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Comment by etiam | Hacker News Reader

"Intelligence officials asked the Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying that it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read.

The three organisations removed some specific facts but decided to publish the story because of the value of a public debate about government actions that weaken the most powerful tools for protecting the privacy of internet users in the US and worldwide."

Was there a fuller version of this article available to the public at some point?

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Probably not. Apparently they're running all these articles by the NSA, GCHQ, etc first. Which I think is beyond ridiculous at this point. This is probably the most damning article of them all so far, and we all deserve to know the precise scope of these organizations' cryptanalytic capabilities that regard the public as "adversaries."

Thank you for clarifying.

So this whole thing is one big "limited hangout" - designed to get some info out there and let the angst swell, then subside -- alowing for nothing to change.

It's basically one globally conditioning effort to reveal and get the world to accept, there is utterly zero privacy. Everything you do is monitored and watched. Period. Oh - and we forcefully and violently protect our stealing of your income to fund this.

Actually it's a good thing they are able to get a response from agencies about their information. Their response in this case supports that the leaked information is real and also that the agencies care about its release. This just strengthens the case against them and reinforces the idea that they are the bad guys in the story.

I agree it's ridiculous. However, given what happened to Chelsea Manning, and given that the Guardian, NYT, etc can't always know in advance what could be construed as "aiding the enemy" it's sensible (in a self-preserving sense of the word) for them to get a NSA/GCHQ opinion on what pieces would "aid the enemy" and what wouldn't. They don't necessarily have to listen to the NSA or GCHQ, but later in court they can legitimately claim that they made an honest effort to avoid divulging information that would aid the enemy.

Nope. Newspapers working with leaked documents like this usually give governments a heads-up that they will be running such and such a story and they ask for input on what should or shouldn't get published. They then take that into consideration.

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