How Julian Assange Is Destroying WikiLeaks
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Wikileaks is quite possibly flawed but whatever flaws it and Assange have should easily be fixed by creating a similar institution that is not somehow tied to a person.
Wikileaks 'the brand' should not be required for that.
But until someone somewhere decides to take on the establishment on a similar scale as what Wikileaks has dared to do we'll have to continue to rely on that particular flawed individual who spent the better part of the last decade in pretty tight spot. Not many people would be prepared to give up their comfy lives to spend the rest of it in the cross hairs of just about every intelligence service.
My personal guess is that all these 'wikileaks should be run by us' people would fold at a very small percentage of the pressure that Assange has withstood to date and that is the primary reason why he's still running Wikileaks. If not for that we'd have long ago seen an alternative.
If any group is set up to be that alternative it is Poitras/Greenwald and a couple of other brave souls, but none of them so far seem to think they can do a better job of it than Assange.
As for Russia, Assange has set his sights on 'the five eyes' and the machinations of diplomacy at large. You can agree with that or not, that's fine. But if you want an organization that focuses on let's say Russia or China then by all means create one, don't bitch that Wikileaks is ignoring them or must be in bed with them.
... "tried" and never actually did.
It's interesting to read about how Assange's, one journalist's and Domscheit-Berg's actions combined to produce the uncontrolled release of the US cables:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/leak-at-wikileaks-...
Au contraire: they would relish the power. Who wants to be a stenographer? Media people want to be gatekeepers and tastemakers. Even when they fold under pressure from higher powers, they rationalize it away as "trading favours". When some random uppity Joe Bloggs comes around and shreds their credibility as gatekeepers, they get mad.
Sorry, but bitching is my inalienable right. Assange did more harm than good for my home country by cooperating with its secret police. I'm not going to have any reservations about his character just because am not ripe for martyrdom myself.
Citation needed.
The role of Shamir is more questionable, but in spite of that I'm not ready to see Assange as 'in bed with the regime of Belarus'. If that's true then it will need some stronger evidence and a much better sourced article.
Here's an editorial from The Guardian mentioning the issue in passing:http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jan/31/wikileaks-holoc...
An op-ed at The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/protect-whistleb...
An Index on Censorship report: https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2011/02/wikileaks-belarus-...
> When I intervened in February 2011 to ask Wikileaks whether they could ensure embassy cables had not been handed over to the dictatorship in Belarus (in particular the government’s secret police, the KGB) via a Wikileaks employee, Israel Shamir - accused of being a Holocaust denier - they refused to comment.
I take that as a tacit admission that this could definitely be the case but that Assange still backs Shamir for some reason. Maybe Shamir has power over him in some form or other, maybe he could do more damage, maybe they are just friends.
But in a way this question is also asking to prove a negative, I don't think Assange could prove to any standard that such a hand over had not happened, the best someone could do is to prove that it had happened.
Shamir would be the one to ask if it had happened or not, not Assange (who would have to believe whatever Shamir told him).
Has there been any recent coverage of this?
> Even after photographic evidence was produced apparently showing Shamir outside the office of the Head of the Presidential Administration in Minsk
I don't see how this is evidence of a document handover.
> and President Lukashenko had made a bizarre announcement stating he was founding his own Wikileaks to expose the opposition,
Indeed, that's pretty bizarre but Lukashenko is an idiot so this should come as no surprise.
> no attempts were made by Assange to protect dissidents.
What do they expect him to do to 'protect dissidents', I don't see this as an actionable item until it mentions specifically what is required. I also don't see any dissidents calling for his head, rather the opposite, they invited him to sit on a panel and they invited him to be there at the premiere of that film.
> Of those “exposed” by Soviet Belarus using cables it claimed were gifted to Lukashenko by Shamir were Andrei Sannikov, a former presidential candidate who was reportedly tortured and Vladimir Neklyayev, the writer and former president of Belarusian PEN. Oleg Bebenin, Sannikov’s former press secretary, was also defamed. Bebenin was found dead in suspicious circumstances the day before I was supposed to meet him in Minsk (I attended his funeral and there are strong suspicions of foul play).
Again, I don't doubt that but why would that be linked to Assange?
> Assisting a dictatorship to defame the dead is pretty low.
That's quite a leap of imagination, to go from a refusal to comment to active assistance to 'defame the dead'.
> Former Wikileaks employee James Ball broke ranks and claimed to Index that Assange personally blocked any attempts at investigation and had covered up for Shamir.
That's bad but disgruntled wikileaks people have said all kinds of stuff in the past rather little of which ended up sticking in the longer term. That's why I asked if there has been any more recent follow-up to this.
Usually this translates into: 'I didn't get my way and now I'll harm you' or some variation on that theme. As a former employer I've had my share of this and it never surprises me what people will get up to once their relationship with you is over.
> Assange’s lack of remorse could not have been better demonstrated when he joined a panel discussion on Belarus alongside political dissidents but entirely failed to acknowledge any concerns over his personal behaviour.
And why would he, given that all of the above amounts to him not wanting to comment on the Shamir case.
If with 'personal behavior' they are referring to other areas of his life then that's another matter entirely but that's not clear from the context here and again we're making some pretty tenuous links between otherwise unrelated items.
-- Ok, enough about that, so here is my personal view, uncensored and without holding back.
I'd be more than happy to support an alternative to wikileaks, with funds or any other kind of resource at my disposal because I believe that wikileaks or something like it is badly needed as a counterweight to the surveillance states in-the-making. Julian Assange is a flawed character, but no more flawed than say a Bill Clinton, a George Bush or a Tony Blair, to name a couple of random individuals and given the degree of dedication and personal sacrifice he's made for his cause I think we owe the man the benefit of the doubt until there is actual hard evidence against him.
Even then, we need to see the wikileaks aspect of him separate from the personal aspects, we afford that kind of protection to just about everybody else, so why not to Assange.
It would be nice if the leaders of institutions like wikileaks would be saints in every respect so that their opposition would not find such easy hand holds for detraction, but given the nature of the territory I highly doubt that will ever be the case. On a personal level I think Assange definitely has flaws but the Wikileaks project and what it has achieved should be looked at separately. In no way do I wish to make the suggestion that the one should excuse the other, and in no way do I want to suggest that the Shamir affair should not be looked into in detail, and it would be very nice to know why Assange still stands by someone that has clearly done a ton of damage to Wikileaks.
I concur that ultimately Assange's contribution to modern society would be judged as a sum of his contributions, and indeed we have many flawed champions, down to MLK. Belarusian opposition just as well would have been stomped out without Wikileaks/Shamir's assistance, although it's certainly not appreciated.
Can't help noticing however that the standard for evidence on any possible flaw of Assange is set exceptionally high. You'd be hard pressed to see a criticism of the establishment face the same scrutiny. Seen that happen both online and with my (mostly tech, mostly libertarian) friends here in Norway. E.g. the rape allegations tend to be downplayed or outright dismissed by quite a few, although same people would jump the gun if someone like Strauss-Kahn is in his place.
If convicted he should not get time off for time spent in the embassy, that's not the same as time spent in a Swedish jail. He should however get the guarantee that he's not going to be extradited to the US no matter what, that seems like a 'free' thing for Sweden and would do a lot of good in terms of moving this case forward, which especially for the women would seem to me to be of prime importance.
Finally, Assange will likely also end up having to stand trial for skipping bail in the UK.
But all that has absolutely nothing to do - I hope, at least - with Wikileaks and what it has done for us all and I for one am quite grateful to Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange and whoever else had a hand in removing some of the veil around all that is ugly and that makes our world into the relatively bad place that it continues to be.
If it takes 'flawed' people to get us there, then so be it.
As for Strauss-Kahn or Julian Assange, when it comes to their public and their private affairs (and crimes) there should be no difference in how they are treated, fame should not be a free pass for misbehavior.
There are lots of things that don't sit right with me about how the Swedes handled this case, for instance in other cases they actually have gone abroad to interview suspects, higher priority crimes never made it to the same level of international police activity, it is relatively unheard of that someone at that level of responsibility would personally get involved to re-open a case, the fact that the womens actions totally contradict their public statements at the time and so on so I have no way of knowing what is the truth but I do know there is some truth to the allegations and I feel that guys that are jerks to women at this level should definitely not be given a free pass.
Personally I have no idea what could drive a man like Assange to do stuff like this, maybe that's what fame will do to you. See also: Bill Cosby and a bunch of British TV characters, Roman Polanski and so on. It seems as if at some point in time something in their psyche switched and they thought they could get away with anything (and some of them actually did get away, sadly).
Or do you think there is something worth releasing in the Kremlin document store that will do as much damage as say MH317 to Russian interests?
History is littered with examples like that and it is no coincidence that Edward Snowden ended up in Russia.
Of course you can then use this to tar them but at the same time you have to wonder if it is possible to alienate all of the world at the same time. It's probably much safer for groups like Wikileaks to purposefully ignore some domains (presumably the ones they care less about) than to be an 'equal opportunity employer' and to hit all of the worlds establishment equally hard.
Wikileaks withholding report on, say, Ecuador, would be understandable in the circumstances. However I find going an extra mile to cooperate with an established dictatorship against its opposition despicable.
Even Ecuador has something to gain from this - immense stature in Latin America for standing up to the USA. The world of politics at that level is pretty complex and I have no idea what made Assange decide the way he did vv Belarus but without having all the facts I'll postpone my judgment and re-iterate that I'd be perfectly happy if some other group would stand up and air Belarus' dirty laundry, assuming there is any dirty laundry left to air.
So, here is the thing, I fail to see any radical anti-West ideology in that tweet. I think it is a fairly popular point of view, based on a reasonable interpretation of historical fact, that the involvement of those three countries in the middle east over the last century or so has led to the rise of terrorism in the region. Additionally, recent interventions have definitely not helped. This is, in fact, the kind of point of view that you'd see in mainstream news in plenty of countries around the world.
You could make the argument that the night of the attacks might be poor timing to tweet this if you read as "finally, this countries got what it deserved for so many more dead elsewhere!". But you can also read it as "our leaders have been pursuing bad policy that is hurting hundreds of thousands abroad and actually came back indirectly to hurt us today as well, this is sad and it's sad that it would have been avoidable". That's not any more anti-West than protesting the Vietnam war was un-American. It is also a reasonable thing to bring up when the gut reaction to an attack like this is to escalate violence, even when it is fairly well established that doing so leads to more recruits for terrorist groups.
Also, I wonder how many people wouldn't be a little bit radical and a little bit anti-X-country if they had been persecuted by said country and forced to hole up in an embassy for 3+ years...
This is a very twisted way to paint Assange as a communist. "Governments should be transparent" doesn't logically lead to "democracy is inept". That's just bullshit.
Again, that's not to say that it can't be much much better than it is, but you do have some power, and the people who wield the true power are beholden to you to some extent, which as a general rule, is not the case in most of the world.
Democracy is "rule by the demos". Demos being ancient greek for "the common people". There are no "common people" making any decisions anywhere here.
This is a common misconception, but one that does not hold water. I am thoroughly unimpressed by European politics as compared to Singapore even though there are a few things in Singapore that are not as good as in Europe. Singapore has a democracy of sorts but is essentially a one party Corporatist system (most recently copied by China). On paper this is a nightmare for me but in reality it works quite well. In the end the systems importance is not as strong as that of the people who run it. I would much rather a smart benevolent dictator who makes good decisions than the joke of corrupt politics we have in Europe currently. We're so good at self-congratulating ourselves that we haven't realised we've lost our way.
Source: I've been in a couple of positions of minor fame, and through a divorce. In both cases, I had enemies maybe 2-3 tiers down from Julian. My past -- factually -- is squeaky clean. I know what happened to my reputation in both cases.
Footnote: Jochen Bittner is a judgmental jerk.
It's a path that one does not choose lightly.
> This is not only nonsense, it is dangerous radicalism
The NY Times likes to promote their own form of propaganda. Other forms are illegitimate.
A country can still have secrets while maintaining transparency, the government like any other entity has confidential information that has to be kept secret, as no one can operate on any meaningful level if everything they do is public.
Anything from actual national security information (e.g. from list of covert agents to nuclear launch codes) to day to day diplomatic and policy related information needs secrecy. You can't build a case when the criminals know you coming after them, you can't negotiate a treaty when every discussion is public, you can't always say what you spending money one because it can cause and arms race etc.
The article doesn't misses that aspect the notion that a government can operate without any type of secrecy is just absurd.
Case in point would be Stallman - whether you agree or not with his ideals or the GPG you can't deny that his impact on software as a whole has been tremendous and positive. It's reasonable to argue that github would not exist were it not for RMS and his fundamental position that all software should be Open Source
But the problem is it's not a position anyone can actually honestly take, I don't agree with RMS and I also think you over-estimate his impact on the software industry but at least he practices what he's preaching while WikiLeaks is a closed and secretive organization which about a step away from becoming a personality cult.
>Today's status quo in Western governments is a long long way from being the happy medium you're describing.
I don't believe this is necessarily true (for all cases, and all countries the US included), you need to understand that allot of the "secrets" that the government is keeping aren't actually intended to protect itself or even it's population but to protect other people and organizations in other countries.
This is why whilst I can understand the release of say the after action reports from Iraq I think that anyone who was involved with the diplomatic cable's leak should end up in prison for good, that was a spit in the face of diplomacy and every western value that people claim to hold and probably have actually caused more damage (as far as human lives go) than all other leaks including the Snowden one combined.
People and government need secrets, sure, but do they really need gag orders? (this is not rhetorical, I really don't know what the answer should be)
> and that a system that maintains this illegitimacy, namely democracy, isn’t half as good as most people think.
I don't know what this writer is talking about with his 'democracy'. There's no democracies involved here.
> Filtering isn’t phoniness — it’s civilization.
Lets just be clear. It's a civilization that rains death on innocent people with no trial or oversight from remote control death robots. A very uncivil 'civilization'.
> Yet, even back then, observers and media partners felt that Mr. Assange had more in mind than transparency, that there was an ideology behind his idea. Over time, that ideology has become increasingly apparent, through his regular public statements and his stint as a host for a Russian state-controlled TV network.
One element of Assange-think has been clear from early on: There is no such thing as a legitimate secret. The public is entitled to share any knowledge governments hold. Only complete transparency can stop and prevent conspiracy. Therefore, editing information by the government — redacting sensitive material, for example — equals manipulating it.
So, the hidden ideology behind mere 'transparency', lurking beneath the surface and which colors all of Assange's work at Wikileaks is... well apparently it's just more transparency.
Frankly, he's right. Any knowledge governments hold which is not germane to some contemporary disaster or military action, diplomacy, etc., should be available to the public. I'm hard-pressed to think of any good excuse for keeping a thing secret for twenty years, a decade being about the maximum for e.g. military secrets, etc.
> And it’s particularly bad, in Mr. Assange’s view, if those people represent Western democracy: In his simplistic reading, the West is hypocritical because it stands for civil liberties, and all secrets are antithetical to liberty. No wonder he got a show on Russian television — his viewpoint puts him nicely in line with Mr. Putin’s ideological agenda.
Eh, his position on secrecy is much more nuanced than that, and I'd bet that even my take on what should be top secret and what should not is more radical than Julian Assange's (and less thought-out, heh). His belief, in a nutshell, is that institutions which mean to control the population share a culture of mistrust, which in turn elevates secrecy to a virtue. Such organizations actually can't operate if they are constantly in danger of having their secrets exposed, even if the risk is low and the real impact even in case of a leak is small.
That's why Wikileaks exists - not because Julian Assange thinks that everything James Clapper knows, we should also know.
How about technical papers on the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb? Or the name of cover agents who were active twenty years ago and either are still active, or at least alive and could be targeted in retaliation?
Don't get me wrong, there needs to be a way for people to expose illegal or immoral actions of the organizations (government or not) they work for, while protecting them from retaliation. Wikileaks serves that function. But no secrets with a longer life than 20 years? ever? I don't think I really agree.
If the reason the government keeps something classified is to protect a person's career, or (as I assume is usually the case) just because they can so why go to the trouble of declassifying it, that is not a good enough reason. The default state of information held by the government is that it should be public domain, and anything classified ought to be scrutinized heavily - and regularly - to confirm it should be so and should remain so.
Wtf? It's not terribly hard to employ a skewed selection process on non-opinionated material.
Wikileaks led a revolution in journalism that has yet to be rivalled and Assange paid a high personal price for it. Any criticism of the man or organisation pales in significance to what they have achieved. Journalism was dead as a non-propaganda means of obtaining quality information until Wikileaks came along.
I view this as a positive step, and I only hope that we can see the same progress with the "the dark web".
I would say that it is in the US government's interest to discredit wikileaks, as their leaks tend to air dirty American laundry. But a lack of similarly embarrassing leaks about Russia dies not Russian propaganda make. It could simply be that Russian whistleblowers are more likely to meet with a fatal exposure to polonium.
Please don't conduct political ragewars here. They're tedious and not in the spirit of intellectual curiosity which is supposed to guide this site.
If you can find the will to do so, the very best thing is to be charitable. In this case that might mean remembering that the commenter has likely only heard one heavily politicized side of the story, and has been conditioned by such one-sided information to reflexively associate one thing with another. Then you might respond in a way that confounds their expectation in a positive, surprising manner, instead of getting angry and defensive, which can only reinforce it.
Admittedly that's hard to do and never something one must do. But it is likely the most effective thing to do. When one person responds from a conditioned reflex but another has the presence not to do so, that's how things get unstuck.
The demographics of HN are so unevenly distributed that it's impossible for the discourse here to be objective about many topics, but we can and do at least control for basic respect, and if you watch closely you'll notice that we care about that, and act on it, a lot.