You probably recall the NSA’s lie about that they were only monitoring citizen’s “metadata” during their illegal data-collection program.
I’ve beaten on this topic a fair bit before; “metadata” is a lie. [stderr] – there are certain fields in a message that you’d want to extract as part of a surveillance program, or the whole system wouldn’t work. But, more importantly, you’d get no benefit from a system that just captured partial data and generated alerts on it, because when the alert went off the first thing you’d want to do is review the contents of the message to see whether it was significant. In other words, the only way such a system would be worth building would be if you collected everything then had a computer search through it for important patterns (call those search results “metadata”) and bring matches to an analyst’s attention, along with the messages themselves.
In an interview with On The Media‘s Bob Garfield, James Risen describes how he knew the “metadata” story was a lie, as it was being told, but he was too busy wrestling with the New York Times to get them to publish anything at all about the collection program. Note that Risen knew about the program for 13 months before anything was published; the New York Times waited until they were well out of the Bush administration and into Obama’s before they said anything; the publisher was, literally, sitting down with Condoleeza Rice and listening to the administration’s arguments for why the program needed to be kept secret. That made the New York Times party to a federal crime, but the whole mess was whitewashed and Obama declined to do anything about it, because the Obama administration was doing the same thing and perhaps worse.
The whole episode is interesting and infuriating [otm] and paints a detailed picture of how even the “investigative journalists” in the media can be deflected and silenced in return for access. I feel a certain amount of sympathy for Risen, who complains about his stories getting buried – but the fact is that his stories kept getting buried and he kept “playing nice” with the utterly corrupt system. He knew a federal crime was being committed by the administration and allowed his employer to conspire (that’s the word) with the government to silence him.
After they killed the NSA story a second time, in December 2004, I was scheduled to take a book leave. I had had lots of stories killed over the last few years, I’d had this experience with the WMD pre-war intelligence coverage where my stories kept getting cut and buried, I was fed up and I felt like I couldn’t cover the war on terror the way I wanted to. I couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t respect myself if I kept letting all my stories get killed – and especially the NSA story; if it came out later from somebody else and it turned out that people would find out that I knew about it, I would never be able to live that down.
It’s odd to me that Risen would then write a book that admits that he knew things he didn’t publish because he allowed stories to be killed but that he felt bad about it. Apparently he didn’t feel bad enough. Personally, I am not impressed by whistle-blowers and investigative journalists who learn something important, sit on it for years, and then finally blow the whistle when they have a book deal. Daniel Ellsberg, who dropped the Pentagon Papers, had more important and interesting stuff that he sat on until he lost it – he only came clean and described his involvement in nuclear war planning and the SIOP once he had a book deal and is (presumably) advanced enough in years not to care anymore. I’d consider him to have been some kind of hero for humanity, had he blown the whistle immediately and not waited until he had another book deal; what if his nuclear war planning had gotten us all killed in the intervening time?
Also, allowing the memes to take hold and continue serves to ratify the lies. The fact that the New York Times and Risen knew that the “metadata” angle was a lie, allowed the “metadata” story to firmly take root to the point where, a decade later, the lie still stands:
Oh, dear, me, we “accidentally” collected all this stuff. Someone leaned on the “collect it all” button, apparently.
Here, the Wall Street Journal is not only ratifying the “metadata” lie they are promoting another, earlier, lie that it was possible to “accidentally” collect people’s SMS and phone calls. Any of you who have any experience with building large-scale IT systems will know that you don’t “accidentally” start doing that – you first must put in place a great deal of infrastructure to gather and assemble the messages for searching out the “metadata” and that does not happen by “accident.” Imagine if Google said that they “accidentally” crawled the entire internet and looked at all the web pages. Oops. NSA and Wall Street Journal want to imply that the have all those data connections, servers, storage, and content search systems lying around in some supply cabinet somewhere and maybe the cleaning lady plugged them in to the internet, “oops!”
It’s not “improper” it’s a violation of federal laws that were established after the revelation of COINTELPRO back in the 1970s. They’re saying, in effect, that they built this system knowing it was “improper” and “accidentally” turned it on again. The obvious question, which none of the congressional oversight committees will ever ask, is “if you’re so incompetent that you can ‘accidentally’ turn a system like this on, how are we supposed to believe you’re competent enough to turn it off and know it’s off?” Apparently the “on” switch is not labeled very clearly.
Now, if I set up a rifle on a bipod, sight my scope in carefully, load it, and “accidentally” pull the trigger, I don’t get to say “oops, sorry” and wash my hands of my mistake. I especially don’t get to do that a second time, unless I’m a Louisiana police officer. Or the NSA.
This stuff is literally unbelievable, unless we’re holding down the stratospheric upper reaches of some bell curve distribution of gullibility. And the New York Times continues to publish leaks that are also incredibly improbable in addition to being very conveniently timed: [nyt]
WASHINGTON – The National Security Agency has quietly shut down a system that analyzes logs of Americans’ domestic calls and texts, according to a senior Republican congressional aide, halting a program that has touched off disputes about privacy and the rule of law since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The agency has not used the system in months, and the Trump administration might not ask Congress to renew its legal authority, which is set to expire at the end of the year, according to the aide, Luke Murry, the House minority leader’s national security adviser.
Oh, come on. The “agency has not used the system in months” is an utterly bizarre claim to make about a system that is always working; i.e.: it i
s always in use collecting all the things. Does the NYT actually believe that nobody looked at any of that data in months? I’ve got a tower covered with Trump logo that I’m willing to sell them, cheap, if they believe that, especially since the government continues to want to do exactly what that program illegally does: [bgr]
The proliferation of end-to-end encryption services has been fantastic for end users and for privacy, but it has also been a huge problem for intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Ironically, it’s the Snowden revelations from a few years ago that shined light on the far-reaching powers of the NSA and its partners when it comes to mass-surveillance operations, thus pushing more tech companies to create chat and voice apps that are end-to-end encrypted. The US government is still unsure of what to do about the phenomenon, and it’s actually going as far as to consider legislation that would ban end-to-end encryption.
Nice to blame Snowden for an ongoing slow-moving failberg that has been trundling about since the early 90s. The surveillance state keeps trying to get access to encryption (probably so they can just look at the messages for “metadata” amirite?) and they have floated, time and time again, ways to bypass encryption or ban it outright. Meanwhile, they show up at any social media organization that has significant messaging traffic, and insist on a way of getting access to messages if they want them. How do you think that Lisa Page and Peter Stzok’s messaging traffic was reconstituted for public examination? That kind of data capture doesn’t just happen, it requires substantial infrastructure to be in place (and the “collect it all” switch has to be in the “on” position) – one cannot retroactively collect data from days gone by – you have to collect it and store it now in case you want to look at it later.
Meanwhile, the media keeps pretending to be the watchdogs of civilization, while rolling on their backs and exposing their soft underbelly every time the government whispers “national security” – which they know is a lie.
The fact that we’re discussing is helpin’ the enemy. You gotta understand – and I hope the American people understand – there is still an enemy that would like to strike the United States of America and they are very dangerous. – George W. Bush in the On The Media piece
Yeah, that’s why it’s looking inward, at Antifa, BLM, and BDS. Just remember: the media, congress, and the surveillance state are all in cahoots. Congress writes the checks for these programs. The New York Times and the Wall St Journal keep the lies alive, and the surveillance state keeps sucking up all the data and says “oops, accident!” on the rare occasion anyone asks what they’re doing.
Reminder to the rich white guy: some people have families to feed and mortgages to pay. Thus most people cannot lightly make decisions that are bound to get them fired. Thus many people end up doing things that they feel bad about. Why? Because they have bills to pay and too few other alternative employment options.
You are wealthier than average, your life is pretty comfortable. Until in your fight for justice you sacrifice personal comfort and make yourself penniless and unemployed, you don’t have a right to criticize others for choosing to keep their jobs.
You know, there’s some track record of American whistle blowers rotting in jails. Or getting stuck in shitty places like Russia if they get lucky. You cannot blame another person for thinking long and hard before they decide to do something that is highly likely to result in their lives getting ruined.
Overall, I don’t like how you are blaming some individual low-level employees for not trying harder to fight against the system. It’s not that simple for a single person to go against their employer, state agencies, and the entire political system. If you want to blame somebody, there are elected politicians, directors of various state agencies, all those people who were in charge of the country and have created a disgusting system that brutally squashes every single low-level employee who happens to have a conscience.
Andreas Avester@#1:
Until in your fight for justice you sacrifice personal comfort and make yourself penniless and unemployed, you don’t have a right to criticize others for choosing to keep their jobs.
That doesn’t follow. What I choose to do or not do is irrelevant to whether or not someone chooses to collude in a crime; sure we can understand why they did it, and even sympathize, but I am not presently colluding in any crimes of the state against the people, therefore there is no reason why I should choose to bankrupt myself to no end.
Another way of thinking about it is that perhaps I have avoided placing myself in such a situation (which is actually true) and found gainful work elsewhere. That doesn’t argue that I should bankrupt myself, but maybe that Risen made poor choices.
Overall, I don’t like how you are blaming some individual low-level employees for not trying harder to fight against the system.
Your opinion is noted. I suppose that prison camp guards for ICE gotta pay their bills, too, and are above reproach in your world? And what about those CIA interrogators – they didn’t want to quit until their government pensions were fully vested, right? You’re basically arguing that anyone who can say their actions benefited them personally and were necessary for their well-being, is excused from criticism over the consequences of their actions?
If you want to blame somebody, there are elected politicians, directors of various state agencies, all those people who were in charge of the country and have created a disgusting system that brutally squashes every single low-level employee who happens to have a conscience.
Your argument would have played well at Nuremberg. Actually, no, it didn’t – it got the defendants hanged.
Marcus @#2
It’s great that you got lucky with your career, but not everybody is as fortunate. For some people quitting a job means becoming unemployed. People’s careers are semi-random. When you are about twenty and you pick some university program, you have no clue where you will end up several decades later. I’m pretty certain that some young and idealistic teen who decided that journalism sounds interesting had no clue in what kind of shit puddle they will land twenty years later. Incidentally, changing one’s career by the time you are fifty is pretty hard.
Here’s an example, a distant relative of mine. Her life’s passion were dogs, and dogs also ended up being the only thing she was knowledgeable about. She dropped out of school at a pretty young age, she didn’t even finish school, never mind going to a university. The only job she was qualified of doing was something related to dog care. During her youth, she tried doing various jobs related to breeding and training dogs. Her attempts of staying self-employed didn’t work, she couldn’t earn enough money to make ends meet. Thus she settled for a stable job where she had to feed and train dogs that were used for guarding a prison. Then, by the time she was already almost fifty, the prison where she worked got rid of all the dogs. She became just a regular prison guard. Back when she was young and still had multiple career options, she had no clue that she will end up working as a prison guard. All she wanted was to just breed and train dogs. Here’s the problem, by the time she was fifty, she couldn’t just quit her job at the prison. Nobody wants to hire a person who is already old, has no education, and no useful job skills. Staying at the prison and becoming a regular prison guard was the only job option she had. What else would you have suggested her? Quitting the job, becoming unemployed and homeless and starting to live under some bridge? She had no other option but to stay at the job she didn’t particularly like.
Ultimately, your attempt to blame low-level employees for all the shit that’s happening in the USA isn’t even productive. The system is already rigged by those who make decisions and have the important jobs. Let’s assume some low-lever employee decides to quit their job as per your recommendations. Would anything change? Of course not, the government agency or the newspaper or whatever else would simply hire another person. All the dissenters are welcome to quit their jobs only to get replaced by somebody else until all those with rebellious minds have filtered themselves out of some agency’s workforce. A single low-level employee who decides to rebel against their employer would make little difference.
I think that comparing journalists (who are silently complicit in problematic actions of powerful institutions like the government) to the agents of that powerful institution who help carry out its policies is unfair.
I note that Reality Winner was arrested, convicted, and sentence to jail for five years, based on the Intercept’s reporting of what she passed on to them. Understanding not just what to report, but how to do so in a way that doesn’t have repercussions on you or your source, is hard. Tradecraft requires either training, or a native instinct for paranoia. Should every journalist be required to stick their own neck out or sacrifice others just to avoid being judged as guilty as those that carry out the crimes?
Andreas Avester@#3:
Staying at the prison and becoming a regular prison guard was the only job option she had. What else would you have suggested her?
The same argument you are making here could be applied to a gestapo concentration camp job. You know, they didn’t realize they were going to be working at a death-camp until after they had bought a house and had a mortgage, etc., etc. What else would you suggest they do, quit their job and lose their house?
You’ve just repeated the same argument you made earlier, and – aside from adding a true “distant relative” story, you haven’t done anything to explain why “it would be a personal hardship” excuses someone taking part in a crime, or conspiring to cover up a crime (which is what the New York Times and Risen did once they knew a crime was being committed and allowed the government to talk them out of publishing about it). You seem to be repeating the argument that because I got lucky in my career and was able to avoid that particular moral dilemma, that I should excuse them for it?
Quitting the job, becoming unemployed and homeless and starting to live under some bridge?
You are assuming that that’s the only option. Yet, through history, many people have found that they had other options than to become co-conspirators in crimes.
I pointed out before that you’re making the Nuremberg defense, and I expect you to understand why it does not work. In case you don’t: in order for it to work you have to completely deny the other person any agency, at all. So you’re telling me your distant relative was utterly incapable of finding something else to do, and that they were so profoundly under compulsion that they are able to not carry any responsibility for making a choice. But that’s not how reality works – nobody’s holding a gun to James Risen’s head and saying “don’t publish or you die” because, in fact, he did publish, once he had a book contract. He did have options (including “wait until you have a book contract”) and he took the one that was desirable and convenient – but, in the process of doing so, perhaps he helped Barack Obama become president by not blowing the whistle. These choices have consequences, and I don’t buy your simplistic argument that anyone has no choice; there’s always a choice, it’s just that sometimes they all suck.
Ultimately, your attempt to blame low-level employees for all the shit that’s happening in the USA isn’t even productive.
Who cares about “productive”, for one? But, for another, I don’t even buy that argument. If we don’t hold the rank-and-file responsible for their actions, then the executives/managers are going to say “hey, our hands are clean, we just gave the orders” or – more the the point – the death camp administrator is going to say “blame Himmler, I was just following his orders, and I had a mortgage to make payments on, you can’t expect me to quit my job and live under a bridge, can you?”
Obviously, I think we need to push against the system at all levels and in all ways. Everyone who puts on an ICE uniform and participates in the system is responsible for the outcomes of the system to whatever degree they helped the system accomplish its crimes. Sure, the executives and managers get more blame than the underlings, but excusing the underlings because making a stand for what was right would be inconvenient is letting them off a bit easily.
(Also, for what it’s worth, one of the “lucky” choices I made in my career was not to do any more consulting for NSA, FBI, or CIA – all of which were clients of mine at some time or another between 1994 and 1999 – when I saw what was happening post 9/11. I considered becoming a “mole” with a deliberate plan to increase my access so I could flip a bunch of information if I found any – there were nasty rumblings about what NSA was doing, all over the security community – instead, I chose to try to warn others about those rumblings. Yes, I was lucky that I had the options open to me to make that choice but I can also tell you for a fact that I’d have a lot more money and power had I decided to pursue a gig as cybersecurity advisor, and do a lot of consulting for beltway bandits. I kept my hands clean as a matter of choice, not luck, if choice has any meaning.)
Let’s assume some low-lever employee decides to quit their job as per your recommendations. Would anything change?
Their life would change, and their responsibility for the situation would change.
The law even has a notion of what’s called “constructive knowledge” of a crime – if you know a crime is going to be committed and say nothing, you’re potentially culpable. If Mike McConnell of the NSA had ever been arrested and hauled out in handcuffs, as he deserved to be, it would have been reasonable to also haul away others who knew of the program and didn’t say anything, because their silence was necessary for the scheme to work.
Let’s say an SS guard decided to stop guarding a concentration camp. Would it change anything? Yes, it would change their responsibility – it might not stop the concentration camp from existing but they would not be in a position anymore where someone could accuse them of participating in genocide. Their participation was necessary (or their silence was) for the whole scheme to work. (It also might save them a well-deserved hanging a few years later) “I was just following orders” is not a defense when the orders are illegal or immoral – it’s an affirmative defense that depends on first admitting one did something wrong.
As I said, you’re just making the Nuremberg defense, and repeating it isn’t going to make it a better defense than it was the first time, or the tenth time.
Let me ask you: do you think the NYT should be let off the hook for sitting on the wiretap story for 13 months, or Abu Ghraib for 16 months so that it “wouldn’t affect an election” by request of the executive branch, or do you only think the journalists’ hands are clean? And if you think the NYT gets some blame, why don’t the journalists?
A single low-level employee who decides to rebel against their employer would make little difference.
It makes a difference to them. Otherwise they wouldn’t be complaining about it, would they?
Owlmirror@#4:
Should every journalist be required to stick their own neck out or sacrifice others just to avoid being judged as guilty as those that carry out the crimes?
I didn’t say “as guilty” – they’re not the people who did the crimes, after all. That’s why legal systems have a notion of a “conspirator” as distinct from the criminal actor. Conspirators are guilty, just not as guilty.
Risen’s entire point is that the NYT regularly sits on important stories because the government asks them to be silent. Do we let the NYT off the hook for that? The NYT probably had financial dirt on Trump that they didn’t disclose prior to his winning the election because they expected Hillary to win. Oops. Do we just say, “hey, that’s OK, you didn’t fuck up in the slightest” or do we give them a little smidgeon of the great big helping of blame that goes around for Trump being the president today?
That’s a real scenario. It appears that Suzanne Craig (who won a Pulitzer in 2019 for being part of the team that dissected Trump’s finances) got an envelope with Trump’s tax data, in September 2016. [cbs] I’m sure the NYT wanted to sit on that information because, reasons, but that decision may have had a huge impact on downstream outcomes. Now that it is too late for that information to have much effect, then they publish it and win a Pulitzer. I mean, it’s a great article and all that, but I would have rather we’d all been able to read it back in October, 2016. It would have been just as Pulitzer-worthy, maybe more so. What do you think?
Huh? We did read it back in October 2016. The article you linked to is dated Oct 3, 2016; it links to an NYT article dated Oct 2, 2016, with Craig’s name on it.
Did you mean something else?
My life experiences are clearly influencing my attitude here. I have seen too many people’s lives go to shit after losing their jobs. For example, my uncle’s life was pretty nice up until his mid-forties when he lost his job as an airplane engineer. After that it went downhill and became very miserable. That’s a shitty story.
My family member who worked as a prison guard never figured out another alternative source of income either. She tried breeding dogs and selling puppies, but she never earned enough side income to be able quit her main job. Once she got a cancer diagnosis, she needed her job more than ever, because state employed people get better social guarantees than self-employed dog breeders. She’d dead now, that was another miserable story.
I just fear poverty, immensely so. Being poor really sucks. I have experienced poverty, and I’m determined to do whatever it takes not to experience it ever again.
Not saying anything when you know that people are getting tortured every passing day is clearly very bad.
I suppose I’m just selfish. I mean, I don’t want to hurt other people and I would prefer to reduce suffering whenever possible, but the key words are “whenever possible” and “as long as I don’t get badly hurt in my attempt to help somebody else.” If saving another person’s life required me to undergo personal suffering, I would prioritize my own wellbeing. If I had hopes for at least somewhat acceptable alternative employment options, sure, I’d take some risk and quit a job. But I know that I wouldn’t risk getting put in jail like Chelsea Manning did. I wouldn’t take any significant personal risks.
I think I have no right to blame other people for prioritizing their personal wellbeing. If I blamed them, I’d be hypocritical. Like you, I’m also lucky in my career and I have been able to avoid this particular moral dilemma. The problem is that I know what I would choose in such a situation—I’d prioritize my personal safety and wellbeing, I’d risk helping other people only if it was at least somewhat safe. Minor risk or personal inconvenience would be fine, but nothing severe or dangerous. On top of that, I’m lucky that I’m not responsible for any children. People who must consider their kid’s wellbeing get an even worse version of this dilemma.
Marcus @5:
Because all prison guards are essentially equivalent to the SS-Totenkopfverbände?
Wow. That gets my vote for Cheap Godwin-Shot of the Year.
For the record, my family member worked in one of those regular run-of-the mill prisons. In my country we don’t put people in solitary confinement, we don’t waterboard them, we don’t even kill anybody, the worst thing a prisoner can get here being a life sentence.
Further to my #9: Marcus, you’re an IT consultant, right? Have you ever done work for corporations or other organizations which have engaged in questionable activities? If so, how do you rate your own moral complicity?
My last years working were for a corporation which counted Exxon-Mobil among its clients. When my company sent out an email asking employees how they could improve their environmental profile, I wanted to respond with “tell Exxon-Mobil to fuck off”. I didn’t, because…basically, I needed to work for a bit longer to make sure I could retire with enough to get by. That also meant working for a couple years longer than I should have to prevent burnout.
Yeah, that pesky line between moral cowardice and justifiability…
Rob,
Concepts applicable to some people, I suppose. Thing is, we’re all different.
As a non-ideologue, moral cowardice cannot be an applicable concept (I always do what I think it best to do), nor do I require moral justification — though it’s nice to have.
(I see no line)
Andreas @ 8 & 10
Your family member ended up with a job they didn’t like, but what if they had been asked to commit a crime while doing that job. Would that make things different? What if they were asked to waterboard a prisoner? Or to remove documents and shred them? Or to turn a blind eye to a beating?
How much crime can you commit in the name of survival and still be able to live with yourself?
voyager @#13
I cannot know that. I can not answer this question until I get stuck in a situation where I am forced to decide between hurting myself versus hurting another person. I hope that I will never have to find out the answer. So far I have been doing a good job with my career decisions, and I hope that my luck won’t run out.
Marcus insists that he’d never hurt another person in order to ensure his personal wellbeing. That’s certainly very nice of him. I can admire such selflessness.
Yet I’m cynical. I assume that majority of humans are selfish. I know I am. If I blamed other people for prioritizing personal wellbeing, I’d just be a hypocrite. I have never experienced any severe hardships in order to uphold justice, thus I do not get to criticize others for not becoming martyrs.
Isn’t turning a blind eye to crimes what the American population has been doing for decades? By now every single American citizen must have heard that prison inmates are routinely abused. Prison rape gets treated as a given. Everybody knows about the routine beatings. After finding out that waterboarding happens, Americans kept on living with this knowledge. Already months ago, I found out that Americans abuse children who are caught on the border. Yet this form of abuse keeps on going on and only gets worse. American citizens seem to believe that watching the latest TV show is more important than reminding their elected representatives that abuse is wrong.
Like I said, I believe that majority of people are selfish.
Let’s compare two somewhat similar situations: (1) a prison guard witnesses one inmate raping another one; (2) the average citizen is aware of the statistics about rape in prisons and knows that it is happening on a regular basis. Both #1 and #2 could try to take steps in order to stop the abuse from continuing. Aren’t they both just as guilty? Moreover, #1 does nothing, because she fears that stirring up trouble might result in her becoming unemployed and penniless. Simultaneously, #2 is doing nothing out of sheer laziness and apathy, because they prefer to spend their time watching TV rather than fighting for justice. Personally, I’m willing to accept the prison guard’s excuse as at least understandable. The average citizen’s excuse, on the other hand, is just laughable. It’s not like they would have to take any personal risks if they did chose to try to improve things in their country.
They don’t have to be equivalent in all respects for the argument to be the same.
Andreas Avester @#3
Sorry but in the context of deciding to do a course on journalism when you are interested in politics this is just bullshit. You don’t ‘accidentally’ end up in political journalism or security journalism or military journalism, you have a burning interest that enables you to out compete your peers to get one of the very few jobs devoted to those areas. You are reporting on the issues that interest you for your student newspaper, trying to get pieces in your local paper and maybe even the nationals, building up your portfolio, reading everthing you can get your hands on about your chosen area. You have journalists who work in the area you want to work in who you admire and wish to emulate, along with journalists who work in the same area you despise and do not want to end up like. In other words you do have a clear idea of where you want to be in two or three decades, you may not manage to get there, but you know what you are aiming for. At twenty I was one of the many people of my age appalled that we (the UK) were killing Argintinian conscripts to defend a territory thousands of miles away that we had, and still have, no reasonable claim to, a remnant of our ill-gotten empire. I could equally have been one of the many who thought we were entirely justified in defending our territory and that the Sun’s infamous ‘GOTCHA!’ headline on the sinking of the Belgrano that resulted in the death of some seven hundred of those conscripts was just right, but, to the point, I wasn’t even thinking of being a journalist, yet I still had an opinion and had read enough to have reasonable grounds for that opinion.
As a US tax payer, yes, you are presently colluding in crimes of the state against the people, and bankrupting yourself would clear that right up. Fortunately, most people are more sophisticated in their thinking than Mr A, and recognise that collusion is a scale with many shades of grey.
So what, exactly, are they supposed to do? The NYT wouldn’t run his stories, so he could be pretty damn sure that nobody else (at least, nobody else that would be taken seriously) would either. Should he have quit his job as journalist and just started handing out photocopies on a street corner? What good would that have done? Waiting for a book deal is one of the few effective means of actually getting the material out there. Most other options just get you branded as crazy, and then nobody’s going to listen to what you have to say anyway.
Andreas Avester@#14:
Marcus insists that he’d never hurt another person in order to ensure his personal wellbeing. That’s certainly very nice of him. I can admire such selflessness.
Surely you know better than to try to put words in my mouth like that. I never have insisted anything of the sort.
If the best you can do is mis-characterize people’s position for debaters’ arguments, then you need to improve your strategy – that’s dishonest.
Isn’t turning a blind eye to crimes what the American population has been doing for decades?
As I said earlier, there’s blame to go around, and the blame gets apportioned according to the degree to which a person participates. Yes, as a US taxpayer, I am complicit in the vast conspiracy that is the US Empire. But I managed to avoid direct involvement with the surveillance state which, given certain things about my field and my early position in it, was something of an accomplishment.
All of these things are matters of degree. Personally, I’d be horrified if I had kept secret information about a crime, and later my actions were revealed as having aided the election of someone like Donald Trump. If I’d made that choice, I wouldn’t be happy to win a Pulitzer or write a successful book about it. That’s how I roll. Obviously, there’s plenty of disagreement.
One thing I really hate about this topic is that some people seem to believe that “well, what’s your answer, then wise guy?” is a response to a criticism of someone else’s actions. That doesn’t work as a moral argument: it’s not my responsibility or my problem to suggest better options for someone else, and taking that line of reasoning is just raising a hypothetical that amounts to “imagine you were in that situation that you just said you were careful to avoid – well, then what would you do?” I already did what I’d do, which is to avoid getting in that situation. I’m not sure what that line of argument would be called – if there’s such a thing as “second guessing” maybe it’s “third guessing” – well, given that you’ve said you would never shoot anyone, what if you did shoot someone, then what would you do?
Dunc@#17:
So what, exactly, are they supposed to do? The NYT wouldn’t run his stories, so he could be pretty damn sure that nobody else (at least, nobody else that would be taken seriously) would either.
That’s a really strange assumption, that nobody else would run his stories. I bet Mother Jones would have, or Utne Reader of even Russia Times. It’s just not the front page of the gray lady, which is what he wanted.
The idea that nobody’d be taken seriously that was not the New York Times is contradicted by the obvious fact that even websites like The Daily Beast and Rawstory have broken significant and important stories and were taken seriously. It’s not like the old days when the NYT was known to be a paper that would stand up to the establishment, like when it published Hersh in the Vietnam era. Although, regarding that, I believe that story was suppressed for almost 2 years before it came out and Hersh has adapted accordingly – he published his bit about the Syria chemical attacks in a less prominent venue, and the story still got wide attention (I happen to think Hersh may be wrong on that one, but he wasn’t wrong on Abu Ghraib) Speaking of the Abu Ghraib story, the NYT appears to have pushed that one back by something like 13 months. Did that affect elections? Why did they do that? They seem to want to avoid playing politics, while playing politics as hard as they can with their official stance of being part of the “resistance” to all of the Trump administration’s lies. Being concerned with The Truth is more than hanging up a poster [nyt] it also entails thinking about how and when a truth is important.
All that said, if I found myself in that situation, which is a situation that I have said I would not find myself in, what would I do? I’d have flogged it to some other media outlet a lot earlier. For example, the Trump finances article won a Pulitzer for its reporting; there are media outlets that would kill to carry a Pulitzer prize-winning piece.
LykeX @15: In what respects do they have to be equivalent such that you would use the “gestapo concentration camp” (they were run by the SS, actually) comparison? It was a bloody cheap shot.
John @12: You are, as always, a shining example for us all. But what does it even mean to say moral cowardice cannot be applicable to non-ideologues? Don’t non-ideologues have morals?
It’s a genuine question. Risen couldn’t get his stories published. What was he supposed to do in response to that?
The only way to “avoid getting in that situation” would have been to avoid learning the information in question in the first place – i.e. to not even try to do the job of being a proper investigative journalist. Hey, there’s plenty of money in celebrity gossip, right?
I’m not playing gotcha here, I’m genuinely interested in what you think he should have done with the information once it became apparent that he couldn’t get these stories published. How should he have gone about “blow[ing] the whistle immediately”? Go to the press? Oh, wait… Maybe he should have called the cops? No, probably not…
Seriously, what should he have done?
OK, I see you’ve answered @19…
Rob Grigjanis@#11:
Further to my #9: Marcus, you’re an IT consultant, right? Have you ever done work for corporations or other organizations which have engaged in questionable activities? If so, how do you rate your own moral complicity?
Well, it seems like Exxon was a client of both of ours. In my case, I did some work for the CISO back in 2006 and 2007, improving the design of some of their networks so they would be less vulnerable to attack. I even worked for Koch Industries for a week back in 2000 – same deal: playing defense.
It was those gigs, and my past work for CIA, NSA, and FBI that made me think about it, and I adopted the position I have held ever since which is that I work 100% on the defense and don’t go on the offense. I remember once telling a really pissed off government executive “I’d help defend Iranian computer systems against attack, before I worked to help design attack tools for you.” That was when I walked away from an extremely lucrative project that would have been aimed directly at messing with Venezuela’s power grid. So, there is that. (And yes, I later helped some foreign companies clean Shamoon, which was American/Israeli malware, out of their systems, probably disqualifying myself from the position of cybersecurity advisor which I was apparently considered for, once)
Being complicit is a matter of fact and it’s also a matter of degree. Should I have not helped Exxon? I’ll accept that responsibility, but it’s pretty minor compared to being part of a conspiracy to keep important news from the people.
Elsewhere I pointed out that Andreas was making the Nuremberg defense by implication for Risen and NYT. That doesn’t mean that they’re as guilty as a death camp guard, it’s the same argument though. I can observe that it’s a fact that someone is making the Nuremberg defense without arguing that the crime is the same. If someone orders me to steal a lollipop from a kid, I might make the Nuremberg defense by saying “I was just following orders” and it doesn’t mean that I’m as bad as a death camp guard, it just means I’m using the same justification – which ought to be a red flag for anyone offering that justification.
Because all prison guards are essentially equivalent to the SS-Totenkopfverbände?
Wow. That gets my vote for Cheap Godwin-Shot of the Year.
Saying “that is the same argument” is not saying “that is the same set of facts.” A ‘moral equivalency’ is when someone tries to say “that action is as bad as what the nazis did’ – I’m pointing out what you could perhaps call a philosophical equivalency: “that argument is the Nuremberg defense and it doesn’t work very well.”
Think harder. I’m confident that you’re capable of it.
I’m not deeply familiar with the US media landscape… Had they done so at the time in question? Since the NSA story was killed for a second time in 2004, and a quick Google tells me that Raw Story was founded in 2004, while the Daily Beast didn’t get started until four years later, I’m guessing not. Alternative internet outlets had much less credibility back then. (“Russia Times” doesn’t even exist – if you mean “Russia Today”, it didn’t exist until a year later.)
And did anybody outside the “progressive bubble” ever give a shit what Mother Jones publishes?
Also:
I consider myself to be a moral nihilist, because I am unconvinced that ethical systems work as advertised. I’m unconvinced by virtue ethics, and consequentialism, and even Kantian reasoning (though I gotta hand it to Kant, that was a hell of a try). I believe that people have opinions about what is moral – we can observe that rather clearly – but there’s a serious problem with sharing them, transferring them accurately, or defending them as objective facts. On that latter point, I specifically reject things like Sam Harris’ attempt to argue that it’s an objective fact that we have moral systems, when it appears to me that he has merely realized that it’s an objective fact that people have opinions about morals.
This is not an attempt to defend moral nihilism, since such defense would amount to defending skepticism: I remain unconvinced so I withhold judgement.
That said, it does seem to me that we have opinions about morals, and it seems to me that those opinions are, perforce, individual. So I might describe myself as a moral nihilist who recognizes that people feel strongly about their opinions about morals, and I am such a person, myself. I have my own opinions about right and wrong, and I act according to them. I just recognize that I don’t believe I know how to convince everyone to share my opinions – if I could get everyone in the world to agree with me about my opinions about what is right and wrong, then I’d say that I probably had something like a moral system (because otherwise I don’t see how I could convince everyone) – I just lack that argument in general, so I am forced to argue about certain things in specific. That’s why some of you might have noticed that I am comfortable saying “I don’t like it when people torture other people” (for example) and I’ll even shorthand that as:
“torture is wrong”
because it’s boring to always say:
“it is my personal opinion, which appears to be shared by many, that torture is wrong.”
That’s a shorthand way of acknowledging that not everyone agrees with me (which is the flaw in “virtue ethics”, which attempts to reify some publicly held opinions into a system of ethics) Clearly, we must observe that there are some people who disagree with the statement “torture is wrong” and others who disagree what “torture” is.
I resolve that problem to my satisfaction by having my own opinion about what torture is, and my own opinion about whether it’s right or wrong always, sometimes, or whatever, and I life my life accordingly.
Now, here’s the tricky part (I say again, this is not a full defense of moral nihilism) while I recognize that these are all my opinions and that I don’t have a moral system, I’m also completely unconcerned as to whether or not I expect other people to live up to my opinions. I actually suspect that’s how most humans operate, in fact. So, if I were to see someone torturing someone else, depending on the situation and if I had the ability, I would almost certainly try to get them to stop the torture. In other words, I am comfortable with expecting someone else to comply with my opinions and – in some cases – I might even compel them to comply with my opinion using force. (if I felt that strongly about it and the situation allowed) I would not feel that it was justified and I would not say that I was right (or wrong) to do so, it’d just be the way I happened to roll in that particular situation with that set of apparent facts and my opinion about the situation.
So I can square the idea of being a moral nihilist with being comfortable putting a gun to the head of someone who was committing torture, and shooting them if they didn’t comply with my opinion. I can also look at the same situation (suppose the torturer has 20 or 30 friends with guns standing around) and decide not to act because it threatens my personal safety and my actions would be ineffective, in my opinion.
All of that’s a long way of saying that it’s my opinion that some of these actions by newspapers and journalists are “wrong” in my terms and I’m willing to say that publicly even though I have no constructive ethical system that would allow me to convince everyone to share my opinion. Rather obviously, I don’t, or everyone here would simply agree with me and then we’d be done.
Final point: I actually see the complexity that results from taking a moral nihilist view as I have just espoused as mapping fairly neatly onto the complexity that people encounter when they try to apply moral reasoning to a variety of situations. I can’t be sure, of course, but it appears to me that my viewpoint may accurately reflect reality. Obviously, that’s just anecdote and opinion but it’s interesting when opinion and experience match perceived reality; if that’s not another way of saying “looks about right to me” then what is?
Marcus @23:
Good for you. Seriously.
That’s a cheap defence for a cheap shot.
“I had no choice but to become a stenographer”
“You could make the same argument for a gestapo clerk transcribing death lists”
“Huh?”
“Oh, I’m not saying they’re the same job!”
I’m fairly confident you can do better.
Dunc@#24:
And did anybody outside the “progressive bubble” ever give a shit what Mother Jones publishes?
Do you use a forklift to move goalposts, or do you just drag them with your teeth?
Personally, I’m lazy and prefer to leave them where they are.
Here’s how the real world works: if The New York Times discovers that Mother Jones or Rawstory has “scooped” them on a hot story, they’ll publish about it, then. I believe it was Daily Beast that broke the story about The National Enquirer doing “catch and kill” on awkward Trump stories, and once they broke that story the rest of the media chimed in, however reluctantly.
More importantly: if The New York Times realized that the stories they kill or delay are going to appear elsewhere, with virtually no delay, they will be reluctant to hold or kill a story because they know they’re more likely to get scooped. In Risen’s interview he describes using exactly that reasoning to get The Times to finally publish the surveillance story – he put it in his book and said “well, it’s going to be out there and you’re going to look like you missed the boat.” Then they published the story. Perhaps the entire media landscape could be shifted, if “gatekeepers” like The Times were taught that if they sit on a story, it’s going to get out anyway.
Rob Grigjanis@#16:
That’s a cheap defence for a cheap shot.
So, you don’t like it? Let me see if I give a shit…
Mmmmmmm no, it still works and I’ll let it stand.
Do the NYT eventually publish all the stuff that they already knew about that currently ends up in The Intercept? Do they make any effort to recruit the journalists who publish the stories there that they didn’t already know about?
Marcus:
No. You have issues, that is all. Why anyone in freethoughtblogs trusts you will always escape me, you’ve always sounded like a deeply scary and dangerous individual to me.
Marcus @#18
I haven’t been trying to intentionally modify your position. You seemed to insist that it’s wrong for a person to prioritize their own personal wellbeing, so that’s how I understood your position. I’m sorry for misunderstanding.
By the time I read your comment @#5, it was already obvious for me that the conversation had reached a dead-end, because our positions differ, and neither of us find the other person’s arguments convincing. I’m capable of recognizing discussions that are going nowhere, and I should have just dropped this conversation at that point. After that, my following comments were pointless.
I started seeing patterns in the anti-encryption/anti-privacy positions and various other authoritarian nonsense some time ago. Mostly the position they all promote comes down to a simple idea: Some group of assholes wants their jobs made easy so they can be incompetent and lazy. And they always want someone else to pay all costs involved.
Lazy and incompetent policing? Let’s play a game of pretend where social movements and skin pigmentation cause crime.
Lazy and incompetent intelligence gathering? Let’s pretend two-tiered encryption wouldn’t blow up in our faces and leave everyone insecure including the intelligence agencies. And let’s pretend it’s possible to play perfect defence against terrorism and halt it from ever happening* while also pretending social movements are terrorist cells.
These situations can get complicated but it’s all the easiest aspects that keep getting screwed up. Because those are the mistakes and misconceptions that let authoritarians be incompetent and make everyone else pay for it.
* I think anyone who’s done customer service can recognize that as the kind of unrealistic expectation customers have sometimes. Mostly I prefer educating them out of silly ideas but not everyone takes that approach.
[OT]
Rob @20,
[1] I’m not advocating for my personal stance, just telling you it is not subject to your imaginary line. I am example no more and no less than anyone else.
[2] I always try to do the best that I can at the time — I mean, why wouldn’t I? — so whence any possible cowardice? I’m not gonna fail to meet my own expectations, and I’m basically nice, as it turns out.
(BTW, the term is associated with Ayn Rand, in case you were not aware)
[3] Of course, but they are not ideological ones, because they are not ideologues.
Me, I settled in my 20s for my idiosyncratic version of enlightened self-interest, which is convenient, because (for example) I can be altruistic or not, depending on judgement and circumstances. Works well for me.
I just realized that the way how I analyze this question is probably different from other people’s thought patterns.
If the question I have to answer is, “Do I perceive [some action] as bad?” then I will look at whether it causes harm, whether it seems unfair, etc. Thus I can conclude that I perceive things like murder or theft as bad. I also perceive withholding information from the public about ongoing state crimes as bad.
If the question I have to answer is, “Do I criticize [some person] for doing [some action]?” then my thought process will become much more complicated. First I will establish whether I perceive said action as bad in general. But that’s not sufficient for me to criticize the person who did this action. There are more questions to answer. What was this person’s situation? Did they have any other alternatives? How I would have acted if I were in their place?
In order to answer the question, “What was this person’s situation?” I would have to look at their personal circumstances: are they impoverished, are they vulnerable, are they themselves a victim and so on.
In order to answer the question, “Did they have any other alternatives?” I would have to come up with reasonable and viable solutions for what other actions [some person] could have done in order to avoid committing [some bad action]. One of the alternatives Marcus proposed was to publish the story in other less known newspaper if The New York Times refuse to publish it. I see that as a viable alternative. If a journalist could publish the story in some other newspaper, but chose not to do so, thus getting Trump elected, then I’ll be comfortable criticizing said journalist.
Marcus also proposed for people to just “avoid getting in that situation,” which means basically “first and foremost, cover up your own ass.” I don’t see this one as a viable alternative. If a single journalist sticks to safe topics like celebrity gossip just to make sure that they never accidentally find out any secret information about government crimes, that’s fine, there’s no problem with one journalist writing about celebrity gossip. But if every single journalist decided to primarily care about covering their own asses, the result would be that there wouldn’t exist any investigative journalists at all. Obviously, that would be much worse than the status quo. Personally, I cannot take seriously a proposed solution that can only work for select few people. For example, an individual person can choose not to work as a janitor in a prison. Thus they cover their own ass and cannot be blamed for anything, because they never put themselves in the pesky position where they might learn something. But somebody else is bound to become a janitor at that prison, and at some point they might get ordered to clean blood stains from the torture equipment. If all the better off people who have several career options decide to “avoid getting in that situation,” then the person working as a prison janitor will simply end up being some impoverished fellow who is most vulnerable, has no alternative employment options, and can least afford to risk stirring trouble by exposing facts about the ongoing torture. The point being: “avoid getting in that situation” is a solution that can only work for a few people, it cannot work for everybody, because, whenever there are crimes being committed, somebody is bound to find out, perhaps even by accident. And the moment they find out, Marcus is already criticizing them for not immediately becoming a whistle blower.
I also have to answer the question, “How I would have acted if I were in their place?” I don’t want to be hypocritical. I reserve the right to criticize other people for things like theft or bigotry, because I’m not a thief or a bigot, but I do not have a right to criticize other people for prioritizing their personal wellbeing, because I myself am a person who prioritizes personal wellbeing. For example, I wouldn’t become a whistle blower if that meant getting put in a prison. Thus I don’t get to criticize another person for wanting to avoid this kind of personal suffering.
The way how I look at the question of whether I should criticize [some person] for doing [some action], it’s possible for me to reach a conclusion that I should not criticize them even though I perceive said action as generally bad. For example, I wouldn’t criticize a hungry person for shoplifting a small amount of food if their individual circumstances were desperate enough. In general, I believe that people have little free will and not that much control over their lives. What happens to us are largely the result of various accidents and external circumstances. Just because I personally got lucky doesn’t mean that I have a right to criticize some less lucky person who was forced to decide between multiple shitty courses of action.
Kreator@#30:
No. You have issues, that is all. Why anyone in freethoughtblogs trusts you will always escape me, you’ve always sounded like a deeply scary and dangerous individual to me.
Boo!
“Having issues” is so delightfully vague. But, yes, I do. I think we all do. Unwarranted certainty being one of the most serious “issues” a person can have.
Dunc@#29:
Do the NYT eventually publish all the stuff that they already knew about that currently ends up in The Intercept? Do they make any effort to recruit the journalists who publish the stories there that they didn’t already know about?
It seems that once something winds up in the zietgeist, then the NYT does feel it has to weigh in on it – which, in this kind of scenario, is awkward since they are weighing in on a story that they, in effect, tried to suppress.
What happened when Sy Hersh published his story about the Syria chemical attack is … interesting. I hope that Hersh discusses it someday, but I would have expected NYT to publish pretty much anything that Sy Hersh said he wanted to print. I mean, the guy’s a Pulitzer mine with tremendous credibility. But they didn’t want to print that story, presumably because it was challenging the narrative the Obama administration was trying to push at that time, so Hersh printed it elsewhere. I doubt the NYT will ask him to come back and I doubt he would if they did.
Intercept hired James Risen and presumably he is now unfettered and can publish what he wants when he wants with appropriate editorial review and fact-checking.
I’m very interested in how non-traditional media like Reveal and Pro Publica and The Intercept appear to be working. It appears to me that they are doing important journalism and have broken away from the “trading for access” world that the NYT and “big media” are stuck in. I wonder if they can maintain their freedom to operate? The current US trend toward authoritarianism is applied to the media, as well (and some like Fox are all in for the establishment) it may result in media like The Intercept being shut down and we all get stuck with state-sponsored media. If that happens, I know people who are already looking at how to build systems for distributing samizdat. Of course the establishment knows that, too, so it’s going to be a real cyberwar. I hope the good guys win.
While I wouldn’t rule it out, I doubt they’ll go down that route… We live in a post-truth world now. They don’t need to shut down or discredit inconvenient media outlets when they can destroy the very concept of truth in a way that the most radical of post-modernists could only have dreamt of. It’s all “fake news”.
Andreas Avester@#34:
Marcus also proposed for people to just “avoid getting in that situation,” which means basically “first and foremost, cover up your own ass.”
There you go mis-characterizing my position, again. Are you mistaking this for a debating club? It’s not.
“Avoid getting in that situation” is strategic advice. Look ahead and, if you see a cliff coming, navigate or slow down. I’d call it “common sense” except I don’t think sense is that pervasive. It’s also a good strategy to decide whether to warn others that you see heading toward a cliff. That’s not “butt covering” it’s “making good decisions.”
When I started to see that computer security was going to turn into a full-fledged member of the surveillance state, I started firing off warnings all over the place, and started being more careful about what jobs I accepted. That’s not “butt covering” that’s “trying to help.” A moral nihilist is perfectly capable of trying to help others; they simply accept that it’s their opinion that what they are trying to do is help, and accept that others may not want the help or may not see it as helpful. In my experience that makes one more careful with how and when one tries to be helpful than otherwise. In the case of computer security, my attempts to ring the alarm on the burgeoning surveillance state was unwelcome in some quarters, but since my strategy was already to avoid that cliff I kept busy avoiding it and continued to warn others and tell them how to avoid it as well. That’s not “butt covering” – I would say that “butt covering” is a concern with one’s apparent legacy to the exclusion of other things. I was and am actually genuinely concerned that computer security has sold its soul to the devil. Just wait and I’ll be posting “I told you so” here periodically. By the way, when someone you warned about a cliff cheerfully drives off of it, you do get to say “I told you so.”
And the moment they find out, Marcus is already criticizing them for not immediately becoming a whistle blower.
Not exactly. I am criticizing them for being complicit for years or months, and then deciding to grab for the mantle of a whistle blower.
This raises a whole topic that is interesting to me, which I have wanted to post about for years (but I’m still not sure how to make my argument) namely that if we believe there are morals, how do they vary over time. If something is wrong today is it less wrong tomorrow? For example, Bill Cosby’s personal assistant, who came out 30 years after Cosby’s serial rape spree, and said “I wrote the checks and provided the drugs.” Are we supposed to be impressed by his morals for finally coming clean about that? If not, at what point do we switch from being impressed to being horrified? Do you always get to be a whistle blower or does it only count if it’s done reasonably close to when it matters? I suspect that a utilitarian would say something about that it matters depending on the greatest good for the greatest number, which would mean that Bill Cosby’s assistant was an unindicted co-conspirator not a whistle blower because he knew perfectly well what Cosby was doing and didn’t lift a finger to stop it. What responsibility does he bear for the rapes that occurred after he realized what was going on?
Please don’t characterize those concerns as “butt covering” – they’re real concerns about real people. In the case of the NYT suppressing information that may have helped give us a Trump presidency, it’s relevant. It’s hugely relevant. The NYT does try to claim it’s a sort of a whistle blower, but it was also the mouthpiece for Comey’s very public dance about Hillary Clinton’s emails. I don’t think they get credit for their positive actions without taking responsibility for their negative actions.*
The point being: “avoid getting in that situation” is a solution that can only work for a few people, it cannot work for everybody
So what? WHo said it needs to work for everybody? Not me. Avoiding bad situations is a pretty good strategy for any individual. If they can’t employ it, that’s another problem entirely. But it’s still a good strategy. That’s all.
Basically you’re pulling some “whataboutism” here. Just because someone isn’t offering a perfect strategy for avoiding all evil, then I guess their pretty good strategy for avoiding some evil is not worth talking about?
Sure, there are always going to be torture chamber cleaners who can’t talk about what they see because they need their jobs and have an economic gun to their head. That’s why, generally, when we assess their responsibility, it’s mitigated by those considerations. Cosby’s henchman probably felt he needed that job, too, and besides he didn’t want a pay-cut and all the hassle of – you know – trying to stop Bill from raping more women. That would have been so … awkward for him. So “avoid the situation” is bad advice because he needed his job more. Got it. And “avoid the situation” is not perfect advice so “stand by and do nothing” is OK?
[* If there were such a thing as morality, it would somehow formulate that.]
Andreas Avester@#31:
You seemed to insist that it’s wrong for a person to prioritize their own personal wellbeing, so that’s how I understood your position.
Show me where I said that, and how you came to believe that was what I said. It’s certainly not what I was trying to say.
For one thing I’d be pretty disappointed in myself if I came down with such certainly on a moral issue; I try to always factor in the situation – that’s the point of the whole discussion as far as I am concerned.
When I say that the NYT should have published information that they chose to sit on and claimed that they were sitting on in order not to influence elections – and influenced elections the other way – I think they did not act as the whistle blowers or mediators of truth or whatever they seem to think they are doing. Ditto, at a certain point when Risen realized that his stories were being killed for political reasons, he had a choice to make and he made it. I don’t agree with his choice and I don’t buy that “I needed my job” when he eventually quits his job years later to publish about stuff that’s now thoroughly too late. Risen and the NYT kept stuff secret that allowed Obama to expand the surveillance state and NYT kept Abu Ghraib secret for up to a year. That’s stuff that might have – for one thing – saved some people a bit of torture. Are you trying to say that I’m being unreasonable when I point out that the NYT might bear some responsibility?
I don’t think it is at all unreasonable to criticize people’s actions in the context of what happens down the stream of time. That is what “blame” means. And I don’t think it is “butt covering” for a person to consider how their actions may play out, and decide whether that’s something that they want to see happen. Of course they have to take all their life situation and other aspects of the situation into account – that’s called “taking responsibility” or something like that.
It seems to me that you’re being very sloppy in your interpretation of what I am saying, turning taking responsibility into “butt covering” and questioning whether certain decisions were made well as offering some kind of strict recommendation for how others should behave. I don’t think I’m being particularly unclear (I may be, in which case you’re welcome to show me) and since I think I am being clear, I’m left with wondering if you are deliberately mis-characterizing what I am saying, or if it’s accidental.
Andreas Avester@#31:
You seemed to insist that it’s wrong for a person to prioritize their own personal wellbeing
Also, I do think it’s wrong for a person to entirely prioritize their personal wellbeing. Yes, I think a gestapo guard should not be able to excuse serving at a death camp by saying, “I needed the pay” or “I was just following orders.” If we do not consider the downstream consequences of our actions I don’t think civilization is possible.
More to the point, we are always considering the downstream consequences of our actions whether for our own benefit or not. Unless we live under a rock or something, we’ve got to consider friends, family, or our entire civilization. It does not seem unreasonable to me to question a person’s decisions downstream, if the consequences of their actions turn out to be bad. “Oh hey mister gestapo guard maybe you should have quit” is not unreasonable to me. “Oh hey NYT maybe you should have published that sooner” isn’t either. “Hey James Risen if you knew about that years ago, maybe you’re not being a whistle blower maybe you’re being part of a cover-up and trying to have it both ways” – it’s all on the same continuum of re-assessing another’s actions and their consequences over time.
[Edit: remember – the NYT according to Risen, and Risen according to Risen, had information about the Iraq WMD story being a lie. The consequences of letting that lie stand have been horrendous, don’t you think? Is it unreasonable to question that decision?]
I think it’s reasonable that we’re collectively pissed off at the big oil companies for trying to obfuscate and cover up the effects of dumping lots of carbon in the atmosphere. I’m not going to excuse them for prioritizing their wellbeing. Nor am I going to excuse their executives for prioritizing their wellbeing. And when you start to choke and die from the results of their decision, I doubt you’ll excuse them for it either.
No, I don’t see this blog as a debate club.
I just fail to see a clear distinction between “making good decisions” and “butt covering.” Both seem to have some similarities. For example, I don’t want to do anything ethically compromising, so I just stick to drawing fluffy cats for a living. Is my career choice “making good decisions” or “butt covering”? I know I could argue in favour of either label.
I’d say the latter. Otherwise, the person acts more like a historian, not a whistle blower.
If it’s a wealthy serial rapist’s personal assistant (who presumably has a savings account and alternative employment options), then I’m comfortable blaming this person for not revealing the info years ago back when it still mattered and could have prevented further rapes.
If it’s a wealthy serial rapist’s first rape victim, then I won’t blame her for not publicly revealing all this information the next day after her rape (she’s already traumatized and expects media and the police to further abuse her and accuse her of lying anyway).
When an impoverished person complains about their living conditions, a Republican will tell this person to just get a well-paying job. If the problem is “poverty,” then “get a well-paying job” is a solution that can work only for a limited number of poor people. A few will succeed and get well-paying jobs, most won’t succeed. Thus when a Republican tells that a solution to bad living conditions experienced by poor people is for them to just start working and get well-paying jobs, I won’t see the proposal as a valid solution. Instead I will demand for a different solution that can actually help every single poor person out there (solutions like food stamps or government sponsored housing). Anyway, I digress, but your proposed solution really reminds me of this case.
If we are talking about computer security professionals who generally earn plenty of money and have multiple possible employment options, then I will accept “avoid bad jobs on an individual level” as a solution, because every single one of computer security professionals could simultaneously use this solution, and it would work just fine.
If we are talking about janitors who have little choice in employment options, then I will no longer accept “avoid bad jobs on an individual level” as a solution—even if one janitor gets lucky to find a better employer who does not require cleaning torture equipment, some other impoverished janitor will simply end up getting the job instead. The law of probability dictates that somebody is bound to draw the short straw.
Andreas Avester@#31:
You seemed to insist that it’s wrong for a person to prioritize their own personal wellbeing
You seemed to be insisting that personal wellbeing was a good excuse for inaction in the face of threat. It’s an excuse, just not always a good enough one. in fact sometimes it’s downright damning.
Whenever you say some words, other people who read or hear you are bound to interpret your words through a filter created by their own life experiences and opinions. That’s pretty inevitable, that’s how communication works.
Anyway, in #5 you said that:
I was filtering such statements though my own lived experiences. I know a bunch of poor people, every single one of them always told me at length about how they despise their jobs, how they hate them more than anything, how they’d love to resign. As a kid, I used to ask, “Then why don’t you just quit?” I always got the same answer: “And become unemployed, penniless, and homeless? That would be even worse.” (Also my family member who worked as a prison guard was among the people who told me this.) Moreover, I also know some people who did lose their jobs, and afterwards their lives quickly went downhill. I watched this happen with my uncle back when I was a child. That was heartbreaking to observe. I still have early childhood memories of before he lost his job. The way how his life changed, how he himself gradually changed as a person, that really sucked. On top of that, there are also my parents’ experiences of living in a totalitarian state, where opposing the government in any way resulted in your life getting ruined in one way or another, and that’s assuming you got lucky and were allowed to stay alive at all.
Anyway, when you suggested that a person who’s stuck in a shitty job should just quit it, at the back of my mind there were all the shitty memories I have about what happens when a person loses a job. Thus I mentally equated your suggestion to “quit a shitty job” with “sacrifice your own wellbeing and accept a life of misery.” In order for some person to actually do so, they would have to prioritize other people’s wellbeing over that of their own.
I know that for plenty of people quitting one job just means getting another different job that might be only slightly worse, with a little smaller salary. If that was what you had in mind, then obviously your suggestion to quit some job would not require some person to sacrifice personal wellbeing for the sake of others.
In general, I never intentionally mischaracterize other people’s position in discussions. I don’t do that even in tournament debates, where it would be just poor strategy (it won’t work unless the adjudicators are stupid, and I don’t use debating strategies that require hoping for a stupid adjudicator).
I can occasionally lie in a discussion, but I do so exclusively when I dislike the person I’m talking to. For example, yesterday I ended up having a conversation with a bigot who started lecturing me how homosexual people are sick and how Jews are evil. So I just lied to that man by claiming that I’m a Jewish lesbian, because I wanted to see his reaction. Anyway, this is something I occasionally do only when I strongly dislike the person I’m talking to.
If the person actually had a choice and they had some at least somewhat acceptable alternative options, then sure. I can agree.
It’s just that in my opinion, “get thrown in jail,” “get sent to Siberia,” or “become penniless and homeless,” aren’t acceptable alternative options. As long as you are not implying that people always have a duty to oppose injustice regardless of severe personal suffering, I can agree with your point that people should be responsible for their decisions.
I agree. In this case we are talking about people who were already immensely wealthy. It’s not like anyone of them were in danger of becoming homeless and penniless.
Sometimes I will accept is as an excuse. It depends on individual circumstances.
Marcus @various
I think expecting people to look ahead to see the consequences of their actions is an ideal that for far too many people may be simply impossible because of the way that they think. I don’t know if people can be taught to do it, but I have seen over and over again that many people just can’t connect the dots that are to me obvious. That goes from the every day practical stuff, like not putting your mug on the edge of the table where it is likely to be knocked off and broken, or reading the road ahead for things that will or even just may require you as a driver to take action to prevent an accident, to blue skies planning of what the transport system in an area should look like in even ten years, let alone fifty years, by the extremely well paid senior officers of the transport authority for that area. All of those examples are ones that I have seen personally, the mug breaker went through eighteen mugs in one year that I know of having shared a house with them – it drove me crazy and I made sure to put all my mugs away once I realised their behaviour wouldn’t change despite them bemoaning how many mugs they broke, that was personally annoying, the transport authority officers was more worrying. They seemed to think that changes in transport behaviour ‘just happened’ even though they were tasked with reducing car use and increasing the use of public transport, walking and cycling, they couldn’t be brought to actually think about the actions required to make the necessary changes happen, just could. not. do. it. yet they were in jobs with the power to make channges that would influence what mode of transport the public ended up choosing to use.
I don’t think this necessarily applies to Risen, and certainly not to the NYT, but it is a factor that I think your analysis neglects, you are making the mistake many of us are prone to all make in assuming that because we can do a thing others can. And that inability may be part of the reason that some of the people concerned ignored your warnings about where computer security was heading, they couldn’t join the dots the way you did and even when you showed them the joined-up dots it didn’t make sense because their brains didn’t work that way. It’s why the people who can do this kind of thinking can have a profound influence on a society.