[HN Gopher] Open Letter from Laura Poitras
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Open Letter from Laura Poitras
Author : jashkenas
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-01-14 21:41 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.praxisfilms.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.praxisfilms.org)
| jacquesm wrote:
| She pretty much outed herself though by using her own computer to
| mail the document to the intercept. That the intercept then went
| and tried to verify the veracity of the documents does not give
| them much credit either, they didn't have to forward the actual
| scans, there would have been other ways of verifying that the
| documents were real.
|
| Finally, this was clearly careless on the part of the Intercept,
| no proof has ever been given that this was malicious, and I'm not
| seeing any here.
| walrus01 wrote:
| It has been some years since I read about the original document
| leak, but as I recall, she shared documents from her workplace
| that either had printer steganography ID codes embedded into
| them (images in a raster scan of a paper document), or some
| form of digital stego IDs in electronic documents.
|
| Basically not very different from how major motion picture
| studios embed some sort of unique ID code into the compressed
| video files given out pre-release, to reviewers (and workprints
| sent to 3rd party CGI studios) so that they can track down a
| leak.
|
| None of which Winner was aware of the existence at the time.
| Some of those codes made it through to the reporting, and were
| published to the Internet, making it fairly easy for federal
| law enforcement to track her down.
|
| I have also not seen any information saying that the
| journalists who received the documents, definitively were, or
| were not aware of the presence of the ID numbers stegoed into
| the documents.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/the-m...
|
| https://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-reali...
|
| On a more meta level, it's a hard problem to solve with
| handling and publishing leaked documents, because on one side
| you have the vast resources of the NSA and the US intelligence
| community coming up with new steganographic and other methods
| to embed tracking ID numbers into documents. The full size,
| scale, budget and weight of various federal agencies'
| "counterintelligence" efforts.
|
| And on the other side you have investigative journalists who do
| not have PhD level degrees in math/cryptography, and do not
| have the technical resources to definitely search through a
| huge pile of documents and say with 100% confidence that any
| possible tracking IDs have been stripped out.
|
| I don't think I could reasonably expect a person from a
| journalism/liberal arts degree educational and work experience
| background to identify steganography.
| walrus01 wrote:
| From the NYTimes article that Poitras links to, this really
| sounds to me like a perfect conjunction of mutual screwups on
| both sides. Winner didn't know that the documents had a
| stegonographic ID embedded into them, and the people at the
| Intercept who hastily published high-resolution raster scans of
| them didn't know or care either. Really seems like there's 50%
| blame to go around on both sides.
|
| "Ms. Winner, then 25, had been listening to the site's podcast.
| She printed out a secret report on Russian cyberattacks on
| American voting software that seemed to address some of Mr.
| Greenwald's doubts about Russian interference in the 2016
| campaign and mailed it to The Intercept's Washington, D.C., post
| office box in early May.
|
| The Intercept scrambled to publish a story on the report,
| ignoring the most basic security precautions. The lead reporter
| on the story sent a copy of the document, which contained a
| crease showing it had been printed out, to the N.S.A. media
| affairs office, all but identifying Ms. Winner as the leaker."
| nr2x wrote:
| Meanwhile, Barton Gellman, who also worked with Snowden, has kept
| churning out great reporting [0], while Greenwald and Poitras
| kept trying to ride on the coattails of Snowden long past the
| point of relevance.
|
| [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-
| if...
| kome wrote:
| Greenwald did a quite an amazing job with Bolsonaro.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/world/americas/glenn-gree...
| nr2x wrote:
| Fair, that's a good point.
| yepnopemaybe wrote:
| Greenwald's work exposing the corruption of Sergio Moro
| dwarfs his work exposing the NSA. Essentially, he obtained
| documents that proved Moro stage managed the prosecution's
| arguments in the case that banned incumbent President Lula
| da Silva from seeking reelection. This cleared the field
| for Bolsenaro, who put Moro in charge of the federal
| judiciary. Where Greenwald's reporting on NSA changed
| neither policy or public opinion, his reporting on Moro has
| transformed the political situation in Brazil and caused
| Moro to resign.
| jancsika wrote:
| At least wrt Greenwald, the upshot of your comment is that you
| don't pay attention to news out of Brazil. He's done some
| pretty important investigative stories there, one of which they
| tried to indict him for. None of those stories had to do with
| the Snowden leaks.
|
| He also continues to rewrite/update the same plodding OpEd
| about how no one should forget that Democratic apparatchiks and
| pundits are also hypocritical, self-serving and untrustworthy
| asshats. Not the most incisive journalism by any metric, but
| again unrelated to Snowden leaks.
| DevKoala wrote:
| How is this relevant? Poitras is highlighting that an informant
| was not protected accordingly, and that the Intercept is no
| longer a trustworthy resource.
| nr2x wrote:
| I think the Intercept discredited themselves as a place for
| sources to go after Reality Winner got arrested, so I've
| never seen the point of the enterprise past that event.
| Otherwise, my point is more she's complaining about being
| fired, but as far as I can tell, she hasn't produced much
| reporting. I still respect what she and Greenwald did, but I
| think Gellman has actually continued doing good work whereas
| they haven't impressed me as much past the one big scoop.
| kome wrote:
| For context: this follow the departure of the other co-founder of
| the The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald.
| https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...
| walrus01 wrote:
| > "horrifyingly, took the lead in falsely branding the Hunter
| Biden archive as "Russian disinformation""
|
| Calling it an "archive" is laughable at best, the provenance of
| the supposed Hunter Biden laptop which was left in the custody
| of a randomly chosen computer repair shop guy who has ties to
| Giuliani and the Trump apparatus is clear. The entire thing was
| an intelligence plant that Greenwald swallowed hook, line and
| sinker.
|
| There's a _reason_ why dozens of highly respected, experienced
| investigative journalists took a good look at the information
| supposedly retrieved from this "laptop" and decided not to
| proceed with publishing any of it. Because they didn't want to
| embarrass themselves by publishing obvious fabrications.
|
| From USA Today:
|
| "John Paul Mac Isaac -- owner of The Mac Shop -- told reporters
| that a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden brought three
| liquid-damaged laptops to his repair shop in April 2019, per
| the Delaware News Journal.
|
| The man left one laptop for repair and never returned to
| retrieve it.
|
| Eventually, Mac Isaac gave a copy of the laptop's hard drive to
| Brian Costello, an attorney for Rudy Giuliani, who is the
| personal lawyer for President Donald Trump. Mac Isaac said he
| turned the hard drive over to Costello because of fears for his
| safety."
| [deleted]
| DevKoala wrote:
| What are you talking about? The story was worth reporting and
| it wasn't until the election was over and verified that major
| news sources decided to push it to the public.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/09/politics/hunter-biden-tax-
| inv...
|
| Greenwald was right in calling the bias.
| walrus01 wrote:
| So either the "laptop" was given to Giuliani, or to the
| custody of the FBI, which is it? If it was given to the
| FBI, how did Giuliani come into possession of a large
| number of files supposedly retrieved from it, and share
| them with any journalist who would listen?
| DevKoala wrote:
| The laptop was given to the FBI first and then someone
| from the FBI leaked it to Giuliani after the
| investigation was not moving. Once it became public a
| senate committee verified the validity of the evidence
| and the investigation made it to the public.
| mthoms wrote:
| If I recall, it was the repair shop owner who shared an
| image of the hard drive with Giuliani's people. He
| thought the FBI wasn't doing anything about it.
| [deleted]
| haroldp wrote:
| Digital data is not hard to duplicate. Both can be true.
| fit2rule wrote:
| The repair shop made disk images (part of the repair
| process), then gave the laptop to the FBI, and then
| shared the disk images.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > What are you talking about? The story was worth reporting
| and it wasn't until the election was over and verified that
| major news sources decided to push it to the public.
|
| "Hunter Biden" is not one monolithic story. IIRC,
| Giuliani's story was all about that laptop (and trying to
| make it look like _Joe_ Biden was involved), but that
| laptop may in fact have _nothing to do_ with this tax
| probe. The existence of the latter doesn 't necessarily
| validate the former.
|
| According to the story you posted:
|
| > Hints of the investigation emerged after President Donald
| Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, helped
| orchestrate news stories centered on a laptop purported to
| belong to Hunter Biden and said to include his business
| documents and other personal material.
|
| > The FBI took possession of the laptop in late 2019,
| according to a computer repairman in Delaware who showed
| reporters a copy of a subpoena. The subpoena is real,
| according to people briefed on the matter, but the FBI and
| prosecutors in Delaware have refused to confirm the
| existence of the investigation.
|
| > It's unclear whether the laptop's contents are relevant
| to the ongoing federal probe and whether investigators can
| even use them, given potential chain of custody
| requirements for evidence.
|
| Pay attention to that last paragraph.
| DevKoala wrote:
| It was actually Hunter's business partner Bobulinsky that
| went on Fox News to claim that he was working for Biden,
| and first met him during a scheduled time that has been
| redacted from Biden's public calendar.
|
| No mainstream press with access to Joe Biden ever dared
| to ask Joe a question so that he could at least defend
| himself from the allegations.
| netsharc wrote:
| From your link: > It's unclear whether the laptop's
| contents are relevant to the ongoing federal probe and
| whether investigators can even use them, given potential
| chain of custody requirements for evidence.
|
| It really doesn't pass the smell test that it was actually
| Hunter's laptop. Unless he's majorly stupid (I suppose
| that's a possibility...), why would he just choose a random
| computer repair store and leave his laptop(s) there.
| According to snopes.com, the owner didn't even see Hunter
| drop off the laptop:
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/10/15/hunter-biden-
| laptop-g...
|
| If I were Hunter Biden, I would certainly have connections
| who I can call and ask about fixing a laptop which has
| secret information, and I would check that they're not a
| Trump supporter first. OTOH, if it really was Hunter Biden
| and he wasn't an idiot, then him giving the laptop to some
| stranger would mean he was sure there were no secrets on
| that laptop. (Then again, people don't understand tech and
| he might've thought deleting a file removes all traces of
| it).
|
| But Twitter and Facebook censoring the story isn't that
| neutral either, it's obvious who they wanted to win the
| election.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Hunter has suffered through documented periods of crack
| addiction and it was during one of these episodes that he
| lost the laptop.
| netsharc wrote:
| Got a source for your assertion?
| f430 wrote:
| I just don't think that enough people are paying attention to the
| disappearing freedom of information and expression in America.
|
| I believe that it has reached a point of no return and that you
| should expect what you saw in China to be a precusor to what will
| come to America now.
|
| Congratulations! You've played yourself America.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Seriously, these concerns shouldn't be a partisan issue, but
| today everything is just so tribalistic. We are laying the
| floor for potential bad actors to remain unchallenged.
| f430 wrote:
| We are going to have fabulously rich 1% more than ever in the
| history of human kind, free from all checks and bounds, they
| can just dictate what is "fake news" or "alt-right" or
| whatever taboo label.
|
| Even if we ever saw Jeffrey Epstein's tapes, a huge chunk of
| the population would deny it as "fake news" because it was
| reported by an "media outlet with poor reputation".
| mrkstu wrote:
| Don't feed conspiracists by shutting down legitimate reporting,
| don't protect the powerful from inquiry, just because they are on
| 'your side,' don't feel the need to de-platform those with a
| record of truth-telling, when they go after those you admire. Let
| the muckrakers muck as much as they can and we'll all get closer
| to the truth, however uncomfortable it may be.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > Glenn Greenwald
|
| Oh yeah, the guy who decided that the Giuliani/Randomly chosen
| computer repair shop/Hunter Biden laptop story was of such earth-
| shattering, incredible importance that he chose it as the hill he
| wanted to die upon, resigning from The Intercept in protest
| because the editors wouldn't let him publish stories about it.
|
| Seriously? Greenwald has lost all credibility.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=giuliani+...
| seppin wrote:
| Yes, but Glenn and Snowden are deities on HN. Your comment
| won't stand for long.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive comments.
|
| Edit: you've been using HN primarily (exclusively?) for
| political and ideological battle. We ban accounts that do
| that, regardless of what ideology they're battling for (and
| regardless of overgeneralizations about "deities"). We have
| to, because this is the #1 thing that destroys HN for its
| intended purpose of curious conversation, and because raging
| hellfires have burning all over this site lately. You've also
| broken the site guidelines egregiously and repeatedly in
| other ways, e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25694321. That's not
| cool.
|
| I've therefore banned your account. If you don't want to be
| banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give
| us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the
| future. They are here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| No, we don't agree with whoever your political adversaries
| are. We're merely trying to maintain some semblance of an
| _interesting_ internet forum, or at least to stave off
| decline: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=stave%20by:dang&dateRa
| nge=all&....
| monocasa wrote:
| I mean, he left because as a founder of the intercept, he had a
| contract item that editors couldn't deny him the ability to
| publish in the intercept on the grounds of content. When they
| told him that he couldn't publish anything that could be
| construed as against Biden, he left as they had broken their
| contract with him.
| edlebert wrote:
| Yes. IIRC they were going to let him publish the story, he
| just had to remove everything about Joe Biden, lol.
| greenburger wrote:
| The letter only mentions Greenwald to appropriately credit his
| reporting along with hers for the founding basis of The
| Intercept. Otherwise the mention of his departure from The
| Intercept is notably absent.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Lack of mention of the manner and specific reason for his
| departure are highly suspicious in and of themselves.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents. Jumping into
| the nearest lava pit immediately upon some provocation is, to
| quote my son when he was two, "what we not do".
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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(page generated 2021-01-14 23:01 UTC)