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Comment by neaden | Hacker News Reader

"“Well they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it,” Leigh and Harding report Assange saying to a group of international journalists. And while Assange has denied making these comments, WikiLeaks released troves of material in which the names of Afghan civilians had not been redacted, an action that led Amnesty International, the Open Society Institute, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission to issue a joint rebuke" This really sums up Assange for me. I don't know if he is an idealist who believes in what he's peddling or an opportunist but either way he's someone willing to let people die.

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That quote hit home for me too. And one a little later that expands on the same idea:

> "Assange, by contrast [to Snowden], appears to have no interest in anyone’s privacy but his own and his sources’. Private communications, personal information, intimate conversations are all fair game to him. He calls this nihilism “freedom,” and in so doing elevates it to a principle that gives him license to act without regard to consequences."

I'm super concerned that his "detention" has had an effect on his mental stability.

He is literally the definition of a basement dwelling keyboard troll... he isn't getting to socialise properly and is locked into a digital world that is quite separate from reality while simultaneously being put on a pedestal, idolised and demonised by power impressive people...

Even the best of us would develop weird quirks and poor thought processes in that scenario.

And an odd quote from some who's claim to fame is running a website that publishes leaked information.

Very convenient unsubstantiated quote there.

It doesn't really matter if the quote is real. He released the information when it was obvious it put peoples lives at risk. There is a reason why responsible journalists wanted to redact that information. Julian seems to just want to put everything out there and destroy privacy and I don't want to live in a panopticon.

> There is a reason why responsible journalists wanted to redact that information.

Yes: the reason they bring it up is that the issue provides a powerful moralistic cudgel against Assange, a threat to their business model.

As far as I know, there are no documented cases of deaths due to the Wikileaks leaks at issue in the unsubstantiated quote: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/...

And you sure can find deaths correlated to mainstream media fake news and social media rumours.

Yes: the reason they bring it up is that the issue provides a powerful moralistic cudgel against Assange, a threat to their business model.

Oh this is just beyond ridiculous.

They bring it up because people's lives were put at risk. I won't go so far as to claim people actually died, but that absolutely was a risk and Assange very consciously chose to take that risk.

Who cares if the "old media" also happens to see WikiLeaks as a "threat to their business model"? That's literally 100% beside the core point, here, though it's a mighty fine deflection on your part.

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