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Comment by minikites | Hacker News Reader

I would be genuinely surprised if the current administration decided to prosecute one of their most useful Russian agents.

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Again sarcasm as a way to convey a legitimate point is downvoted on HN so I'll translate: I would be surprised if he was prosecuted harshly given his important role in the election of the current president of the US.

(Edit: to be clear, I personally dislike seeing all these jokes about russian agents re: the 2016 election. There was clearly meddling but its beginning to bother me that a vocal strain of vocal American liberals seem to believe that the main reason why trump is president is because someone broke some rules. People like Assange aren't pawns of some dark and evil power: they are themselves bad actors and should be treated as such.)

> People like Assange aren't pawns of some dark and evil power

Citation needed. The rest of the world seems to agree that he was in fact a pawn to a "dark and evil power", as you put it.

Here's my citation:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/0...

"Assange behaved as an instrument of the Kremlin operation which, in an excruciatingly close election, may have made just enough of a difference to secure Trump’s victory."

...

"Mueller’s investigators have recently questioned at least five witnesses about Assange’s role in the 2016 campaign."

> that the main reason why trump is president is because someone broke some rules.

The evidence shows this pretty clearly. Also, "broke some rules" is a pretty silly way to describe the literal murders that have taken place re: Russia and the election. It's also an obviously biased way to describe the incredible scale and power of electoral propaganda along with bribes and hacked voting systems.

> hacked voting systems do you have evidence that fake votes were cast?

I said absolutely nothing about fake votes being cast. Why did you make that up? What are you talking about? Please elaborate.

Russia hacked voting and electoral systems. Here is a news article about that: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/russians-penetrat...

In related news, you will find constant streams of articles demonstrating the epic quantities of failures of voting systems across the country. You will also find lots of news articles about voters being eliminated from the voting rolls, in mysterious ways.

Which acts are done by the Republican people in charge of the voting systems? Which acts were done by Russians who hacked in? I don't know. None of us do, yet.

But you're here making up ridiculous claims and using logical fallacies to try to insert false 'facts' into your question. You twist my words and ask non-sensical questions. Why?

Russia hacked our voting systems. That is not up for dispute, that is a long-established fact.

That's totally fair and, not to be dismissive, I don't think it's productive to try to have this conversation here. I just want to say I'm not trying to defend or downplay what WikiLeaks got up to under Assange's oversight. I'm simply saying that while his interests may have lined up with Putin/Russian oligarchs he is himself an ideologue and a bad actor who comes from a community of the same and he should be treated as such.

Why is he a bad actor? Why should he be treated differently from other whistleblowers. AFAIK his leaks have had many good outcomes. I think there was a case or two where sensitive information could've been vetted better but to me he definitely looks like a net positive.

Have you watched the documentary "citizen four" about snowden? The way that they went about these releases are worlds apart and each man has his own clear agenda. Snowdens behavior set a good precedent for future leaking. For example, he was careful to do diligence to make sure no one agents would be harmed. This is important because much of the legal case against this sort of action claims (wrongly) that leaking is somehow treasonous no matter what because it endangers IC field agents.

All of this said, broadly, the world Assange wants to build is bad and the world Snowden wants to build is good. This matters and is part of why I call Assange a bad actor: it's not the act of releasing sensitive data its what he intended to do with it. (And to be clear, i'm no fan of Clinton.)

I'd also like to point out that, while I really value this community I dislike this tendency. Not agreeing with such comments is fine, but this isn't a personal attack so I don't understand why this style of conversation is treated this way. Sarcasm and sly humor are actually good and should be encouraged so long as it is relevant and not meant to hurt non-public figures. Overall this behavior comes off to me as understanding what is being conveyed but using the style of delivery as an excuse not to engage.

> they are themselves bad actors and should be treated as such How is leaking some provably true secrets about a political party to the public bad in any way in a democracy?

There are responsible and irresponsible ways to dump this kind of info. Both result in the public learning what it is entitled to know. (All such secrets are bad of course and should be brought to light.) For instance, Assange has failed to scrub irrelevant personally identifying information from releases in the past which have resulted in uninvolved non-public civilians getting doxxed. All this does is allow oppressive regimes like the current US government more evidence to make the act of leaking even harder. Assange is bad for freedom of information in the current social order because he’s a very convenient story for people who want secrets to remain secrets.

> There are responsible and irresponsible ways to dump this kind of info

I personally disagree with this. If a random 3rd party has access to this info then everyone else might as well.

Setting aside whether I think it's likely Assange is a Russian agent, it wouldn't surprise me to see an agent of a nation thrown under the bus for political reasons or to support a narrative. For an example, see Valerie Plame.

Fun fact, as I was looking this up to make sure I had the right people and names, wikipedia helpfully informed me that "The scandal led to a criminal investigation; no one was charged for the leak itself. Scooter Libby was convicted of lying to investigators. His prison sentence was ultimately commuted by President Bush, and he was pardoned by President Trump in 2018." More fuel for the conspiracy minded, I guess. ;)

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