Prism and NSA Spying: why I don’t (entirely) believe it.

You know, there's a conspiracy theory angle here.

A tactic I have observed for dealing with awkward leaks is to allow the speculation about the unknown aspects of the leak ramp up to extreme levels, then rebut the more ridiculous theories without addressing the sensible ones. Joe average reads the rebuttal, feels let down that the story wasn't quite as inflammatory as the hype had led him to believe, and moves on.

This PRISM business (of which there had been no hint before) is a massive one-up on the seriousness of the Verizon scandal, and its timing in relation to it is deeply suspicious. It wouldn't be too difficult for someone in the intelligence services to make an extremely pithy PowerPoint presentation (also suspicious - it's basically a bunch of arrows from the top tech companies to the NSA) about how the NSA slurps data from all and sundry and fake a leak to a newspaper.

I predict that this story will turn out to be a complete wash, and in the meantime everyone will have forgotten about the not-as-sexy but much-more-true Verizon leak.