Whittaker’s phrasing is ambiguous. Could be read as expressing one of a number of things:
The paper/article is misleading and distracting from meaningful threats to privacy.
That the original tweet is using misleading accusations to distract us from the article’s revelations of meaningful threats to privacy.
That Appelbaum’s authorship of the research is an unwanted negative association which undermines the attention deserved by the threats documented in the paper which are misleadingly justified as necessary by eg. governments.
It’s difficult to know without a better understanding of Whittaker’s position on the various matters at hand, so I don’t know.
And if we can’t tell for sure, it’s stupid to start pointing fingers. If you don’t have the facts, reading your (general) own narrative into her very short statement and presenting that as the objective truth is irrational. That’s how conspiracy theories are made.
Personally, it sounds like the person on top is recommending backdoors to “protect the children,” and Whittaker is rightly pointing out that that’s a stupid take, given who is in charge in various governments and the dumb reasons many of them have used as justification for implementing backdoors.
Whittaker’s phrasing is ambiguous. Could be read as expressing one of a number of things:
It’s difficult to know without a better understanding of Whittaker’s position on the various matters at hand, so I don’t know.
And if we can’t tell for sure, it’s stupid to start pointing fingers. If you don’t have the facts, reading your (general) own narrative into her very short statement and presenting that as the objective truth is irrational. That’s how conspiracy theories are made.
Personally, it sounds like the person on top is recommending backdoors to “protect the children,” and Whittaker is rightly pointing out that that’s a stupid take, given who is in charge in various governments and the dumb reasons many of them have used as justification for implementing backdoors.
Exit: clarification