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Comment by herghost | Hacker News Reader

I do find myself confused by Assange's motivation when taken in context of his circumstances.

If he has and holds evidence of something so damaging that a tweet of the supposed hash of the file is enough to be a threat to a person in power, then why has he allowed himself to live under effectively self-imposed house-arrest for the past 4 years?

I can't imagine that the Wikileaks apparatus doesn't have sufficient op-sec and op-capability to ensure that whatever they're holding gets released effectively should they choose for it to be, so I find myself erring towards this being an over-played hand for the most part.

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It's akin to a nuclear exchange. You can only use it once. It's MAD.

So you hold onto it to protect a high value asset - your life. Assume that you want charges dropped unto you - and you get that granted. Then you want something more annoying to the powers you control - maybe that would be granted. But at a certain point the cost to grant you wishes is going to be on the same level as the threat you hold over me, and then I may decide to take the fallout, and be done with it.

I suspect we're on the verge of this - Assange has something so damning that the fallout of having him taken out in broad daylight becomes something you contemplate. If this is so, at this point if Assange goes public with what he knows, he's a dead man anyway.

The likely fallout of assassination is your own death. I'm not sure there is anyone who feels like Julian's death is worth their own.

Or they don't have anything of value that they haven't released. The idea that's he's sitting on something valuable to protect himself seems questionable to me considering he's pretty much a prisoner in an embassy for the forseeable future. I suspect Assange's ego is way to big for him to sit on anything 'juicy' for very long. He needs to keep himself and wikileaks relevant.

Also they have the ability to spread information as they see fit. See his various leaks for example. Assange isn't hosting an ftp for everyone at the embassy. This stuff goes out via torrents, mailed drives to journalists, and via Assange's army of helpers.

He could be tortured or pressure could be put on his contacts.

In the former case he might fear he releases the secret to stop the Dead Man's Switch, in the latter case his contacts might avoid him or be tortured themselves just to pressure JA, so it doesn't sound like a free life either.

The only explanation is that the revelations are recent. We won't know until (if) it's released.

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