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Comment by calhoun137 | Hacker News Reader

I honestly feel like you comment is a perfect illustration of this point made in the OP, which was as much about citizens as it was about what politicians would like them to think:

"just fathom the authoritarian mindset that would lead a citizen -- and especially a "journalist" -- to react with anger that these things have been revealed; to insist that these facts should have been kept concealed and it'd be better if we didn't know"

By the way, the indictment for the extradition request has nothing to do with the 2016 election, but rather the Iraq war logs from back in 2010. I understand you may not like Assange very much and think he is a bad person, but I would encourage you to consider the bigger picture and that many people are raising the alarm that this is an extremely dangerous attack on the first amendment and the freedom of the press.

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Trust me, I'm aware of the thin lines that these things ride upon. I don't care that, in particular, the Podesta emails, the DNC emails, the Brazile questions, or anything else about the Clinton campaign were leaked. It was information, and it was illuminating to the nature of American politics.

What I have a problem with is, these sorts of leaks allow American elections to become a target of nation-state attacks. We shouldn't become used to making electoral decisions based on what the Russian state wants us to know about our politicians-- we need to make those discoveries ourselves, with investigative journalists that have skin in the game.

I understand that the request has nothing to do with the election, and likely would have happened without. Still, when inciting American citizens to break the law, I would hope that one would have some stronger backup than a single embassy's forbearance to carry you through to safety. Conspiracy isn't some newly made up charge, Assange didn't have to encourage Manning to do anything other than release what she had legal access to at the time.

You are prescribing the problem as the solution. Journalists being unwilling to hold political feet to the fire is what caused the buildup of weaponizable secrets in the first place.

> What I have a problem with is, these sorts of leaks allow American elections to become a target of nation-state attacks.

Let's look at it this way, assuming those leaks were really backed by nation states, they will have a way to achieve what they want with the materials they have whether WikiLeaks exists or not.

WikiLeaks is just a tool that anyone could use to release genuine information. The existence of such an entity could be good or bad. But when you start arguing that they are bad because they allowed some nation state to swing the election, you should remember said nation state could almost certainly do the same thing even if WikiLeaks never existed.

I don’t see how that makes sense in practice in a globalised world with the internet. The information is going to come from everywhere, and given the way the US meddles, our elections are of interest to practically every country. OF COURSE they’re going to try to influence our elections. Even a brief glance at our own history shows us doing that to, uh, practically every other country. It’s only going to get more pronounced! I see no practical way of achieving what you want other than burying our heads in the sand.

This line of thinking seems right and what I assume most would take away from this incident (Maybe I have to reevaluate my line of thinking?). I'm surprised to see so many people making this a black or white, 1 or 0 binary choice out of this whole ordeal.

Maybe we could have political candidates who aren't criminals so then foreign powers couldn't tilt our elections by revealing the truth about them.

...except the Russian state was undermining the non-criminal to aid the known criminal?

Please, point to any "criminal" act that was revealed in the emails (that were stolen and released to Wikileaks by Russian security services).

If a game show that gave away real prizes leaked the questions in advance to one contestant but not the other, that would be fraud. I'm not sure if a debate can be held to that standard, however?

What was revealed in the 2016 election wasn't criminal, so what exactly are you talking about?

In politics perceptions matter more than reality. Partisans on both sides are quite convinced that the other side's candidate is a criminal.

Democratic partisans believe the other candidate was involved in a criminal conspiracy with foreign powers and/or engaged in criminal conduct to cover it up, and Republican partisans believe that the Wikileaks emails are full of proof of criminal activity by the other side's candidate. (they have probably never actually read any of the emails, but they believe it, which is all that matters)

Neither of those beliefs are strongly supported by evidence but both result from the fact that both candidates have a long history of dubious conduct that their detractors reasonably believe would be criminal if the laws were equally enforced without regard to wealth and political power.

I feel like you're missing GP's point. Even if we stipulate that leaks are in the public interest (inasmuch as they expose corruption), selective leaks give an undue amount of power to the person deciding what to leak. If we were getting a similar number of leaks from the DNC, RNC, USA, non-USA, etc. I honestly wouldn't have a problem with it. When the leaks are all focused in one direction though, it looks less like journalism and more like propaganda.

That's separate from the question of whether it's criminal though. I haven't read the indictment yet and don't have an opinion on that.

You're not wrong but there's nothing to be done about it. You either have freedom of speech/press or you don't, you can't have "freedom of speech as long as you're fair".

What people seem to be missing here is, the ideals the community held when we lined up behind and helped propel Wikileaks forward went far beyond freedom of speech—it was deeply anti-propaganda, it was deeply anti-power, the releasing of all information— Julian made a conscious choice to become the monster we were all fighting, a propagandist who selectively hid information or selectively amplified certain information—this is quite literally the same thing we were fighting to stop.

We’re lining back up to fight for his freedom of speech, but he will forever be a study in why we must metaphorically “kill your idols.” Anyone who knows what we were fighting for knows that Julian abandoned the freedom of information cause long ago.

This sums up the whole problem and it's concerning that so many people aren't able to grasp it.

One approach that might work is an force that only participated in defense/retaliation, similar to the Mohist siege engineers.

...undue amount of power to the person deciding what to leak.

Totally with you on this. How is Assange the exemplar for this problem, when scores of people in government, law enforcement, military, unsupervised services, etc. leak their opinions to journalists every week, anonymously? Journalists should challenge these leaks rather than taking dictation.

>"just fathom the authoritarian mindset that would lead a citizen -- and especially a "journalist" -- to react with anger that these things have been revealed; to insist that these facts should have been kept concealed and it'd be better if we didn't know"

You mean, like, releasing some leaks, but not releasing other leaks? Yeah, that would really suck.

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