Leaker of US Documents Shared More Secrets Earlier in a Discord Group with 600 Members (japantimes.co.jp) 119
Remember that U.S. Air National Guardsman who's suspected of leaking classified documents? The New York Times has discovered "a previously undisclosed chat group on Discord" where the same airman apparently also posted "sensitive information" including "secret intelligence on the Russian war effort," this time to a group with 600 members — and "months earlier than previously known," in February of 2022.
The case against Airman Teixeira, 21, who was arrested on April 13, pertains to the leaking of classified documents on another Discord group of about 50 members, called Thug Shaker Central. There, he began posting sensitive information in October 2022, members of the group told The Times. His job as an information technology specialist at an Air Force base in Massachusetts gave him top secret clearance... The user claimed to be posting information from the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.
The additional information raises questions about why authorities did not discover the leaks sooner, particularly since hundreds more people would have been able to see the posts... The exposure of some of America's most closely guarded secrets has prompted criticism about how the Pentagon and intelligence agencies protect classified data, and whether there are weaknesses in both vetting people for security clearances and enforcing the mantra that access to secrets should only be given to people with a "need to know."
Unlike Thug Shaker Central, the second chat room was publicly listed on a YouTube channel and was easily accessed in seconds... Apparently eager to impress others in the group who questioned his analysis, he said: "I have a little more than open source info. Perks of being in a USAF intel unit," referring to the United States Air Force... At times, he appeared to be posting from the military base where he was stationed... Airman Teixeira also claimed that he was actively combing classified computer networks for material on the Ukraine war.
When one of the Discord users urged him not to abuse his access to classified intelligence, Teixeira replied: "too late...."
The Times says they learned about the larger chat room "from another Discord user."
The additional information raises questions about why authorities did not discover the leaks sooner, particularly since hundreds more people would have been able to see the posts... The exposure of some of America's most closely guarded secrets has prompted criticism about how the Pentagon and intelligence agencies protect classified data, and whether there are weaknesses in both vetting people for security clearances and enforcing the mantra that access to secrets should only be given to people with a "need to know."
Unlike Thug Shaker Central, the second chat room was publicly listed on a YouTube channel and was easily accessed in seconds... Apparently eager to impress others in the group who questioned his analysis, he said: "I have a little more than open source info. Perks of being in a USAF intel unit," referring to the United States Air Force... At times, he appeared to be posting from the military base where he was stationed... Airman Teixeira also claimed that he was actively combing classified computer networks for material on the Ukraine war.
When one of the Discord users urged him not to abuse his access to classified intelligence, Teixeira replied: "too late...."
The Times says they learned about the larger chat room "from another Discord user."
How times change (Score:2, Insightful)
Going from “evil empire” to admiration for the Republican Party. https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.... [umd.edu]
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Such is the "life purpose" of each AC with each vacuous brain fart.
Yeah, I know farts are supposed to be Funny--but you will be hard pressed to find much Funny on Slashdot these years. I still have the habit of checking the largest of the discussions that are about to expire...
Really? That provoked the censor troll? Or was it collateral damage? Sorry for sticking a thumb in your eye, you ugly sock puppet.
Not really. That's what they call an insincere apology.
Look at the sock puppet censor troll spewing mod points!
To paraphrase from Idiocracy (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course he's guilty. Just look at him.
It continues to strike me, and evidently not just me, as *odd* that a 20 yo whose service photograph looks like the 14 yo who masturbates behind the bleachers during cheerleader practice was given admin privileges on these networks.
Then again, at my workplace, the IT monkeys fall into two categories: adults who do their job and go home, and kids fresh out of school who couldn't cut it in tech jobs and ended up IT monkeys...and also look (and sometimes act) like the kids who masturbate under the bleachers.
Re:To paraphrase from Idiocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
What seems to be lacking is the IS security on the base itself, as he shouldn't have been able to access Discord, and data transfers between SIPR and NIPR should have been locked down more. He also shouldn't have been able to get a cell phone into the locations with TS data.
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The immature kid was the tip of an inverted iceberg of grossly (criminally?) incompetent layers of management whose primary security plan was such a gross failure that it was forced to rely essentially on trust. Imagine if it wasn't some immature kid, but a competent spy in the same fucking hen house of clucking idiot management.
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Imagine if it wasn't some immature kid, but a competent spy in the same fucking hen house of clucking idiot management.
Exactly. And how would anybody ever know that they had the information if they didn't brag about it or leave a trail?
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From there, admin privileges are just some additional CBT training and being "read into" whatever program the systems he was a privileged user on.
He supposedly leaked the covert recordings of world leaders who are supposed to be our allies, stuff that's a huge egg on our face if it gets leaked. Those made me doubt that it came from him. I can believe that some classified stuff is freely floating around inter-agency surveillance exchange programs, but transcripts or recordings of secret surveillance operations should be a very limited access item to even know exists, much less access.
Either the government has some huge flaws in their security protoc
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Re:To paraphrase from Idiocracy (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, in any case a whole organization was stupid here and with critical stuff. I shudder to think how these idiots handle nuclear weapon safety.
Re: To paraphrase from Idiocracy (Score:3)
There was a story on npr or nyt about the guys sitting in the silos maybe 10 years ago. They were all 20-somethings, in grad school (either one of the service universities or online program at places like Purdue) and spent their shifts doing homework, figuring they're not going to have to be turning any keys or pushing any buttons.
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If you're on NIPR the highest classification you'll find is secret. If you're on SIPR, you can find everything above secret but you can't use a machine capable of writing to external media. You're using a specially modified machine running Horizon thin client, which itself is setup to not allow any transfer of media files.
What I want to know is how did he get files off SIPR?
FISA, CIA and NSA markings (Score:5, Interesting)
My understanding is that the leaked documents contain classification markings from FISA, CIA, and the NSA. None of those documents sound like they are in the scope of operations for the USAF, "intelligence" branch, or not. The Airman is also a raw recruit, an E3. That is a rank typically granted to apprentices.
Forget the Airman. I want to know how an E3 got access to documents completely outside the security domain of his unit.
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Forget the Airman. I want to know how an E3 got access to documents completely outside the security domain of his unit.
Why not both [blogspot.com]? Find out how he got access to the documents and why he thought it would be a good idea to post said secret documents for everyone to see? If it was to show off then procedures need to be put in place to more fully vet these people. If it was a side attempt to provide information to the enemy, then hang him.
And not only how the got hold of them, but why no one knew they were
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If it was a side attempt to provide information to the enemy, then hang him
what enemy? so you are acknowledging that the us is at war? your president isn't going to like that ...
nah, forget it, it was a rhetorical question and the answer is pretty obvious. i'll just happily point out this little fault in reasoning:
If it was to show off then procedures need to be put in place to more fully vet these people.
if it was? and if it wasn't, all fine and dandy? how is a kid's intention relevant to a security procedure? the mere possibility of that risk means those procedures need to be in place. yesterday. so, this is just hot air.
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By "enemy" they clearly meant adversarial nations like Russia or China. Dont be a twit.
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The constitution is very specific on treason. They couldn't even get a treason conviction in the Rosenberg trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:FISA, CIA and NSA markings (Score:5, Insightful)
If these documents were created and stored on an IT system then the paper counting scheme will clearly no longer apply. The issue is then more one of how the documents managed to be printed without then becoming "accountable". The fact that the alleged miscreant had some sort of network admin access suggests to me that either:
a) He printed them and then tampered with the logs which should show what has been printed (clearly there shouldn't be any printers on a TS network in the first place), or
b) He smuggled in a storage device, used his admin rights to override the locks preventing such devices from being accessed and then transferred the documents to a low classification network where there were no printing restrictions.
At the end of the day, the key problem is that you can add restrictions to higher classification networks restricting what users can do, but you need people (admins) to implement these locks and they will inevitably have the possibility to override them.
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Indeed. That person should never have gotten this access.
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Melchett: Now, I've compiled a list of those with security clearance, have you got it Darling?
Darling: Yes sir.
Melchett: Read it please.
Darling: It's top security sir, I think that's all the Captain needs to know.
Melchett: Nonsense! Let's hear the list in full!
Darling: Very well sir. "List of personnel cleared for US-Military-Secrets, as dictated by General C. H. Melchett: You and me, Darling, obviously. Field Marshal Haig, Field Marshal Haig's wife, all Field Marshal Haig's wife's friends, their families,
Enough (Score:1)
Also kids, don't use discord for private or secure things. How and why do you think the service runs on their servers and is free?
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What are your thoughts on the wars we conducted on Iraq and Afghanistan? Zero weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and two decades in Afghanistan and the Taliban takes control literally the day we leave.
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Seems to me that we didn't learn anything from VietNam. Or perhaps more correctly, the people (very wealthy/powerful) who own and operate the government for their exclusive benefit, didn't.
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Re:Our goverment is fucking LYING to us (Score:5, Insightful)
1) WTF is an "illegal war"? And what war are you talking about? Is the U.S. currently at war with some country? I mean, if we are talking about the Russian/Ukrainian war, there is one obvious bad actor (Russia, gonna spell that out for you). The U.S. is not currently at war with either country involved in that conflict.
2) Dude is not a "whistleblower". He was just bragging about his access to information. If he was a whistleblower, he would have been reporting some activities to either someone at work or a journalist, not sharing the data with his buddies on Discord.
Yes, state actors will crush whistleblowers. The U.S. has a bad track record of that, but they are not the worst of the lot. There's a certain country that favours polonium poisoning as a way of dealing with them, for example.
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That was more than just bragging. This goofy kid had serious delusions of grandeur from the sounds of it.
This one has been chugging kool-aid flavored vodka spritzers, and he wasn't doing it alone or for random shits and giggles.
Whistleblower? For who? The russia?
Re:Our goverment is fucking LYING to us (Score:4, Insightful)
It never ceases to amaze me (Score:1)
What amazes me is the number of people who think open carry is a solution to the problem because of everybody had guns they think
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Meanwhile nobody's actually questioning why random national guard kid had access to classified documents.
I think that is the main question here. And I think whoever messed up so this kid got access he was not mature enough to handle should actually be the one to go away for a long, long time.
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>Meanwhile nobody's actually questioning why random national guard kid had access to classified documents
Yes, except literally everybody talking about this guy, nobody.
My first thought, then I saw yours, O Valorous AC.
The funny thing is (Score:1)
It hasn't stopped the noise machine from fear mongering on the prospect. It's genuinely weird to watch the anti-communist crowd pivot to pro-russia even though Russia is way more authoritarian today than they wore under
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It saddens me American domestic politics is so polarized each side must work to defeat any success of the other side.
So we have Republicans throwing in with Ruseia rolling tanks through Europe for literally the exact same reason Hitler used: protecting your ethnic nationals in another country.
Having made that side mad, I shall make the other side mad. Why would Republicans do this? Why, they just came off 4 years of the other side pulling out all the stops to be 100% contrarian as well.
Re:The funny thing is (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, obviously people opposed the previous administration simply because who was at the helm. Absolutely. Thank you for your reductive insight. How silly of me to think it was because people abhorred what he espoused and the policies he pushed.
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You might be an idiot
This guy ruined his life (Score:5, Insightful)
and harmed America for bragging rights. Beyond sad.
Get off my lawn - Why back in my day (Score:5, Interesting)
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Heh. Reminds me of when we were sitting around on a graveyard shift at the facility. Us lower grades were just sitting in a daze during a break when the clown of the group grabbed a stamp and a paper and started a chant, "Secret codeword, secret codeword", stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp! He did it a few times until he tired of his simpleton outburst. He was senior to most of the rest of us, but he was short, so dumbshit stuff was the norm for him.
White, Christian, American Man (Score:3, Funny)
Stop picking on this wonderful, white, Christian, American man.
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Biden's Excellent Insurance.
Restricted access (Score:3)
access to secrets should only be given to people with a "need to know"
IIRC,the exact opposite reproach was raised after 9/11, leading to secrets being mush more shared within the intelligence community.
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tl;dr
Whataboutism and Hunter’s laptop.
Not a story that is ripe for Funny? (Score:1)
Or is it? But you merely propagated the AC's vacuous title... I know you can do better. (Or am I just parroting Mindset by Carol Dweck? Kind of a new flavor of the power of positive thinking, but perhaps with more focus on the process than the results.)
Re: It's OK when A Democrat does it (Score:5, Insightful)
...But her emails!
...But Benghazi!
...But his laptop!
Re: It's OK when A Democrat does it (Score:5, Informative)
But it was Russian disinformation
Re: It's OK when A Democrat does it (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't give one fuck about Hunter Biden's laptop, but how is information about an actual event that actually happened considered disinformation, particularly of the Russian variety?
Re: It's OK when A Democrat does it (Score:4, Interesting)
Well for one the information was highly suspect at the time. The story of it being found doesn't add up (most likely scenario was it was hacked/stolen data and then the laptop was planted to "find"). There's no legitimate way the information could have been obtained by the RNC.
Then the story was being pushed hard by Russian trolls and Republicans. There was wasn't anything of substance involved, but it was clear they were trying to make it seem like there was in order to sway the election similar to how the Clinton emails did in 2016.
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So you say it looked back then that it was suspicous because the content was damning, now that it turned to be real that same content is nothing of substance, and you still say it is Russian disinformation. You managed to contradict yourself TWICE.
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Nope, maybe English isn't your first language so I'll explain it a bit more.
The story of how the laptop was found was suspicious (dropped off at a random blind MAGA shop then the hard drive contents hacked and sent to Giuliani).
The content has never been anything damning, but the Russian trolls have been trying to make it seem like it was. Similar to how they were trying to say that a pizza shop was a child sex ring, they were hoping they could make up some scandal with this one as well.
The Russian disinfo
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If the content is not damning, why would you, the left media, the 50 government officials, or even the supposed "Russian trolls" care? Obviously there is something in it that concerns all those people very much if they are spending all that energy on it.
You can't have it both ways.
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As I said, the interpretation and coverage of it was meant to sway the election. It's been well covered now and apart from some Biden dick pics, there wasn't anything exciting.
We saw the exact scenario play out in 2016. The Clinton emails weren't damning, but Russia and the Republicans used them to manufacture outrage.
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The story of how the laptop was found was suspicious (dropped off at a random blind MAGA shop then the hard drive contents hacked and sent to Giuliani).
What the hell does this even mean? What's a MAGA shop anyways?
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As I said, the interpretation and coverage of it was meant to sway the election.
That doesn't make it disinformation. If you want an example of disinformation meant to sway an election, look no further than this:
http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/ht... [cbsnews.com]
Remember that whole thing with the faked memo that ended Dan Rather's career in disgrace, that Democrats still to this day insist was accurate even if the memo was forged?
Yeah about that, look at page 61:
Mapes eventually tracked down Lieutenant Colonel Killian’s son who, according to her notes, told her that then-Lieutenant Bush had volunteered for active duty in Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.
And page 130:
However, Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG, did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots.72 For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.” Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.
Yet despite all of this, the first "evidence" that the Rather/Mapes team obtains to support what he wanted to find, he disregards a
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"MAGA" is a term for Trump supporters. The repair shop where the laptop was dropped off belonged to a blind one
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That doesn't make it disinformation. If you want an example of disinformation meant to sway an election, blah blah bla
Yeah it's pretty much the definition of disinformation. Saying false things, even if there was some basis of truth in them
Re: It's OK when A Democrat does it (Score:1)
Yeah it's pretty much the definition of disinformation. Saying false things, even if there was some basis of truth in them
This, right here, is what we call cognitive dissonance.
There was no basis in truth at all in that Dan Rather memo. Literally none. Don't take my word for it, read the report. The TL;DR bits are on page 131, where they essentially concluded that Mapes was being dishonest. They even mention the service records, which directly contradicted what the memo was saying.
Meanwhile, we've also got this whole laptop shit, which it turns out that...yeah, in fact it did happen. Even the FBI, who very obviously aren't MAG
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Ok, first, no one cares about the Dan Rather memo - that's not part of the discussion, that was something from a couple decades ago.
Second, there is STILL no story with the laptop contents. There's no smoking gun, no scandal. Just some boring emails and a few dick pics. The only part that could be considered a scandal is if the laptop or contents were stolen and planted (seems quite likely). It's confirmed that the contents were hacked and provided to people in the GOP, but right wingers are instead mo
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A description of the mechanism of cognitive dissonance I've read (in Jerry Weinberg's Psychology of Computer Programming) is, when the person hold two contradictory beliefs (laptop not important and laptop imporant), facing that fact would damage self esteem -- and in this case open the Pandora's box of needing to reappraise many other beliefs about the Party, the system of values and so on -- so to protect the person from the pain the ego invents any exuse to explain away the contradiction.
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Ok, first, no one cares about the Dan Rather memo - that's not part of the discussion, that was something from a couple decades ago.
And I don't care about the laptop thing either; the only thing that interests me here is the effort to cover it up. Ditto with the memo, the story there was all about the effort even Dan Rather himself made to get exactly the narrative he wanted despite numerous red flags slapping him in the face for over 6 years.
But none of that matters. The point I'm making is that you (as in you personally) are going to label something as disinformation purely because you don't like it, and when it comes to disinformatio
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How did the contents of the laptop get sent to the GOP and Fox then? Did the FBI make a copy and send it? Pretty clear the contents were illegally acquired even if they were originally produced by Hunter
Re: It's OK when A Democrat does it (Score:2)
How did the contents of the laptop get sent to the GOP and Fox then? Did the FBI make a copy and send it? Pretty clear the contents were illegally acquired even if they were originally produced by Hunter
Supposing that narrative is 100% true, how does this become disinformation?
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That's the problem, it wasn't 100% true. If it was, we'd just call it "reporting"
Re: It's OK when A Democrat does it (Score:2)
Which part isn't true? The FBI has authenticated the contents, as have other independent analysts. It seems your only complaint is whether it was obtained legally. Regardless of whether that is the case (which it seems the courts are reviewing) and supposing it was completely illegally obtained, the underlying material, as far as everybody is aware, is authentic. So again, how does that become disinformation?
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The whole narrative was that this laptop was proving some crime and there was a big scandal, but all it showed was the candidate's son was making money off his name and liked to party. That was the disinformation
Re: It's OK when A Democrat does it (Score:2)
As far as I know, there was evidence of two crimes: Tax evasion, and something involving drugs. It does seem Biden was at least somewhat aware of the latter occuring. I don't see how that's anything not relevant to an election. Furthermore, why the hell was there so much of an effort to cover up the entire thing? And what the hell did the Russians have to do with it?
Re: It's OK when A Democrat does it (Score:2)
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Bro, I said the laptop was planted, not that it never existed. Only the most gullible people are still hanging on to this story.
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Presumably the GOP in an attempt to make another Buttery Males like in 2016. The fact that people are pretending there's anything of substance there still amazes me. An email vaguely referencing a "big guy" isn't the smoking gun you think it is
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Well for one the information was highly suspect at the time.
Suspect or not, how is a factual event disinformation?
The story of it being found doesn't add up (most likely scenario was it was hacked/stolen data and then the laptop was planted to "find").
Regardless of how it was found (aside from this having conspiracy theory written all over it on your part) that doesn't change the fact that the contents of it are apparently legitimate. So again, I ask, how is this disinformation?
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a factual event disinformation?
What event? A laptop being found and private information about someone not running was stolen? Why would that be news worthy?
Regardless of how it was found (aside from this having conspiracy theory written all over it on your part) that doesn't change the fact that the contents of it are apparently legitimate. So again, I ask, how is this disinformation?
Because it was a non-story. The parts that were verified would not be worth reporting. The disinformation was making a big story out of nothing by adding speculation. They did the same in 2016.
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So the news of the laptop is "disinformation" because the content the lapop is, according to you, "not newsworthy."
The DISinformation -- FALSE information -- here is that someone INTERPRETS the importance of the laptop content as high, whereas YOU clearly understand the laptop is NOT imporant and that no one in this country has has any reason to look at it.
That is nothing but using broken logic to validate one's emotions.
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You've almost got it. The disinformation is that there is something of interest in the data that was on the laptop.
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And you didn't get it: value judgement -- that something is "of interest" -- is neither information nor disinformation; it is an OPINION, and a minority one at that. *
It's like someone saying that Trump was a great president; it is neither information nor disinformation, just a an opinion.
(*) "Of 1,000 US voters polled by Rasmussen Reports, 63% believe the story of the first son's abandoned laptop is important and 44% think it's âoevery important.â"
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I bet you'd see similar numbers on the Steele dossier, but it would still be irresponsible to publish that right before an election as it wasn't yet verified
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Why bring Steele dossier in this conversation? You claimed earlier that someone pushing their OPINION -- that the content of the laptop is important -- is false information.
Or, are you moving goalposts? OK, you say, it may not be disinformation, but it is IRRESPONSIBLE to allow anyone to publish right before the election something that pertains to one side -- your side, of course, the anti-Trump side -- in a negative way.
Is that your position? That in a free country both an information and opinion that does
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The Steele dossier is an analogous case that happened to the Republican candidate and was handled the same way. Publishing it before the election would likely have hurt Trump, but it was unverified info and the news organizations didn't want to speculate on it.
In the Hunter laptop case, the right-wing news jumped right into the unverified info and immediately began to create some false narratives that they were pushing in an attempt to sway the election, but no one was believing them.
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"but no one was believing them."
This thread is an fascinating illustration how cognitive dissonance works.
"It was DISINFORMATION to present opinions on a factual event" => "it was IRRESPONSIBLE to talk about the factual event and present such opinions" => "NO ONE BELIEVED those opinions" (if no one "believed" then why the fuss, and btw you don't "believe" an opinion) => ... => ... => ... => ...
I'm sure there are areas in my life where emotions override my thinking in cognitive dissonance,
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I've been pretty consistent. Trying to reword it a bit because there seems to be a lack of understanding but I guess that's what happens when you join the Trump-cult, you lose the ability to see common sense
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Ah, that's the next step in the chain: you cannot understand because you vote Trump.
Here's the updated ledger:
"It was DISINFORMATION to present opinions on a factual event" => "it was IRRESPONSIBLE to talk about the factual event and present such opinions" => "NO ONE BELIEVED those opinions" => "You CAN'T UNDERSTANT this reasoning because you voted Trump" => ... => ... => ... ...
Mind you, I don't think you are unintelligent, I only think there is a force in your mind that prevents you from
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I don't understand how you're still not getting it:
It was DISINFORMATION to present opinions on a factual event, doing so is irresponsible of a news organization (but would be expected from a partisan publisher or a foreign adversary supporting a candidate.
If you're curious, there are lots of things about Trump that are bad for the country. He's corrupt, against democracy (little d), bad a diplomacy, selfish, a con-man, doesn't listen to experts, racist, sexist, the list goes on. His only positive is he's
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Your answer puts the perfect tie on this thread. I rest my case.
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Well glad you're clear that you can't grasp simple concepts. Just the type of people Trump attracts. To quote him "I love the uneducated!"
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For anyone else reading this, here is my hypothesis for what is recorded above: emotionally loaded terms cause the person to fast forward through or SKIP entirely or dramatically reduce the attention necessary to analyze a claim that induces unpleasant emotions.
If Ksevio were reading a boring paper he would probably meticulously analyze the chain of arguments and weigh them in his mind but once he sees a term like "Trump" (or "hunter laptop" or "Tucker Carlson") the mind goes on high alert, fight-or-flight
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Oof, Someone's a bit triggered at hearing Trump was a bad president
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I'll admit, the ruse failed (sort of -- all he saw was "Trump").
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The email server was George W Bush’s idea and Colin Powell told her about it. Did you ever run across this information in your “research”?
I guess let’s lock all three of them up. Deal?
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I'm glad we can agree on the law being applied unequally. https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
Re:Nope, not a whataboutism. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nope, not a whataboutism. (Score:5, Informative)
The short answer is that leaking state secrets to smear bad orange bad man bad bad bad bad bad bad bad!!!
No one "leaked" state secrets to incriminate the con artist. He did it himself by deliberately taking secret documents to his residence, then playing footsie [yahoo.com] with the FBI who was trying to retrieve them. He even went so far as to say he had every right to keep secret documents [businessinsider.com], this years after he kept asking to do so and was told no, he was not allowed to do so [businessinsider.com].
This is the same guy who finally admitted [imgur.com] he paid a porn star for sex while he cheated on his third wife.
No one needs to "leak" anything. Just let the criminal talk. He willingly incriminates himself.
Re:Nope, not a whataboutism. (Score:4, Insightful)
The punishment for breaking most laws varies depending on the severity of the break.
So the short answer is that one got limited distribution and didn't become an embarrassment for the US government. The second was plastered all over the internet and was immediately passed by the leaker to foreign citizens of a country that is busy invading a democratic ally.
If you think the differential punishment is down to the political leanings of the leaker then you are an idiotic moron.
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