Asked today to elaborate on his reasons for alleging that Snowden “had help,” Rogers, through a press aide, declined to comment.
Asked today to elaborate on his reasons for alleging that Snowden “had help,” Rogers, through a press aide, declined to comment.
The point of this sort of statement is not persuade or clarify, but to muddy the waters and confuse the public. All he has to do is get the statement out there, and people that aren't paying close attention will conclude that it's an open question.
If he goes too far, he can always tone it down, change his mind "based on new evidence" or even apologize if it comes to that. People that criticize him will have to acknowledge his new position. But people that aren't paying close attention won't notice, and any retractions won't connected back to his original statement. That will still be out there on the net, getting quoted, linked to, retweeted etc, doing it's job of misinforming the unwary.
It won't, until we figure out to fetch such information automatically in a proper context.
Elsewhere on HN there's a discussion right now about an piece of journalistic nonsense thrashing Google that was written by a person who is known to exaggerate and write falsehood in her articles. I know that because someone brought it up in the comments; what I would like to have is a small pop-up, appearing immediately as I open the article, that says: "warning, this article was written by a known liar with history of writing falsehood".
It doesn't matter if stupid statements never disappear, until we have a way for them to resurface when needed.