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The Intercept Shuts Down Access To Snowden Trove (thedailybeast.com) 67

Posted by BeauHD from the no-longer-a-priority dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: First Look Media announced Wednesday that it was shutting down access to whistleblower Edward Snowden's massive trove of leaked National Security Agency documents. Over the past several years, The Intercept, which is owned by First Look Media, has maintained a research team to handle the large number of documents provided by Snowden to Intercept journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. But in an email to staff Wednesday evening, First Look CEO Michael Bloom said that as other major news outlets had "ceased reporting on it years ago," The Intercept had decided to "focus on other editorial priorities" after expending five years combing through the archive. "The Intercept is proud of its reporting on the Snowden archive, and we are thankful to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald for making it available to us," Bloom wrote. He added: "It is our hope that Glenn and Laura are able to find a new partner -- such as an academic institution or research facility -- that will continue to report on and publish the documents in the archive consistent with the public interest." Poitras reprimanded First Look Media for its decision to shut down its archives, and lay off 4 percent of its staff who had maintained them. "This decision and the way it was handled would be a disservice to our source, the risks we've all taken, and most importantly, to the public for whom Edward Snowden blew the whistle," she wrote.

"Late Thursday evening, Greenwald tweeted that both he and Poitras had full copies of the archives, and had been searching for a partner to continue research," reports The Daily Beast.
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The Intercept Shuts Down Access To Snowden Trove More

The Intercept Shuts Down Access To Snowden Trove

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  • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward


      The same left-wingers who see a Russian conspiracy behind every pro-Trump vote in 2016 incredulously do not consider the possibility that Snowden might actually be a Russian asset who was recruited to cause absolute mayhem.
      That's because we actually have evidence that Russia was trying to influence the 2016 election. The CIA and FBI have said exactly this. It's also because we have ZERO evidence that Snowden is a Russian asset. You think if the CIA or NSA had the slightest inklink he was recruited by the

      • Forcing Snowden to be stuck in Russia was quite beneficial to the USA in that they have a lot of people thinking there is a connection there and they continue to smear Snowden as a traitor because he was forced into Russia by the USA. The irony of that smear today is somehow lost as I've still heard it being used against him.

        The alternative was to allow Snowden to escape to a safe but neutral country. Sure they could more easily go kill him but everybody would know why and it would make him a greater hero.

    • Re:Funny thing about Snowden (Score:4, Insightful)

      by eaglesrule ( 4607947 ) <eaglesrule@nospam.pm.me> on Friday March 15, 2019 @06:01PM (#58281258)

      It's funny how right-wingers can't imagine that someone might actually take their oath to uphold and defend the constitution seriously, and reveal information that is beneficial to the public interest. A vow to protect against enemies, both foreign and domestic, which does involve blind obedience to those currently in power.

      It's incredible to assume that Snowden would even have a chance to see the inside of a courtroom. Not when there is an example to be made.

      • Plenty of "right wingers" and "conservatives" think Snowden was a hero for taking his oath seriously. It's only the oxymoronically named Intelligence Community and the corrupt State dept that hate him - and they are avowedly NOT right wingers. None of whom, I'd point out, were voted for. Zero.
        Leave the partisanship behind and learn the truth instead. (IMO, unaccountable people in power *all* suck)
        Conservatives hate Nazis and other social democrats or racists as much as anyone else - stop claiming all

        • Conservatives hate Nazis and other social democrats

          You need to stop reading the internet and read some actual history books. Nazis are not socialist[*] and they're not democratic. Calling them social democrats makes you look very very foolish.

          [*] If you believe that Nazis are socialists because they have "socialist" in the name then I assume you also believe that Democratic People's Republic of North Korea is indeed a democracy.

      • It's funny how right-wingers can't imagine that someone might actually take their oath to uphold and defend the constitution seriously, and reveal information that is beneficial to the public interest. A vow to protect against enemies, both foreign and domestic, which does involve blind obedience to those currently in power.

        It's incredible to assume that Snowden would even have a chance to see the inside of a courtroom. Not when there is an example to be made.

        It not a right or left wing issue. It is a authoritarian vs libertarian issue. Politics is not a one dimensional slide with conservatives on one side and liberals on the other it is more a n-dimensional space with lots on nuanced positions. trying to over simplify that into a binary lib v con paradigm is what makes American politics the devise social hellscape we have had for the last decade and a half.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )

          It not a right or left wing issue. It is a authoritarian vs libertarian issue. Politics is not a one dimensional slide with conservatives on one side and liberals on the other it is more a n-dimensional space with lots on nuanced positions. trying to over simplify that into a binary lib v con paradigm is what makes American politics the devise social hellscape we have had for the last decade and a half.

          But still a majority decides so even here in Europe with multiple parties like in my country we have 7 larger parties (>4%) three are left-aligned and four are right-aligned so while the internal votes will decide the flavor the overall choice is just one or the other. It absolutely happens that people don't want to vote with the party they like the most because of the company they keep. It's still millions of individual positions flattened into 2-3 dimensions then flattened to majority decisions.

        • It not a right or left wing issue. It is a authoritarian vs libertarian issue. Politics is not a one dimensional slide with conservatives on one side and liberals on the other it is more a n-dimensional space with lots on nuanced positions. trying to over simplify that into a binary lib v con paradigm is what makes American politics the devise social hellscape we have had for the last decade and a half.

          You're correct about not using sweeping generalizations, and allowing for shades of grey between the two extremes.

          However every single right-wing talking head, publication or media outlet that I'm aware of, tried to frame Snowden as a traitor. My error was in not being more specific, as yes, there are individuals who do not align with the opinion of mainstream talking points.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If Russians are behind the revelation of all these ways in which the American government has lied to us and betrayed us, then I say "thank you" to the Russians.

      I don't really care if their intent was to harm, or to help. I care about what happened: important truths came to light.

    • If Snowden was working for Russia, he obviously would've escaped to there instead of to Hong Kong (from which he only fled to Russia when he was ejected from Hong Kong). It's a ridiculous "theory".

  • Not profitable. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @05:14PM (#58281090) Journal

    Let's be real. The Intercept and First Look Media didn't do this for The Greater Good. They got publicity and advertising revenue for being gatekeeper of this information and first to break the stories. "major news outlets had ceased reporting on it years ago" means "no longer profitable". So why should they be paying people to dredge through it when they aren't producing juicy bits any more? The two "journalists" whose job was to find stuff in top security documents that were illegally leaked in the hopes of bringing in web traffic shouldn't be the least bit surprised that their "research" positions have come to an end.

    • I agree. That's why instead of telling the world what was going on, the spent the first 6 months trickling out parts that were incorrect, like the PDFs the British trainers made that misstated the capabilities of the program it was training for, because the people writing the training didn't have full access.

      So by the time they started leaking legit shit, the media was ignoring the details because it was old news. There's probably still lots of important information that hasn't been reported, but it wouldn'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by epine ( 68316 )

      Let's be real. The Intercept and First Look Media didn't do this for The Greater Good.

      Because purity is pure, with nary a visible means of support.

      Which begs the question: What was God's bag?

      Surely he wasn't into creation for the greater good or the love of humanity, at least not judging by how many of us he's already turned into pillars of salt.

  • The Snowden Files Have Essentially Been Published (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tinkerton ( 199273 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @05:15PM (#58281098)

    I think the most important bits have been published, even if this is only a tiny fraction of the whole. The main lessons to be learned from it have been communicated. After that the cost/benefit calculation just becomes much smaller. It can live on as a reference base where journalists and historians can look up data which is relevant to current events but which has little apparent value in being published outside of these events. New Look Media simple doesn't want to invest anymore in what is mostly a symbolic openness. Resistance to that assumes that there are hugely important things being covered up.

    • I should add, there will be damaging information in the remaining files but the criterium is not to do damage but to publish what the public needs to know , where the government goes wrong.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      What is important to historians? To people working on OS, crypto security?
      How do we know what is not published and that is all ok now?
      Cant sort it anymore? Let the world sort it for free using their own bandwidth, sites and with their own databases.

      • You can argue about the criteria and that other people would use other criteria for what is publishable. But the way it works now is the journalists involved and their organisation get to decide and my point is they aren't trying to cover anything up. They honestly think they published what really ought to be published. Greenwald wants to pass on the archive to historians. That means he is thinking along the same lines.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      No problem, there are plenty of people who will volunteer to do it for free. I would and of course I would be tempted to simply upload it to wikileaks. I mean there is the solution right there, why don't they take it.

      • I would and of course I would be tempted to simply upload it to wikileaks. I mean there is the solution right there, why don't they take it.

        (derisive laughter)

        Oh, wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder.

      • It's pretty clear they don't want to go the Wikileaks publishing way. It's out of his hands now but do you think Snowden would want that? He's very principled about that. He became a whistleblower to expose unconstitutional practices and runaway surveillance policies. He sure as hell doesn't want to expose the dirty linen of the state any more than necessary. Wikileaks will publish unless there is a very good reason not to. Snowden wants it the other way round Both because that does not match his pollitic

      • No problem, there are plenty of people who will volunteer to do it for free. I would and of course I would be tempted to simply upload it to wikileaks. I mean there is the solution right there, why don't they take it.

        This is precisely why they don't use the volunteers who would do it for free. The whole point was responsible journalism.

        There's a lot of sensitive information in there for good reasons. Not everything secret is bad and governments have prefectly good, utterly reasonable reasons for keeping so

        • Snowden knew he didn't have the resources to cover it all himself, so rather than go for a Manning style public infodump, he went to a responsible outlet. Wikileaks is the complete antithesis of that.

          - The reason Snowden didn't publish is not because of resources but because that was the job of journalists. He would not have published even if he had the resources.
          - I certainly won't dismiss Wikileaks as easily as you do. Their position is more radical . Maybe the main difference with The Intercept is that t

          • I certainly won't dismiss Wikileaks as easily as you do. Their position is more radical

            I'm not dismissing them, but I think it's clear that their sort of leaking is not the kind that Snowden's interested in.

  • First Look Media CEO Michael Bloom:

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/mi... [linkedin.com]

    Previously employed by:
    Guardian
    Rolling Stone
    Sony
    Viacom
    AOL
    News Corp

    Coincidence?

  • Before Snowden... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I had no connection to the following terms:

    PRISM
    Xkeyscore
    Tailored Access Operations (TAO)
    I hunt Sysadmins
    LOVEINT
    STINGRAY

    and countless others. Whether these terms will vanish from my vocabulary I don't know, but they keep
    Snowdens memory alive. These terms and their descriptions opened eyes, worldwide.

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