Just don't imagine that HN is sitting on some moral high ground. Any time there is a story here that could be construed as possibly being negative towards Mr. Snowden, the top comments are overwhelmingly "Why is the media focused on Snowden and not the NSA scandal?" Whenever a story favorable to Mr. Snowden appears here, however, the comment threads are full of praise and much speculation over his personal future.<p>I'm sure these are mostly disjoint groups of users and not evidence of hypocrisy, but clearly even many hackers have great interest in the personal story of Mr. Snowden. And who can blame them? Personal stories are easy to identify with and easy to understand.<p>Now the story is about the stories, which is even further removed from the point at hand. And I am commenting about the story being about the stories, so I don't claim any moral high ground either. Just an observation, though.
There's nothing particularly unexpected by this, is there?<p>You see a big spike for "NSA" and "Prism" initially, then "Snowden" gradually takes over.<p>People consuming information about the NSA leak learned everything available during the first week. There is nothing new to be learned there.<p>Snowden's whereabouts are, however, an ongoing saga. As a result, I, like many others interested in this, are searching for Snowden news which is constantly changing.<p>It's encouraging so many are searching for Snowden. No one would be interested if they didn't already understand the context.
Apparently WaPo's key demo is imbeciles.<p>>You can play around with the graph here, and the trends don’t change substantially if you try “NSA” instead of “National Security Agency” or look at how the whole world is searching rather than just Americans.<p>Oh yeah? What if you combine the two?<p>Further, Brad Plumer, you may want to put yourself in the position of someone doing a Google search before you announce what people are trying to find info on. If I search NSA, what happens? I get results that don't have anything to do with the PRISM story. Same goes for the word 'prism'. 'Snowden', on the other hand, will bring me exactly what I need, so that's what I'm going to search for. Or don't they teach you how to Google at the Post?<p>I'll stop there. Anybody with half a brain could think of another dozen mundane ways to call Brad Plumer stupid. Except, of course, for Blad Plumer, who is stupid.
Why should we believe that "the Snowden story" is actually <i>detracting</i> from the NSA story?<p>That makes about as much sense as saying Deep Throat and the book "All the President's Men" detracted from the Watergate story.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_President's_Men" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_President's_Men</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate)#Controversy_over_motives" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate)#Contro...</a>
This is simply shows how users interact with search engines. If I want to visit the NSA homepage and learn what wonderful people they are I'll search for "NSA", if I want to find out the last clusterf<i></i>k to hit the NSA I'll type in "Snowden".
In some ways I wonder if he (and the impact that he wanted his leak to have) would be better off if he just turned himself in.<p>If the media insists that the story be about him, at least it won't be this Hollywood style, "where in the world is Edward Snowden" drama. Perhaps it can instead be about why this man is being prosecuted, and whether he should be.<p>It's an outside chance, but at least it gets us closer to the real story if it goes that route. If nothing else, at least the mundane day to day details of legal proceedings are less exciting than this global pursuit. And, perhaps in those details, as the government begins to make its case, we can learn more and have questions again raised about what the government is doing.
What's interesting is how this all should have been entirely predictable to Snowden. He's an American, he knows what Jerry Springer is. He said right from the beginning that he didn't want this to be about him, so why has he let the circus go on so long?<p>Did he think that the press focuses on human-interest stories because they <i>don't</i> sell or drive pageviews? He's giving the media so much to drive stories on, and all about Snowden and Assange and Wikileaks and asylum... but not about the big bad NSA. But so be it, I'm sure his current padded cell must be more comfortable.
This is classic journalism. People are wired to consume stories about other people. Collections of facts and abstract concepts appeal to hackers, engineers and analytical types, who are in the minority as most people can't stomach that kind of information.<p>Journalists always add a face to a story, and Snowden is that face. I'd say it's actually kind of encouraging because it means the message has been tailored for the mainstream and/or mainstream readers are interested.
This crisis management technique is employed by politicians while running their campaign, is it really that surprising that it persists when former campaign staff gets government titles?<p>1) Move the limelight away from the story and onto the opponent.<p>2) Dig out some questionable behavior from the past, or coin a term that portrays everyday common behavior in a negative light, e.g. if someone changed their opinions about anything, they're now a "flip-flopper".<p>3) Profit.
This article doesn't consider an aggregate like "nsa + national security agency." Plotting the two terms combined shows the Snowden story isn't clouding out the NSA searches.<p>For people who might suggest plotting "edward snowden + snowden," the graph doesn't change at all, for obvious reasons.
It really doesn't help that Snowden himself keeps asking for attention. He broke the story, gave away the docs, and still checks in every week so we all don't forget about him. I still think his leak was at least in part motivated by selfish reasons.
I think people are interested in Snowden because people are curious to see what happens to someone who so brazenly defies a democratic government in the name of democracy.