Well… Saying somebody is lying is prohibited by the rules of the House of Representatives I think. So the word disingenuous gets thrown around a lot. It’s a fig leaf. As time as gone on, it’s been interpreted as a thin fig leaf.
I would argue that the term has some plausible deniability to it.
Emphasis added. He is criticizing those claiming that Snowden is a human rights defender: he is saying that they are bullshitting or blowing smoke. They are not lying exactly, because this is a matter of definition and privacy plausibly falls in the human rights category. They are engaging in rhetoric and need to be called out as… disingenuous. Karl could have called his opponents liars because it was the OP and he was attacking somebody off this message board. But it would have looked weird.
So yeah, there’s a distinction here and distinctions matter.
(I don’t agree with Karl as it happens, but I’m discussing usage here, not substance.)