Macron emails leaked by wikileaks | Hacker News Reader

Macron emails leaked by wikileaks

wikileaks.org

34 pointssubroutine68 comments

I wonder why we never had any info on Le Pen, Trump or Russia from there?

Le Pen and Putin probably don't write emails and Trump is tweeting :) But I agree, it is hard to follow the ethics of this, to say the least. Also, if I were sent leaked documents, it would be incredibly hard to understand and consider the ethics.

And they don't have aids that write e-mail either? I don't believe they all use letters with some wax to imprint their ring: it's 2017. The parent is right, Wikileaks has a murky agenda.

So because Wikileaks has had a couple of leaks from Hillary's crew and this Macron one among all the other ones [0] means they have a murky agenda?

Or do you mean the recent Vault 7 from CIA etc are also part of this newly found dark agenda, instead of a continuation of earlier leaks such as the Iraq War documents leak?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks#Leaks

Assange (let's get rid of pseudo-plurality of Wikileaks) has clearly observable political agenda, and it hasn't changed much. As long as it harms the United States and its allies, it will be disseminated. If it's something that implicates the "anti-imperialists" like Le Pen, Trump, Putin and their petty dictator buddies (e.g. Panama Files) it will be booed and downplayed by him.

There was a leak from Vladislav Surkov, personal adviser of Vladimir Putin among other functions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surkov_leaks

Apparently Assange wasn't interested in publicizing that one.

Putin is not using internet, he is old for that.

Mr. Putin publicly said that he does not use internet at all[0]. In Russia Wikileaks-esque orgs are primarily busy in political elite wars[1]. That's always the same - corruption, dirty money, murders, robberies. Boring.

[0] https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/putin-answer-kids-questi...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/07/anonymous-inte...

Haha, guys, come on. 'It's because Putin doesn't use email', sure, sure. 'Nothing to leak', indeed! Putin, Le Pen, Trump - paragons of ethical behaviour, squeaky clean. /s

Wikileaks publishes whatever the GRU feeds them, with gusto.

Supposedly, they use typewriters over there. At least that's what they want us to think, but why wouldn't they? Computers are inherently untrustable & likely malicious if you don't build the damn thing yourself and by the time you connect to the internet, all bets are off.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1017...

Trump can't take a leak without it getting leaked. Panama papers were equal opportunity... the leaks seem pretty well equal opportunity.

Wikileaks did not publish the Panama Papers, and in fact accused them of being part of an anti-Russian conspiracy.

Tighter security or nothing to leak, I would imagine.

Panama Papers were heavy on info from more Russia sphere of influence. (And people criticized them for that for some reason.)

The Panama Papers were released by a group of journalists, not by Wikileaks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers

Oh I minsunderstood the comments, I thought you asked why there are no leaks on Russia in general.

Haha.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717458064324964352

Bias warning: I am a liberal democrat.

I see wikileaks as more of a 'balance of powers' organization. It sees all concentration of power, especially state power, as presenting a great danger to people. Thus it tries to "equalize" it. Thus Wikileaks's main focus has been America. Russia's secrets are known to other state actors, including the US, thus one superpower and a few great powers are in a position to stop any atrocity, if they choose to do so.

Not so with the USA. Many people, including Assange, believe that USA has been a dangerous state actor, leading to immense global suffering 1) directly, and 2) indirectly through financial, weapons, and political support (shielding them from UN resolutions and international justice) to ruthless dictators. For (1) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes , and (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_...

The USA has also wielded state power internally against its citizens, with the highest rate of incarceration in the developed world, secret internment camps, spying by state agencies, and the suppression of its black citizens by violence and coercion.

US has intelligence and raw power superiority to rest of the world, Wikileaks believes that by creating more transparency about all aspects of government, it can create more awareness and global action. It has partially succeeded.

The above of course does not preclude USA also leading to great alleviation of global suffering - Vaccines, PEPFAR, saving the world @ WWII from Hitler, etc..

Nothing above should be construed as support to Wikileaks, I am merely trying to convey an understanding of an alternative viewpoint.

Then why nothing on Trump?

As Assange has stated repeatedly, he sees no difference between mainstream party politicians: Obama has continued NSA spying and indiscriminate drone bombings. He sees Trump as a genuine outsider to the dominant Washington polity and an alternative power network. He thinks whatever disrupts mainstream neoliberal/neocon world order is a good thing.

Again, please keep in mind I'm not a WikiLeaks supporter.

Because the FSB publicly threatened them after they were claiming they have shit on the Russian elite.

Couple months later, Assange was on RT.

Wikileaks is an English speaking organization with no Russian speakers on the staff, why would a leaker consider leaking Russian documents there? They can't leak what no one sends them, which also explains the other two.

Good point, but still, consider how simple it would be for them to get Russian speaking help, and how small an effort it is in comparison to the gain in publicity - if they got something, of course.

Why would they get something is the question? I doubt Wikileaks is that well known in Russia, most Americans have a vague idea of what it is already.

Assange hosted a show for Russia Today back in 2012, so he knows some Russian speaking journalists who should be able to lend a hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tomorrow

Assange hosted a show that RT acquired the first broadcast license for, I doubt he had much contact with RT employees for that show. And again, why would a Russian leaker consider Wikileaks over another organization full of Russian speakers?

It's so incredibly annoying that every time there's a news article about wikileaks people start crying about its bias and Russian spies. Even if Satan himself feeds them info, so what? What matters is the truthfulness of their leaks.

It seem to me like a lot of people avoid attacking the verasity of the leaks themselves but focus only on the 'Putin connection', which is of course a much easier thing to do.

Well, hey, it's modern world politics, where it's not the objective truth that really matters or the argumentation, it's a 'who can shout the loudest' contest instead.

No, screw that approach. Truth is not just a collection of facts; it's also the point cloud that the facts create. Even if your information is 100% accurate, you can still generate incredibly potent misinformation by selectively releasing some facts and retaining others. It's bias laundering, and it creates propaganda that's substantially more difficult to discredit than the old-school, lie-based kind. We should really know better, but I suppose it plays to our human weaknesses.

I say that every time WikiLeaks comes up, "Assange should not be trusted" needs to be the top comment. No different than a "view at your own discretion" label.

Out of interest: who could be trusted with releasing accurate facts but not withholding any?

The 17 intelligence agencies?

97% of scientists?

> The 17 intelligence agencies?

Probably not.

> 97% of scientists?

Probably yes.

Also, news organizations with transparency and decades-old reputations, e.g. the BBC. But certainly not a secretive <s>anarchist</s> libertarian organization with an egomaniac leader[1] and questionable political connections.

[1]: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting

BBC is paid for by the British government, that is, politicians or oversight orgs that report to politicians. For-profit news agencies are simply delivery mechanisms for advertisements run by mostly large conglomerate corps. News happens to be their niche to get eyeballs on the advertisements that pays the bills -- porn tubes and cnn have more in common than we'd like to accept. Additionally to the extent they need licenses for the public airwaves or access to governmental officials, they are influenced by those.

Decades-old reputation matters nothing compared to the current leadership being beholden to those who hold the pursestrings.

The best that can be hoped for is the powers influencing the news somehow balance each other out enough for a modicum of truth to leak through.

Bias does not necessarily follow from "paid for by the... government", "run by mostly large conglomerate corps", and "need licenses for the public airwaves". Most everything good is paid for by someone or some group; journalists don't have the means to do their reporting for free.

Ultimately you have to use your own judgement, but if your preferred news organizations have a history of hiring honest and reputable journalists and providing unbiased coverage (especially if it targets institutions of power) then I think heuristically you can leave them in your "trusted source" folder.

In the worst case scenario, I suppose you can just follow your favorite journalists and rely on personal trust and reputation.

BBC is not paid for by the British Government, it's paid for by the license fee, essentially a tax on everyone that has a TV

That said, the BBC very much represents "the establishment" views.

They've also spent millions of tax payer money to keep government reports about BBC reporting bias secret from the public.

I don't know, I think if there is a bias or we only read things released by Russian spies then it seems really important to take that into account

If every single person's emails are at least controversial then it just means you are going to be a mob chasing anyone that was targeted, unrelated to if they are better or worse than everyone else (and it seems like any email is damning, pizzeria-thank-you emails are enough to cause people to think there is a vast child trafficking conspiracy and literally shoot up the place).

If it was an unbiased sample it is fine to catch a random subset and set examples of them, but if you have a biased sample then you might be actually leading to concentration of power in whoever has the least scruples in hacking and leaking opposition emails if you aren't careful to take the sample bias into account.

I take issue with wikileaks because Assange has explicitly stated himself that his goal is to inflict the maximum amount of damage through headline manipulation or hyperbole/click-baiting; leave it to the users to actually take a look at the content of the leaks to decide for themselves. Given this, the organization appears to be no better than any other sensational manipulative news organization, so I highly question their methods.

Is there a wikileak bias or do conservatives have better infosec?

You cant be leaked on if you do not use technology! runs away

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

"Now opposing the war, Ellsberg and his friend Anthony Russo photocopied the study in October 1969 intending to disclose it."

I read that the Russian intelligence services are still using typewriters for exactly this reason

Which reminds me of this great story: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/10/how-s...

There's definitely a bias. That's why the last paragraph of that announcement is there; that's wikileaks denying that they're a front for Russian intelligence, an allegation which is being made a lot these days.

Perhaps they learned after the Nixon tapes?

Worth reading Julian Assange's blog on the purpose of wikileaks.

http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf

To me the answer is that America's current "Left wing" is more in-line with the American Neoliberal world dominance agenda. Meanwhile Americas conservatives where they promote American dominance do so in public. Republican candidates debated candidly about how much they'd like the "bad guys" to get tortured. Meanwhile the DNCs favoured candidate got big donations from the defence industry and Saudi Arabia whilst talking about how important human rights are.

Wikileaks project is about attacking powerful in-groups deception of voters. All leaks help this cause by increasing the info-sec cost of conspiracy. But if the in-groups private messaging is in line with their publicly stated positions then what's there to leak?

Except Trump/Tillersion just happily approved the biggest arms deal with Saudi, while the previous Obama administration was halting this deal because of human right violations in Yemen. Iran deal was also in the line to reduce Saudi's influence on foreign policy.

> if the in-groups private messaging is in line with their publicly stated positions then what's there to leak?

1. We won't know unless there is a leak

2. I think the fact that there was a leak was as or more damaging to Clinton than the actual leak itself. Anecdotal... My dad: "but the emails!" Me: "what about them?" Dad: "They were hacked". Me: "what did they say?" Dad: "..."

3. So you're saying, yes there is a clear bias?

This answer would make sense if Wikileaks were the source of the leaks. As it is, they're not, so their motives don't really come into it.

Besides, I'm pretty sure what DTjr did would qualify as eminently leakable.

This is good point, although we don't know if WL is getting right wing stuff and just not leaking it.

You'd have to assume that a) WL ran such a tight ship you'd never heard a hint of it, which seems unlikely b) the suppliers of the information didn't try anyone else, which also seems unlikely.

Macron is not exactly left-wing.

He is socially and culturally progressive - so he counts.

I think there might be nuance in the way US and France see the political scale, but I guarantee that he is not considered left here.

At best center, but since his last policies (cutting rent assistance, giving tax breaks to the rich), even the "center" image starts crumbling

Indeed - language has been co-opted. In the UK we see the same thing "moderate" "centrist" - these now mean big-business friendly policies, to the right of previous right wing governments.

There is probably (as this point) a political bias amongst people providing leaks to wikileaks.

The Trump administration has had plenty of leaks but they have all been published by traditional media (NY Times, CNN and so on).

"Leaks".

Stuff was leaked while Bush was in office. One of the more memorable was the Blair-Bush documents.

Conservatives score much higher on loyalty and respect for authority as their moral foundations. Wouldn't surprise me if that's enough to explain the gap.

It seems 90% of the emails are just newsletters (LeMonde, Korben, Google Alerts...). It would have been so easy to remove those!

Rather 40% newsletters, 40% expense reports (note de frais).

Here we go again.

Please don't post direct links to Wikileaks or any other site that hosts leaked classified material (even if the link is not to classified material).

By posting a direct link you are excluding the people who have the most well informed opinions on the subject.

Even just linking to a clickbait piece that provides a link to the source material is better.

Appologies. I reposted to an ABC piece. Question though... how does this exclude people who are already well informed from commenting on this forum? And how does a clickbait article rectify this?

Thank you.

A little more detail.

Anyone working for the gov't, a gov't contractor, the defense industry or other industries requiring a clearance would do well to avoid this stuff. Being able to honestly answer "I've read the third party analysis but haven't seen more than quotes from the docs myself" makes life easier if the person administering your poly decides to ask about that sort of stuff.

Linking directly to wikileaks also means that nobody working in those environments will read your article while at work or using a work device. While you might not get asked about it depending on where you work it's just unprofessional. It's like visiting a link to a tech article published by Pornhub's blog.

By giving those groups a reason to avoid the topic you eliminate a lot of potential for transfer of useful information. Little tidbits like "the author says X but in my experience Y" add up to a large amount of knowledge transfer that we probably don't want to exclude from this site

Thanks, I thought it was bullshit, but now I know for sure.

I'll be more interested in truthfulness of leaks when Assange leaks Putins emails.

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