The Intercept Shutters Snowden Archive, Citing Cost

Something happened that would be decried by everyone as ‘censorship’ if “the government” had shut them up – the largest look inside the alphabet soup agencies working got shut down, after a few years of next to no publications already (once the initial “scandal” could believably be laid to rest). The Snowden trove of course got privatized within a year, with Glenn, Laura and Jeremy selling their tongues to Pierre Omidyar, whose companies have deep connections to the US State (primarily via USAID, a regime change outfit). Now, after 5 years of hardly any word, and with fewer than 10% of documents published (about), Greenwald, who more or less received access to $250M to use for journalism, cites “cost reasons” as to why the archive will be shuttered.

Meanwhile, supposed privacy watchdogs (like the EFF) have nothing to say, and of course the corporate and state media have basically become silent about the content of the leaks since mid-2014.

Congrats, Ed, you got played. (So did we the people, but that’s par for the course.) Hope future leakers learn from his mistake.

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Interesting, I had not heard about this.

The whole bit about Omidyar initially funding The Intercept mainly to hide information about Paypal’s work with the government from release sounds a bit improbable though. Wouldn’t the other news outlets with the Snowden archive be more than happy to publish that information to discredit The Intercept (their competitor)?

In general though, the reasoning seems pretty ridiculous:

The Intercept had decided to “focus on other editorial priorities” after expending five years combing through the archive.

As I see it, the Snowden archive is the entire reason for The Intercept existing at all. This is like a hot dog stand discontinuing hot dog sales to focus on “other priorities”.

But they all stopped providing access to it already - if they ever did.

Edward Snowden was a guest on a recent Motherboard Cyber podcast and they did ask him his thoughts. He didn’t have much to say but the podcast is worth listening to. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43jd9q/edward-snowden-russian-asylum-guantanamo-or-dead

I mean, wouldn’t they have reported it? What benefit does it serve for the Washington Post or New York Times to hide incriminating information about Paypal?

If there was evidence it was true, probably. It’s not something I had heard of until this thread started.

I think there’s no money to be made hosting the Snowden file, and perhaps the intercept has lost financial support it originally had?

Neither had I, which is why I doubt the Paypal conspiracy bit.

I imagine the real reason is purely that it’s cheaper to report on other stuff, and they want to increase profits.

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I agree, that and I doubt there are any more Pulitzer prizes to be won from reporting on the Snowden files. It’s mostly old news now from a media perspective.

The point isn’t PayPal and its role, I think. But that omidyar works with the us state department via usaid, which promotes regime change to open up other countries to us and western investors.

Eh.

Burn america down its a lefty shithole.

Great thing about censorship, It tells you where to look