WikiLeaks plans to release documents on US election and Google
theverge.com
theverge.com
Yes wikileaks has done very good things for the world. No, Assange is not the moral actor he claims to be.
I agree completely that the leak was very significant, but my preference (I think; not 100%) would be that Snowden hadn't leaked.
How does that work?
Lots of evil is done in the name of "trying to make the world better". Its not unreasonable for people to be more interested in what they see your actions as likely to produce (and what they see that you reasonably should have known that they were likely to produce) than what you intended them to produce.
(And that's even before getting into the fact that "better" is subjective and one person's better can easily be another person's dystopian nightmare.)
Musk is worrisome because after the innovation honeymoon is over, he could easily end up functioning as a closed-world promulgating autarch - just as Gates and Jobs did.
But Assange and Snowden? Their very popularity is founded on forcing open centralized amalgamations of power. They have localized power and surely an assortment of groupies etc, but these structures simply cannot scale to dominate a medium city, never mind the world.
So even if they are run-of-the-mill psychopaths playing their roles solely for self-advancement, the possible damage they can do is quite limited compared to say any unnamed multinational executive.
Capitalism created a Schelling point for getting useful public goods from self-interested parties. Compared to the prior most-lucrative path of government (likely via revolution), it raised the average amount of control for everyone while constraining the maximum control a winner could obtain. The general belief in free exchange of information advances this cooperation point to even smaller power structures, leaving the supernodes with even less privileged leverage over the rest of us.
Again, not against the former two, but I don't think that is an apt comparison whatsoever.
The quickest example comes to mind is how much of a douchey move this is from Assange:
http://gizmodo.com/wikileaks-just-published-tons-of-personal...
And how Snowden was a patriot for uncovering the omniscient warrantless wiretapping, but he also released the means and methods for how the NSA does literally their job in hacking foreign intelligence targets.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/9/12864328/wikileaks-threat-r...
Publishing unredacted documents does help sell their authenticity to the general public but I think too often the harm is too great, especially to innocent parties.
But what if Wikileaks waited to be asked... Who do they give the docs to? Just courts, or interested civilians? If the former, how does that help citizens know what's going on, and if the later, what's the difference between just releasing it and selectively releasing it? This also requires people risk their freedom to request the full version.
And more critically, that means to prevent the publishing of full documents you simply need to kill the messenger.
Running Wikileaks the other way wouldn't be useful and still wouldn't appease the wrong-doers.
I too doubt that they have anything that significant for the election but I will give them the benefit of the doubt based on their prior important work. I also understand that they release information bit by bit. If it was released all at once, mass media would not have a chance to report on all of it.
Is there a specific case you're thinking of? For instance, with the DNC leaks, or with Chelsea Manning's leaks, I believe that the information relevant to the public interest would have been disclosed by any reputable major news outlet (NYT, WashPo, ...) that received it, so long as its authenticity could be verified.
I prefer that leakers go to traditional journalists (à la Snowden) rather than WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has a track record of creating collateral damage with its disclosures; for example, exposing SSNs and credit card numbers of people who happened to be donors to the DNC and who were otherwise uninvolved with the shenanigans going on. A responsible, ethical journalist would take care to exclude personal information that is tangential to the actual public interest.
What was the actual, observable impact of unabridged Wikileaks documents in court cases?
WikiLeaks is a media organisation so it will crave for attention as all media does. But please name one single case in which data released by WikiLeaks was bogus.
On the other hand I could bring up hundreds of cases where main stream media has released fake information.
So how exactly do you decide who has credibility and who does not?
Entirely off-topic, but I find it interesting and amusing that we can fairly squarely date ourselves with references like this. I grew up with a Lamborghini Countach picture on the wall by my bed. I suspect later generations of children (mostly boys, to be sure) had Diablos, Gallardos, Aventadors, etc, or some representative equivalent (Lamborghinis just make it easier with defined names for model types).
If you're curious, the dynamic you mention was already used in the movie "22 Jump Street" where the undercover, older guy has a Countach poster and the investigation target, the college age guy, had a Murcialago poster.
Didn't he already do this? And not just once, but many times. In fact his releases have been so controversial that he has the "privilege" to live in an embassy while hearing via media politicians (mostly Democrats) calling for his death or even "droning" him. (Hillary suggested that)
Could it be that you are just a Hillary supporter that is afraid he could release something damaging about her?
That seems to have more to do with his refusal to face the music on rape charges than his releases.
> while hearing via media politicians (mostly Democrats) calling for his death
For most of the time since WikiLeaks involvement in the publishing the Manning docs, the calls for his punishment, including by the most drastic means, have been bipartisan but stronger on the Republican side. The Republicans changed their tune after Assange participated in the release of the DNC hack recently, but its somewhat revisionist to pretend that history started just a few weeks ago.
She declined to do it anywhere but Sweden if my memory serves.
Politicians calling for his death is just grandstanding. In fact, the possibility of the death penalty is probably the only thing that would keep Sweden from extraditing him.
The U.S. and the U.K. also have an extradition treaty, so the existence of a U.S.-Sweden extradition treaty doesn't really do much to enhance the plausibility of a double-extradition plot where Sweden extradites him from the U.K. on rape charges only as a ruse to get him into Sweden where he can be extradited to the U.S. on some other charges. (If the U.K. was a country that had no extradition treaty with the U.S. and was particularly resistant to U.S. extradition, then a double-extradition plot might be plausible.)
Now the U.S. and Ecuador also have a treaty but I don't read lawyer well enough, especially not old-timey lawyer, to know whether it would apply to anything Assange might be charged with. It does say it "shall not be applicable to crimes or offences of a political character" and I'm sure that's how Assange would characterize it (and I think that's at least partially why Ecuador has been housing him).
But the U.S. hasn't charged him with anything so there's nothing for Ecuador to extradite him for yet. In any case, the claim is a nice excuse to avoid jail in Sweden.
No, he isn't. Contrary to the ever-lasting myth, embassies have no extraterritorial status whatsoever. They are in and are a part of the host country.
But they have special protections under the Vienna Convention.
I don't know about his other leaks but there's evidence that he communicated with, arguably collaborated with and advised, Manning before Manning copied the classified material. If Manning just sent the material to Wikileaks, Assange would be in the clear (e.g. the Pentagon Papers, Trump's 1995 tax return info this week). Maybe it's not a solid enough case to be sure of a conviction, I doubt the U.S. would want to take a chance on it, but it's not like there's nothing there.
No one has suggested charging him with treason. He certainly can be guilty of espionage against the US without being a citizen.
(And his citizenship is irrelevant to whether he can exceed the protection of the 1st Amendment, since that applies whether or not he is a citizen with regard to government action such as prosecution for espionage.)
Assange surely is a conspiracy theorist to hide in the embassy when politicians publicly call for his death and his main informant Manning was placed into 24/7 solitary confinement which could only be described as torture.
> the calls for his punishment, including by the most drastic means, have been bipartisan but stronger on the Republican side
Okay, then please name a Republican that has called for killing Assange.
Sara Palin called Assange an "anti-American operative with blood on his hands" who should "pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders".
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) called for Assange to be tried for espionage and for WikiLeaks to be designated, treated, and combatted as a terrorist organization.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) described Assange as a "high-tech terrorist"
Newt Gingrich declared that "Julian Assange is engaged in warfare. [...] And Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism." and that "He should be treated as an enemy combatant and WikiLeaks should be closed down permanently and decisively."
Generally, people prefer the leaker-journalist relationship, where the journalist is careful not to release info that would be damaging to individuals, or not relevant to whatever story they're trying to cover.
Your particular criticism doesn't apply here and it seems like you just don't like Wikileaks for one reason or another so you wanted to write a disparaging sentence about them.
They do not just blindly dump information to the ether, they sit and wait and dump information that is the most damaging at the most opportune time.
Whether or not you think they're doing public good probably depends on your perception of Hillary Clinton and how much you care about the collateral damage they cause but don't pretend they don't have an agenda.
This implies that one builds a perception, then evaluates information in that context. Many people do this and it is sad.
We should be using information to evaluate, and not our preconceived notions.
The only way Assange has "damaging" information for either candidate is if those candidate did something wrong and covered it up. Shouldn't we the information (once vetted) to evaluate our next president?
And yes information is usually damning because of bad things that were done (ignoring the frequent instances where this is not the case, like someone who votes against the "stop child porn [and also eradicate half the bill of rights] act") but Wikileaks has an opportunity to leak this information when there is time to research, discuss, fully understand the data (months ago) or at the last possible second where it will have the most sensational impact with the sole purpose of turning the election instead of informing anyone, with minimal time to vet, discuss, understand, make sense of the results. That is now.
Ridiculous.
That's what I'm suggesting they do now, but they aren't.
Your particular criticism doesn't apply here
That's your opinion.
and it seems like you just don't like Wikileaks for one reason or another
I listed my reasons.
But this is getting tiresome. The talk about this has been going on for months now. And now it's October and the only thing we've got is that something's going to be released.
They're going to lose any interest very quickly because of this unless it's truly damning material.
Journalists and anti-censorship activists who I am in touch with in Turkey have been combing through the leaked documents, and I am not aware of anything “newsworthy” being uncovered. According to the collective searching capacity of long-term activists and journalists in Turkey, none of the “Erdogan emails” appear to be emails actually from Erdogan or his inner circle. Nobody seems to be able to find a smoking gun exposing people in positions of power and responsibility. This doesn’t rule out something eventually emerging, but there have been several days of extensive searching.
However, WikiLeaks also posted links on social media to its millions of followers via multiple channels to a set of leaked massive databases containing sensitive and private information of millions of ordinary people, including a special database of almost all adult women in Turkey.
Yes — this “leak” actually contains spreadsheets of private, sensitive information of what appears to be every female voter in 79 out of 81 provinces in Turkey, including their home addresses and other private information, sometimes including their cellphone numbers.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zeynep-tufekci/wikileaks-erdog...
Plus the DNC leak created a strong impression in many peoples' minds that it was a deliberate attempt by a foreign power (guess who...) to try to tip the US election to the candidate they favored (hint: name rhymes with "Ronald Rump"). So there's some irony if WikiLeaks is now going to publish allegations of someone else influencing the election.
The remarkable thing about this is that, almost universally, the media organisations who claim this condemns Wikileaks support the person who actually uploaded all that personal information and gave everyone the link, claiming it was something else. Some of them, like Wired, have even argued he did absolutely nothing wrong. It's almost like no-one actually cares about that sensitive information being exposed to the world, just attacking Wikileaks.
WL... not so much with the regrets. That can make a big difference in how people react; "I realize I did a bad thing and now feel bad about it" gets sympathy while doubling down doesn't.
Hmm... depending on your point of view, I guess either of those options could apply to either candidate. We've become way too polarised.
[0] http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/g...
Adjusting your values and convictions is seen as a flaw, so in a sense we have disincentives evolving of thoughts.
[1] http://thegroundwork.com/jobs/ [2] https://timshel.com/ [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=loomin-arty
Well, that's underwhelming.
The strategy worked well for the republican party, but Dole seems (understandably) bitter about being left high and dry by his own party. Note that no living US president has endorsed Trump, and George H.W. Bush has said that he plans to vote for Hillary. Bob Dole is the closest thing Trump has to a presidential endorsement. Remember when there was talk of the republican party cutting support for Trump and focusing on congressional races? I won't pretend to know what Bob Dole thinks, but I suspect that his own history factors into why he supports Trump.
Second: Yes, it would make it easier for Trump to win.
The ballots have already been printed in most states, and early voting has begun in some areas. Some number of people have already voted for Hillary. If Hillary is removed from the ticket and another Democrat is selected, Hillary's votes probably wouldn't be transferred. I can't imagine it's legal to switch someone's vote after-the-fact. Needless to say, you don't get to vote a second time just because your candidate stepped down.
Meanwhile, in some areas they wouldn't be able to (for either time or budgetary constraints) print new ballots. That means Hillary would still be on the ballot in some areas, and it would be up to voters to write in the name of the new democratic nominee.
*edit: removed redundant redundancy, also corrected word typo.
That seems to be the theme of Hillary scandals. It's always some superlative outcome. Either she is going to be exposed as a mastermind or "oh nevermind I guess that's not a big deal after all." It's absurd. An opponent of Clinton making a more modest critique than "she is the antichrist" would be very refreshing.
Conservatives and Bernie supporters spent months fuming over how email servers showed exactly how evil Clinton was and the most that came out of it was apparently "extreme carelessness." Years of Benghazi and nothing to show for it but words to be poorly scrawled on protest signs for at least another year or so.
I am definitely not informed enough to determine whether or not there is or isn't merit to any given controversy or scandal. There are probably a handful of people who could possibly know for sure. She is definitely one of the most powerful people in the world. She is certainly capable of conspiracy. But I know there are also powerful people who are would benefit a lot from harming her career and her image.
Honestly, it's at least worth considering that innuendo, accusations, and connecting dots that aren't there, or are there in a much less dramatic form, are all much cheaper than actually pulling off conspiracies.
I remember when I got my first degree, in journalism (kinda), it was generally considered that the Watergate scandal would never get published in the modern age. I think the Clintons are pretty much the proof of that.
People making charitable donations before and after she has any actual political influence, with a tiny fraction of them having any contact with her whatsoever? All so that the Clintons can.. help poor people?
All I needed to know to tune out was that the anti- crowd fanned the flames by saying that 95% (IIRC) of the funds were not spent on charities. Because... they are a charity themselves, and spend the money directly on causes?
I don't think your characterization of their expenditures is necessarily accurate (or wrong!). It's hard to tell, because the whole thing is so opaque[4]. This is a common criticism of the Clintons, even from supporters. They are so opaque about everything that things that would be innocuous end up seeming far worse because of their inclination to hide things.
[0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-...
[1]: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/82df550e1ec646098b434f7d5771f...
[2]: http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clintons-complex-corpora...
[3]: http://nypost.com/2016/08/11/hillary-played-favorites-with-h...
[4]: https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Clinton-Foundation-...
In other words - you have no evidence of actual crimes. You just want an investigation.
As I understand it, prosecutors typically look for patterns of behavior in cases like this since there's rarely a nice hand-written letter explaining how they are going to exchange favors. I'm not a prosecutor or a whistleblower. So yes, I think there's enough there to warrant someone with the proper expertise looking into it. Why would we not want to make sure our politicians are upholding ethical standards? I'm sure there are a lot of other people in D.C., some of whom are innocent, that would at least warrant an ethics investigation. I was asked about Clinton, so I focused on her.
Bribery seems very likely.
There are a number of suspicious bodies that have piled up over the years related to the Clintons.
Her husband was probably involved in more sketchy sexual situations than any other president since JFK. At the least, that should cast a Cosby-esque pall over the whole situation.
Was it criminal mishandling? The information I've seen on it is that there were very few (as in less than 5) items that were classified that made it to that address, and they were incorrectly flagged when they were sent to her[1].
> Bribery seems very likely. ... There are a number of suspicious bodies that have piled up over the years related to the Clintons.
Those aren't actions, those are, until shown otherwise, coincidences. To my knowledge, almost every Clinton scandal has been investigated thoroughly, so what, specifically, would you see her held accountable for?
> Her husband was probably involved in more sketchy sexual situations than any other president since JFK. At the least, that should cast a Cosby-esque pall over the whole situation.
Possibly, if you believe she's responsible for her husband's sexual proclivities. That's not a stance I support.
1: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/08/how-many-class...
I wasn't trying to spin it my way, I was trying to get clarification from you on why you viewed the same events differently than me. Presumably it's either because we believe differently in the magnitude of the offence, or we have different information on the offense, or we attribute the likelihood of truthfulness differently to different portions of the story, or some combination thereof. I'm interested in where differences like that come about, and so my message wasn't meant entirely to refute your stance, but also to stake my own lightly in the hope that you might engage where you thought I was incorrect and explain why you thought so.
> I've already made up my mind as to which is the less disastrous option
That's an interesting way to put it, because to me that sounds like a vote for Hillary, unless you think the status quo is disastrous, and I'm not sure what justification would be used for that. I don't think you meant it that way though, so presumably you have a reason to think a Clinton presidency would be disastrous at this point?
That's too bad.