{"id":136789,"date":"2014-08-14T16:22:11","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T16:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=136789"},"modified":"2014-08-14T19:19:49","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T19:19:49","slug":"npr-presents-cia-backed-group-independent-expert-snowdens-harm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/npr-presents-cia-backed-group-independent-expert-snowdens-harm\/","title":{"rendered":"NPR Presents CIA-Backed Group as Independent Expert on Snowden’s ‘Harm’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Naureckas\u00a0<\/em>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald was on\u00a0Democracy Now!<\/strong>\u00a0Wednesday morning (8\/13\/14<\/a>) talking about his new piece in the\u00a0Intercept<\/strong>\u00a0(8\/12\/14<\/a>) critical of an\u00a0NPR<\/strong>\u00a0report (Morning Edition<\/strong>,\u00a08\/1\/14<\/a>) describing “tangible evidence” of a “direct connection” between Edward Snowden’s revelations of unchecked National Security Agency spying and increased Al-Qaeda efforts to protect its communications via cryptography.<\/p>\n

Greenwald called the report, by\u00a0NPR<\/strong>\u00a0reporter Dina Temple-Raston, “a pure and indisputable case of journalistic malpractice and deceit.” It’s hard to say he doesn’t have a point.<\/p>\n

The piece is basically a summary of claims made by Recorded Future, described by Temple-Raston as a “big data firm” and “a tech firm based in Cambridge, Mass.” She didn’t describe it, as she did in a 2012 report (Morning Edition<\/strong>,\u00a010\/8\/12<\/a>), as a group with “at least two very important financial backers: the CIA’s investment arm, called In-Q-Tel, andGoogle Ventures<\/strong>. They have reportedly poured millions into the company.”<\/p>\n

Not only is Recorded Future financially backed by the CIA, the intelligence community is one of its\u00a0chief clients<\/a>\u00a0(along with Wall Street), and In-Q-Tel. It’s a registered vendor for the NSA itself, though it refused to tell Greenwald whether it has any actual contracts with the agency.<\/p>\n

This is the company that Temple-Raston brought in to substantiate claims by “US government officials” that “revelations from former NSA contract worker Edward Snowden harmed national security”\u2014without letting listeners know that it was not an independent authority, but a entity with close financial ties to the intelligence community whose claims it was vouching for. This is indeed journalistic malpractice, and merits a correction byNPR<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

But what about the substance of the claim that\u00a0NPR<\/strong>\u00a0found newsworthy enough to base a segment around? It doesn’t pass the laugh test. In essence, Recorded Future is saying that there were significant changes made to encryption software distributed by militant Islamic groups after Snowden’s revelations\u2014and that’s “good circumstantial evidence” that Snowden was the cause of those changes.<\/p>\n

That is, of course, a textbook example of the logical fallacy known as\u00a0post hoc ergo propter hoc<\/em>\u2014Latin for “after this, therefore because of this.” But when you actually look at Recorded Future’s reports, you see the changes weren’t even “after this.” Here’s the timeline as\u00a0presented<\/a>\u00a0by Recorded Future:
\n\"Recorded<\/a>
\nThe colored dots are activity related encryption programs associated with various Islamist groups\u2014and the blue line is June 2013, when Snowden came out with his revelations. Note that there was a major burst of activity that started well before Snowden came forward and continued afterward\u2014involving Asrar al-Dardashah, a program to encrypt instant messages released in February 2013 by the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Global Islamic Media Front. In its timeline, Recorded Future presents this as the first significant change in jihadist transcription techniques since 2007.<\/p>\n

But when it comes time to analyze the timeline, this pre-Snowden release mysteriously disappears:<\/p>\n

The timeline above tells a compelling story showing how four to five months after the Snowden disclosures both mainstream AQ, as well as the break-off group ISIS, launches three new encryption tools.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, by blatant cherry-picking you can produce “a compelling story”\u2014as in, good enough to fool\u00a0NPR<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Naureckas\u00a0 RINF Alternative News Glenn Greenwald was on\u00a0Democracy Now!\u00a0Wednesday morning (8\/13\/14) talking about his new piece in the\u00a0Intercept\u00a0(8\/12\/14) critical of an\u00a0NPR\u00a0report (Morning Edition,\u00a08\/1\/14) describing “tangible evidence” of a “direct connection” between Edward Snowden’s revelations of unchecked National Security Agency spying and increased Al-Qaeda efforts to protect its communications via cryptography. Greenwald called the report, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-136789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-politics","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}