One wonders if Glenn's persistence in reporting this issue is due to being targeted by NSA contractors like Palantir, regarding Palantir's work against US activists. A "Spotlight" as the email says: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2LJZSZknE-I/TVpg4sNeUHI/AAAAAAAAC6... Via street nigga's thread.
Exactly what is Palantir --- specifically Palantir, not nutball HBGaryFederal head Aaron Barr --- accused of doing unlawfully or unethically in this "dalliance"? Collecting public information for law firms isn't unethical.
Having one of your 27-year-old SEs eagerly working alongside Barr to move a deal forward has bad optics. But believing that Glenn Greenwald should be thwarted is an opinion that, while obviously objectionable on HN, not actually unethical.
Could you explain exactly how Palantir is accused of attempting to unethically damage Glenn Greenwald's career? In more detail than "one of their SEs was in an email thread with Aaron Barr"? Because what you just wrote is a straw-man version of my comment.
"believing that Glenn Greenwald should be thwarted is an opinion that, while obviously objectionable on HN, not actually unethical."
Are you trying to say that an employee for NSA contractor Palantir discussing targeting a journalist because of his work on a topic is separate from the employee's beliefs, therefore is not actually unethical?
How exactly did the journalist, or his career get brought up in a conversation between federal contractors about solicitation for work again? Was it to talk about of the reports they liked from him?
Here is a reason one might ethically believe Greenwald should be thwarted: because they believe that Greenwald is deeply dishonest, making up details about stories in order to fill in the gaps of his narrative and reporting them as if they were facts, so that half the Internet now believes that Google, the one big Internet company known to have actually invested real resources in opposing dragnet surveillance, is instead in league with the NSA, and instead of using Google Mail we should all support incompetent kooks like Ladar Levison.
Now, some important caveats:
(1) It is obviously possible to unethically thwart any writer's agenda. Publishing things you know to be untrue, even in the service of what you believe is a higher truth, is unethical; it's exactly what someone might accuse Greenwald of having done. For that matter, invading Greenwald's privacy by, I don't know, stealing his bank records would also be deeply unethical. But Palantir hasn't been accused of either of these, or, for that matter, anything else unethical w/r/t Greenwald. Feel free to enlighten me here.
(2) If you can't tell, I'm not a major Greenwald fan. Having said that, I also believe the best antidote for bad speech is good speech, so orchestrating a campaign to suppress him doesn't seem like a good strategy to me. It apparently sounded like a good idea to one of Palantir's SEs, which ended up getting the guy fired.
