At 2:36 PM -0700 6/15/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Though I do learn a lot of things I can't write about directly. I had dinner last week with a senior White House official and an FTC commissioner and a bunch of other folks. The condition of the invite was not reporting on what was discussed. Yesterday I spent the afternoon with folks including a Supreme Court clerk and a Federal judge. Friday evening I went to a party with a bunch of Republican heavyweights where we talked about what the Senate leadership is doing with the crypto bills.
Maybe what John was saying is that you're being co-opted. Brought into the inner circles, shown the secrets, wined and dined (and whined)...maybe you'll even be invited to Fort Meade for a screening of the "If you only knew what we knew" video. When you have dinner with judges, cops, senators, narcs, and other such insiders, and much of it is "deep background" (or whatever such briefings are called), and you have to promise to only spin the story in certain ways...well, the result is pretty obviously that you're just an outlet for the agitprop machine. I'm not saying you've sold out yet; I don't really know you, so I wouldn't know how vulnerable you are. But you're sure showing all the signs of becoming just another Washington Insider. One way they buy people--very reminiscent of the methods used to recruit spies--is to feed reporters with information they can't get anywhere else, and swear them to secrecy. This ties them up in complicated webs of trust, mistrust, and deceit, and makes the reporters more dependent on them for future stories. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."