We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point
twitter.com
twitter.com
It isn't a week since they were extremely economical with the truth regarding Assange's internet access ('state actor cut off their internet' -> 'Ecuador has pulled the plug on Assange's laptop').
The best way to deal with this would have been to distance themselves from anybody doing this, the very worst is to suggest they have the ability to issue orders to those perpetrating these attacks.
With supporters like these they wouldn't need enemies to begin with, it's a very negative association and they're purposefully aligning themselves with these so called hackers.
What will replace wikileaks?
Are any of the releases discredited?
Part of it may be because some of Wikileaks high value contacts are now in places where they are vulnerable (which adds weight to the call to Pardon Snowden, it would make it much easier for WL to release dirt on Putin and company, assuming they have any).
Assange set himself up to be easily corralled, not the smartest thing but he's not the first (and won't be the last) person that makes it into the limelight and ends up tripping up because of it.
Releases themselves can be independently verified, what data that is there that ends up labeled factually accurate is a great gift and I'm very happy they did what they did, however we will need more or other organizations like WL if we're to get the whole picture.
That would help in another way, you could immediately check for any modifications or selective withholding of information from the various sources.
No fear of going against the establishment. How many websites that you know of reveal such classified information and get wide press coverage for the same?
I don't fully understand Assange's political motivations, but the world is definitely better off with Wikileaks than without.
It's not a very nice world to imagine. The people who get hurt are ordinary citizens whose info winds up in these giant data drops.
Most countries have this already. It's called the CIA or whatever the local equivalent is. The only difference is that rather than publishing directly, they leak information to media outlets for dissemination.
> It's not a very nice world to imagine. The people who get hurt are ordinary citizens whose info winds up in these giant data drops.
Bah, it can't be worse. The ordinary citizens that can get hurt by stuff like this are in countries that can (and will) already hurt them for less or even nothing. The common citizens of western democracies have nothing to fear.
Why is privacy super important, one of our most fundamental rights, until some dude with white hair who wrote a bad port scanner decides it doesn't matter?
Why is that so hard to reconcile? You don't draw a line between individual privacy rights and those of government officials?
> So why not let the government search everyone's email for signs of terrorism?
If you're going to go that route, take it one step further and ask: Why not have a camera in everybody's house to prevent battery?
What part of taking $40,000 a year in salary from the government entitles Wikileaks to the contents of your personal emails?
http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/151983995587/on-the-wikileak-e...
They didn't get the personal emails of Turkish citizens, they got the emails of Turkish citizens that were on the AKP email server. That would be like complaining that a company has access to my personal emails because I use my work email to communicate with my non-work friends. The AKP is the government in Turkey so drawing a distinction between them as a private party and them as the government is weak.
> What part of taking $40,000 a year in salary from the government entitles Wikileaks to the contents of your personal emails?
None and if you don't mix personal and work, it makes it much easier to have that separation. If it's all one soup then you can't complain that the part gets released with the whole.
> http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/151983995587/on-the-wikileak-e...
Ditto for the DNC and RNC. I don't give a rats ass which side has their documents leaked. If it happens, I say it's fair game because, even though they're technically "private organizations", for all practical purposes they are the government.
If people want to avoid having "personal" comments and communications being impacted by this they need to maintain that separation and the poster child for what NOT to do is Hillary Clinton.
Or just keep their political and personal lives separate.
It's a cornerstone of democracy. Some countries take a much less serious approach to voter registration but especially in Turkey such lists are social dynamite and the release of those lists was absolutely uncalled for and irresponsible.
> It's a cornerstone of democracy. Some countries take a much less serious approach to voter registration but especially in Turkey such lists are social dynamite and the release of those lists was absolutely uncalled for and irresponsible.
When there's a single ruling party, or two major parties in a system like the USA, the distinction between political parties and the government itself is blurred to point of being meaningless. For an even more extreme example of this see the CPC in China. They are the government, party business is government business, and vice versa. Hiding behind them being a private organization doesn't work.
That's simply nonsense. The reason you might have two major parties forever is if you start making things like registered voters public. After all, who would dare to affiliate themselves with a third openly if that would lead to an immediate risk of being labeled in all kinds of nasty ways.
If Peter Thiel isn't immune to such pressure you can bet that ordinary citizens would be a lot easier to target.
The government and the citizens of a country are two disjoint entities, even in a 'one' party (that really means 'none') state.
Party membership does not equate to being a part of the government (though the one does not rule out the other).
Focusing on personalities is a mistake when it comes to mere technical ability, but when it becomes a political question I think it is a valid concern.
At a minimum I'd like to see another outlet next to WL.
And no one has shown any change to released information. Not once.
In fact, if you really want to read into it:
> US govt funded #PanamaPapers attack story on Putin via USAID. Some good journalists but no model for integrity.
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717670056650530816 almost sounds like WL had knowledge but decided not to act because it was critical of Putin.
You can absolutely create a narrative by removing quotes out of context. In the same way, you can create a narrative by withholding information.
The problem with OCCRP is that they don't have knowledge critical of Putin - they have knowledge about people like, say, one of his ex-colleague's kids but make the headline and lede of every Russia-related article they post about Putin and not the actual people involved. They don't seem to take this approach with any of the other countries they report on. Wikileaks are far from being the only ones to remark on this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zeynep-tufekci/wikileaks-erdog...
The ones made by the same people pointing the guns.
I'm completely at loss what to think about recent events, but godd2's argument isn't trivial.
https://glomardisclosure.com/2016/07/26/the-who-and-how-of-t...
I'm not sure why you (and others) are trying to hold them responsible for it.
“I actually never had a conclusion on who the uploader was, since it wasn’t central to my complaint about actions of Wikileaks: that they had misrepresented what the emails were, and that they had repeatedly publicized these doxing databases as “full data for our Turkey AKP emails + more”. I’m glad to see one party step up and take responsibility, but this doesn’t absolve Wikileaks of their role in all parts of this “leak” which never should have happened since it exposed no wrongdoing by a government or a powerful actor, merely the emails of ordinary people, and sensitive personal information of 20-30 million ordinary people. I tried to explain this directly to Wikileaks, but they blocked me after I started showing them tweets from Turkey’s leading anti-censorship activists who were disgusted and horrified by these actions, especially since they will now become a strong talking point for pro-censorship forces in Turkey.”
I find the fact that they blocked her especially obnoxious.
From your prior link: https://glomardisclosure.com/2016/07/26/the-who-and-how-of-t...
If it's just somebody's hobby to release information, than that's as far as it goes. But in order for the information to be actionable, it requires interpretation, and then the process of choosing what information to release becomes important.
Imagine how a hypothetical scientist's results would be interpreted if it were known that they were only publishing the information that favored their own agenda -- personal, political, commercial, etc. Yet none of the data points that they publish can be discredited.
The first set of large leaks wikileaks ever did were simply dumps. Now they spoonfeed their leaks, which they claim everyone has a right to know, at a peace that is most beneficial to them. Its clear their primary objective is no longer govt transparency, but their own profits.
They have a store? Large sites cost money to run. Shocker.
They play the PR game? They have to because their opponents use tactics to drown them out. They also know the mainstream media has a very short attention span and the leaks would never be talked about again once the news cycle changes. Dropping all the emails at once would be foolish.
If you have a problem with it you are free to start a competing outlet...
Because what I read in the tweet pretty much says - we don't want this, please stop.
> What will replace wikileaks?
Nothing, at least anytime soon. If wikileaks sticks to it's mission of opening Governments without the negative associations, as you said, that would suffice.
It's looking like the latest allegations against him of pedophilia were totally false and fabricated by supporters of the Clinton campaign.
Edit: the above link doesn't spell it out but the the toddandclare.com website it is talking about is allegedly a totally fake dating site that submitted a false report to the Bahamanian police and issued a fake report that they tried to pass off as being written by the UN. That reddit post is describing how they think the fake dating site is linked to a private intelligence company.
http://www.snopes.com/2016/10/19/ecuador-cut-off-julian-assa...
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/17/1583749/-Julian-As...
This all started the day Equador cut off his net access. Assange has not been seen in public since.
How hard would it be for them to post a five second video clip with today's newspaper?
Current thinking is that wikileaks is no longer in control of their twitter account and/or Assange is missing.
You'd be surprised. My friends and family seem to be doubling down on it. They either outright don't care or they are encouraged by the underhandedness of it all.
Pastebin seem popular tool for data dumps, and no one blames the owners for not redacting names. None also talks about the owner, their personality traits, and so on.
It seems disingenuous to accuse them simultaneously of throwing credibility to the wind and of carefully phrasing sensitive on-going matters like the disruption of Assange's internet access.
They're also not claiming this attack "as one of theirs", they're saying a third party who supports them is _and asking them to stop_. That distinction seems pretty clear, and is not an endorsement, it's a call for de-escalation.
From where I'm sitting it's the US state machine continuing their mission to destroy Wikileaks' credibility, by misrepresenting their M.O. and cherry picking tweets like this... only now the left-wing public is eagerly joining in as opposed to only the right-wing calling for their heads for being traitors. The thing about negative associations is, it's posts like yours that create them.
But when Palin called it "palling around with terrorists", the US left-wing was rather opposed to that tactic.
The more attention they receive, the more attention their email dumps receive.
Even Sean Hannity is praising them right now.
If their goal is to influence the election, then I think it's in their best interest to draw attention to themselves.
If anything, their credibility and the scope of their reach are increasing.
And when you're not, you're with some underworld spy
Or the wife of a close friend,
Wife of a close friend...
"Wow! @wikileaks admits its supporters are engaged in anti-American cyber-terrorism. No wonder Wikileakes loves me so much! #ImWithPutin"
Is that really from a presidential candidate? With a misspelling and a hashtag that is not what you would think would chime with the electorate. Plus some narcissism thrown in, just to make you cringe.
As for the tweet itself, I am amazed that Wikileaks thinks Assange is that much of a hero that they think that some anonymous fan would take down the internets in response to Assange's internets being taken down. There is some conspiracy minded thinking going on there, warranted or not, it is not the sort of mindset that Wikileaks need to be in if they are to function as an organisation. For instance, if some real conspiracy was going on, e.g. the U.S. military were running a 'cyberstorm exercise', then Wikileaks would have taken the bait. In so doing this takes discussion away from what Wikileaks seek to publish and towards the ethics of hacking.
I don't think it's too nostalgic to pine for longer, epic exhortation of ideas. People still give memorable speeches (cf. Obama's "More Perfect Union"), and people still memorize the speeches of old. They give context to the soundbites and give depth when we want to go beyond the misquotes. But yes, blaming twitter goes too far, because it certainly has its place, too. It's just another tool of communication that has its benefits and pitfalls.
We get moving speeches when issues hit so close to home that the words serve as kindling for our deeper emotions. Every speech is inextricably tied to its own context.
Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet" Ronald Reagan's Space Shuttle Challenger address LBJ, "We Shall Overcome" JFK, "Ich Bin Ein Berliner"
None of these speeches would have been as meaningful in a different time, with different events and feelings and happenings.