NSA goes on 60 Minutes: the definitive facts behind CBS's flawed report | Hacker News Reader

NSA goes on 60 Minutes: the definitive facts behind CBS's flawed report

theguardian.com

104 pointsSworDsy10 comments

> The lack of specificity made cybersecurity expert Robert David Graham dubious that the plot NSA claimed to discover matched the one it described on TV. “All they are doing is repeating what Wikipedia says about BIOS,” Graham blogged, “acting as techie talk layered onto the discussion to make it believable, much like how Star Trek episodes talk about warp cores and Jeffries Tubes.”

A nice summery of how to read NSA PR.

I think the recent history of 60 Minutes might be what it looks like when the government starts calling in its favors.

What else are you referring to? I can think of:

- The Prime Air story (can't really see how that would have to do with the government)

- The botched Benghazi story (that doesn't quite make sense)

Or is it something else?

Nah, just basic incompetence and lack of journalistic integrity, and it ain't recent. Remember "Unintended Acceleration" from the 80ies? Complete and utter BS, yet they not just ran with it, but stuck with it after the BS was "exposed" (in quotes because it was obvious beforehand).

(Unintended Acceleration was the claim in the 80ies that Audis, when in reverse, would accelerate when the driver was stepping on the brake pedal without touching the gas pedal. Mechanically completely impossible and never actually happened. http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cjm_18.htm)

Beautiful read! Reminds me of last years Toyota with a similar 'issue' ;-)

There has to be a better explanation of why Dan Rather was fired and Lara Logan just got a promotion. Now, as far as incompetence, I have a question of whether I'm putting the cart before the horse, particularly whether the NSA/Bezos/etc. used 60min because they knew they could get their message out predictably, because CBS News is a dead horse.

I have no idea how accurate the 60 Minutes story was, but this article is woefully unconvincing. Calling your rebuttal "the definitive facts" is childish.

My favorite line is: "There are as many red flags surrounding the BIOS Plot as there are in all of China." Who writes this?

I am not surprised by the lack of comments given how badly written this article is. I can only imagine the upvotes are in sympathy with the title.

I didn't find the article poorly written on an absolute scale, at least the first couple of sections (I haven't finished reading the whole thing). Are there specific sentences or paragraphs that bother you?

Pundits said the Bezos interview with the Prime Air gimmick ruined CBS credibility.

Now we have this to cement their new reputation as "PRNewsWire.tv"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com