UPDATED: So this allegation falls on its ass, and rather quickly, too.  The desire to reach beyond the known facts into the realm of speculation is pretty high in general, but on a spy story it’s even stronger, it would seem.  In any event, I’m leaving this post up regardless.  Lots of good discussion in the comments section, but more than that, it represents the line at which I believe a civil liberties intrusion rises to an unconstitutional and indefensible standard.  This was hyped.  But again, there is no reason not to be wary of government overreach. The original claim, now denied and dormant, is here, followed by my own, earlier comments: In my original post criticizing the hyperbole over the Verizon phone metadata gathering by the NSA and the revelation of a court order for that program, I wrote this: “When the Guardian, or the Washington Post or the New York Times editorial board are able …to show that Americans actually had their communications...

In response to yesterday’s expressed disappointment with a Guardian column that challenged the original post on the NSA controversy here, Clay Shirky, who authored that essay, showed up in the comments section this morning.  That’s a mensch.  All credit there.  I’m going to highlight his comments and my answer to continue to focus my argument here.  And perhaps maybe move the argument off of who is Simon, or Greenwald, or Andrew Sullivan, or Thomas Friedman, or Janet Mayer, or Michael Moore, or Glenn Beck, or certainly, Mr. Shirky himself,  where they come from or what they might or might not know given what we think we understand of their background.  That stuff does not improve argument; it weakens argument.  Content matters.  The arguments themselves matter, not who we think made them or why.  Come to think of it, everyone just now arguing about who Edward Snowden is  might similarly inoculate themselves against the great viral scourge of  argumentum ad hominem...

There’s no problem whatsoever with the U.K.’s Guardian reporting the leaked Verizon court order, engaging with Mr. Snowden, and publishing the known details about that NSA program, as well as PRISM.  It is not in committing an act of premeditated journalism that such an august publication entered the realm of self-aggrandizing hyperbole.  The journalism is the job.  It was in the additional editorializing of the lead reporter in telling us exactly how “indiscriminate” the NSA program was.  Such characterization jumps past the known into the argumentative, and actually undercuts the fundamental journalism.  The NSA program involves a great amount of phone data, but it has by no means been proven indiscriminate. And while we have, leaked to us, the court order signed by a federal judge authorizing a re-up of that ongoing program, what we have not seen thus far is the affidavits of the counter-terrorism investigators explaining exactly the goals and uses of that...