Why is this downvoted? Is there significant evidence to suggest wikilieaks was in fact not compromised?
There is no evidence that WikiLeaks has anything to do with Russia. None whatsoever. Whenever I've asked people why they think this, they give two reasons:
1 - WikiLeaks hasn't published leaks about the Russian government.
2 - Assange did some TV interviews on RT years ago.
These are both laughable. Assange himself gave the obvious explanation for (1) - they haven't done that because they didn't receive any. And it's equally obvious why not: WikiLeaks arose to handle leaks of material that the western press were refusing to publish for unsatisfying reasons, like the Iraq war stuff. But the western press would salivate at the opportunity to publish damaging leaks about the Russian government, assuming the original holder wanted the info to appear in the west and not in, say, Russian. So why would anyone with such material care about Wikileaks? There is no reason for them to do so.
Regardless, attempting to divine intent from things that have not happened is hardly a good standard of evidence to use when making serious accusations.
As for the TV interviews, well, RT is a large scale news channel that has interviewed tons of different people over the years. Appearing on a TV channel is hardly evidence of working for the related national government. Otherwise everyone who appears on the BBC works for the British government, anyone who appears on Al Jazeera is in the pocket of Qatar and so on.
2. They are hosted out of Russia.
3. They actively take sides in political battles. Hardly the stance of an objective "journalistic" organization.
However, I don't think it's sufficient reason to flag/dismiss anything.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2016/04/qa...
I don't see Assange attacking any sources in that Q&A. He does criticise (not attack) the way some journalists handled it, saying they put their own spin on things and that there should have been a bulk release. Otherwise, he argues, the impact would be low. That seems like a reasonable opinion to hold.
2. I looked at their IP addresses. They appear to have three datacenters, at least being advertised to me, one in Russia, one in the Netherlands and one in Norway. From a political perspective having servers in a place unfriendly to America, given how many of their leaks are about the US establishment, seems pretty sensible to me. But saying they are "hosted out of Russia" is extremely misleading, a lie of omission.
3. How are they "actively taking sides in political battles"? They leak what they get. If they didn't, leakers would go elsewhere to get their info out, it's not like Wikileaks has a monopoly on leaking. This is just slander and smearing.
Do you know that they leak what they get? Cause there are credible accusations by former members that they do not.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/
You can search by text, attachment filename or email ID. How is that not bulk released?
Do you know that they leak what they get?
It's common sense that they do. These leaks come in the form of digital files, not papers. People give material to WikiLeaks so it gets published. If they gave material to WikiLeaks and nothing happened they'd just find another way to leak the same material - like Snowden when he went to Greenwald and Poitras instead of Assange.
This is why the idea that WikiLeaks is somehow a part of the Russian government is so mind-bendingly stupid propaganda. How would they hold anything back? Not only is there no motive and no evidence with these allegations, there isn't even common sense!
that's an unreasonably low bar when they have done more for transparency than most conventional news organizations.
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717458064324964352?lang...
I'm stacking the tinfoil pretty hard but ignoring the history/politics you gotta say the technical side behaved in a weird way.