[dewey]

Looks like Bloomberg is doing the same as with the "implant" rumors and Supermicro a few months ago.

Gruber has a very nice disclaimer at the bottom of posts mentioning Bloomberg now:

"Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” last October — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true."

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/09/05/gurman-touch-id

[mar77i]

As commonly with stories like this, people will see the Bloomberg story and not see the correction issued by ProtonMail. The harm is done, and ProtonMail is likely going to miss out on subscriptions because of Bloomberg's irresponsible publication. This tendency likely holds true even if Bloomberg were publishing the correction themselves, as it has been observed time and time again.

If you apply for a writer's job at Bloomberg or many of these media companies, people will ask you if you have a following on Twitter, Facebook and the like with which you can share content you write so that your employment poses a smaller risk to your new employer than someone with little to no following. That in itself might just make writers statistically more loyal to big tech than really necessary.

[Barrin92]

I'm still completely astonished by how little attention this got and that Bloomberg has never been forced through public pressure to offer a correction. It's bizarre given how large the story was when it first broke.

[bgorman]

Bloomberg is based in a country with secret courts and secret gag orders for electronic surveillance (USA). Is is really that surprising that they have been unable to provide evidence regarding major electronic surveillance efforts?

[ethbro]

The irony would be if they were under a gag order not to issue a retraction.

But that's diving down the paranoia rabbit hole.

[jwr]

Thanks for reminding about this. I really don't know why people take Bloomberg seriously after "The Big Hack" article. From my point of view, they lost all credibility and I no longer believe what they write.

[mar77i]

It's as if they wanted to make PM look bad so that customers would rather opt for an Email provider that the NSA can spy on...

[MaupitiBlue]

SuperMicro didn’t sue Bloomberg. That should be a huge clue about the accuracy of the original article.