[liberationtech] Centralized control of the debates on the Snowden docs

[Jonathan Wilkes]

On 07/10/2014 09:28 AM, Ryan Bartos wrote:
> Hi LibTech,
>
> The debates that rage on after every trickle of snowden release
> justifiably causes much resentment. However, one crucial point about
> these debates are often missed. And that is that the exact debates we
> are having and the exact evidence on which they based are controlled
> by a tiny select few of now celebrity journalists.
>
> We are face unknown risks, given the information taking place on
> there, affects our daily lives. What devices, proceses and
> organisations we can trust will be and are being influenced by the
> contents of the documents. This not to say that all centralized
> control of a valuable set of information is always bad. But in this
> case, the trickle of information out comes with slivers blacked out,
> terribly skewing the terms of the debate that ensues. We're unable to
> see a fuller picture of even the little we see, and the values guiding
> the framework of debate of the releases are a mysterious black box to
> us. If anything we've seen so far is something to go by, we really
> ought to be more cautious about who we let control the terms of public
> debate and why.

Hi Ryan,
      If you had read the unredacted document and revealed that the 
blacked out term was the name of a tech company, how would you explain 
the significance to a general audience?

And...

Were other companies not mentioned because they don't participate, or 
because that particular document is just a single example of how the 
industry as a whole fits in to wide-net surveillance?

Did the company participate willingly?  Did they know?  Who would you 
contact at the company, and what would their response be?  Would their 
response be canned?  Would it be a non-denial denial?  How would it 
compare to similar such responses in the mid- and late- 2000s from the 
telecoms?

For each technical aspect of story, who do you know that is a 
widely-respected expert in the field relating to that aspect?  Do they 
know how to communicate to a wider audience?  If not, how do you 
paraphrase them so that they can be understood without affecting the 
intricacy of their statements to you?  How does what they say fit with 
comments made by other experts in the field?

Also-- since we know the NSA also does social engineering, which words 
do you choose to minimize digressions into irrelevant or merely symantec 
counter-arguments?  And how do you plan to deal with the attack on your 
character when they come?

Roughly how many hours of work do you think it would take you to do the 
background and write the story explaining the significance of this 
particular document?

      Professional journalism might seem like a dinosaur in the age of 
zero-marginal-cost data flying around everywhere.  But you haven't 
suggested replacing its function of informing the public with anything 
other than the royal "We".  I'd like to imagine that if you had the 
unredacted documents you'd write a 5,000 word essay addressing all the 
issues I raised above.  Unfortunately the early history of Wikileaks 
(and your apparent ignorance of that early history) suggest otherwise.

-Jonathan

>
> Regards,
> Ryan Bartos