Snowden journalist to publish UK secrets | Hacker News Reader

Snowden journalist to publish UK secrets

reuters.com

47 pointsaburan2815 comments

Greenwald's response...

"Reuters is the absolute worst at tearing comments out of context for sensationalizing headlines. The paraphrase:

Q: Will the UK's detention of your partner deter your future reporting?

A: Absolutely not. If anything, it will do the opposite. It will embolden me: I have many more documents to report on, including ones about the UK, where I'll now focus more. I will be more aggressive, not less, in reporting.

Q: What effect do you think they'll be of the UK's detention of your partner?

A: When they do things like this, they show the world their real character. It'll backfire. I think they'll come to regret it.

REUTERS: HE VOWS TO PUBLISH DOCUMENTS ABOUT UK AFTER DETENTION, SAYS THEY WILL BE SORRY!!!"

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rm09tf

The problem is going to be that the UK tabloids will pick up the Reuters feed and then make it sound like some barmy American is threatening Our Brave Lads. Guardian readers + other 'broadsheet' readers are not the voters who elect governments over here...

Here's the pessimistic view: the authorities intentionally did this (detained Miranda) to provoke GG into releasing classified documents in a way that the popular press would interpret as "in retaliation"... thus setting up the perception in the public's eyes that GG is acting in a non-journalistic way, in a personal way, perhaps as a personal crusade "against the state"... thus making it easier for the public to swallow the idea that GG is an enemy of the state, not a journalist

That's a particularly pessimistic view of the authorities' grasp of media relations: the British mainstream public are far more likely to be interested in "how's the journalist the government tried to silence going to respond" than "what's that occasional contributor to a newspaper far too left-wing and longwinded for me to actually read got to say for himself"

If the UK government wanted the right wing media to smear GG they were best off letting them get on with it

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2350153/Journalist-h...

rather than encouraging them to change their tune

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2396745/Edward-Snowd...

I agree with what you say... but I meant the media more generally not just the right-wing media

I can see the headlines on the nightly news: "journalist GG retaliates against UK government's detention of his gay lover by publicly releasing classified documents"

and then all of a sudden it's about GG vs the government instead of what it should be, the govt vs the public interest

It's pretty horrible that airports are now used as weapons by countries against their citizens, not even for crimes but just to see what they can find. I mean somewhere, someone in charge picked up the phone or typed into a computer "hold him", there was no miscommunication or misunderstanding here. It was clear abuse of power, just because they could.

By the way, they can do the same thing to you if you live within 100 miles of a US border, you do not have to be crossing it, they can just do a border stop 100 miles in regardless where or how you are traveling. You don't have any rights at that point because of anti-terrorism laws and they can seize things and clone your phone. This is not even remotely an exaggeration.

http://news.yahoo.com/does-constitution-free-zone-really-exi...

This article makes it seem like Greenwald would be releasing the 'secrets' in a retaliatory manner, rather than (what I believe to be) his original intentions to release them anyway, to show that he is undeterred.

Does this seem disingenuous to anyone else? Why play up the (potentially non-existent) retaliatory angle?

Why? Because it gives them a good angle to bring additional attention to the story.

Similarly, if a really major news story broke today (a war starting, someone super famous dying, cure for AIDS found, etc.), i'd expect them to delay the release of these new secrets because they wont have the attention they want.

The governments and intelligence communities are desperate to turn the tide against a person rather than the agencies involved, and delegitimize Greenwald as a journalist. The story is out of control as far as the governments are concerned, and their bluntest weapons are violence (not yet) and character assassination.

I'm not surprised they are scared. Mr. Greenwald has written a New York Times bestselling book on executive authority, broken multiple storoes on his blog about wiretapping that each led to front-page stories on most major newspapers in the country, and Russ Feingold read from my blog during the censure hearings.

I don't think there has ever been a journalist as brave.

Some people may be concerned that these secrets are only going to be published because they attacked him personally. I think this is misguided.

I am more concerned by the idea that they might have otherwise gone unpublished. Hopefully he is just changing the planned release date.

I would be the first to say his style can be bombastic and he can be overly aggressive. But nobody denies that he’s very smart, and among liberal bloggers at least, very moderate and rational in his view, and unusually willing to engage debate. So it is hard to figure out what there could be about the guy that generates such strong emotions.

Releasing information as revenge for illegal detention is the wrong decision, why make it personal? Confront the illegal detention if it was illegal but don't make it reactionary and petty like this.

he's been taken way out of context. see other comments here.

I think a better headline would be:

Guardian to publish about UK's espionage equivalent of NSA program.

This headline paints it as a Britain vs. Greenwald in sort of revenge tone which, though possible, is incorrect. Besides revelations about 100% espionage is not about a tussle between two fighting children right?

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