is also pretty stupid.

Bill Blunden: "In this editorial he asserts that American spies are motivated primarily by the desire to thwart terrorist plots."

Glen Greenwald: "In one sense, this blame-shifting tactic is understandable. After all, the CIA, the NSA and similar agencies receive billions of dollars annually from Congress and have been vested by their Senate overseers with virtually unlimited spying power. They have one paramount mission: find and stop people who are plotting terrorist attacks. When they fail, of course they are desperate to blame others."

Maybe Glen's sentence could have been written "They have been given the mandate to find and stop people who are plotting..." to fend off a potential (purposeful?) misreading like Mr. Blunden has done, but the problem here is clearly not the wording.

Nothing about Glen's article supports any of Mr. Blunden's rambling innuendo. Not only is this is a lame attempt to score points off of Glen, but it's pretty dubious submission to HN in the first place.

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