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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

It's a high profile tech magazine with mainstream credibility. It would be silly for them not to have FBI sources.

It just doesn't seem right for media sites to "partner" with FBI/the government for a story like this, and give them a platform to spread its propaganda.

For the record I'm one of the people who believe what the FBI did here is wrong. I imagine if they had know what it is and what it can do early on, they would've shut down Bittorrent Inc, too, for "facilitating piracy", "conspiracy to create piracy", "money laundering" (by making money as a company that creates torrent technology), and some other CFAA charges, for good measure - all of them bullshit.

This isn't entirely propaganda, though. Sure, the government's version of events is, but it's also a newsworthy event that Wired's readership would be interested in. Why would they not cover it, or foster partnerships that make it easier to get access to stories like this? It is literally their job.

Some guy in a fedora and freebsd t-shirt hanging around sleazy bars downtown waiting for his flipped FBI agent to come around and drop him some new juicy goss on the latest... TF2 hat update? Sounds legit

Well, Wired is a business, and cybercrime stories are pretty good business, and a lot of people the FBI might want to reach (and let know that they're on to your games, criminal scum) probably read Wired. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship, and this isn't exactly bad press for the government, so it might be more legit than it sounds at first glance.

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