The identity of the Sony hackers is still unknown. President Obama, in a December 19 press conference, announced: "We can confirm that North Korea engaged in this attack." He then vowed: "We will respond. We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States." The ... campaign to blame North Korea actually began two days earlier, when The New York Times [reported] that North Korea was 'centrally involved' in the hacking of Sony Pictures computers. The same day, The Washington Post ... devoted most of its discussion to the "retaliation" available to the U.S. The NYT and Post [did not note] how sparse and unconvincing was the available evidence against North Korea. The day before Obama's press conference, long-time expert Marc Rogers detailed his reasons for viewing the North Korea theory as "unlikely"; after Obama's definitive accusation, he comprehensively reviewed the disclosed evidence and was even more assertive: "there is NOTHING here that directly implicates the North Koreans" and "the evidence is flimsy and speculative at best." None of this expert skepticism made its way into countless media accounts of the Sony hack. North Korea was [reported to be] responsible for the hack, because the government said it was. That kind of reflexive embrace of government claims is ... dangerous [because such] claims can serve as a pretext for U.S. aggression.