I think tanderson92 is claiming that the source was actually identified via other methods, so the material provided by the Intercept played no role in identifying the source. Hence the Intercept did not accidentally reveal their source but is being portrayed as such in order to discourage people from leaking to them.
Personally, while that scenario doesn't sound impossible I think the likelihood is being overstated due to motivated cognition: if you like the Intercept you would like to believe they did nothing wrong, but in reality people do make mistakes.
I don't make any particular claim about how the government identified the source. They also have access logs and apparently only 6 people accessed the document.
I do think that The Intercept bungled this in not stripping the watermarks; I don't shield them from criticism even though I value their reporting. But I do not necessarily accept the government's version of events. Parallel construction is not unheard-of.
> I don't make any particular claim about how the government identified the source. They also have access logs and apparently only 6 people accessed the document.
Thanks for pointing that out. I've edited it to simply say "via other methods", especially since other comments say the source did not directly send the info via her work email.
> I do think that The Intercept bungled this in not stripping the watermarks; I don't shield them from criticism even though I value their reporting. But I do not necessarily accept the government's version of events. Parallel construction is not unheard-of.
If the Intercept did make the mistakes they apparently made (if not they're free to deny it), does it matter whether or not the parallel construction theory is true?
Personally, while that scenario doesn't sound impossible I think the likelihood is being overstated due to motivated cognition: if you like the Intercept you would like to believe they did nothing wrong, but in reality people do make mistakes.