I didn't treat it as anything. It really doesn't even need to be proven as fact. The actual thing people were warning about was untrained and unqualified people having access to this data in the first place. I can't find a statement denying that this employee had that level of access.
If those people weren't granted unprecedented access to our data, there would be no whistle to blow. You can wait for the "investigation" to play out, the rest can see that obvious risks were ignored to benefit someone.
The steelman is that this issue is politically loaded, and there is not yet proven public evidence for the most explosive version of the claim. That makes it an easy target for partisan amplification, especially because it maps perfectly onto an existing fear people were already primed for. It is emotionally potent by design.
> there is not yet proven public evidence for the most explosive version of the claim.
Again, there doesn't need to be evidence. The point is that a claim like this is clearly plausible and worth investigating because of political decisions this administration made. They took a non-political issue (access to social security data) and explicitly made it political. You don't get to later use those same politics as a protective shield for criticism.
> it maps perfectly onto an existing fear people were already primed for.
People were primed because of the repeated warning that experts were giving about the security of this data and carelessness in allowing access. You are helping to prove my point that the administration encouraged this by their own actions.
Anyone whose looking at this administration as anything but corrupt thieves that need to be immediately jailed is a patsy, a fool, or a thief themselves.
I'll treat this as a genuine question. No, to "steelman" is to engage with the strongest possible version of your interlocuter'so argument, rather than the weakest. An especially effective steelman case will (genuinely!) strengthen or clarify the opposite point of view before laying out the case against it. It's a way of granting respect to those with whom you disagree, and (I find) a discipline that helps me avoid empty rhetoric.
But, yeah: if you find that the steelman version of the opposing argument won't be borne out in reality that's a promising line of attack. You'll argument will be more likely to be effective, however, than if you attack the strongest rather than the weakest ("strawman") version of the case.
I don't understand, declaring on your own terms what you think the argument actually is isn't respectful, it's deeply disrespectful. Take the claim at face value, details can and will be clarified through conversation.
> declaring on your own terms what you think the argument actually is isn't respectful
Which is usually a strawman tactic, and I agree both disrespectful and useless.
But... We will always respond to our own understanding of someone else's argument! That's inevitable, short of mind-reading. A habit of steel-manning the opposite case is a useful discipline for demonstrating respect - and, ideally, minimizing the necessity for clarification.
In practice, this means to make (to the best of your ability and understanding) an honest and accurate restatement of their case, and (if you see an opportunity - you won't always) a genuine suggestion that it would be stronger if it considered [x, y, z], before you attempt to refute it. You may not get it quite right, but you will have given your interlocuter a straightforward opportunity (as you say, conversationally) to clarify.
I think this is, given as I say that we're not able to inhabit anyone else's mind directly, the closest that we can rhetorically come to taking another's claim "at face value".
If those people weren't granted unprecedented access to our data, there would be no whistle to blow. You can wait for the "investigation" to play out, the rest can see that obvious risks were ignored to benefit someone.