The Intercept

The Intercept
Interest of	Ken Silverstein
Owner of	The Intercept

After NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden came forward with revelations of mass surveillance in 2013, journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill decided to found a new media organisation dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism. They called it The Intercept.

First Look Media

The Intercept is a publication of First Look Media. Launched in 2013 by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, First Look Media is a multi-platform media company devoted to supporting independent voices, from fearless investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking to arts, culture, media and entertainment. First Look Media produces and distributes content in a wide range of forms including feature films, short-form video, podcasts, interactive media and long-form journalism, for its own digital properties and with partners.

Leaked documents

NSA malware

In March 2014, The Intercept published leaked documents from Edward Snowden showing that the National Security Agency was building a system to infect potentially millions of computers around the world with malware. The report included a top-secret NSA animation showing how the agency disguised itself as a Facebook server in order to hack into computers for surveillance. The story reportedly prompted Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to phone President Obama and complain about the NSA's surveillance]]. Zuckerberg later wrote in a blog post:

"I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future."

NSA intercepts

In May 2014, The Intercept reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) was secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation on the island nation of The Bahamas and collecting cell phone metadata in Mexico, the Philippines and Kenya. Following the report, The Intercept was criticised by WikiLeaks for withholding the name of one country whose calls were being recorded. WikiLeaks announced that "the country in question is Afghanistan."

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Cryptome	“Cryptome raises serious questions that nobody else on the left or in the media want to talk about, including how Omidar has created a business from Snowden's cache; what exactly Snowden may have been doing while he was working for the CIA prior to his time at NSA (and what else he may have been doing at NSA itself); and why Snowden and The Intercept continue to proselytize for Tor, the anonymization tool, despite its massive funding from the U.S. government, the Pentagon and the national security state.”	Tim Shorrock	February 2016
Pierre Omidyar	“There is truly nothing like Omidyar’s contradictory roles — fighting the empire, leaking the empire’s secrets, while also working hand-in-glove with the empire’s agencies to make the world more pliable to US government and corporate interests. Perhaps it reflects the multibillionaire’s bizarre Howard Hughes-like schizophrenia; perhaps it’s deliberate, a co-optation of the dissident activist wing. Perhaps there’s no rhyme or reason, only the effects — an eerie silence from nearly the entire activist community when it comes to holding Omidyar or his many endeavors accountable.”	Pierre Omidyar Mark Ames	30 October 2014

 

Employee on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End
Andy Carvin	Editor In Chief of Reported.ly	February 2014	August 2016

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Pierre Omidyar: giving until it hurts	article	7 December 2013	David Carr	"No billionaire media mogul is ever going to be in the service of working people, no matter how much rhetoric about freedom of speech is deployed in the promotion of his or her product..."

 

A document sourced from The Intercept

Title	Type	Subject(s)	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:GCHQ and Me: My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers	Article	GCHQ UKUSA SIGINT Edward Snowden ECHELON Robert Hannigan ABC Trial Transparency International Menwith Hill Reiner Braun	3 August 2015	Duncan Campbell	No one at the May 2015 conference on intelligence, security and privacy argued against greater openness. Thanks to Edward Snowden and those who courageously came before, the need for public accountability and review has become unassailable.

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