The Top 10 Most Inaccurate and Exaggerrated NSA Stories (So Far)
As we enter the third month of The Story of the Summer, the Edward Snowden NSA saga, I thought it might be a good time recap some of the most ridiculous and inaccurate claims made by various reporters covering this beat.
I hasten to note that I’m leaving out anything from Alex Jones or other well-known conspiracy theorists, though it appears as if there’s a new litter of leftie conspiracy theorists emerging, some of whom will be mentioned below. I’m also not including self-debunked stories: for example, the posts that make outrageous claims as the lede or headline, then clarify (usually about the existence of court oversight and warrants) deep within the belly of the article itself. Furthermore, some of these items follow the 24-hour Rule: once a wild claim is made, it’s often clarified within a day or so, but only after the misleading claim has circumnavigated the internet several times over. That’s exactly what happened when it was reported that…
10) Legendary civil rights leader, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), “praises” Snowden.
On Wednesday, The Guardian‘s Paul Lewis posted an article in which the reporter misrepresented what the congressman said when asked in an interview about the Booz Allen Hamilton leaker. Lewis appears to have merely speculated that Snowden himself believes he acted in good conscience and in the tradition of others who engaged in “civil disobedience.” But then, in keeping with our 24-Hour Rule, the congressman released a statement on Thursday in which he emphatically denied The Guardian‘s framing: “I never praised Mr. Snowden or said his actions rise to those of Mohandas Gandhi or other civil rights leaders. In fact, The Guardian itself agreed to retract the word “praise” from its headline.” As of this writing, the reporter has yet to post an update to include the congressman’s statement…
9) NSA analysts enjoy “direct access” to “tap” tech giant servers.
Our first, but not our last Glenn Greenwald claim. It feels like a million years ago when Greenwald posted his now infamous article about NSA’s PRISM database and how the agency somehow “taps” (Greenwald’s word in his headline) into proprietary servers belonging to Google, Microsoft, Facebook and so forth. Like the Rep. Lewis story, this one also adhered to the 24-Hour Rule. Almost immediately, other reporters began to question how “direct access” was possible. It turns out, NSA could, in fact, directly access drop-box style secure FTP servers where the tech giants would post requested data. Additionally, Snowden himself said that there were “policy protections” against literal “direct access.” Without “direct access,” the story disintegrated into, 1) something that, for the most part, had been previously revealed anyway, and 2) a less intriguing story about an NSA database, which, by the way, was constantly misunderstood to be a “program.”
8) The British GCHQ collects 21 petabytes of data every day from underwater fiber optic cables.
If you recall, this story began as a wild theory — literally — published on The Guardian, which subsequently morphed into reality as it jumped from publication to publication, including The Atlantic (no correction issued) and The Young Turks show on Current. This was a stupendously aggravating example of how shoddy reporting circulates through the tubes and is eventually repeated as fact.
The rest at: http://thedailybanter.com/2013/08/the-top-nine-most-egregiously-inaccurate-nsa-stories-so-far/
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