Because the point whether or not you believe they care about the content, or are cynical and assume it is just about their traffic, is to get maximum mileage out of it. And the way to do that is to drag it out.
If they dumped everything at once, a lot of it would get drowned out by a small number of the most interesting revelations.
They are doing us a huge favor by dripping the content. This forces other media outlets to continue the coverage of the (relatively un-sexy) topic.
We were complaining for ages that nobody covers and addresses privacy related issues. Thanks to Greenwald's and Sowden's media strategy it finally becomes frontpage news. Plus, with a little bit of luck we see the US government getting a few more times caught lying to the public in very clear terms.
In my opinion this is going to be a case study on how to masterfully orchestrate a press campaign. Just look at this week, Sunday: Release of the G20 spying story, Monday: Live Q&A, Tuesday: Most likely discussion of something he revealed in the Q&A, etc. Wouldn't be surprised if they had scheduled out a few weeks ahead. I'm sure there is at least a prime-time TV interview with Snowden still to come.
I think it might also be a case study in journalistic ethics classes in the future about how much a news organization should "push" a story or topic. The Guardian clearly has a point of view they want to push on this story (which isn't inherently bad) and I think some will argue that this distorts or distracts from the underlying story.
You can dump everything and then spend the next 6 months going through it with a fine-toothed comb and writing articles daily. Is the public really better served by waiting months to hear everything?
Yes, it gives Greenwald and Snowden the ability to exercise at least a little control of the story at the expense of Washington. So far I'm unimpressed by how revelations have played out under scrutiny but I hope they have something that allows them to just wait for the US government to back itself into a corner before they release hopefully more detailed and informative documents and primary sources.
Maybe they have one really big scoop that must be released at the right time and the rest of their hand is just bad PRISM powerpoints and warrants. Yay speculation
Other journalists would try to beat The Guardian to the scoop, with the same result. Everyone would be talking about it for two weeks, then we'd forget.
By controlling the flow, they can make sure that each important revelation is allowed some time in the spotlight. The issues gets a lot more attention that way.
You people are un-fucking-believable. You are literally lauding -- no, contorting yourselves to defend -- the hoarding of information you consider vital to the public good, and the slow, drawn out manipulation of the public's attention for private gain. This is, at a high level, directly analogous to whatever evil you think the NSA is committing.
And the dumbest of all ironies, which I'm sure is lost on all of you, is that you are employing utilitarian ethics to defend it. That is exactly how a spy program is considered ethical.
God. The humanities really are dead if this kind of clueless doublethinking represents the future thought leadership of our world.
No, I think the unbelievable people are supporting the gradual release as they feel it maximises the impact of the revelations, for the public good. What with news cycles and short attention spans and everything.
You seem to disagree, but don't make any convincing arguments that dumping all the information immediately is better for the public good. Probably because it's a very hard task.
I'm not saying whether it should or shouldn't be released. IMO there is no "there" to this story anyway, as will be revealed when/if these mysterious documents arrive. My critique is of the naked speculation run rampant on HN, and the post hoc rationalizations for believing wholeheartedly claims which are, at best, dubious and in any case unsubstantiated.
The story doesn't even pass the simplest of tests for self-consistency. An NSA contractor claims that the government is listening to all digital communications, but is somehow able to transfer classified files, taken from the NSA, to a journalist in the UK. If we believe the first part, how could the second part happen? If the agency had such a capability, I would assume that a call between low-level NSA employees and journalists (foreign ones especially) would trigger all sorts of alarms.
I disagree, there have been significant leaks - confirmation of the NSA collecting every phone record in the US on a daily basis, confirmation that the DNI lies to his oversight committee, confirmation that the NSA has collected almost 3 billion records on the US in march 2013, allegations that the NSA is attempting to collect all internet traffic, both outside and inside its borders, in the broadest possible sweeps. If it was such a non-story, I don't think Obama would have done a press conference about it, would he? That's a lot of 'there' for a non-story if you ask me, and sounds like the NSA has significantly expanded its mandate without proper authorisation or oversight.
An NSA contractor claims that the government is listening to all digital communications, but is somehow able to transfer classified files, taken from the NSA, to a journalist in the UK. If we believe the first part, how could the second part happen?
Just because lots of data is collected, that doesn't mean they can find what they want from it, except in retrospect, so I'm not sure where the contradiction lies there for you - I think his communications with Greenwald were encrypted (according to the film-maker he contacted first) after first contact.
Also, I don't remember him saying specifically that they are listening to all digital communications, just that they can if they want to listen in to any communications, did he allege that somewhere?
Huh? He didn't assert that the NSA has omniscience and the ability to instantly target, decrypt and analyze every piece of digital communication in the world. What he's talking about is the broad collection and storage of this data that can then be retroactively mined, possibly decrypted (for cases where encryption is even used) and analyzed when the sender and/or recipient becomes "interesting" to them.
Do you think he used his work phone to call Glenn Greenwald's personal phone or something? I think it can be rationally assumed that he used the best anonymizing techniques and encryption he's aware of to transmit the information.
If they dumped everything at once, a lot of it would get drowned out by a small number of the most interesting revelations.