WikiLeaks reveals the NSA spied on Berlusconi and his closest advisors
espresso.repubblica.it
espresso.repubblica.it
The responses here on HN are sadly predictable as a result and likely will draw a similar response from the public.
Wikieaks has never really had a moral agenda like Snowden in regards to why they are releasing the information in the first place. Assange has repeatedly stated that he simply believes all secret information should be released. In the process they hope to expose corruption in the political systems. The fact they released proof the NSA was spying on a foreign leader isn't the story here, nor it that really a big noteworthy reveal considering the endless Snowden leaks, so we should stop pretending that was the real goal here and dismissing it on those grounds.
That being said, the fact Wikileaks was capable of getting access to plaintext NSA intercepts is in fact interesting. Not the usual high-level vague Snowden powerpoint slides. So if we're going to play that game this is still atypical in the greater scope of the NSA releases in the past two years.
To Wikileaks, the credible threat of future leaking is probably more important than the single leak of past infractions, because the threat impedes the flow of internal communications, which makes an "unjust" organization's internal "thought processes" more costly and less efficient.
Proven NSA involvement basically means there's no cheap way to keep high stakes secrets safe from leaking. The NSA has the bigger budget and better technology, so you can't defend against this path of leaking. Yet NSA leaks too, so it seems NSA can't defend themselves, either.
Taken together, this says nobody can defend against leaking: That's Wikileaks' most favored state of affairs.
even aside from Snowden leaks, this exactly what those guys are there for. if they weren't doing it, they wouldn't be doing their jobs...
and i agree, the specifics are the interesting part of this.
> Wikieaks has never really had a moral agenda like Snowden in regards to why they are releasing the information in the first place. Assange has repeatedly stated that he simply believes all secret information should be released. In the process they hope to expose corruption in the political systems
This isn't a fair assessment. They do have a moral agenda, though perhaps haven't been very good at explaining it to the public.
You should read Julian Assange's short essays written before wikileaks was started to get a picture of it. There is a strategy. https://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf
You might not like it or agree with it, but that IS their moral agenda!
Now, there exists a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that spying is wrong, and governmental secrecy is wrong. Thus this particular Wikileaks release, and, afaict, a lot of the Wikileaks effort has gone into promulgating that ideological goal. I would note that governmental transparency is pursued by multiple political groups across the US spectrum: police transparency, foreign policy transparency, purchasing transparency, etc. It's not a simple bijective mapping between the thought-movement Assange is with and the goal of governmental transparency; there are profound nuances and deep variances of goal within the broader 'transparency' ideal.
As for me, I am perfectly content to have the spy game played against heads of state; especially if it keeps down total system instability and human suffering.
If there's nothing outrageous about the who/why of your spying, you don't have to worry as much about your staff's desire to whistleblow, or the kind of consequences if they do, so you don't have to adopt dysfunctional internal policies trying to prevent leaks. Assange's job is to make leaking in general as safe and easy as possible, so the "secrecy tax" will disproportionately damage the unjust use of secrecy:
> "The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption."
More loosely though he believes in privacy for individuals (a protection for the weak), with transparency for organizations. Spying on states doesn't violate the former, and I imagine in some cases you could argue it aids the latter.
AFTER EDIT: To clarify this point a bit, the world of espionage practice distinguishes "operatives" (nationals-employees of the foreign government, who first of all need a visa status even to be in the host country) from "agents" (nationals of the host country, who often have employment status in some sensitive position in the host country's government or armed forces). Yes, the United States and absolutely every country is harsh in its treatment of its own citizens who act as espionage agents directed by the intelligence operatives of foreign countries. Quite a few of the prisoners in the federal SuperMax prison in Colorado are people like John Walker or Robert Hanssen who were paid by the United States taxpayers to handle secret information with discretion and who were pledged by their terms of employment to not have contacts with foreign intelligence operatives at those operatives' direction. Men like that do hard prison time in any country where their activities are discovered. But the foreign operative usually just ends up expelled from the host country, unless there was something illegal in itself about the foreign operative's presence in the host country.
"The US government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN--let alone its Secretary General."
A nation that doesn't spy on others is irrational and suicidal. Your enemy will not reciprocate your naivete. They will exploit it and enslave you.
A nation that doesn't punish spies (or their masters) caught within its territories is similarly irrational. The fear of death (or imprisonment) makes your enemy cautious and less effective.
The only morality in the international system is the morality of your own victory and what you do with it. In victory, you can spread peace, freedom, and prosperity to your heart's content. In defeat, your ideals are worthless.
Probably you are thinking of the "survival of the fittest", but that doesn't mean only survival of the fittest country, it also means survival of the fittest alliance of countries. In that sense, cooperation and reciprocal help leads to increased chance of success for a country.
When applying to humans, "the law of the jungle" is just half the story. People who are in groups that cooperate well are more likely to survive, too. Humans are social animals, we cooperate to get things done. Just being the fittest one single man does not necessarily make you more successful.
A better model for survival is ecology, which puts a big emphasis on the complex interdependency of species and individuals.
Or, to make an analogy: even if a cancer cell is the most fit to reproduce in the body, it will soon lead to the demise of its own organism and, as a consequence, live shorter than a regular cooperating cell.
Let me tell you how to defend against that, because there will always be some of those people. Spy as little as possible, conceal it as much as you can, don't share your spy info to catch drug dealers, in fact, don't use it to prosecute crime at all, use it to stop real terrorist violence in progress and let some other jokers take the credit, use it to fact check diplomatic shenanigans. Spying and policing have zero business together in a free society.
Obviously he doesn't, because he does what many people would consider spying.
I suggest that he has a more nuanced view that some spying is bad, and that you might want to consider that his support for it depends on how it serves the people.
> It's not a simple bijective mapping between the thought-movement Assange is with and the goal of governmental transparency; there are profound nuances [...]
Well, actually, no there aren't. Lying to bypass limits on your mandate is a crime, if not treason.
Assange's quote in the OP is all about alleged abuses that I as supposed employer would want to hear about: "Today we showed that UN Secretary General Ban KiMoon's private meetings over how to save the planet from climate change were bugged by a country intent on protecting its largest oil companies. We previously published Hillary Clinton orders that US diplomats were to steal the Secretary General's DNA. The US government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN--let alone its Secretary General. It will be interesting to see the UN's reaction, because if the Secretary General can be targetted without consequence then everyone from world leader to street sweeper is at risk."
Thought experiment: what would happen if you exercised any discretion in whether to continue employing them, or even how much of your income you pay them?
An organization's function is the set of all its capabilities. We should seek to define the purpose of a state entity by limiting its function via mechanism, rather than by hoping for good people to do the right thing. There is no reliable mechanism by which moral people bubble up to the top of power.
I feel glad today that the NSA acted in promotion of American interests, but I feel that is a incidental exercise of its many capabilities, and so my feelings are fickle.
It certain doesn't seem as if it has effective oversight in this matter, based on comments from congresspeople as to the level of information they are given.
In this instance, it seems as if the NSA is doing their job. In other instances... doesn't seem like it.
The day that FOX news no longer talks about russia and china when their spies are caught, those will be the day that everyone else will start ignore news about the NSA.
FWIW, I've just started laying out one aspect of this debate and how intelligence operation blowback can affect the perception of neutrality of NGOs working on the ground. This increasingly seems to lead to a rise in deaths of aid workers and many of the people they work to help. E.g Polio in Pakistan.
https://medium.com/@roryireland/latest-wikileaks-documents-i...
I think spycraft is a bit like logging to ELK, or sending metrics to Graphite/InfluxDB - capture all data you can, analyze later.
I'm not saying it's likely, just that there are possible reasons out there in the world.
Essentially, they seem to be looking out for 'dissidents' - the same sort of behaviour that US politicians often berate when other countries, such as India or China, do it (also wrongly!).
They kept the government mostly in yhe dark about the depth of what they knew, and executed s perfect slow burn.
The agency went reeling from one disclosure to the next hastily making up lies and then having them disproved in subsequent releases.
Obviously there was more to it, however the main point is that the opposite seems to be true now. Even for receptive people, we just know and it is an effective strategy for the govt to habituate people.
Unless the facts surrounding an event gave relavent subdata and a narrative can be brought into focus with the new insight, this isn't news it is habituating the public to accept it.
I don't want to accept it, but simultaneously it is obvious that as noted in the thread, "SIGINT, is gathering signal intrlligience". So it ends up being a reminder that we have given up s lot, but not bad enough(on the per story basis) to ignite support.
Also, I am concerned about the risk we tale decentralizing our data. We may give up the opportunity to have amazing trend analytics and information that may never resurface in the inevitable balkanized system that is to be developed
Nevertheless, specific instances of spying on allied governments is often irritating to the ally involved, and their citizenry.
US citizens are probably less upset about foreign surveillance by the NSA (even if it is directed at allies), OTOH, US citizens aren't the entire audience for news.
It is, however, incredibly bad form to be caught doing so.
I'm not a terrorist and yet the NSA can do whatever it wants with me, and that's scary.
I'm sure we're all glad to know that those of us not born into the Holy Light of the USA are subhuman scum unworthy or consideration.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19070_the-5-craziest-exploits...
Let's give NSA a slow clap for spying on crooks for once in their allied SIGINT. That guy makes our politicians look like boy scouts.
Well it ain't no secret anymore and I wonder at the timing, who at the NSA leaked the documents and what their motivation is.
He was just starting to curry the favor of the general public. He was the subject of a prominent biopic, he received a positive resolution from the UN. He has a lot of supporters, but they're not all fully sold on his philosophy.
Many of his supporters might consider this leak not in the same spirit as the others. The NSA is doing its job, just like the SIGINT agency of any world power. Game theory, tit-for-tat, and mutually assured destruction all make intelligence gathering necessary. As long as one country has SIGINT capabilities, its competitors must match them, even if only for the purpose of defending their sovereignty.
As others have said, the NSA spying on foreign public officials is hardly newsworthy or unexpected. If you believe all SIGINT should cease to exist, then this should also not be news to you, because you already believe these SIGINT capabilities exist, by definition of you opposing their existence. So in no case should this news shock you.
Therefore one has to wonder what Assange's motivation is behind this leak. Based on its timing, it seems far more likely that his motives are personal more than philosophical. It furthers no agenda but his own.
(Or perhaps the NSA is behind the whole thing. This is a pretty nice puff piece for them, and they've gotta be on the offensive finding job applicants these days.)
Or his motives are following the philosophy of the freedom of information, as it had in the past. The or is not exclusive: it's possible that his motivations are both personal and philosophical. But to say that this leak furthers "no agenda but his own" is oddly dismissive of the mission / philosophy behind wikileaks.
It's not there to circlejerk people who are already exposed to this kind of information. The philosophy is that more people should have the option to know. If it weren't for projects like wikileaks, it would not be a choice for you to make.
Like we'd expect otherwise.
They've done everything possible to turn him into an actual enemy, rather than the editor of a site facilitating responsible disclosure by whistleblowers. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if that affects the manner in which future leaks are released as well.
He's playing his next card. I have no idea what his motives are, do you?
It's disingenuous to pretend like we're all just in the dark about what really happened, that he might have actually committed rape and that's what any of this is about.
Are you sure you meant "mutually assured destruction" there? That generally refers to annihilating one's opponent -- that's out of scope for intelligence, right?
No, it's far better to keep an eye peeled on everything they do now that they've been shown to be trying to slip their mandate.
> Therefore one has to wonder what Assange's motivation is behind this leak [...]
No, not really. His motives are really clear. Force the liars out into the light of day. The US Army was actively collaborating to frame innocent Iraqis with terrorism charges - something which directly contributed to ISIS, and they hid evidence and lied to the press and US investigators about it.
Honestly, your motives are more in question. Assange pointed out that our government was lying to us and you heap blame on him.
"Look, we've had police combing this guy's house for weeks and we have nothing! Nobody is that clean, he must be dirty!"
But of course we all believe that you're just honestly speculating.
To address your comment, Mr. Hominem, I never called Assange's motives into question. I'm providing a valuable service of an alternative perspective. The fact that I instigated a flame war is evidence of the hacker news echo chamber. I suspect once my comment crosses into -1 territory my opinions will be disregarded by the same people who would consider them when my comment was at the top of the discussion.
Propaganda is alive and well on hacker news. Luckily so is free speech, the right I assume you hold most dearly. If you want to avoid hypocrisy, it would be best to approach discussion with an open mind rather than a vindictive agenda.
I have no agenda, except that I like to keep my writing sharp and piss some people off in the process.
Please don't.
From the point of view of democracy the USA is the worse.
Would they choose not release the leaks, given Ecuador's provision of embassy asylum to Assange?