The Washington Post Has Now Hedged Its Claims About PRISM | Hacker News Reader

The Washington Post Has Now Hedged Its Claims About PRISM

businessinsider.com

34 pointsrasterizer5 comments

Glenn wrote the original Guardian article -> Washington Post, and many others, cited that article as fact -> Apple/FB/etc released their choreographed story about "direct access" -> Washington Post amended their article due to lack of fact checking in their original article -> Business Insider calls Washington Post out for displaying broader context in their story.

Circle jerk. Flamewar. This is not journalism, this is TMZ. We are getting away from the fact of the matter that the President said is a real fact; the Internet is giving away metadata to spy on Americans using a mix of Legalese and Marketing terms all protected by the acts installed by President Bush and extended by President Obama.

The President has said that the only access being given is to content posted by foreigners. Do I believe this? I have no idea. But it is important to note that he said this, as it was the exact same rationale given for warrantless wiretapping years ago(We only monitor communications between foreigners and Americans.) And it's this dinstinction that gives a plausible (note: i don't say correct) constitutional defense of this.

I've stopped clicking on businessinsider.com links. And, forbes.com is a close 2nd in this form of useless publishing.

Uh, doesn't the first sentence in the updated paragraph still say that the government is tapping directly into central servers blah blah blah?

I'm sure PRISM is not the all-powerful intelligence apparatus people here are claiming but I'm not sure how much hedging is really going on here. It was obvious even from the first draft that the claims WaPo were making were based on the slides that were leaked.

Indeed. The first version of the paragraph gave no indication as to the source of the information. The modified version of the paragraph simply defines the source, but doesn't otherwise change the content of the paragraph. It seems businessinsider is trying too hard to find a new angle on the story for views.

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