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zoobyshoe said:I think nsaspook and Greenwald are faulting the WP from a position of "curse of knowledge." That is: knowing what they know about computer security, they have become unable to understand the minds of people who don't know what they know. I'm thinking it did not occur to one editor there to question whether the FBI/DHS characterizations were overly broad or not. That's pretty much the kind of thing it would only occur to a cyber-security savvy person to ask.
That's a problem if all things were equal (their previous main tech security savvy guy left) due to ignorance but IMO the major reason for the story taking flight in it's initial form was the 'it's too good to check' attitude that can snare all of us when we have a predetermined bias for a sequence of events. You don't need much cyber-security training to check OMG news sources for the slightest bit of accuracy and lock it down before publishing when the facts are only a phone call away.
The bigger the OMG factor the more you need to check!
I can easily see how the original source of the story could be confused by even the WaPo.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevle...unraveled-through-web-archiving/#3c93bde52bc1
In fact, when I asked the Post why it had not contacted the utilities prior to publication, in her emailed response to me, Ms. Coratti asserted that the Post had indeed contacted both utilities for comment prior to publication and had not received a reply from either and so proceeded with publication. In fact, she went as far as to state “we had contacted the state’s two major power suppliers, as these sentences from the first version of the story attest: ‘It is unclear which utility reported the incident. Officials from two major Vermont utilities, Green Mountain Power and Burlington Electric, could not be immediately reached for comment Friday.’”
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However, as the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows, this is actually false. Archived snapshots of the story at 8:16PM and 8:46PM make no claims about having contacted either utility and state instead only that “While it is unclear which utility reported the incident, there are just two major utilities in Vermont, Green Mountain Power and Burlington Electric.” No claim is made anywhere in the article about the Post having contacted the utilities for comment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...vermont-utility-story/?utm_term=.b5586f272773
On Friday night, “officials” appeared to have given The Washington Post a perfect scoop for a weekend that would bridge the years 2016 and 2017. “Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say,” read the OMG headline on the original story. Even on the sluggish first steps of a holiday weekend, the story hustled its way everywhere. Journalists tweeted it; other outlets pursued it; statements came flying out of officialdom.
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What stands out about the incident, however, is that the newspaper published its salacious story based on the accounts of the “officials,” though without input from the utility folks. Burlington Electric executive Neale Lunderville told Vermont Public Radio, “It could have easily been corrected, well first, had this federal official not leaked this information inaccurately, and second had the news outlet got in touch with us to confirm it or deny it, and we would have told them, ‘Not so. That’s not the case.’ And they could have printed a correct story the first time around.”
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Kris Coratti, a spokeswoman for the paper, issued this statement: “We have corrected the story, prominently displayed the correct information after further reporting, evaluated what transpired, and had the appropriate discussions internally to make sure something similar does not occur again.”
“Again” would be the third time, considering that The Post was forced to publish an editor’s note over a Thanksgiving-weekend story fingering Russia for assisting in the spread of fake news.