(edited for clarification)
Which is still a huge moral difference. I would have hoped that HN would be one community that would understand the difference between a whistleblower leaking data to journalists to expose a crime versus an outsider committing a crime in order to acquire data to leak for their own political gain. But I guess I shouldn't expect that considering many people here think Snowden, Manning, and Assange are all of equal moral standing.
Collateral murder undermined the effort to sell war as a noble goal, and then Podesta's emails hurt the democrats, so now both political parties and their fans feel personally burned by him.
He's being railroaded right now, were you aware? Not a US citizen but somehow inexplicably being extradited and charged under the US espionage act.
Assange has said that he had information on the Trump campaign but decided not to publish it[2].
Assange is accused of taking an active role in hacking/cracking.[3] Also you don't have to be a US citizen to be charged for a crime by the US government.
Any idea that he is an independent journalist is now gone. He's not a force for radical transparency like he originally billed himself to be. He's only concerned about transparency when it benefits him personally or politically and is happy to lie about or coverup anything else.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/us/mueller-report-seth-ri...
[2] - https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/2934...
[3] - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/wikileaks...
> Also you don't have to be a US citizen to be charged for a crime by the US government.
You sure about that? I mean, if a non-US citizen commits murder on our shores, fine, charge them, but the espionage act for non-citizens who didn't personally commit any espionage? Really? Shit, even if they did, they're not Americans, you want to extradite every non-American who isn't sufficiently pro-America?
How much of this argument relies on "we are the good guys of history, so we get carte blanche and if you disagree you are bad"?
Part of being a "good guy" is standing by your word. We have extradition treaties with the UK. Unless there is some belief that the wanted person couldn't get a fair trial in the UK, we would follow the same process that they are putting Assange through.
Also, "sought out information".. you're gonna take that as an exception for rights of the press? No publishing about watergate if the editor and journalist "sought out" the information?
What is your point? Espionage laws are typically intended for foreign nationals.
> Also, "sought out information".. you're gonna take that as an exception for rights of the press? No publishing about watergate if the editor and journalist "sought out" the information?
The press has the right to publish classified information as long as they are solely publishing the information and do not partake in accessing or gathering that information. This was the finding of the Supreme Court in NYT vs US[1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_S...
As if that wasn't enough, Felt ran COINTELPRO, too.
Similarly, I think that it was in the interest of the public to report when it was discovered that Trump only paid $750 in taxes (despite not committing a technical crime!) or that Hillary Clinton received some debate questions in advance (again, not a crime!).
This standard that Twitter is applying appears to have no clear line of enforcement, nor does the principle you've put forth.
Yes, here is the first google result.[1]
>Who decides whether a crime has occurred?
This is complicated and why there is a preference for whistleblowing to occur through official channels rather than through journalists. However sometimes there is a level of corruption that can't be dealt with any other way besides going public with it. In those instances, it is up to the whistleblower and journalists initially before eventually the court decides. Snowden was good in this regarding by trying to limit what was leaked. Manning did a poor job here.
>I would say that Snowden exposed a crime (perjury) by James Clapper. Manning (IMO) exposed war crimes.
No disagreement here. Snowden and Manning fit a clear definition of whistleblowers. Assange is the one who is not on the same moral footing as those two.
>Similarly, I think that it was in the interest of the public to report when it was discovered that Trump only paid $750 in taxes (despite not committing a technical crime!) or that Hillary Clinton received some debate questions in advance (again, not a crime!).
Trump's taxes likely did reveal numerous potential crimes. He reported different numbers to the government and lenders which would likely indicate he committed fraud.[2] He both employed his daughter and paid her as an external consultant which isn't allowed[3]. He regularly claimed things as business expenses in questionable ways.[4] I'm sure there are many others too, those were just the first three I remembered.
[1] - https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/first-us-t...
[2] - https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-never-b...
[3] - https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/28/politics/ivanka-trump-donald-...
[4] - https://theintercept.com/2020/09/28/donald-trump-taxes/
So you would have supported Twitter blocking all mentions of the Panama papers until this conviction last month? Or would Twitter judge ahead of time that a crime has occurred and thus permit the hacked materials to be released?
> In those instances, it is up to the whistleblower and journalists initially before eventually the court decides.
But only journalists of a certain political bent? You seem to be advocating adding Twitter, FB, and other for-profit corporations into the conversation here.
> Assange is the one who is not on the same moral footing as those two.
Assange was the journalist who published Manning's releases. This seems incoherent to me.
> Trump's taxes likely did reveal numerous potential crimes.
The NYPost article revealed the crime of crack possession. It was not so long ago that the FBI did a sting operation to get the same sort of footage they used to convict my city's (DC) mayor. And the FBI clearly thought they had some information about a crime, which is presumably why they were subpoenaed.
Obviously, that's a stupid argument - but that's the point. You are just going to set up arbitrary thresholds for what is a crime and what isn't post-facto to justify blocking what you don't want and allowing what you want.
Also, not actually true!
There were claims that she received debate questions weeks in advance, which are a complete and total fabrication by a probably-not-innocent prank website.
There were separate claims that she received debate questions shortly before the town hall debate. And there was an effort to do so from someone outside of her campaign - but the questions that were provided were not the ones asked, so.... It's false to say she received some debate questions in advance.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-received-debate-qu...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/31/ha...
Oh come on, the 2016 election is in the past, you don't have to spin it. The questions asked were similar enough and it can't be denied that Clinton got the questions in advance, but not Sanders.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donna-brazile-wikilea...
> An email later obtained by POLITICO showed that the text of the question Brazile sent to the Clinton campaign was identical to a proposed question Martin had offered CNN. (A similar, though not identical question, was ultimately posed to Clinton at the town hall).
> In the newest email, sent one day before the March 6 Democratic primary debate in Flint, Michigan, Brazile tells senior campaign staff that “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash. Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint.”
> The next night, a woman named Lee-Anne Walters asked both candidates a very similar question.
Honestly I'm confused why people are so hot and bothered about the questions asked. Are any of you seriously surprised by the questions asked? Of course the candidates prepared to answer these questions. If they weren't prepared their prep team should be fired for being woefully incompetent. Seriously, all the questions are about the most popular topics. I honestly would have been shocked if Flint wasn't brought up considering it being part of the national conversation.
Should she have gotten them? No. Is it cheating? Yes. Is it a big fucking deal to detract from actual issues? No. It is just another example of minor cheating that they are doing constantly. But this is like cheating on a test where the teacher pulls questions from the homework and changes a few numbers and you already memorized how to do all the homework problems.
I think its a big deal when candidate keeps on cheating or lying. It establishes a pattern of dishonest behaviour which the other candidate can easily make a soundbite by calling her crooked.
> In an email released Monday morning by WikiLeaks, Brazile provides details to top Clinton aides about what Clinton would be asked at a CNN debate March 6 in Flint, Mich., by a woman whose family had lead poisoning.
> “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” Brazile writes in the subject line of an email to Jennifer Palmieri and John Podesta. In the body of the email, she adds: “Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint.”
I hate Trump. But acting as if people are so stupid that you can just deny that this even happened? You're only hurting Democrats at the ballot box.
Was there dishonesty from the DNC? Yes! But it's important to say what happened. Someone did a bad job of trying to supply her with a couple of questions. Instead the only thing they managed to provide her was a hint about two of the subjects that would be discussed. So to the point I responded to - Did she "receive some debate questions ahead of time" - nope! She didn't! Just some things that were close.
Did that give her an unfair advantage? Maybe! But I doubt it - if Bernie's campaign didn't expect a question about the Flint water issue, then they're idiots. And I don't think they're idiots. The help offered to Hillary was inaccurate and of dubious worth.
The emails [0] show pretty clear strategizing with Clinton campaign staff over preparing answers to the exact questions being proposed at the CNN town hall. That the CNN town hall ultimately chose to go with similar questions worded slightly differently does not in some way absolve the Clinton campaign.
If you buy a gun and then rob a bank with it -- except the bank teller laughs at you because there's water dripping from your "gun" -- it doesn't diminish the fact that your intent was to rob a bank while yielding a deadly weapon. Just because you're ineffective and can't tell a water pistol from a Glock doesn't mean the intent doesn't, or shouldn't, count.
Even so, it only mentions the equipment. Would owning the equipment grant the store ownership over all the information on the computer? Does the store gain legal authority to share that information with a third party that is neither a government official nor a journalist like Giuliani?
I'd give it at best a 50/50 likelihood of being fake, and would hope that a free and liberal society would demand a lot higher confidence than that before they start wantonly censoring things on the internet.
However the authenticity of the documents isn't even relevant to the overall point. If they are fake, there is a crime of fraud. If they are authentic, it is likely a crime to release this information. There also doesn't appear to be any evidence of a crime committed by either Hunter or Joe Biden. Even if a meeting took place, which no one is able to confirm, that alone isn't a crime. That lack of crime would seemingly eliminate this as an example of whistleblowing. The end result is that it appears that a crime was committed just to make Biden look bad and try to turn the election in Trumps favor. I don't know why Twitter or Facebook need to allow their platforms to be a pawn in that game.
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/giuliani-bi...
Except, if it did take place, Joe would be caught in another big lie because he stated he never had any dealing with Hunter's business.
In my understanding the policy was aimed originally at stopping the spread of photos like in The Fappening hack. But there was nothing hacked here in my understanding.
If I remember right the basis for why that was legal was that there existed an public interests to release the recording of a private conversation to the public, and that the recording equipment were legal property of the recording studio.
Four years later and the lawyers of NBC seem to have been right on that.
No one condoned Russia's intelligence hacking and leaking the DNC/Podesta/Clinton emails, of course, but once they became public knowledge, it'd be ridiculous for a social media company to censor all links to the emails.
Similarly, no one condones repair shop owners snooping on customers' laptops for political dirt, but once it's public, the information itself stands alone.
Twitter would be right to ban the repair shop owner's account, if he had one, but I don't think they're right to censor any references to the leaked information. It's law enforcement's job to determine if a crime was committed and to prosecute the individual if so.
God forbid anyone mention the contents...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21319618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21480268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21337908
It is exceptionally difficult to tell someone something; it's often counterproductive. If someone is curious, they will look themselves, and ask a question that belies they have read the material.
If you cant spare the time to read hot mic words or listen to someone who was a NSA technical director, why would you want to hear what _I_ think about it?
This is the way it works these days, but I'm not sure it actually makes sense. In a trial a judge will often tell the jury to disregard information that has been improperly brought forth. It's difficult to enforce, but what wouldn't it make sense to have something similar in the court of public opinion?
Also, it's a slippery slope argument, but I'll point out that "once it's been said, it's true" is a social anti pattern. If I lie, and someone else quotes me, does that make it information that is "out there" or is it just noise?
FWIW, the more we learn about this story, the more similar it sounds to my extreme example.
No, I don't think it'd make any sense. Courts of law are very specific, rigorous systems. Since people's lives are on the line, it's necessary to abide by a very precise spec. I don't think Twitter and criminal trial courts can be considered analogous at all, and I very much hope they stay as separate as possible until the end of time.
>Also, it's a slippery slope argument, but I'll point out that "once it's been said, it's true" is a social anti pattern. If I lie, and someone else quotes me, does that make it information that is "out there" or is it just noise?
It is a social anti-pattern, but it's the role of respondents to discuss and assess if something is true or not. If something has significant indications of possibly being a hoax, Twitter may be in the right to add a label saying it may be a hoax, but I don't think they have the right to just remove it. If it's a truly unsubstantiated and damaging and/or absurd conspiracy theory (Seth Rich, Pizzagate, Q, etc.), they can put it behind a warning wall with links to resources showing it's false, but even then I still don't think they have a right to just remove it.
In a case like this, where as far as I can tell there isn't currently any strong evidence it's a hoax (just information that happened to be obtained unscrupulously and possibly illegally), it'd be especially egregious to remove it or even put a warning near it. I don't think tech executives should hold the power to judge what is and isn't a social anti-pattern and to ban them, beyond what's already banned in their terms of service (abuse/harassment/etc.).
Also, to turn the slippery slope around, do you think Twitter should have banned all references to Snowden's NSA leaks, due to the information being released illegally? Or the Pentagon Papers, if Twitter existed then? What about the Shadow Brokers compromise/leak (which possibly was a result of Russian intelligence hacking NSA or noticing some tools they mistakenly left on a system, though the attribution is still unconfirmed)?
When is Twitter supposed to judge that disclosure of illegally-obtained information is okay or not okay to censor? Obviously there are some cases where they should censor the material, like someone's explicit photos being leaked as a result of an iCloud account compromise, but especially when it comes to high-profile political leaks or hacks, censorship seems like a terrible idea.
I'm definitely on the anti-Trump, left-leaning side, but even with the current US polarization I'm kind of surprised how many people seem to have a massive bias and blindspot here. If this were Donald Trump Jr.'s emails plucked by a repair shop owner, discussing arrangement of some large payment from Lukoil, I don't think any of the people making these arguments would be at all consistent (beyond maybe agreeing the acquisition was unethical).
The way to address the exposure is to actually look at the contents of the emails and determine what it may imply about Joe Biden and his son, if anything; not to just try to get them removed from the internet Streisand-style. If there is actual misconduct or malfeasance here that implicates Joe Biden, that'd be especially unethical and irrational to call for. So far I'm kind of skeptical that that is the implication here, but it still needs to be assessed impartially.
I realize arguing against free speech is deeply unpopular, particularly on this forum. And I also realize it's inherently hypocritical. And, generally, I agree that the cure for "wrong" speech is more speech. Free speech is sacred to me as well.
But, I've also learned that, when shit hits the fan, you gotta slaughter some sacred cows, including those you never thought you could. The counterexamples you bring up are terrific. Is there a way, one that isn't just individual whim, to judge and moderate speech, in a way that is socially productive? I would bet there is, one that we haven't discovered yet.
After all, peer reviewed science hasn't always existed. I think the parallels there are rich. Modern scientists do operate as high priests of truth and knowledge. Who performs that function for speech? The woke left? The conservative right? FANG tech? None of those sound reasonable to me, but that doesn't mean a reasonable plan doesn't exist.
[0] - Yes, it’s more involved than “stealing” because Snowden acted as a whistleblower, but I’m trying to draw a comparison.
Only in a universe in which Twitter is the sole means of broadcasting, publishing and communication - but we don't live in that universe, so no, they really wouldn't have.
Are these people mistaken? Does what's allowed to appear on Twitter really have no effect on the broader society?
Russian bots may or may not be a problem, but that problem is orthogonal to the point I'm trying to make.
Do not tell me that's not Big Tech putting their thumb on the scale in a dangerous way.
And before you say it, "muh private platform" is not an acceptable argument. This is dangerous to our society.
Then the content will probably go on to achieve gigantic commercial success; as is usually the case it appears that something is being banned. See e.g. Spycatcher, this story.
I mean, do they also control the entirety of mainstream media, all of the news outlets, all book and newspaper publishers, email, television, radio and the entire rest of the internet?
Sorry... this is Hacker News, so I have to point out that they actually don't, and that was kind of a rhetorical question.
No, believe it or not, people would still know about Watergate or the Panama papers even in that case.
>Do not tell me that's not Big Tech putting their thumb on the scale in a dangerous way.
You mean the purely speculative case you just made up? Sure, it would be, but then the purely speculative case you just made up doesn't reflect reality, so who cares?
And even then, as I mentioned, there is still an entire universe of broadcasting and publishing outside of social media, and the internet itself. So even if all social media sites and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon suddenly decided they weren't competitors and collaborated to ban the same content, that content still isn't memory holed or erased from history.
>And before you say it, "muh private platform" is not an acceptable argument. This is dangerous to our society.
Yeah... you should take your brilliant intellectual riposte to 4chan where it would be best appreciated. Here we rather appreciate putting a modicum of effort into refuting someone's position. You're going to need something more compelling than that.
More than one thing can be dangerous to our society, like if these platforms were used to spread falsehoods and misinformation unchecked.
Also, what “culture” are you referring to?
Whatever you think about their cause, you should be worried by the precedent set here. This is censorship at the same scale a government might do, but snuck in through the backdoor, and completely outside of any democratic mechanisms.