Talking to the Press Considered Harmful

Tim May tcmay at got.net
Tue Oct 9 10:09:25 PDT 2001


On Tuesday, October 9, 2001, at 07:20 AM, Ken Brown wrote:
> Whatever the security services' motive, it is quite unclear to me why
> a `quality newspaper' should have run this story, even after its
> technical and operational implausibility were explained to you in
> detail (see also `Al-Qaeda hid coded messages on porn websites' [5]).
>
> Could you kindly publish this letter as a correction.
> Ross Anderson
> Reader in Security Engineering
> University of Cambridge

Insert here the usual quotes about "in war, the first casualty is truth."

Why anyone expects scribblers to stick to the truth (even their flaky 
conceptions of it) in these strange times is beyond me.

We have "Wired News" (not DM) nattering about "gun show loopholes," we 
have "Reason"  opining that free speech is rilly, rilly scary and like, 
ya know, there are no libertarians in foxholes.

I've had a couple of reporters try to reach me for "quotes." When I 
turned them down, they replied along the lines of "But it'll only take a 
minute of your time." All the worse, but they miss this point.

The time for careful consideration of crypto, civil rights, stego, 
biowarfare, and other such issues was over the past decade or two. And 
these issues _have_ been beaten to death.

But I guess a newspaper or magazine or even an online "newschat" service 
would not do well if it advised readers in 30-point type:

READ THE FUCKING ARCHIVES!

USE SEARCH ENGINES!


And so the sheeple are given aerosol sprays of factoids and rumors.


--Tim May, Citizen-unit of of the once free United States
" The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood 
of patriots & tyrants. "--Thomas Jefferson, 1787





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