14 DAY TRIAL // Ever since the NSA leaks started, the US government, obviously, has been talking to the press to try to contain the damage as much as possible and steer the dialog in its favor, again, as much as possible.
Thankfully, for now, the press still has strong protections in the US, so all the US government can do is ask nicely.
That's unlike in the UK where it can come into a newspaper's office and destroy hard drives to prevent any of the leaked documents from being published, or at least to send a message the press that it won't take these things lightly.
Barton Gellman, one of the three journalists that have been instrumental in the string of leaks originating from whistleblower Edward Snowden, has now revealed how the US government asked him to leave out the names of the nine companies involved in the PRISM program.
The argument was that if the companies would be named, they wouldn't want to cooperate with the government anymore, because of the public outcry.
"The thing that the government most wanted us to remove was the names of the nine companies. The argument, roughly speaking, was that we will lose cooperation from companies if you expose them in this way," Gellman told the audience at the Cato Institute conference.
"And my reply was 'that's why we are including them.' Not in order to cause a certain result, or to get you to lose your cooperation but if the harm that you are describing consists of reputational or business damage to a company because the public doesn't like what it's doing or you're doing, that's the accountability we are supposed to be promoting," he added.
Indeed, he continued, now that the companies have been named, they have started to fight against the government surveillance and asking for more transparency. Before, he believes, they had very little incentive to do so.