Rachel Maddow did a BIG SCOOP on Thursday night, and we think it's a pretty big fuckin' deal. To cut to the chase, somebody(she doesn't know who YET) used her "Send It To Rachel" tool to send her something thatlooks like a highly classified document about collusion between Donald Trump and Russia, but is
Of course it can be faked, in dozens of ways. My point is that Greenwald is calling the timestamp real and using it to widen the possibility of potential senders. It would be very difficult for the average public Internet user to be able to grab the document, with it's original creation date, without that user having root access.
So while it is possible for someone to download the document as I did, change the date to match the original and then send it off to Rachel, you still have to ask: how would the user know the exact creation date of the original, to the second, without having access to the original itself?
Re-thinking this, I'm not sure if the forger would even need to know or replicate the timestamp on the original; after all, what Reality Winner purportedly sent to The Intercept was evidently a scanned copy of a printed NSA document. As such, the timestamp and other metadata on the doc received by The Intercept would certainly differ from that of the original NSA doc.
All the forger would have needed to do here, is Photoshop a copy of the Intercept doc, copy/paste into a new doc, with a timestamp on their "copy", set to sometime after Reality Winner was arrested, but prior to the time The Intercept published their legitimately leaked (Legitimately leaked? Is that a thing?) document. File metadata is relatively easy to manipulate.
Getting the printer dots into a believable pattern seems somewhat more labor-intensive, but still doable, assuming the forger is familiar with the dots. I went back and checked Rachel's segment; in the close-up of the Intercept document at 11:02, there is a clearly human-readable pattern of dots on the Intercept/NSA document, that look like they indicate "P1".
Three things jump out at me here:
1) Rachel's forger either didn't know about the dots, or couldn't be bothered with getting them "right",
B) It would have been a hell of a lot more significant had Rachel received her document before the Intercept published theirs, and
III) The content errors and irregularities seem a pretty potent indictment of the document anyway. (On edit: Is our forger James O'Keefe? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.)
So, I at least partially agree with Greenwald; the list of suspects is much larger than Rachel's "whoa if true, very short list" scenario. Which Rachel clearly labeled as a "whoa if true, the meta could be faked too" kind of thing. But yay Rachel for sending up this flare; it's plausible that her scoop here may have prevented the whole Trump/Russia investigation from being turned into another "Rathergate", at least in the public's mind, if not Mueller's.
All true, but the timestamp on Rachel's doc IS the time stamp on the Intercept doc, exactly. In her piece she dates the document, not by the time she received it, but by the time it was created. So, again, my question is, how?
Okay, I looked at the download link for the Reality Winner doc on The Intercept's June 5 story, trying to find some way to see the exact upload time. Even inspecting the properties of the link reflects current date/time for me too. So, yes; How?
Then, per Greenwald's rebuttal piece to Rachel's story, this:
In other words, anyone who took the document directly from The Intercept’s site would have a document with exactly the same time stamp as the one Maddow showed.
Which is demonstrably not the case.
So now, instead of answering the "how" question, I have a new one to add; why would Greenwald say that?
Yeah, I know. If he didn't say that no one would ever know the date stamp on his document. By making a point of it, he has pretty much confirmed that the doc Rachel received is based on an exact copy of the file uploaded to the Intercept website.
You mean the metadata that shows the creation date as the exact same date and time as the original document?
That one?
You mean Maddow couldn't even compare the metadata in the two documents and determine that they didn't change the creation date when they altered it, making the creation date utterly worthless as a forensic device?
Wow. That's some sloppy reporting. Or maybe Maddow was just that eager to run with this narrative, and she didn't care what was true.
I'm pretty sure that my problem with Debbie is her willingness to carry water for evil business industries. Here's some reading material you can continue to ignore:
But it is really quite funny to watch you toss out various red herrings. You're aware that Bernie's Jewish, right? Oh. Wait. In this case, he'll be considered an atheist, in order to serve your chosen narrative of the moment.
Your willingness to fight fact with innuendo is depressingly familiar. I have seen Fox News do it on too many occasions to count. And here you are, shamelessly shilling for a conspiracy theory already proven false, by attacking the people who have provided the proof.
How does it feel to become what you've always hated? You are Fox News now.
She got hosed pretty badly on that "Trump's tax returns" thingee which ended up sort of like "Al Capone's Secret Vault." So she's not going to fall for any more bullshit.
Further, that screen shot in Greenwald's rebuttal piece has now exposed the timestamp info to the public, apparently for the very first time. Because of that disclosure, it's now easy for anyone to create new forgeries with that exact timestamp.
Turning these facts into a logical syllogism, the conclusion is pretty remarkable; that Rachel's forgery was, in fact, based upon the original upload from TI to the document cloud (as opposed to either the original NSA doc or Winner's upload to TI). Either that, or one or more of the premises are wrong.
Does anyone know a way to independently discern the timestamp of of the TI doc from their June 5th story? Alternately, has anyone found any instance where the timestamp was exposed, prior to Greenwald's July 7 rebuttal?
You know, you don't even troll well. I just feel bad for you. You're snarking away, defending a Party that sold your priorities to the highest bidder.
You think the Democrats are interested in universal healthcare, or financial regulatory reform, or labor protections from abusive employers, or any real progress on climate change, or a less belligerent foreign policy, or reining in the surveillance state, or doing anything at all on campaign finances?
They sold all of those positions to their donor base. There will be no universal healthcare with Democrats. Not if their Pharma and insurance employers have anything to say about it. Labor protections were sold off to multinational corporations. Democrats are real climate change warriors, if you don't could the frack everywhere policy. And you really thin neocon Hillary wouldn't be bombing Syria? She promised she would. And they took the Dubya surveillance state, and just enhanced it. All in support of the industry donor who benefit massively from these policy flip flops.
And campaign financing? You can't. Reform a system by taking its money.
All of the things Democratic voters say they care about, Democratic donors are hostile towards. And you keep voting for these shills who sold you out years ago. Not just that, but you come here, and promulgate their lies.
I can't feel anything but pity for such a person. And you don't even get it yet. You can't win an election without us. You proved it last year. You all told us to go fuck ourselves, and enough of us listened to you that you lost to DONALD FUCKING TRUMP!!
And here you are, disrespecting our principles, mocking our priorities, completely oblivious to the fact that your Party sold out your priorities years ago, and you don't have any votes you can afford to turn away. but here you are, doing it, ready to blame the left for your next electoral failure. Apparently no one told you that it isn't the voters' job to support whatever compromised shill of a candidate the Party deigns to throw our way. It's the responsibility of the Party to nominate candidates we can support.
Figure it out, win an election. Keep this shit up and people will be talking about the Democrats like they talk about the Whigs. And it'll be your fault.
It is indeed. "The Unicorn in the Garden," from Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated (Harper and Brothers, 1940). Later republished in A Thurber Carnival (1945).
Of course it can be faked, in dozens of ways. My point is that Greenwald is calling the timestamp real and using it to widen the possibility of potential senders. It would be very difficult for the average public Internet user to be able to grab the document, with it's original creation date, without that user having root access.
So while it is possible for someone to download the document as I did, change the date to match the original and then send it off to Rachel, you still have to ask: how would the user know the exact creation date of the original, to the second, without having access to the original itself?
Awww, why don't you go work on Jilly's next presidential run?
Or hasn't the check arrived from Moscow yet?
Re-thinking this, I'm not sure if the forger would even need to know or replicate the timestamp on the original; after all, what Reality Winner purportedly sent to The Intercept was evidently a scanned copy of a printed NSA document. As such, the timestamp and other metadata on the doc received by The Intercept would certainly differ from that of the original NSA doc.
All the forger would have needed to do here, is Photoshop a copy of the Intercept doc, copy/paste into a new doc, with a timestamp on their "copy", set to sometime after Reality Winner was arrested, but prior to the time The Intercept published their legitimately leaked (Legitimately leaked? Is that a thing?) document. File metadata is relatively easy to manipulate.
Getting the printer dots into a believable pattern seems somewhat more labor-intensive, but still doable, assuming the forger is familiar with the dots. I went back and checked Rachel's segment; in the close-up of the Intercept document at 11:02, there is a clearly human-readable pattern of dots on the Intercept/NSA document, that look like they indicate "P1".
Three things jump out at me here:
1) Rachel's forger either didn't know about the dots, or couldn't be bothered with getting them "right",
B) It would have been a hell of a lot more significant had Rachel received her document before the Intercept published theirs, and
III) The content errors and irregularities seem a pretty potent indictment of the document anyway. (On edit: Is our forger James O'Keefe? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.)
So, I at least partially agree with Greenwald; the list of suspects is much larger than Rachel's "whoa if true, very short list" scenario. Which Rachel clearly labeled as a "whoa if true, the meta could be faked too" kind of thing. But yay Rachel for sending up this flare; it's plausible that her scoop here may have prevented the whole Trump/Russia investigation from being turned into another "Rathergate", at least in the public's mind, if not Mueller's.
All true, but the timestamp on Rachel's doc IS the time stamp on the Intercept doc, exactly. In her piece she dates the document, not by the time she received it, but by the time it was created. So, again, my question is, how?
So, I was going to try to get some work done tonight, but now I'm binge-reading The Intercept...
Okay, I looked at the download link for the Reality Winner doc on The Intercept's June 5 story, trying to find some way to see the exact upload time. Even inspecting the properties of the link reflects current date/time for me too. So, yes; How?
Then, per Greenwald's rebuttal piece to Rachel's story, this:
In other words, anyone who took the document directly from The Intercept’s site would have a document with exactly the same time stamp as the one Maddow showed.
Which is demonstrably not the case.
So now, instead of answering the "how" question, I have a new one to add; why would Greenwald say that?
Yeah, I know. If he didn't say that no one would ever know the date stamp on his document. By making a point of it, he has pretty much confirmed that the doc Rachel received is based on an exact copy of the file uploaded to the Intercept website.
You mean the metadata that shows the creation date as the exact same date and time as the original document?
That one?
You mean Maddow couldn't even compare the metadata in the two documents and determine that they didn't change the creation date when they altered it, making the creation date utterly worthless as a forensic device?
Wow. That's some sloppy reporting. Or maybe Maddow was just that eager to run with this narrative, and she didn't care what was true.
And another person who has read the DNC talking point: everyone you disagree with is a Russian operative.
I thought you weren't going to read any more of my lectures. I guess that was another failure of the facts.
I'm pretty sure that my problem with Debbie is her willingness to carry water for evil business industries. Here's some reading material you can continue to ignore:
http://www.politico.com/sto...
http://www.politifact.com/f...
But it is really quite funny to watch you toss out various red herrings. You're aware that Bernie's Jewish, right? Oh. Wait. In this case, he'll be considered an atheist, in order to serve your chosen narrative of the moment.
Your willingness to fight fact with innuendo is depressingly familiar. I have seen Fox News do it on too many occasions to count. And here you are, shamelessly shilling for a conspiracy theory already proven false, by attacking the people who have provided the proof.
How does it feel to become what you've always hated? You are Fox News now.
She got hosed pretty badly on that "Trump's tax returns" thingee which ended up sort of like "Al Capone's Secret Vault." So she's not going to fall for any more bullshit.
Further, that screen shot in Greenwald's rebuttal piece has now exposed the timestamp info to the public, apparently for the very first time. Because of that disclosure, it's now easy for anyone to create new forgeries with that exact timestamp.
Turning these facts into a logical syllogism, the conclusion is pretty remarkable; that Rachel's forgery was, in fact, based upon the original upload from TI to the document cloud (as opposed to either the original NSA doc or Winner's upload to TI). Either that, or one or more of the premises are wrong.
Does anyone know a way to independently discern the timestamp of of the TI doc from their June 5th story? Alternately, has anyone found any instance where the timestamp was exposed, prior to Greenwald's July 7 rebuttal?
Oh, cupcake, it's not a DNC talking point. She was at the same RT dinner Flynn attended...but I think you left out the shriek of "NEO-MCCARTHYITE!!"
You know, you don't even troll well. I just feel bad for you. You're snarking away, defending a Party that sold your priorities to the highest bidder.
You think the Democrats are interested in universal healthcare, or financial regulatory reform, or labor protections from abusive employers, or any real progress on climate change, or a less belligerent foreign policy, or reining in the surveillance state, or doing anything at all on campaign finances?
They sold all of those positions to their donor base. There will be no universal healthcare with Democrats. Not if their Pharma and insurance employers have anything to say about it. Labor protections were sold off to multinational corporations. Democrats are real climate change warriors, if you don't could the frack everywhere policy. And you really thin neocon Hillary wouldn't be bombing Syria? She promised she would. And they took the Dubya surveillance state, and just enhanced it. All in support of the industry donor who benefit massively from these policy flip flops.
And campaign financing? You can't. Reform a system by taking its money.
All of the things Democratic voters say they care about, Democratic donors are hostile towards. And you keep voting for these shills who sold you out years ago. Not just that, but you come here, and promulgate their lies.
I can't feel anything but pity for such a person. And you don't even get it yet. You can't win an election without us. You proved it last year. You all told us to go fuck ourselves, and enough of us listened to you that you lost to DONALD FUCKING TRUMP!!
And here you are, disrespecting our principles, mocking our priorities, completely oblivious to the fact that your Party sold out your priorities years ago, and you don't have any votes you can afford to turn away. but here you are, doing it, ready to blame the left for your next electoral failure. Apparently no one told you that it isn't the voters' job to support whatever compromised shill of a candidate the Party deigns to throw our way. It's the responsibility of the Party to nominate candidates we can support.
Figure it out, win an election. Keep this shit up and people will be talking about the Democrats like they talk about the Whigs. And it'll be your fault.
It is indeed. "The Unicorn in the Garden," from Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated (Harper and Brothers, 1940). Later republished in A Thurber Carnival (1945).
The Jack Acid Society, now occupying 1600 PA. Ave.