Defeatist Compromising Commentary From Reason Magazine

Bill Stewart bill.stewart at pobox.com
Thu Sep 27 01:09:02 PDT 2001


At 11:13 PM 09/26/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 07:32:57PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
> > based on interviews in 1992. I mention this because several journalists
> > have been writing b.s stories aoubt Osama using "steganography, files
> > hidden in images.' B.S.)
>
>"Several?" A Lexis search on this phrase turns up 149 items:
>("bin laden" or "bin ladin") and ("encryption" or "steganography") and 
>date aft 9/10/2001
>And that's not counting most web-based news services, such as CNET or Salon.

But how many *individual* stories are those, as opposed to either
wire service stories appearing in multiple newspapers or
content skimmed from wire service stories mixed with other content?
Is it really one set of FBI pronouncements being used in all of them,
or is it multiple sources in the government hawking the same party-line memes
to reporters, or is it actual multiple independent sources?

Some of the stories probably also include reporters going to
Usual Crypto Suspects like Schneier and Zimmermann
asking for comments on the government/wireservice stories,
which at least adds some independence and diversity.
Possibly some of the reporters who've covered crypto issues in the past
may have added things from their own knowledge.

But for the most part I've seen articles that are basically all the same.





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