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>Is it more believable that this guy circumvented their security, wiped his hard drive, but forgot about the life-sentence inducing child porn on his other hard drives? Or that is was planted by people who didn't like him, needed a scapegoat, needed a conviction, and had an easy way to do it. Neither, because they're both contrived strawman scenarios. >The US Intelligence Community has had some really massive screwups and straight up illegal operations become exposed over the last couple of decades (weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, COINTELPRO, PRISM, the list goes on...). I mentioned COINTELPRO in another comment, but I don't consider any of the other things you listed as ranking as highly as planting child pornography, and even COINTELPRO never went that far. >They have lost the legitimacy required for blind trust in them. Another weakman argument. Obviously I don't trust any government, let alone any government's intelligence agencies. Few people do. Most people, in all countries around the world, are well-aware that they're some of the least trustworthy entities to ever exist. I still think evidence is required when accusing an intelligence agency of heinous offenses, even when they have been guilty of many offenses in the past. I would even say the same of far more authoritarian and ruthless governments' intelligence agencies, like China's, even in spite of the fact that I think China's system and police state is a serious threat to humanity. It would not shock me much if the CIA did this. It would shock me if everyone out-of-hand believed it was more likely than not that they did this despite not a shred of evidence, or in the vast majority of cases didn't even look for any evidence, or cared about there being evidence, or even read anything related to the situation beyond a condensed title or a comment from someone who also read nothing but the title. It's intellectual laziness. Not that prosecuting a leaker is a high-stakes social issue, but future issues may arise where such a poor approach to epistemology could pose a great threat to our country or world. This thread so far is only a hair's width better than an InfoWars comment section. |
> Neither, because they're both contrived strawman scenarios
Except that the first scenario isn't a strawman, or even contrived: it's exactly what the CIA/FBI/prosecution is telling us to believe.
While the second scenario certainly smacks of "conspiracy theory", it's trivially doable by the agencies in question, who have motive to do so, and incredibly difficult for the defense to even allege, let alone gather evidence to support. I absolutely agree with and am sympathetic to the idea that this is just conspiracy theory nonsense, but... would anyone really be surprised if it were true? I certainly wouldn't be.