CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]
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However, the processing of Information into Intelligence that can be acted upon is what characterizes Intelligence agencies. Wikileaks does not concern itself with this phase. Yet, the CIA’s Pompeo is trying to paint a narrative that Wikileaks is doing this by labeling them a “non-state intelligence agency”, thereby justifying the CIA’s actions to attack Wikileaks.
In brief:
Narrative #1 - the CIA attacking an “Idealistic Free Information Publisher”.
Narrative #2 - the CIA attacking a “Non-state Dark Intelligence Agency”
The CIA is actively trying to create Narrative #2, which is a bit concerning.
I, for one, think that all information should be free. I think Pompeo's motivations are suspect and geopolitical and I don't trust him personally. However, I also think that Wikileaks has a myopic view of information freedom that chiefly benefits powers whose long term vision is the decline of liberal democracy.
Where else are we going to get insight into the globbal power "underworld", which the intelligence community just happens to always have a finger in? Anonymous sources feeding into New York Times? Because that's all we had before and continue to have today otherwise.
People just don't like when certain inconvenient information comes out and Wikileaks didnt care about the source.
People constantly try to pin ideological stuff on Wikileaks or data leaking in general but that misses the bigger point and it's a point that extends beyond Wikileaks itself and goes into information releasing in general (we don't need to defend Assange personally or Wikileaks itself to be concerned or defend the general idea). I also highly doubt they are selectively choosing NOT to release political information... like news outlets apparently do.
But I also don't care, there's a huge amount of risk and blowback doing such a mission regardless of source or content which we should respect.
They get what they can from where ever and publish it if it has some value to the general public, and we've gotten tons of value from Wikileaks already. So do plenty of other organizations now inspired by Wikileaks, plenty which have exposed corruption in a new way (like Panamaleaks).
The fact this sometimes can have an 'agenda' or be exploited by the original sources will never negate the value of a neutral 3rd party who releases stuff publicly we'd never see otherwise. And will continue to do so as long as operational.
My only fear is that there won't be people brave enough to do this given nation-state harassment and those who think its all a political-inspired conspiracy (which litter every social media site).
It turns out Wikileaks does care about the source https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
To be absolutely clear: I don't have any reason to doubt the motivations of Wikileaks' current leadership. I also genuinely believe that they treat all leaks as "equal," in the sense that they believe in the absolute freedom of information and are liable to (eventually) release everything that they're given.
The observation is tantamount to the tragedy of the commons: give malicious actors unlimited means under an ostensibly just principle, and your principle will be monopolized for malicious ends or used to subvert itself.
But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have commons, or that I want to live in a world without Wikileaks. It's just an admonishment to be aware of a risk inherent in "neutral" venues.
I agree with your sentiment, but we are all aware of the role WL had in the 2016 election. And in chats Assange was found to have said, “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win,” .. and then he continued to play the Seth Rich conspiracy angle until finally distancing from it.
Under scrutiny, the agenda is not as neutral as one would like, and the consequences of this lack of neutrality are massive.
Nonetheless, in that case as well as in the case of Wikileaks, any result of reporting the truth should be blamed on the people who committed the unpopular acts, not the people who reported them.
1) Claims of neutrality are evidence against being neutral
2) performance of neutrality is evidence of neutrality
3) blind adherence to neutrality is evidence of not understanding the goals of neutrality
Everybody is biased. Always.
There are no exceptions to this rule.
>We believe it would be much better for GOP to win, Dems + Media + liberals woudl [sic] then form a block to reign in their worst qualities. With Hillary in charge, GOP will be pushing for her worst qualities, Dems + media + neoliberals will be mute.”
Not only is Assange allowed a personal opinion, why would a pro-GOP preference matter? Pro-GOP sites deserve their freedom of the press trampled?
...by exposing the hypocrisy of said liberal democracies. What good is a liberal democracy when the demos remains oblivious of the negative aspects what the cracy is doing?
If things like the collateral murder videos, or the treatment of Manning and Snowden are the work of said "liberal democracies", then I'm fully in the camp that wants to decline them, and replace them with better, more transparent, more accountable structures.
> If things like the collateral murder videos, or the treatment of Manning and Snowden are the work of said "liberal democracies", then I'm fully in the camp that wants to decline them, and replace them with better, more transparent, more accountable structures.
But that's not what will happen. Instead, populists will rise to power under the ruse of libertarianism, or going back to "the old ways." Eventually the nation will continue to divide itself until it collapses under internal infighting. Almost as if by design...
Exactly! But that's predicated on "we see wrong". What Snowden and Wikileaks (and the various paradise leaks) showed, is that there's a lot of wrongs we don't see.
Maybe I didn't specify this explicitly in my earlier post, but my core position is this: attacks on Wikileaks are attacks on the ability for the voting population to see the wrongs, and as such are attacks on democracy itself. It's ironic for the CIA to claim that Wikileaks "works towards the decline of liberal democracy", when the CIA itself is working to suppress democratic checks and balances.
the CIA in the past has installed brutal dictatorships and actively tortured the most vulnerable of our own citizens. I think it's fair to say protecting liberal democracy is hardly a priority of theirs.
Most people on HN are pretty well informed of the less than nice things the .gov has done over they years even if they bury their heads in the sand when advocating for expansion of government scope on <insert personal favorite issue here>.
And the right has their own laundry list of reasons the government is not to be trusted. Those people have nearly zero trust for pretty much any gun-toting federal agency.
I wouldn't say that people are "oblivious". I'd say that people are divided on how to fix the issues.
At least with information in the open, people can attempt to grok the full picture for themselves.
Wikileaks can't guarantee that.
How many of them were killed/disappeared? If you can't cite a number in the hundreds (or even one case), your comparison is false.
No contest but I think GP point was not about the absolute quality of democracy right now but rather about which power did more to destroy democracy in the recent years.
Are you really saying that the FBI has and continues to celebrate a criminal [1] and their own criminal behaviour as most exemplary? For nearly half a century now? And no bi-partisan political rebuke? And are not treated with total contempt by every adult in the USA and every court in the world?
How is that remotely possible? Surely this is a conspiracy theory?
Many Americans do hate him. But it's important to note that Hoover's criminality did not extend to the average White American: his efforts focused on Black Americans, gays, and anybody sufficiently "radical" by the standards of cold war America.
Ronald Reagan also has buildings named after him, mind you.
And this doesn't come up in every single news article about the FBI? This doesn't come up to discredit every single piece of FBI evidence in court?
I would believe that kind of thing about the Soviet Union. Or some other dictatorship. And this is happening, right now, in the USA, largely ignored by media, by politicians, by courts, with massive BLM protests, you say?
>Many Americans do hate him.
Many Americans believe the world is flat. Tragically what "Many Americans" believe means nothing about credibility.
No. What I said was that Hoover was a criminal, and that his reign at the FBI was marked by illegality. Whether or not the present FBI is a criminal organization is a separate claim that I'm not going to make right now.
> And this doesn't come up in every single news article about the FBI? This doesn't come up to discredit every single piece of FBI evidence in court?
It's an established fact about the FBI, the same way that the Tuskegee Experiment is an established fact about the CDC. Both agencies (claim to) have reformed, so there's nothing to "bring up" in court.
The fact that you don't personally know about it doesn't mean it's ignored. It's taught in US high schools as a critical part of America's cold war hysteria as well as the federal government's reaction to the civil rights movement.
> Tragically what "Many Americans" believe means nothing about credibility.
You asked specifically whether Americans hold Hoover in contempt, not for the factual content of their beliefs. I think that they're right to hate him, but the base factuality of their beliefs doesn't change the fact that his public image is negative.
Lets be serious here, the FBI continues to be a criminal organization like many other three letters: due to a top down compromise system... but why do I even bother with someone who has already slyly tried to dismiss the topic as surely a conspiracy theory (the implication being all conspiracy theories are false and/or batshit crazy). If your bias and immovable opinion weren't so obvious I might tell you more about things like the mafias (including Trumps mentor, Roy Cohn) part in the Hoover compromise, and other things.
edit: I got wooshed... https://youtu.be/QKVS8TMork4?t=23
The parent is clearly lampooning this perspective, not advancing it unironically. But I can kind of understand mistaking it for the real thing, the insistence on denying the possibility of conspiracies has reached some pretty serious Poe's Law proportions.
The incredulity is 100% genuine. Just seeing how everyone reacts looking at and seeing how absolutely fucking insane it is to have the FBI and their powers in a building named "J Edgar Hoover"
Someone said the fbi reformed since those days of criminality. Why would anyone believe that while they continue to celebrate J Edgar Hoover. While they go to work to protect the rule of law to a building named J. Edgar Hoover. Why would any judge take the word of any FBI agent when they've covered up criminal behaviour, and performed it and lied about it instead of arresting J. Edgar Hoover the first second they became aware of what he was?
They said they weren't criminals when Hoover was in charge. They lied. They continue to exult Hoover while claiming they aren't criminals anymore. Who actually isn't feeling sick at the idea of believing that? Hoover is the biggest FBI hero. A vicious criminal thug running the FBI as a criminal conspiracy is the FBI's biggest hero. Says so right there on their HQ.
It's something that's impossible to get your head around. 30 years ago. No sign of it changing?
The FBI flagrantly advertise their lack of respect for the rule of law. That's on all of us.
It is who and what the FBI are! Take them at their word when they tell us this! It's so much worse than any symbol. They are out there doing their J Edgar Hoover thing with the force of law behind them! And rubbing our noses in it.
Harry S Truman wrote during his presidency: "We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail
He was a villain by any reasonable accounting whose exploits are at this point well known and his moral deviance, bigotry, hatefulness, contempt not so much merely for the letter of the law as for its spirit and purpose. A contempt for justice as it might be understood by anyone other than a straight, white, conservative, republican, man that ultimately overshadows his accomplishments.
I get this is supposed to be a debate, but the FBI never rolled tanks into Poland or Czechoslovakia. The FBI never annexed the peninsula of a foreign country, then set up fraud elections to make it look organic.
Most importantly, the US largely ended it's support of anti-democratic forces post-cold war. The KGB has no such intention.
Except in Venezuela, Bolivia, the Middle East...
Specifically voiced support for the pro-democratic opposition leader that arguably won the election.
> the Middle East
Supported democratic reforms in Egypt against a long time pro-US dictator in Mubarak. Supported Syria's right to self-determination to the point of fighting with FSA for years.
> Bolivia
Bolivia is an interesting case, the opposition claimed fraud but i've seen no evidence of it. A black eye for sure to come down against the results of their election without proof.
Processed into intelligence it was not. The video from the helicopter strike was technically processed, but by no stretch of the imagination was it intelligence that an American airstrikes hit two journalists and family with young children.
Out of the leaks listed on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Leaks), how many of those can honestly be classified as processed intelligence by a hostile power, under the guise of an ideology of totally free data?
Thus the attempts to nail Assange for conspiracy, something that is self-evident nonsense given the Adrian Lamo chat logs published by Wired show Manning contacting Assange with express intent to leak.
If there were equal amounts of dirt on every politician, then fine, but there is clearly not. This is what bothers me about the whole thing. It can be manipulated by powerful states, and some of them are more willing to use it than others.
It's a complicated balance act. You want to hold "your" party accountable, and the scale is not "better than the others". At the same time, you don't want to diminish the difference, by just talking about your side's problems. A "we publish everything we get" policy is then not necessarily balanced, if one party plays this game, and the other doesn't.
How do you know that wikileaks is trustworthy? Answer please.
If we are talking about the 2016 election then there is actually data on how much dirt was being thrown around. Looking at all the scandals being printed in news papers, with the big ones being the email scandals for Clinton and audio tapes for trump, the data as presented in a research paper was that the intensity of scandal articles was higher for Trump, but the duration of articles was higher for Clinton. Trump scandals got focused in the news during the last month of the election, while the Clinton scandals had been published on and off for almost a half year. In total, articles writing about scandals was around 3-4 times more in total for Clinton and distributed over a half year, than those of trump which was distributed over the last month of the election.
The general conclusion I got from that research is that dirt that can be dripped over a long period has a better chance to stick than a louder but shorter lived dirt. It also makes comparing one kind of dirt to an other difficult. This lesson seems to have been taken in by heart in the Snowden leaks and panamaleaks, both which stretched out their leaks for months.
Why "a blind eye"? An open eye. Wikileaks has no loyalty to the US government, and it isn't, nor should it be, a concern of theirs whether elements hostile to the US benefit or not from its publications. Wikileaks publishes information of public interest, and that's that.
Also, note that Wikileaks has published information about regimes the US perceives as hostile, e.g. Russia:
I said "liberal democracy," not "US government agencies." I also don't think the information itself is suspect. Please read the surrounding (very good) discussion around the difference between information and intelligence.
So, how does exposing high-level corruption, war crimes, mass surveillance, etc. lead to a 'decline of liberal democracy'? Unless you mean 'exposing the ways in which our society is not a liberal democracy leads to the decline of the illusion of liberal democracy'?
It used to be that Democracy meant that you could read any official document to make sure your government wasn't acting out. Intelligence agencies were a compromise on that, with the idea that at least if there was a disaster someone would speak out. Now even that is under threat?
The only long term vision that is compatible with this is the decline of democracy, liberal or not.
Wait, think tanks, all political pundits, every newspaper with an opinion column, and everyone reading Hacker News processes information into intelligence. Who can't be targeted under this definition of a non-state intelligence agency?
-Lavrentiy Beria
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/assange-timed...
They made extremely clear, however, that they thought a Clinton victory in 2016 would be dangerous for the world, while a Trump victory would reign in the worst tendencies of liberal leadership.
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...
Smears unleashed in the last week of the campaign are a bit below the belt. Doubt that is ever going to stop anyone though.
Also not to be a whataboutist (I didn't have a horse in the race), but plenty of other dirt was released on other candidates in the run-up to the election, and I didn't see the Clinton campaign condemning the timing of its release...
Not bad press. The stolen materials of a state-sponsored attack released at the precise time it would do the most damage. And people are claiming with a straight face this was a coincidence and Wikileaks wasn't working with Russian intelligence, against the American democratic party.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-cl...
I'd take anything the New York Times's "reports" on political/etc with a grain of salt.
Also, I'm of the opinion that all news/media organizations are propaganda organizations. But so what? Let these propagandists fight to expose each other rather than colluding together to mislead the public by serving the same state.
So going after #2 sounds even more silly than going after #1.
As for the epithet "Dark", that's just empty rhetorical embellishment.
Isn't that the same strategy that countries like Iran, Russia, and China have against their whistleblowers? And isn't that the exact behavior that we always blame and condemn? We have human rights sanctions against Iran for punishing journalists.
We can't have a discussion if basic we can't get basic things right. Snowden isn't a whistleblower. He leaked stolen materials then fled to a hostile country.
Multiple IC whistleblowers were allowed to testify against the President in the last 4 years, all without punitive punishment (although the Trump's tried). Snowden could have chosen a different path. His impressive control of his own narrative seems to have most of this community fooled.
The CIA are known to be professional bad-faith liers (eg, [0]). It is quite possible they are lieing for political purposes. Their opinion on Wikileaks is not remotely authoritative.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CIA_controversies#Cove...
Yes, which makes them an opposition intelligence organization. Like I said.
I love this argument as it turns both Larry King and Jesse Ventura into Kremlin agents.
This argument is ridiculous. If there was any actual evidence he was a Kremlin agent, why would they currently be using the flimsy hacking charges to extradite him?
> If there was any actual evidence he was a Kremlin agent
"why don't spy agencies burn sources and methods to charge Assange with espionage when he's already in prison for other charges?" That's really not how it works.
>why don't spy agencies burn sources and methods to charge Assange with espionage when he's already in prison for other charges?
We already know that all of his communication in the Ecuadorian embassy were tapped for years, what are they protecting?
Trying desperately to turn emails (that amounted mostly to dirty laundry) stolen by a government into manufactured scandals and conspiracies the day after the worst revelations about Russia's preferred candidate dropped was not, and is not, journalism. How on earth can you get something so basic wrong?
> We already know that all of his communication in the Ecuadorian embassy were tapped for years, what are they protecting?
Nice little straw man there. We are talking about Assange's official relationship with Russian military intelligence years before he hid in the Ecuadorian embassy. The proof of said relationship, if made public, reveals how Russia was monitored/caught and helps them conceal their future efforts at recruiting assets.
Which is why the "if you have proof why not make it public?" argument in relation to espionage is and always will be a bad faith argument. Snowden did it too. He knows damn well everything he says will go unchallenged, and he uses that silence to his rhetorical advantage.
But you knew all that already.
Nothing you said has any connection to whether it's journalism. He received and published politically relevant information.
>We are talking about Assange's official relationship with Russian military intelligence years before he hid in the Ecuadorian embassy
So based on something he did in 2016, you think that's proof he was a Russian agent from the mid 2000's that the US intelligence agencies just let do whatever he wanted for years. I do not understand that point of view.
> always will be a bad faith argument
The need for intelligence agencies to keep their information secret is not more important than the accused's right to a fair trial.
I also don't have any clue what you think I knew already. I have seen no evidence that Assange or Snowden are foreign agents.
> So based on something he did in 2016
Speculation no one can answer, ignored.
> The need for intelligence agencies to keep their information secret is not more important than the accused's right to a fair trial.
You aren't listening to what i'm saying. If you suspect someone of espionage and they are already sitting in prison of sex crime charges, you have no reason to expose the methods and sources you used to catch said person.
And responding to any claim made exposes you publicly to confirm what you know and how you know it, which further damages your intelligence collection efforts. Which is why "show me the evidence" is not in good faith, especially not someone like Snoweden that knows damn well how intelligence works. He knows he won't get push back publicly, so he has complete ownership of the narrative. "None of my leaks results in anyone dying". The American IC is not going to list their assets that were executed in hostile countries as a result, for the reasons I mentioned.
> accused's right to a fair trial
Funny, both Assange and Snowden fled their respective "fair trails" to hide from justice. Neither had any intention of risking jail for "what they believe in" - yet some people still view them alongside whistleblowers that actually did.
As I don't consider Assange to be a Russian agent, I don't have any issues with them receiving state-hacked information. They are under no obligation to determine the source's motive. And they are free to coordinate with a political campaign, they have the freedom of assembly as well as of the press.
The Roger Stone indictment was for obstruction of an official proceeding, false statements, and witness tampering. His discussions about Wikileaks weren't illegal, lying about them was.
>Speculation no one can answer, ignored.
What? You're the one claiming the DNC leaks prove they are a Russian agent. I don't agree, but I understand that argument. Then stretching it to include "Assange's official relationship with Russian military intelligence years before he hid in the Ecuadorian embassy" makes no sense to me.
>. If you suspect someone of espionage and they are already sitting in prison of sex crime charges, you have no reason to expose the methods and sources you used to catch said person.
I am listening to what you are saying, selective enforcement of laws absolutely violates your right to a fair trial. Without exposing their methods, we have no idea of those methods were constitutionally sound. They may not have any reason that benefits themselves, but I don't care.
Further, Snowden isn't behind bars. Why didn't they expose their methods and prevent him leaving Hong Kong rather than block his passport while layovered in Russia?
>Funny, both Assange and Snowden fled their respective "fair trails" to hide from justice.
As Assange's extradition hearing and the numerous whistleblower trials over the past fifty years have shown, they had no expectation of a fair trial. Quoting Daniel Ellsberg about his case
>(my) lawyer, exasperated, said he 'had never heard of a case where a defendant was not permitted to tell the jury why he did what he did.' The judge responded: 'Well, you're hearing one now'. And so it has been with every subsequent whistleblower under indictment.
lol. "None of these things are crimes" is not the solid argument you think it is. To be a useful idiot aiding an autocratic government in their intelligence operations might not be technically illegal, but you give up all pretense of being "journalists" when you do so.
> His discussions about Wikileaks weren't illegal
Again, not what we are talking about. I'll take your constant efforts to move the goal posts from what constitutes journalism to what constitutes a crime as a tacit admission you don't have a leg to stand on.
> Daniel Ellsberg
A famous leaker is pro-leaker, what a shocking revelation. Difference is all of the pentagon papers were relevant to the ongoing crime of the Vietnam War. 95% of what Snowden leaked had nothing to do with domestic surveillance. Funny how that's never mentioned.
Also, maybe listen to people that actually know what they're talking about in 2020. Here's a lawyer that specializes in representing intel officers in whistleblower cases, talking about how Snowden did have options, and it's a lie to say otherwise.
https://twitter.com/MarkSZaidEsq/status/1339383062120062978
He chose to run, he chose to avoid the consequences of his actions. And in more simple terms, a whistleblower is a legal term for something he chose not to be. He leaked, then ran away. Calling him a whistleblower is an insult to the brave people that actually did seek whistleblower protection in serious matters and were willing to testify and face the consequences.
I do not have any idea what you consider to be journalism. Why would being a useful idiot make publishing politically relevant information eliminate your pretense of being a "journalist?"
>Again, not what we are talking about.
Then explain how Stone's indictment for spying is in anyway relevant to our discussion? I assumed you brought it up to claim Assange's actions were illegal, making prosecuting his actions not violate his freedom of the press. You just wanted to show he was in contact with GOP leaders?
>famous leaker is pro-leaker, what a shocking revelation
The relevant part was a judge saying he couldn't explain his actions. Assange's case was similarly run. They had no hope of a fair trial.
I had not heard of Zaid, my research pulled up this exchange he had though
>What result could Snowden have expected had he covered the bases and his butt by approaching an inspector general’s office or congressional committees?
And replied
>“Candidly,” Zaid said, “he likely would have been frustrated immensely with the lack of results from either, given the current posture.”
Though he's a vocal critic of Snowden, even he found it unlikely that the "proper channels" would have netted results.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/o...
And on the subject of moving goal posts, why have you changed from trying to show them as Russian agents to not journalists/whistleblowers?
Not being part of an information warfare campaign of an autocratic country's intelligence service, as we have definitive proof Wikileaks was. The fact that you keep saying this is fine and totally par for the course (also weirdly repeating that the DNC's personal correspondence about ordering pizza and shit-talking each other is 'politically relevant') makes me think you are either far too partisan in your admiration of Assange to discuss this objectively or you just don't understand what the journalism industry is. I don't really care which is true at this point.
You are also misrepresenting what Zaid has said, repeatedly. Being a whistleblower is not an easy thing and not without consequences, but Snowden didn't even attempt to become one. Which is why referring to him as such is misleading at best, and cynically misrepresenting what happened for ideological reasons at worst.
So because a foreign intelligence group took advantage of a "useful idiot" they aren't journalists? Their actions don't matter? Do you feel the same towards writers being used by the CIA to spread their stories?
I fully admit that some editing of the leaks would have been preferred, but I can also see how that would be difficult in their position and it would be used to cast further doubt upon them. Publishing them as is still qualifies as journalism.
Oh, and I personally find Assange to be an abhorrent person. He's egotistical, racist, and much of those sexual assault claims seem likely. His right to a free press still should not be trampled.
>You are also misrepresenting what Zaid has said, repeatedly.
By directly quoting him while providing the context? Maybe he's right and some set of actions could have put Snowden in a better position today. As things stand, Snowden would not receive a fair trial, as Assange is not.
As per the previous question, it appears you don't understand what journalism is. Journalists report stories as objectively as possible, they don't play an active and knowing role in foreign intelligence operations. Surely the NYT and WaPo have played roles in furthering propaganda before (Iraq War), but they weren't co-conspirators. And it wasn't a foreign spy agency feeding them stolen materials to leak for destructive purposes. Big difference(s).
IF Wikileaks actually were journalists, they'd have a hell of a story to write about how their bipolar manic founder had been coopted by an autocratic intelligence agency to do their bidding, throwing away years of good work to actually expose the bad behavior of criminal governments.
I'd read that story.
> As things stand, Snowden would not receive a fair trial, as Assange is not.
Yeah that's not what he said. He said Snowden would face the full wrath of the US Gov (true) but that he's been able to protect others (in the last year even) that had the same pressures. The idea that Snowden "had no choice" is a ridiculous myth believed only by those who see him as a hero first (as part of their general world view), then figure out the facts of the matter later on.
Let's recap the evidence you have provided showing he played a "active and knowing role." First, that his show aired on RT. Second, that Wikileaks published the information they received. That is not a convincing argument.
If further evidence did emerge clearly showing Assange knowingly and actively assisting Russia, my position on the legality of his actions may change, and punishing him would not violate his rights.
>And it wasn't a foreign spy agency feeding them stolen materials to leak for destructive purposes
No, but many of the CIA's worldwide operations are exactly that. Plus, I don't find a domestic spy agency feeding them stolen materials for destructive purposes much better.
>Yeah that's not what he said
Those are my words, based on similar trials I have mentioned. He may have had other choices, at this point he would not receive a fair trial. Zaid already believes he deserves the punishment, like you do, so you both seem unconcerned about whether his trial would be fair.
I'm done with this bad faith nonsense, i've addressed the multiple people trying to shift the conversation away from what I said towards RT.
Assange, the guy that promised us all he would "open governments" takes his orders from a murderous KGB thug.
And he has no end of people still willing to make excuses for him (that's you).
Not just Pompeo and the CIA, the mainstream news industry.
Also, there is the distinct possibility that it could be compromised by agencies of other states.
I don't think either of those narratives are quite on the mark.
Maybe we'll eventually find out.
Something I've noticed with the riots in Europe/America/China/the Middle East/Africa is that we now have first hand video footage of how situations play out. Often longform over 20 minutes which goes far beyond what traditional media forces would show.
It isn't anywhere near enough to erase the organisational gap, but it is the furthest along the civilians have ever been in that game.
Riots look fun on TV. and then you're in one. And you've only met these protesters casually a few times. Are you ready to take a beat down for them? And are you willing to fight hard against a tight unit like LEO or the military who have a lot more weapons to escalate with.
Whenever I went to demonstrations -and, granted, its been a while since War in Iraq started- I made a very conscious decision about this beforehand. Its part of planning, because it might affect your OPSEC (things such as your possessions and your planned behavior).
I also believe its not a valid comparison between physical violence and emotional violence (such as threats). I'm currently reading Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill, and I keep thinking: "now this is a fight worth fighting for". I'm at 2/3 and I have not read about physical violence [against the reporter, Farrow; not referring to the violated women!] as of yet.
As many protesters will tell you, in a lot of cases the police start the fight. Are you saying you're okay with them being able to just silence you? What do you propose doing when they use violence to shut down your protest?
A protest is ordinarily not a story. The police suppressing a protest is a story. Protestors understand this, and there's a whole romanticism around getting arrested on camera.
Over the last month we've seen the strongest proof of this that one could imagine. In India, 250 million farmers and associated union members went on strike. Somehow this event went completely unreported by USA journalists. In nations where the USA "defense" department could conceivably waste more money, the threshold is considerably lower than 250M... more like, say, ten? Twenty? Possibly a hundred protesters in Syria or Hong Kong would be worth a report.
Instead, you need to announce a permit for a demonstration. If you don't have one, the police will tell you to leave the premise. If you fail to comply, you might get arrested, even if you don't use violence. But the part where protestors fail to comply with (reasonable and legal) instructions by the police is the part you omit.
Whereas I never got into trouble with the police. Partly because I got the popular skin colour, gender, etc but also because I know when to be obedient and sincere. I can only recommend the same. Pick your battles!
If they did, you would see police initiating physical violence against a group of otherwise non-violent protesters.
> Instead, you need to...
Or else, you would see police initiating physical violence against a group of otherwise non-violent protesters.
In a brutal dictatorship, violent suppression of dissent is direct and obvious. In your democratic country it is hidden among "reasonable and legal" stages; this keeps the Good Citizens [1] obedient and sincere.
----
If violence is perpetrated against the police, preparators will go to jail.
That is however not the case when done by anti-riot police.
These asymmetrical rules prevent much from happening.
And this play against them, an enemy can study them too. The saying it that the Sun clan spread its military manuals far, and wide to indoctrinate everybody into using few easily predictable military strategies.
A brilliant military strategy is always like a zero day exploit.
Seeing an errand enemy spy always showing up at known route, and known times to check your garbage, or steal your post? A perfect opportunity to confront him with a few muscular guys, and a soft enough rubber hose.
Edit: since it appears no one can actually answer this question with an actual answer, and only down vote and troll, I think that probably means wikileaks does not make significant leaks from the military-industrial complexes of China or Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_material_published_by_...
Tibetan dissent in china, russians spying on their own people, ect. There's a few entries that contain multiple countries. I only skimmed the list.
For all of these reasons, it is much much less likely for any leaker out of China, Russia or Iran to leak to Wikileaks instead of someone else.
On the small chance you had, you still wouldn't give an organization with nobody that speaks your language the information as none of your neighbors have ever heard of their website. You would give it to a local journalism source.
So yes, Wikileaks does not make significant leaks from the military-industrial complexes of China or Russia. Anybody expecting them to has no clue what they are talking about.
In the US, you become a best selling author:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/books/trump-books.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/17/mary-trump-and-john-bolton-b...
https://www.thewrap.com/michael-cohen-disloyal-book-amazon-b...
Our culture and protections(1A) allow an environment of leaks. Obama’s war on whistleblowers barely made a dent:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/obamas-whistleb...
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/obamas-crackdown-w...
https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/
https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Russia
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/rc3/2020/Fahrplan/system/even...
These are the questions I always get every time I cross any border anywhere except the border (on the way in) of my own country. I don't get this bit.
Whether they were used as a delay tactic in this case, I couldn't say. Surely they could just leave you waiting while they "looked something up" or "waited for the computer system"? It's not like you have any choice but to wait.
They aren't interested in the answer, they're interested in whether you have a ready answer and don't sound evasive.
in fact, I have a friend who took a day trip to Canada with no problem and then, upon attempting to reenter the United States, was blocked because she had not brought her passport. Canadian authorities had accepted her driver's license as sufficient proof of identity for entering their country; US authorities would not accept it for reentering her home country.
It doesn't seem too hard to remember the answers to four questions and practice it beforehand.
That said, have you ever had stage fright? It's pretty common. Practice often seems to melt away when an actual performance is at hand. With that in mind, it's perhaps not unreasonable to think that this particular bar - quite low as you rightly and wisely point out it seems to be - will trip up no few liars at scale.
And of course there are follow-ups: I got asked what programming languages I use at work. All very casual-like.
I'd like to go to London at some point again, with my family (ie. not work related). Supposedly train from Amsterdam to London is only 4 hours, so its an attractive travel/stay.
There are many other possible options. Basic trained police (some have been exposed before in Wikileaks related stuff) or a military team, foreign actor or quite possibly a corporate intelligence team. Perhaps even criminal elements.
Working to help manage security for NGOs in London/elsewhere often means my organisation works essentially a counter-intelligence role against corporate intelligence (many of whom were often working on behalf of states). They are very prominent in digital and physical surveillance. Many times we identified and exposed very big operations targeted against activists - harrassment, hacking, physical surveillance, bugging etc. It's was one of the reason we built our open source Umbrella App (https://www.secfirst.org) to make it easier for activists and journalists to be able to learn about and manage things like surveillance. Covert method of entry teams in the UK are known as exceptional (you'd have to be working in Northern Ireland for decades), there's pretty much no way they would get stuck by a commercially available key. Also it's highly highly unlikely they would try make an entrance when the person is so near to their home. Especially if it resulted in damage. For such a sophisticated door they would have planned such a thing well in advance. It's plausible of course, maybe they were just lazy or whatever, but there are a number of possible other reasons.
Countries have the right to decide who they want to let in or not
Borders are just one of the tools - but a significant one - established societies can use to ameliorate that.
Also removing that rule overnight would cause a lot of chaos.
Good laws, bad laws, whatever. More men with more guns than you and all your pals enforce laws that you are subject to.
― Joseph Heller
But they have an obvious vested interest in having sufficient data to track the motions of anyone, because they can't know a-priori who is involved in an activity harmful to the interests of the United States of America until they have evidence an activity has happened or will happen and need to begin connecting the dots to identify the pattern.
You can't connect dots you don't have. Most of the NSA's behavior can be understood as maximizing their dots.
It's a realistically attainable goal for an agency like the NSA. However, the Snowden revelations put it into jeopardy because their prior policy was that merely storing data about Americans is constitutional if it is not queried in an unconstitutional way. It is not. But they are allowed to store anything about anyone else, and they probably still do that. I mean, advertising companies do this at a city block level in many countries already.
Total information awareness, to be used in circumstances where it's necessary for national security. Pull the scare quotes off and it's directly in line with the NSA's mission "to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies under all circumstances."
There is no reason why the use of the military on our own citizens should be limited either, yet we still have a military.
The use of the military on citizens is very severely limited in essentially all democracies. Hell, even in the PRC it is limited.
The problem is to function as a military power you can't just spill the beans on everything. What's your solution here? Magic?
> The use of the military on citizens is very severely limited in essentially all democracies. Hell, even in the PRC it is limited.
It's limited because the people limit it. That's my point - if the people want to limit surveillance they can - whether they choose to or not is up to them.
I have my smartphone set to 4G only, and it works, as long as my provider supports VoLTE. Not all do, nor do all phones work with it. Phonecalls always used 2G (data connection stops).
I'd love to see the proof of what happened with GPG keys.
As an antidote to the paranoia for others, consider the sort of person who has to do this kind of thing as a job and whether they are the sort of person whose opinion you value.
Maybe the best option is total transparency. There people operate in a shadowy world. If you take photos of the people following you and post them publicly, that might burn their agents and make the operation more expensive. People in that field probably don't want to end-up on the internet and be linked with image reverse search. Plus it acts as documentation.
<story time>
At one point I programmed from the same cafe almost daily for much of a year. A mid-level drug dealer decided to setup shop in the cafe, often sitting near me. His street dealers would come in about once a week for a pow-wow where they'd all exchange cheap burner phones for new ones he'd supply, backpack was overflowing with phones. I always wore headphones so never really overheard their discussions, and never wanted to invite conversation, so I just ignored this hoping it'd just go away as these things tend to constantly move around. I'd always see some illicit activity in every cafe I worked from often enough, so it wasn't too surprising.
Then one day things got crazy with him running out to the nearby clifftop carrying massive binoculars looking over the Pacific ocean, running back in talking on his phone about locations and times of a shipment and trucks dumping "meth shit", it was like a breaking bad episode irl. Everyone in the cafe saw this happening, he was well on the road to getting busted for being so obvious in public. Something had gone wrong with a pickup and he was having a sort of crisis right there in the open, making all these calls and yelling at people about the situation.
I ended up mentioning it to the owners who seemed ignorant of this happening in their cafe, as they employed lackeys to run the place and were rarely around. They were furious and clearly intended to do something about it, especially when they realized he was a local guy they knew who went to school with their son.
So I avoided the cafe for some time after that. Maybe a month or so goes by and I start testing the waters, guy seems completely gone, all better right?
Not quite. Unfamiliar people started showing up at the cafe hovering around me, following me, asking about my phone, phone starts malfunctioning, asking about my laptop, totally obvious and annoying shit. They'd come in and sometimes just sit right across from me without ordering anything more than a single paper cup of black coffee just to have ordered something, and keep checking their watch. Right at the stroke of 5, up and walk out, they were working shifts and eager to leave. When I'd switch to another nearby cafe, they'd miss me for a few days then start appearing there too. When you spend enough time in a small local cafe over years you recognize the locals, you know the customer patterns, this kind of thing sticks out like a sore thumb.
All this just because I was in proximity to this bullshit happening in a cafe I frequented. Though, the fact that I was at the cafe nearly every day and probably appeared to not have a legitimate income source I'm sure didn't help. But I wasn't doing anything illegal, just taking a break from the SV grind.
What I learned was that there's substantial resources thrown at this style of policing. It's like a dust-devil blowing around to wherever some shit goes down, and whoever's nearby becomes a person of interest. Eventually it will blow on to another priority, but until it does you're annoyed by its invasion into your personal life.
I don't remember how long this went on for (if I ever really knew). I ended up stopping going to these cafes for months, just programming from my apt instead, and disposing of that phone not long after it started malfunctioning, simply going phoneless for a very long time. Fortunately my thinkpad never seemed to be affected, though I'm sure I retired it earlier than I would have otherwise.
Short vid based on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M
Rather than a site willing to release anything.... Wikileaks, even from the early days they, seemed to craft their own narratives in a way that many journalists find uncomfortable.
Even in the earlier days of Wikileaks when they had a facebook page (not sure if they do anymore) they'd regularly announce an upcoming data dump and imply that it was very important and serious and imply what it was about .... then radio silence. They never would release anything on that topic...
If you asked on their page, your comment was deleted ... whey did they not release it? No word. Many of these weren't national security type situations and there was enough info that you knew they never released it ever, just radio silence.
I liked the idea of what I thought Wikileaks was early on, but it never was that, and I'm suspicious of their choices and etc. They seem as interested in crafting something, what I'm not sure, keeping their own secrets, as any state. Who really is Wikileaks, what are they up to, I wonder sometimes...
On the internet of course this is all or nothing. You either are for a thing and against everything deemed to be the polar opposite or the other way. It's hard to have nuanced discussions about these things but I think that grey area is where you see the concern from journalists.
I think if you were to ask a journalist, you might get a more realistic answer, and that is they see that the institution itself is probably compromised. Leaked information can still be valid, but as an organization itself they probably don't trust it as being unbiased, or exactly what it says it is.
Integrity is a super important part of journalism, it has to be constantly earned.
I used to be a big WikiLeaks supporter but these days are long gone.
They promised leaks on russian oligarchs that never happened. They promised to "bring down" Bank of America. They promised to release another video showing war crimes by the US that was never released. They criticized the release of the Panama Papers.
People who still support WikiLeaks are either lunatics or they tend to have right wing agenda of their own.
Wikileaks had an image of a Bank of America VP laptop with email discussion about the creation and exploitation of predatory loans, and a complete indifference to the eventual 2008 crash that they knew it would cause.
As to the DNC stuff, yeah Assange was probabally used by the Russian intelligence, but it was probabally an easy sell. Hillary really did (maybe jokingly?) call for Assange to be assassinated when she was secretary of state. He had every reason in the world to cut off her ascent to power.
If you want a really good look at Assange's humanity around the time of all the DNC craziness, Laura Portrias was living with him at the time and filming him all day every day, and turned it into a movie called "Risk". https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4964772/ Very similar vibe to Citizen Four, but with Assange instead of Snowden. Also for some reason it didn't get much attention because all sides hating on Assange became super trendy around that time.
For what it's worth, my political alignment is probabally far more liberal than the majority of people on this site, and I've been a Wikileaks supporter since they were just leaking internal fraternity documents.
Hillary's joke (if that is what it was) was an assault. She had the means to actually carry out the murder she suggested. Such actions, even in jest, have been known to cause people to get killed when some subordinate takes it as an order.
I think it takes a tremendous lack of empathy to not allow Assange a grudge against someone who quipped about murdering him and potentially the people around him, particularly someone with the awesome power of the united states behind them.
Journalists often have their axes to grind and their blind spots. It isn't great but it's just something we have to factor in... and I think this is one that a lot more justifiable than most.
And while he may have been used by Russia in the DNC leak, the leak revealed substantial unethical conduct that people were rightfully fired over. It brought transparency to the world that we deserved. If its publication depended on some bias on Assange's part, I think it wouldn't require much bias perhaps only would have been with respect to the timing of it.
How do we know this is true if the data was burned?
Sadly we don't, and likely never will. Assange mentioned the laptop data and hinted at what it might contain in an interview. We do definitely know that a large cache of data got held hostage and eventually burned when fuckhead left. Like I mentioned before, there was a whole Benedict Cumberbartch movie made about the fallout there: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1837703/
Read his book, watch his movie. It's fascinating to see his perspective on how it all went down, but a lot of very bad people got away with some very bad things because of his actions, so forgive me for allowing a bit of contempt to seep through.
Proof or it didn't happen.
In the public imagination the hacked emails got conflated with the “Clinton email server”. The point was just to muddy the water.
I wonder if the Russians dumped the whole inbox rather than selected messages because they couldn’t find any really bad ones.
Sadly, it resulted in only a shuffle of players around the board. Wasserman-Schultz has plenty of congressional committee and leadership appointments. Donna Brazile was rewarded with Wasserman-Schultz's old gig at the helm of the DNC for leaking debate questions to Clinton
The emails do demonstrate that the party game is rigged (i.e. parties have favorites and tilt the scales in their favor). That's not only legal, it's intended---the point of parties is to coalesce political power.
The GOP demonstrates why the DNC is set up to tilt scales. GOP has fewer mechanisms to filter the popular vote in the party than the DNC does, and as a result, there was no backstop to Candidate Trump.
But the story of the parties themselves is a story of slowly widening democratic representation. The DNC system was even more tilted towards party insiders before the McGovern election. It's been pulling in popular vote over the decades, but it's not a mobocracy. I wouldn't be surprised if the RNC, after Trump, modifies its rules to add some kind of backstop against a television celebrity having so easy a path to the Presidency over career politicians.
If you add a backstop against political outsiers gaining office, only insiders who are under control of entrenched politicrats (who have no interest in reform), corrupt actors & revolving door beurcracats/lobbyists can win a significant political position.
Thats a lot of words to say the whole system is rotten and any narrow window of reform is quickly shut...
As George Carlin said:
It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe
A shared interpretation of reality would be a good start. Most of the things you named in your first sentence happened at such low counts that they had functionally zero impact on the outcome of the election. For starters, there has been no instance of obvious election fraud caught on camera, no forensic evidence that has gone unchallenged, voter roll issues, while chronic, were being addressed for years leading up to the election, intimidation of poll watchers was in the eye of the beholder, and transparency was extraordinary (they had counts live-streamed). Actionable oversight also exists, but excludes "tossing the entire result of a state election," for obvious reasons (most of the actionable oversight is of the form "Screwing with elections is a federal crime and you do a lot of time for it").
There was a commission to look into instances of fraud in the 2016 election, and it concluded in 2018 that there were a handful of actionable events but the end result was the outcome was unchanged. The 2020 election's results were even wider than the difference in the 2016 outcome. It may not be unwise to appoint a commission to investigate the election results, but my money's personally on an outcome in 2022 similar to the outcome in 2018.
(... and Carlin was a great entertainer but not a political scientist).
The election fraud is obvious & you know it. Even if you think its not enough to swing the election, we still have a responsibility to investigate.
George Catlin does not need to be a political scientist to state what is obvious. People do not need to "stay in their lane" to participate in political discussions that ultimately affect them in one way or another
Every time we criticize Georgia, we should remember that the President's party is the one in charge of elections there, and the one in charge of auditing and assuring security of those elections. There is every incentive for the state election commission to cry foul if there was foul to cry; the fact they have not is extremely telling, and one really has to widen the conspiracy net to come up with an explanation that puts the state election commission of Georgia in on a conspiracy to defraud the electoral process.
> there is not institutional effort to investigate the irregularities
I don't know what you would consider "institutional effort," but there are absolutely processes for investigating irregularities and multiple investigations are currently in progress. Georgia just concluded one such audit today. https://www.ajc.com/politics/no-fraud-georgia-audit-confirms... - they don't get reported on in detail because, to be honest, the details are boring and therefore don't make for very good news; they have about as much fun as a tax audit with even fewer exciting variables. and to really get a big picture of what's going on, one has to track the news from multiple states, since every state manages its own balloting system.
A full and exhaustive audit takes time. The President commissioned such an audit at the federal level for the 2016 election, and it resolved in 2018, finding an absolute handful of actionable cases. I would expect the audits that are going on now to continue, as multiple parties are interested in pursuing them. But they take time; the one for 2016 took two years.
Edit: Downvote if you must, but the question was what was newsworthy about the DNC Wikileaks release. Is it incorrect or that you don't like it?
I guess that’s newsworthy in a very inside-baseball kind of way but I don’t think it justifies posting someone’s whole inbox online.
The major message for two presidential campaigns has been "we must do everything possible to defeat Trump, and by that we mean not voting for progressives" is BS when the third wayers had a major hand in putting him in the White House to begin with, and their long term strategy more or less requires similar tactics in the future.
The Epstein incident where they used the code word "pizza" for sex turned out to be real. Imaginations running wild turned that into a false conspiracy about a literal pizza shop. Is it fair to criticize wikileaks for unrelated parties imaginations running wild?
Political campaign staff and people with ties to secret services seem like the exact sorts journalists should be meeting with. If they're one and the same even better.
Then you've been duped. The prosecution of Assange is based on his work with Chelsea Manning on US war crimes in Iraq.
But if the lives of poor brown people far away are not as important as cheap partizanship then the CIA can make you believe anything.
Not to mention the fact HRC called for the assassination of Assange and his treatment has been characterized by the UN as torture. I presume you're OK with torture too as long as you think it serves your club?
The claim of Clinton calling for Assange's assassination seems to be a completely unsubstantiated rumor.
Your "torture" claim is plainly false (even if it were true, what's the point in appealing to the authority of UN?), the "characterization" is by Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on torture (so he's just something like an independent consultant).
More importantly, basically everything Melzer said about Assange is bullshit. I read the interview of Melzer that seems to be the source for all of the absurd claims; and all of Melzer's claims there are vague, unsubstantiated, unverifiable or nonfalsifiable; except for one:
Turns out that Melzer's only concrete accusation is based on a misreading of evidence at best; the one against the Swedish police, of how they supposedly tampered with (even fabricated) one of the testimonies. The evidence for that is inconclusive, Melzer was possibly confused with the format of the Freedom of Information documents released by the police, but in any case Melzer is making a big fuss out of nothing and downplaying rape with his other comments at the same time.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209868
Also see the comment by one of Assange's alleged victims:
> One of the women interviewed by Melzer later sharply criticised him and demanded his resignation. She said that by defining how a "proper rape-victim" would have to act, Melzer was engaging in victim blaming and that his report was partially "untrue and defamatory"
I think it should be pretty clear that Melzer's word is worth very little.
It turns out some secrets are harmful, and some are helpful to the stable function of a society. Practically speaking, I believe it is hard to make a case that Wikileaks has been a net positive, unless one can see a president Trump as part of a net positive story. On the flip side, history is also dotted with obvious examples of secret keeping resulting in long-term damage.
The truth, I think, is that the beneficial nature of secrets is something you can only evaluate situationally.
I like Manning as a person, but state secrets exist for a reason and she deserved to be imprisoned for her crimes.
WikiLeaks tried to get the Pentagon to help them redact documents[1]. They refused to do so knowing there would be people like you accusing WikiLeaks/Manning of wrongdoing here.
> I like Manning as a person, but state secrets exist for a reason and she deserved to be imprisoned for her crimes.
You do realize she shed light on war crimes right? Do you consider war crimes 'state secrets' that 'exist for a reason'?
The reason, oftentimes, is simply to hide wrongdoing, as was the case here. The fact Manning was imprisoned, (and tortured), while the killers of civilians and journalists she exposed were not shows that this is not a just system. It's designed to chill whileblowers and allow atrocities to continue, unpunished.
How anyone could support that is beyond me.
The State Department cable leaks were grossly irresponsible, as were most of the rest of the military intel leaks. She slurped and dumped without understanding of the ramifications of divulging all that information, which can endanger her fellow soldiers in the field, who had not committed war crimes. That she appears to have gotten lucky and it did not, in fact, endanger soldiers in the field is irrelevant to the reason such a slurp-and-dump is a court-martial offense.
I think reasonable people can disagree on whether, in aggregate, she did more harm than good. She shed light on (what we would want to be) senseless deaths of several civilians in a military theater, and separate from that, she catalyzed multiple revolutions resulting in the deaths of hundreds.
What warcrimes? Please be specific. Because if you're talking about that Helicopter gunship video, that was not a warcrime, and was selectively edited by Wikileaks to try to make it look worse. All of which made Wikileak's claims far more dubious.
Since when is killing journalists not a warcrime?
I'm personally inclined to agree with Mark Taylor that "...what this video shows is really a case that challenges whether the laws of war are strict enough."
Within the US, there is a similar broad cultural argument ongoing on whether laws protecting police officers err too far on the side of assuming the cops' in-the-field interpretation of what happened should guide how the law understands what happened.
Would you honestly rather read from an "unbiased" journalist who diligently repeats what both sides said on Twitter than a biased one that actually uncovered important new facts?
Especially when that "unbiased" "journalist" probably is just as biased as Assange, anyway, and their only real purpose is to construct a filter bubble for you.
Yes. Because at least you are publishing new information. And then then people can decide for themselves how to interpret it.
Same could be said about the New York Time, the Washington Post, Fox, & NPR. All media outlets are biased. Some are more honest about it than others.
I can't tell which parts are supposedly not part of the original phone. The 870 doesn't have bluetooth, but some very similar looking models do, which could account for the antenna on the board.
Edit: See my follow up below. I'm now convinced this is a pretty complex tap inside the VoiP phone. No reason for a UHF transmitter to be inside a desk VoiP phone.
That white connector on the little tap board appears to plug into J4 on this board: http://buggedplanet.info/lost+found/20180323/Images/18.jpg
So that larger board would have to be part of the conspiracy. It's the one with the 2 FPGAs, NAND memory, board trace antenna, etc. That board is obviously custom fit for this specific phone, with passthrough cutouts for the LCD ribbon cable, mounting screws, etc.
Edit: Actually, I can make out a chip in the top left of that larger board linked above that says SX1231 on it, which is a Semtech UHF transceiver. The QFN24 packaging matches as well. Small excerpt from the data sheet:
"The SX1231 is a highly integrated RF transceiver capable of operation over a wide frequency range, including the 433, 868 and 915 MHz license-free ISM (Industry Scientific and Medical) frequency bands."
Which is a pretty fishy chip to be in a desk VOIP phone. Interesting that someone might have made a custom fit, nicely silkscreened and barcode part-labeled bug for one specific model of voip phone.
I would imagine these bugs are designed by hardware engineers (a high skill job due to uniqueness of such trait), but not necessarily assembled by the same engineers (a lower skill job which requires different qualities).
So, for example, a 'TAO station' would not necessarily contain all those engineers who designed the bugs, but it would have technicians who can install/implement them.