Comment by Sauer_Kraut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sauer_Kraut | Hacker News Reader

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A better suited title would be: 'Press Paid To Fail To Ask Any NSA Questions At President Obama’s NSA Press Conference'

This fits entirely into the US government putting a noose on what journalists are and how they must act:

"The person also must intend to report on the news at the start of obtaining any protected information and must plan to publish that news."

"Feinstein suggested that the definition comprise only journalists who make salaries, saying it should be applied just to "real reporters."[1]"

[1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130807/13153224102/sen-fe...

edit: Amused myself by imaging a panicked Glenn Greenwald clutching a bunch of print-outs, shouting to a camera that he doesn't know what these are but by god they are SOMETHING.

Yes, the people that covered this press conference are a shining example of the "real reporters" that Feinstein was talking about.

It's a good thing they didn't allow any of those unpaid journalists to talk to the president. They might have actually asked some real questions, and that might have been, uh, embarrassing.

Well he does plan on publishing that protected information as soon as it becomes newsworthy by virtue of demonstrating that some politician or bureaucrat is lying to the American people. The politicians are just holding things up by not lying sooner.

Naturally my mind went to how investigations need to brew after data acquisition, but withholding bits of an investigation for those reasons is entirely proper as well.

In an era of journalism changing to be more distributed and less structured there is a multitude of ways the US government's revising seems foul. This is of course completely aside from what you said above, letting officials and others lie themselves into a box.

It seems rather dire that dissemination of information is being attacked on several fronts by what seems to be a wounded beast of a government lashing out at those around it, persons/careers/activists/even methods themselves.

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