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Comment by unixhero | Hacker News Reader

From the bowels of 4Chan

https://i.imgur.com/abcVS6q.jpg

Extradition is a process that involves an extradition court and a right of appeal. There is absolutely no way they are bundling Assange onto a plane without Wikileaks screaming blue murder. This is highly unlikely to be credible.

Are you joking? This is beyond rule of law. If Ecuador caves Assange will be(or already was) transported unconscious (if not dead) in a black bag by same rendition team that organized and operated concentration camps in Poland, Romania and Ukraine.

Difficult to imagine this being "influenced" by Clinton. It feels like it would be to Trump's significant advantage if this happens. It plays directly into his narrative.

Difficult to imagine the person who called for Assange to be "droned" could influence anyone to cut his internet?

I see a lot of people repeating the claim that Clinton said that, but I've yet to see an actual source.

yes please link me to an article that actually says that

:shows truepundit article:

seems flimsy, doesn't really contain any actual sources other than "sources said". can you cite any other articles that don't use truepundit as the source?

:crickets:

yes. one article on an arguably either satire or hard-right website is the source of all the "drone him" talk

Here's Hillary's response to a question about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSTht4G4yJs

Have you looked? https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/782906224937410562

Respectable organizations don't copy text from unsourced articles on partisan blogs, change the font to Courier to make it look like a cable, and then screenshot the result.

Hmm, that's actually a good point, I didn't realize the primary source was so sketchy. Thanks for correcting me, seems I was too quick in my judgement. I'd like to edit/delete my comments, but I don't see the interface. Are HN comments immutable?

Not necessarily. If she is fearful of very damaging leaks in the pipeline, Clinton would want to make sure that, at the very least, they don't come out through Wikileaks, which has a 100% track record of real leaks and can't be denied.

http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r...

100%, huh?

Don't twist my words. I said that they have never leaked fake documents. They clearly have an agenda in what they select for publishing.

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In response to mejari (both of his replies) below, I'm rate-limited:

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Did you even read that article? That's not what it says. They just didn't publish the documents. What it does say is that the hackers that stole the documents were joking about editing them before sending them to wikileaks.

They faked the documents by editing their contents to remove data they didn't want released. How is that twisting your words to show that your claim they've never leaked fake documents is false?

Sooo, then you agree that the documents are true and accurate?

You keep using the word fake, and I don't think you know what the work fake means.

No? What part of my comment suggested I agreed they were true and accurate? I laid out what about them was false and inaccurate.

The part where you said that your problem with wikileaks was that they chose to not release some of the info they have.

You didn't say that they released fake data. You implied that all the data that they DID release was true and accurate, but there was some other true data that they didn't release.

The fact that they explicitly removed data from their release is faking their release. It's not like there was even an entire release they chose not to do, they did the release but selectively removed a small part of it, seemingly in support of Russia. Then they presented their leak as the entire leak. That is false, they presented a false picture.

They leaked falsified documents. Either through receiving falsified documents and releasing them or through falsifying them themselves. Either way your claim is false.

Scary timing. So one possible reason this could be is to stop him from rallying the troops.

You actually believe some 4channers when he says he is a intelligence officer? I have a bridge to sell you...

No, I don't believe it, but it is a possibility I had not thought of and the fact that Assange's internet access has been shut off lends at least a little bit of credibility to the comments (note how that post was made already 8 hours ago).

also, why would I believe some anonymous HN'er about anything. Information is either true or false, the source isn't really relevant, all that matters are the facts.

>Information is either true or false, the source isn't really relevant, all that matters are the facts.

Absurd. Of course your sources matter. A credible source is more believable than an incredible source. Ever heard of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"? Looking only at the material presented and not at the presenter of the material is only giving you part of the picture.

Yes, sources matter if all you do is to look at the information and it's source. But if you look at the information and you can find independent verification of rejection of the information then you can form a conclusion that is a lot stronger than just speculation based on info+source.

Possible facts:

Assange has had his internet access shut down (probably true)

Assange has been extradited (status unknown at this point, you seem to want to discredit it based on the source I simply withhold my judgment until there is more information about this)

> Assange has had his internet access shut down (probably true)

What basis do you have for the (probably true) rating?

The man literally told people he rescheduled his election-changing news conference from a balcony to a middle-of-the-night webcast, because he thought a sniper was going to kill him on the balcony. As if this was likely. Then it turned out his election-changing news conference was an advert for his book.

The man is great at marketing himself.

Because he could easily prove his internet access wasn't shut down by sending out a message to the contrary. Also the Ecuadorian embassy could deny it.

Absent any proof that he actually has access I'm going on the assumption that he does not because that is what they claim.

Now whether or not it really is a state actor (could be Ecuador!), Assange's laptop frying the network card or some other reason why he hasn't got access (didn't pay the phone bill?) is up for grabs.

What? He claims he had his internet cut off. You say the proof is that he hasn't sent out a message to the contrary. Ummm....

Do you understand what I'm saying when I say I don't believe Assange when he says his internet is cut off?

Also, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the Ecuadorian embassy has a policy against making any sort of statements about Assange.

His internet is cut off or it isn't. Claiming it is when it is not so will undermine his credibility for no gain at all.

Note that Wikileaks is making the claim not Assange and they are not the same entity (they'd have to, given that Assange can't go online).

Now, it could all be not true but what would be the point of lying about this when the truth will come out regardless?

1. Because it makes him seem like a martyr to the cause without him actually having to do anything, just like when he implied he couldn't give a speech on the embassy balcony because Clinton's forces were about to kill him with a sniper rifle. (http://www.angrypatriotmovement.com/wikileaks-huge-hillary-a...) ...so he had his followers tune into a 3AM webcast instead, which ended up just being a promo sales pitch for his book. He is excellent at marketing.

2. The truth will not "come out regardless" if he was lying. It's very hard to prove a negative. Even if the embassy puts out an announcement saying "As far as we know, his internet is fine," Wikileaks can just say "The embassy is in cahoots with the Americans," or "It was cut earlier, and sources told me it was the gubbment." No one will care much at that point, his martyrdom point will have been made.

So, it appears Assange's internet was in fact cut off, and that the 'state actor' was Ecuador.

Disingenuous even if technically true.

Time will tell. You could be right, you could be not. I believe that if Assange says something that is not truthful that reflects bad on Ecuador (one possible explanation is that Ecuador blocked his access) that they would make a statement if what he said was incorrect. And I'd believe them over Assange if that's what it came to.

How can you tell if a piece of information is independently verified if you don't know the source? If you're ignoring who presents the facts and who presents the verification, how do you determine whether or not the reporter of the verification is independent from the reporter of the fact? Sources matter.

And there is no such thing as a "probably true possible fact". There are facts and there are allegations.

> How can you tell if a piece of information is independently verified if you don't know the source?

By your reckoning no anonymous source can ever be credible. Some pretty interesting stuff has come out over the years from anonymous sources and turned out - retrospectively - to have been accurate and likely to have been a leak by an insider. Given that nobody is ever (Snowden excepted) to go on the record about an imminent operation from inside some government agency the only way such information could ever come out is through anonymous sources.