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Comment by cavanasm | Hacker News Reader

Wikileaks doesn't collect intel whatsoever. They pretty much put up anything sent to them that they think is real (and that admittedly fits whatever editorial narrative is driving Assange at the moment). No one at Wikileaks is doing the hacks, or infiltrating government organizations.

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I see the claim that "no one at Wikileaks performs any kind of attacks" said quite often, but it seems to go against the account of Assange made by his ghostwriter, Andrew O'Hagan, who claims that much of what Assange does or did was hacking and then rejecting credit[0]. It's often lead me to the belief that Wikileaks was formed as a way for him to launder the goods of his infiltrations.

Take that along with Assange's history of arrest in the 90's[1], I find it hard to take at face value that he just stopped hacking systems.

The relevant section of the essay:

> One of the things Julian found it hardest to admit to was the amount of hacking he did himself. He had worked out that being an ‘editor’ was somehow a necessary front for much that he did. He objected to the idea that WikiLeaks ‘stole’ secrets: according to him they simply understood, at a deeply sophisticated level, how the flow of information in society could be altered.

[0] https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Hacking

> They pretty much put up anything sent to them that they think is real.

Maybe, maybe not. How would we know they do that?

Assange had an AMA on reddit, and he said they received Trump intel pre election and judged it was not worthy of releasing compared to the Clinton data dump.

That's a lot of editorial bias for an organization that's goals, at least initially, revolved around transparency.

Whenever this comes up, I like to ask what people would expect could be revealed about Trump that would materially change anything. The Clinton campaign raked him over the coals to the point that deluded people now think wearing a vagina-shaped hat is some manner of effective protest. It seems pretty likely that any leaks about Trump would be boring in comparison to how he appears in the public eye in the first place.

If someone sends real leaks to Wikileaks and they don't publish, then the leakers can use alternative channels to distribute the leaks (for example, sending directly to journalists), and then accuse Wikileaks of not publishing. Has anyone already accused Wikileaks of not publishing real leaks?

Yes, they've been accused of that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/europe/wikileaks-ju...

> WikiLeaks, he told a Moscow newspaper, had obtained compromising materials “about Russia, about your government and your businessmen.”

> Mr. Assange, asked soon after by Time magazine whether he still planned to expose the secret dealings of the Kremlin, reiterated his earlier vow. “Yes indeed,” he said.

> But that promised assault would not materialize. Instead, with Mr. Assange’s legal troubles mounting, Mr. Putin would come to his defense.

There's also the fun time they came out against leaks that hurt Trump on the baffling assertion that Trump deserved to get to read them before release: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/817322050297745408

> The Obama admin/CIA is illegally funneling TOP SECRET//COMINT information to NBC for political reasons before PEOTUS even gets to read it.

Odd stance for the organization to take.

For added irony, at the time the Pres. Elect was "bragging" about how he didn't feel the need to even read such intelligence, as he was "smart enough to know what was going on" and got other information from the "shows he watched".

One accusation: http://www.cnbc.com/id/42762811

Sorry, i meant gather cables, leaks etc. That is what i meant by intel.

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