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Comment by matthewmcg | Hacker News Reader

"But the case has also generated concerns among some within the U.S. intelligence community that top Justice Department officials — stung by criticism that they have been overzealous in pursuing leak cases — may now be more reluctant to bring criminal charges involving unauthorized disclosures to the news media, the sources said. One source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said there was concern 'there is no longer an appetite at Justice for these cases.'"

Aren't these comments themselves probably unauthorized disclosures to the news media?

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This is probably a trial balloon [1], a tactic of leaking information in order to gauge the reaction.

For a long time in US foreign crime/terrorism policy there has been a sense of "find our enemies, no matter where they are, no matter the cost." Changing that positioning would be a big U-turn in rhetoric.

By floating this change under the guise of "sources close to the matter", they get to gauge the reaction of interested parties while maintaining cover of deniability if it's poorly-received.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon

is yahoo.com good enough to function as a trial baloon (does this publication have access to effective actors, does it have enough clout), or do you need the New York Times for that?

Is at least good enough to see the reaction here in HN, hypothetically speaking.

The NY Times is well aware of what is published on line. So are the remaining metropolitan daily newspapers.

> Aren't these comments themselves probably unauthorized disclosures to the news media?

Offically, yes. In practice, no. My understanding is that government orgs need some amount of non-official contact with journalists in order to get information out to the public. That is partly so they can make favorable information disclosures without it seeming official.

One could view the comment you quoted as an attempt to slightly improve the image of the Justice Dept and intelligence community without risking those entities appearing to be "soft on crime" (which is what would likely happen if they issued an official statment).

assuming that the comments are those that the directors of the nsa or cia like, then it's an authorized disclosure. Only the delusional would view either org as soft on leakers.

Whoa whoa whoa! Now we're getting deep into what used to be called "Kremlinology". Back in the depths of the Cold War (and even today, from North Korea) the Soviet government would issue "news" that was blatantly untrue manure, and nothing else. So people would try to divine real meaning from arcane aspects of the untrue manure.

If they need to "make favorable information disclosures without it seeming official", and they need to improve their image without appearing to be "soft on crime", they should just say so, rather than making unofficial official statements and jumping through flaming semantics hoops like linguistic circus lions. We know those TLAs are rogue, but if we need to apply Kremlinology to understand them, they've lost their moral and linguistic anchors as well.

Except that leaks to the press as a way of trying to control a story (or to simply play bureaucratic knife fights) is a DC art as old as time. Such things happen in other countries including Russia, though the Kremlin promulgating "blatantly untrue" material isn't quite the same as leaking stories to the press...

Except that these unofficial official leaks are now in the Sacred Homeland Security arena! Think of the children! Terrorist must not triumph! If you give them an inch they'll abuse a mile of it right into the ground!

Seriously, off the record stuff about unemployment statistics is one thing. Leaking stuff about drones and TSA and so forth is entirely another, or so we're told. Isn't James Risen in the doghouse over exactly that sort of thing?

> they've lost their moral and linguistic anchors as well.

Whoa whoa whoa, I thought the intelligence apparatus was a benevolent entity!

I was not justifying their method (or even saying that the unofficial/unauthorized leaks were truthful), merely offering a possible explanation of why they are allowed to happen (or, likely, encouraged).

When I said "favorable information disclosures", I meant favorable to the agency involved, not necessarily to anybody else.

"White House Kremlinology" is a phrase I first ran into a decade ago; you can google it. I hate that this is the state of things, but it is.

The main goals of these "hints" is to

1) Release the information to the public.

2) Not be on the official record of releasing such information.

Maybe Justice Dept. doesn't want to be on the record about not towing the party line or not being "tough" on leakers, but at the same time, it perceives the public is getting a little fed up with these NSA shenanigans. So they don't want to make it official, as it would seem as the executive branch is devided in its public stance.

So they test the waters by releaseing an "anonymous" hint like that and then see what happens.

This also, interestingly, can serve as a hint-hint to the NSA management to tone it down a bit, as Obama is getting some bad rap about this and so on. Sometimes the most direct message is not a direct message but through an anonymous hint like this. (Directed both at media, people but also government agencies as well).

This is nothing new and is tried and true PR technique.

Are there any ongoing efforts to disrupt PR schemes like this? I'd like to see the public less easily manipulated but I'm not sure where to start. (And, technically, not sure that I'm not also being manipulated.)

I don't think this amounts to manipulation of the public, since it's an attempt to get truthful information out into the public. Rather it's politics--like getting your friend to ask someone else's friend if she likes you.

People on HN tend to frown on this sort of politics. I'd posit that such attitudes are counter-productive. If you forced Americans to choose between two black or white options: security or liberty, you might very well not like the outcome. Sympathy towards people who leak national security information is not such a popular position that an agency can shout it from the rooftops. If you make more subtle disclosures untenable, the outcome might not work out in your favor.

Sorry, I should have clarified: Any tool or technique can (will?) be employed by either side.

I moreso wanted to know: when the security > liberty fanatics employ it against us, how can we best disrupt it?

There's also a problem with hardline Conservatives who see Snowden as a out-and-out traitor, don't see a major problem with a heavily police-friendly state, and are generally looking for any means to bash the President for not being "tough enough" with "the bad guys".

This can be a good way of saying what lot of people need and want to hear without giving the poo-flinging trolls a clear target for their displeasure.

"Unnamed sources" can usually be considered officially floated statements when coming from any major media outlet. If major news organizations printed anonymous sources in the administration saying things both that 1) didn't have any component that can be factually verified and 2) were not something that the administration wanted to release, they'd find themselves in enough trouble enough of the time that it would become difficult to do their jobs or stay profitable.

edit: they're really not anything that actual journalists should be including in their stories. Sadly, these quotes from unnamed sources are often the entire story.

I guess there are different types. Telling journalists water-cooler rumors and generics is one thing, leaking them classified docs is another. The latter probably is pursued much more vigorously than the first, even though technically the first may be policy violation too.

Yes, but the classification laws were always known to apply to pawns. The rules don't matter higher up, they never have. Use of force trickles down, not up.

If you were in power, would you really limit your propaganda to what's publicly known? What could possibly be the repercussion of selectively leaking to your advantage?

After reading enough of these unchallenged self-serving not-responsible-for-deliberate-lies voice-of-pretend-authority that's-not-piss-in-your-ear-it's-rain official-unofficial off-the-record comments, one concludes that they never have an ounce of truth to them, so the parties that theoretically would care about unauthorized disclosures are right to ignore them completely.

[EDIT] Wow, there must be a bunch of "journalists" on HN! Never mind me, just go back to parroting exactly what TPTB tell you, but not for attribution, so that none of the lies you tell on their behalf can be challenged.

Besides the content of your post, you are being downvoted because your comment is nearly impossible to parse and comes off as pretentious. Grammatically standard English would serve better to get your point across.

Fewer hyphens might also be in order.

I thought it was a TempleOS post at first.

Hahaha well that's an accomplishment of sorts. b^)

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