I'm not familiar with the facts of the case.
And, I further realize that facts are almost completely immaterial to motivated reasoning about the case, but...
... assuming that you (or someone) is a straight-shooter, why is this "fantastic news"?
2. Even if Russia had provided Wikileaks with the Democratic Party emails (which it probably didn't), that wouldn't matter, i.e. Wikileaks was still quite justified in publishing them.
2) Agreed. That was not a point of contention.
This is untrue:
As we’ve repeatedly stated, we stand by the findings and analysis of our investigation, and, as detailed in our company statement, we’ve provided all forensic evidence and analysis to the FBI as requested. Additionally, our findings have been supported by the U.S. intelligence community and other cybersecurity companies.
https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
> Assange... say[s] "It wasn't the Russians"
Has he actually said that? The actual quotes I've seen have not been definitive:
"The same day, Assange told NBC News that "it's what's in the emails that's important, not who hacked them." When asked by NBC News if WikiLeaks might have been used to distribute documents stolen as part of a Russian intelligence operation, Assange replied: "There is no proof of that whatsoever. We have not disclosed our source."[1]
and
"On Sean Hannity’s radio show, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that hacked Democratic documents sent to reporters at Gawker and The Hill may have come from Russia. But, he said, he is confident the emails he received did not come from the same source.".. "“Our source is not the Russian government,” said Assange, later claiming WikiLeaks did not receive its material from any state actor, Russia or otherwise."[2]
(Note "state actor" - which would align with the idea that the hacking group is just under direction of Russian intel, not that it is part of it)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer_2.0
[2] https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/310654-assange-some...
Re: Assange - yes - he is quite circumspect.
All the evidence points to it being the Russians, Putin himself said it might have been "patriotically minded" Russians, all US intel agencies say it was the Russians, all non-US agencies say it was the Russians.
And you claim to be baffled as to why people say it was the Russians?
Maybe it wasn't, but it's not exactly baffling why people say it is. There are no real counter theories at all - the only counter claims sort of say "Deep State" but nothing else.
Where is the direct, observable, undeniable evidence?
If you don't have it, then don't keep parroting the nonsense.
b) What kind of evidence wouldn't you deny?
It doesn’t matter what Assange said, the only thing he could possibly know is who gave it to him. He doesn’t know where his source got it, even if his source was not Russian.
I’m also pretty sure that no LEOs said any such thing.
Who else examined the servers? The US Government stated in court that it relied exclusively on their analysis and never examined the servers at issue. One might think this was normally something they should be doing, but it's getting more common (e.g. with Bezos' phone, where the private company failed to decrypt the supposed malware, despite there being open source tools for WhatsApp decryption).
Given that they failed to identify the Ukranian P.A.S. malware or a bunch of Tor exit nodes, it's legitimate to question how definitively they were able to pin this on a specific APT.
> It doesn’t matter what Assange said, the only thing he could possibly know is who gave it to him.
A fair point, but one you should make to the US Government and the media who promulgated the myth that he would somehow get a pardon for saying exactly what he's repeatedly said in public for years now when the real story was that someone hoped to convince Trump of that and never actually got to talk to him.
Also, we do have some evidence against. The exfiltration happened at almost exactly the speed of a USB drive. That doesn't seem likely to be coincidental, or likely to randomly happen for internet exfiltration of data.
Some believe Manning is a hero who followed her conscience and leaked classified information in order to inform the public of secret crimes the government/military committed.
Others think what Manning did was incredibly reckless and treasonous, tantamount to selling secrets to the enemy (just without the "selling" part)
So to answer your question, people in the first camp see news like this as a good thing.
So the real question is: was it appropriate to throw her back into prison, under very harsh conditions, just to force a statement from her. I think there is very good reasons to doubt that, independant of the stance about her original actions. From that perspective, I think her release is good news.
Why are you such a fascist?
But when your mother awakened certain hidden feelings in me with her sex toys when I was 9, I did feel feelings against her other object of sexual obsession, you; I developed an urge to put my hands around your neck.
It's been years, but I carry it to this day.
I miss her.
tl;dr she was a whistleblower facing the wrath of the people she outed
Also, it's customary on HN to point out when you have a conflict of interest. You work for a military contractor & used to work for the government, and probably should disclose that when talking about a subject so closely tied to your work.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
The case of using someone's employer or field to shame them is particularly bad for this site, because it disincentivizes people from showing up where they have the most expertise. It's true that we're all strongly biased by our work, so some distortion is inevitable, but having HN be a place where people feel free to show up on topics that they're knowledgeable in is more important than policing each other for bias.
We're also trying to avoid the online callout/shaming culture on HN in general.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
How do you know that? I don't see anything in their profile. Was it a post that they made?
A whistleblower is a subset of leaking with the limited intention of exposing something specifically nefarious.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_breach
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spillage_of_classified_informa...
Whistleblowing only works if the people significantly higher up aren't supportive or complicit with the illegal actions.