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Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Just to recap, PRISM looks like a web front-end to a shitload of other systems. This is why a relative noob like Snowden was working on it -- it was web work. It's also why he had such a broad overview of what was going on. He knew the direction and capabilities, if not the details. He was probably just hooking up APIs somewhere.

That's just guesswork, of course. I think it's easy for us (and the Guardian) to imply a lot of detail where none exists. I don't think the Guardian has anything to apologize for. It'd be great if we all got a better technical view of these systems. But asking to receive it third-hand through a leaker and a non-technical reporter is probably a bit much.

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The Guardian could at least "apologize" for using "scare quotes" in the process of walking back their claim.

That's underhanded for any media publication that aspires to the idea of "journalism".

In addition they could have at least mentioned the idea that other theories emerged as to what the slides they presented might actually mean that way people would be aware that there were other valid conclusions that could possibly be drawn, especially by those with tech and government experience.

British papers tend to do that not as "scare quotes" but because they often quote someone else's description of an event in their headlines, or refer to it in the article.

The Guardian isn't walking back anything. The submitted article just takes another Guardian article about a different aspect of the story (article title: "NSA scandal: Microsoft and Twitter join calls to disclose data requests") and proceeds to call it a walk-back, which it is not.

No. Rather than issue a direct correction to their initial story which so falsely represented the facts on the ground that all of the US's largest internet companies simultaneously issued categorical denials, the Guardian ran another article that redefined the term "direct access", knowing (as they had to have) that their own original interpretation of the term, in black and white in Greenwald's original reporting, had been repeated as fact by numerous major media outlets.

If the tech companies have been slandered unfairly, why don't they sue the Guardian?

Because The Guardian has 19,998 more documents that they don't know the contents of.

If they have have acted properly, why should that stop them?

It's hard to lie effectively when you don't know how much of the truth is known.

Because nobody, probably not even at the NSA, is confident that they actually know the full extent of what's going on.

So true. That's one of the most dangerous aspects of conducting this type of thing in the dark.

They think the clear denial and resulting walk-backs are enough.

I wonder if all those tech giants could pursue libel charges (low standards to proof in the uk) against the Guardian. Uh oh.

> The Guardian could at least "apologize" for using "scare quotes" in the process of walking back their claim.

Seems to me that the claim from the article re scare quotes is nonsense.

There are no scare quotes in the guardian piece. There are, however, lots of quotes.

The things that the article claims are scare quotes (the relevant passage "...That has allowed the companies to deny that there is “direct or indirect” NSA access, to deny that there is a “back door” to their systems, and that they only comply with “legal” requests...") are, if you actually read the guardian's article and see the context, clearly terms quoted from the companies' denials (given more fully earlier in the article), the point of the passage being to explain why the companies denials were true given the specific terms used.

What are you talking about? They are quotes, not "scare quotes" (see how I just quoted you?).

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