Julian Assange: The Man Who Knew Too Much | Hacker News Reader

Julian Assange: The Man Who Knew Too Much

laprogressive.com

109 pointscurmudgeon22145 comments

Regardless of how you feel about Assange, what's happening with him should send shivers down your spine. His attempted prosecution attacks source protection, a very important component of investigative journalism.

In America, it seems the breakdown is:

* Are you an individual? If yes, when you have biases, make mistakes, or commit crimes, you are a villain and are given no benefit of the doubt.

* Are you a corporation or company? If yes, it's just business.

NYTimes, WaPo, TheIntercept, ..., all published disinformation to support their singular echo chamber narrative this past election cycle. Pretending that folks like Assange are deeply problematic but avoiding that same look into MSM is fairly bizarre.

He isn't any more of a journalist than The Pirate Bay is.

I welcome contrary views when there's substance to them, but blind contrary statements like this don't really contribute anything to the discussion.

iow: expand

Paid "Journalists" aren't journalists any more than any random Twitter handle.

The sole basis for Politico was to distribute planted stories out of DC.

Read what he's written, wow. Very uniformed opinion.

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

This is a terrible piece. The implication is that Google was set up as a government spying program from the beginning through sneaky programs within DARPA. And this is just flat on its face ridiculous if you've spent any time at all with funding agencies or CS research.

> His attempted prosecution attacks source protection

I don't know how source protection would apply to Julian Assange. He's not a source, he's the head of an international organization.

Also, source protection is a journalistic courtesy and is completely removed from the legal system.

Source protection is when journalists (including heads of international organizations engaged in journalism) protect the sources of their information that enables said journalism.

A "journalistic courtesy" that people like you would make illegal so as to shutdown journalism that goes against your agenda.

Not to mention the fact that he's not been found guilty by a court but has been locked up for years.

He started out as a hacker, but turned into something else, not sure what.

This situation reminds me of that Petyr Baelish scene from GoT, when he proclaimed that knowledge is power only to find out that power is power.

In any case it was proven time and time again that spotlight is deadly for individuals like him, but instead he sought out more of it, one way or another.

Little finger's demise was not due to being overpowered. He lost the information war he was waging. His opponent who thought of him an ally eventually did read through his manipulations, re established the truth with the aid of the man with the greatest information seeking powers, who can even navigate to the past to reveal certain well kept secrets. Baelish died because outraced on the information front. The power cutting his throat was a strong teenager, but one who could do so because nobody remained on his side after the unveiling of the shocking truth to those present in the scene.It’s all information. Just saying.

Edit: typos

He hacked, did phenomenal work on database technology and opensourced his work, had plenty of meaningful experience which he realised could be put together to inform the public. And is currently in prison with only a slice of human rights supposedly guaranteed on UK soil.

If you're looking for someone with Mr Assange's good qualities, but without the bad ones, have a look at Ms Reality Winner.

> If America truly values an informed public, the persecution of Julian Assange must end.

We've pretty clearly answered that negatively, America values an indoctrinated public. To the point that our debates aren't about right or wrong, fact or fiction, but whose doctrine one hews closest to.

Here's a list of reasons I think the American public has such huge problems with indoctrination:

- The vast majority of people enjoy indoctrination and very few people will say "hold up" when presented with a story that doesn't line up with other stories or that seems synthetic. This is partly because doctrine is designed and evolved to be salient, and partly because many people have not experienced an environment of truth, where things make sense, that could give non-sensemaking a contrasting emotional character.

- There are occasional isolated incidences of powerful interests wanting very badly that the public stay uninformed, but no counterbalancing incidences of similarly powerful interests wanting the public to be informed. This averages out to a downward pressure, even though each instance is brief and each power incomplete.

- Even when people want to be informed, they will usually be satisfied with the synthetic feeling of being informed, and stop there. Realizing that what you think is informing you is actually wasting your time takes a humility and emotional fortitude only present in the strongest, most humble, and most epistemically virtuous people. Consequently it is rare for people to realize it.

Not saying you are wrong, but could you give real examples of your three points? Right now it feels a bit abstract and hard to argue against.

Not the OP, but the lab leak theory being 'debunked' in the press very swiftly, before any real research, in stories sourced from a bunch of people who would be implicated to some degree by such a thing would be one recent example.

That's not to say it's proven by any means, but various media outlets credulously accepting stories from conflicted sources and not even disclosing that conflict is itself a black mark whether or not the theory pans out later.

It was 'debunked' because it didn't amount to a theory at the time.

It was a wild political swing at a manufactured enemy to shift blame from a void of American leadership.

Well, first, that's not what the word "debunked" even means. Two, there were and are plenty of odd signs, like the furin cleavage site.

Yes, that's by no means conclusive, but they say that we should research this instead of coming to hasty conclusions in either direction that are, as you point out, manifestly political.

A claim that, when being asked "where's your proof," is met with absolute silence if not wild claims without evidence, can be dismissed immediately. Just because a broken clock is right twice a day doesn't mean it's a solid timepiece.

Sure, but this was never one of those things.

Yes, this is the exact storyline that was pushed by the mainstream media. Repeating it doesn't make it true but reinforces the counter argument.

There were a lot of clues that it might indeed have originated from a lab but these were selectively ignored, thus it "didn't amount to a theory".

More and more communication happens abstractly, away from the facts. An article titled "The lab leak theory is false" is not merely trying to inform people of a fact. Some call these Simulacrum Levels of communication. [1]

The hypothetical article may also be trying to cause people to act like the lab leak theory is false. The statement doesn't indicate whether the author believes the fact is true or false, it indicates the behaviors they desire from the reader - for example, not being biased against Asians. See also "You don't need N95 masks", which means is that the speaker doesn't want a panic buy of masks so they're unavailable for medical personnel.

It could also be written to cause people to believe that the speaker is part of the group that advocates against the lab leak hypothesis. "That sounds like a conspiracy theory, or racist, or nationalist, and I'm a part of the team that's against those things, go team, we're the best!". By taking a stance against the lab leak hypothesis they indicate their memebership in these causes, regardless of the truth or falsehood of the statement or the behaviors that belief or disbelief in the statement would entail.

Finally, it may be expected to benefit the speaker in an abstract sense. If you have any position at all on a hot news item, that brings in eyeballs, which the publisher values. None of the correctness, behavior, or group identification results really matter in this context, their incentive is orthogonal to the communicated information.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qDmnyEMtJkE9Wrpau/simulacra-...

Thanks for that, it was an interesting read.

The lab leak theory was pushed heavily by QAnon and then got picked up by the usual right wing news outlets without actually providing any proof. It made great TV, and also made conservative news outlets a bit of good profit as well. But since Fox news' (and others) prime time is mostly opinion, not news, it makes it hard to separate what is "fact" and what's someone's opinion stated as fact.

I think what you're complaining is valid, but you need to look at both sides. There appears to be a million different hypotheses for how the first transition to human happened, the lab leak is just one of them. Responsible journalism would have included the other hypothesis instead of highlighting the most panic/profit inducing one.

> The lab leak theory was pushed heavily by QAnon

IIRC, what QAnon pushed was beyond the standard lab-leak theory, that it was an lab leak of something created as an offensive bioweapon. I do think that that had the effect of poisoning the well on the plain lab leak theory (one might even speculate that that was the purpose for which QAnon pushed the theory.)

Ironically, we're on a thread discussing Assange, who ran Wikileaks, which published (often cryptographically verifiable) source information. The editor of that publication has been locked in prison indefinitely. So if you're having trouble distinguishing trusted information, you might think that the solution extends beyond "responsible journalism."

Then we had another thread on HN thereafter suggesting that Google & co. rotate out their DKIM keys to make this sort of news less verifiable. This seems to suggest that factual accuracy is not always the primary concern.

On the third point about feeling informed but not really being informed, there was something earlier this week where Vox had an article claiming that publications were ganging up on blackrock. Turns out one of the board members has a huge conflict of interest and is an investor in blackrock. https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blac...

Now let’s say you read the vox article but nothing else. You might feel informed, like you’re doing something good keeping up on the news or whatever, but you’re potentially worse off if you don’t know the whole story

Eh. After yesterdays annoucement on CDFI by US treasury, which indicates that it includes venture capital funds, I can see why some might get a little miffed on missing out on grabbing goverment largesse..

It is not possible to give specific examples without crossing paths with readers who happen to have that particular epistemic monkey on their back. I want to avoid political arguments, so I think this tack fits the HN ethos best despite being, admittedly, an imperfect solution to a sticky problem. Although I think anyone can come up with their own examples.

Eliezer Yudkowsky suggests using historical examples, when making points about politics – like French Revolution or earlier. I know you're talking about contemporary US politics, but people are people are people and it can't be that different to something from history.

I'm not sure if information availability has ever been this high (before modern era). When everyone in your town believes the same thing and only the most wealthy people can or have any reason to send a letter to another country, sustained misinformation is a lot easier to justify without recourse to anyone's preferences, at the top or bottom of society.

I may have another reason to add.

I am toying with GIS tools these days and it kind of shocked me that when I queried for "most common amenities" in a medium sized US city, I got:

1: parkings

2: places of worship

Well above any educational facility.

surely if you want to go to the library in the US, you have to park there?

Also, lack of atheism is not a sign of lack of education or presence of ignorance.

I was not criticizing the prevalence of parking, it is obvious you need a lot because most amenities will have one. What I found weird was that places of worship is the second absolutely necessary amenity according to the American mindset.

Places of worship are places where you are taught to respect a lot of indoctrination techniques as valid and where you do weekly exercises at shutting down critical thinking. I can't imagine it having a positive contribution over the wisdom of the general public.

I don't think there's much worth responding to in this comment except to say that I disagree and that some atheists have very strange ideas about religion and I don't know if that's because they don't understand what's going on or something else.

This is just dumb. A person spends 15% of their life using educational facilities. It is possible they will need parking and attend places of worship for close to 80% of their lives. The latter are also not amenable to geographic consolidation; you can't build one parking lot for entire medium sized city, but you might be able to only have one secondary school.

I'm not sure how dumb it is if you really think about it. Why is theology the only field with widespread public lecture halls? Why can't I go to botany church every Saturday? If there was anywhere near the public interest in knowledge about the world as there is in knowledge about the world-to-come, you could go to church on Saturday to hear about botany. You wouldn't even have to cancel anything on Sunday.

How is theology not knowledge about the world? Religion is the original form of moral philosophy and sociology, and contains thousands of years of experiential learning about how to lead a positive individual life within a society that enables said individuals. That's much more important to be informed about than botany.

Having said that, skill-oriented communities would be great too - they primarily exist online right now because participants are often spread out, or otherwise take the form of friend groups based on shared interest.

> How is theology not knowledge about the world?

Gather all the theologies into a room and get them to agree on the evidence for their points of dogma if you can. There's a first test of knowledge. Beyond pragmatic social strategy, these ancient tribal writings are a vestige of ignorant mummery.

"My Sky Avenger versus your Sky Avenger," as George Carlin might have said.

> Religion is the original form of moral philosophy and sociology, and contains thousands of years of experiential learning [...]

Sure, humans (and likely other extinct hominins) have speculated about their life and the world. It is not given that all their conclusions favoured a Sky Avenger. Some notable ancient Greeks were atheists. So, no, "religion" does not contain thousands of years of experiential learning. Speculation only becomes learning when it can be tested. Arrant nonsense is not learning, even if bound in leather and printed in gold on vellum.

Theology is knowledge only in the same sense that astrology, Scientology, or QAnon claims are knowledge. It is knowledge about a system of false and/or untestable assertions, constituting in all a set of conventions to which a power structure may ally itself. Old religions become mythology when there is no longer a power structure to promote them.

People make pragmatic choices every day to live in the real world. Purveyors of religion just build fantasies atop these pragmatic choices.

This little screed just betrays a lack of knowledge about religion. The idea of gods as being imaginary beings that people believe to be, Idk, invisible or something rather than anthropomorphised representations of the laws of nature is a pretty low effort atheist trope.

I used to believe this stuff when I was a know-it-all 15 year old too and used to joke about the flying spaghetti monster, but I've since attempted to actually understand some of these ideas rather than dismissing religion as crazy imaginings by those stupid people from over 70 years ago and all of history before that, compared to us modern enlightened atheists. I was raised atheist and have only come to understand some Christian ideas via learning some philosophy and 20th and 21st century scientific theory.

Good Sir, in my best and kindest humour I must say that neither of us is 15 years old ^_^ and I am aware that a literary interpretation of 4000 [1] years of mythology is not just possible, it has been offered in notable works by Joseph Campbell and JG Fraser.

Although literary criticism far from a rigorous field of thought, I am happy to celebrate your interest, especially if you have devoted most of your adult life to it.

What ignorance, cruelty, strife, and murder have been committed in the cause of other interpretations of 4000 [1] years of mythology is to my mind the greater concern. But we can of course agree to disagree on the InterWobbles.

Cheers!

[1] An arbitrary number to include various artefacts.

I actually haven't devoted any of my adult life to it - I was raised without religion and grew up not understanding the nature of religion and thinking science was somehow its successor as JG Fraser believed. But this belief was born of ignorance, not knowledge. My primary studies in adulthood have been systems theory and some dabbling in moral philosophy, rather than studying the Bible.

I suspect that wars between sects is not a simple matter of killing the non-believer, but an excuse for the real reason wars have always been fought: expansionism and colonialism in order to control scarce resources.

From your kind reply, Sir, I am led to suspect that we agree on much more than we would at first assume. Bread, circuses, and other mummery are distractions useful to the powerful as they concoct and enact their schemes.

And, of course, the winners of a conflict write the historical account and the myths. The losers lose their voice and often their lives.

There are some relatively lucid works in literature. But literature serves artistic purposes. There are honest and more rigorous works in economics, history, and anthropology that lead to a stark conclusion. [0]

Civilisation is a hard system to build. ^_^

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_homini_lupus

if you're implying that religion is just a tool used by the powerful to manipulate the masses, then I'd say that while that does happen for sure, that it's far from the purpose and benefit that religion brings to a culture. Religious literature is not just artistic, it prescribes a set of behaviour (morals) that, when engaged in by the individual, leads to the best outcome for the collective. No other system has successfully done this, and the 20th century was a catastrophe of political movements attempting to replicate this cultural success using bureaucracy and violence.

The history of human catastrophes extends far enough back in time that I conclude it to be the functions of a pre-compiled, statically-linked library.

I don't agree that there is any rigorous system to be found in the topic we are discussing. But we certainly can agree that anyone trying to be good is a welcome candle in the darkness. ^_^

Parkings make sense, I was merely pointing out that something as optional as places of worship are as prevalent as parkings.

You don't "need" to attend places of worship 80% of your life. A place of worship is usually a place where you are told to consider respectable several of the tools for indoctrination:

- Trust in a authority

- Faith over knowledge

- Revelation as a valid source of information

The reasons you cite should have applied equally well back before the propaganda outlets took over.

I think this is the main reason the US population is so poorly informed and polarized:

- For the last 40 years, the Republican Party has systematically defunded education and consolidated the news media.

The Democrats haven’t done enough to push back, and many of the left wing media outlets copied Fox’s playbook, but that’s not the same as spearheading these changes.

I suspect you may be over-evaluating the quality of news sources / the public discourse 50 years ago. Fifty years ago, the US was willfully escalating in Vietnam! The founding fathers were complaining about the yellow press in some of their communications about freedom of speech. WWI had media restrictions on anti-war text issued straight from the presidency. I really don't think the troubled discourse was invented in the lifetime of anyone around today.

There is an argument that Assange wants an an indoctrinated American public too, just in a different direction. The prime example is how he repeatedly implied that Seth Rich was the source for the DNC leaks despite knowing that wasn't true because Wikileaks was still in contact with their source after Seth Rich was already dead. That act shows that Assange's goal isn't to reveal truth or corruption. His goal is to seek specific political ends and the missions of truth-seeking and anti-corruption are just an act to help achieve those ends.

Wikileaks fanned the flames around pizzagate. Don't put your hopes for an informed public in that organization.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wik...

By saying "we don't know what to make of it"?

Yes. Instead of saying it's obvious nonsense, they said it might be true, basically encouraging readers to keep digging into the ridiculous conspiracy.

Maybe because pizzagate actually was really disturbing. You can get your life ruined over making an OK sign, because it's a "dogwhistle", but powerful people making references to pedophilia and satanic rituals is just fine and dandy, nothing to see here? Do you actually know what pizzagate is beyond that one shooting? I don't know if there is any "conspiracy", but some of those people are actually really messed up.

Wikileaks more or less went down the road of being a tool for indoctrination. The notion that wikileaks is useful for an informed public is long dead. They made fools of everyone who thought they were champions of unbiased free information.

Is it possible that American competitive interests are not aligned with countries or individuals that know too much?

For example could allowing other countries to develop vaccines seriously damage American or European IP?

https://www.openglobalrights.org/vaccine-apartheid-global-in...

For those downvoting me, awesome! I deserve it, since I was making a tongue in cheek comment.

If you know that Assange's persecution is wrong, and you excuse it away, you are the problem.

make the ones in power not happy and literally rot in jail :-(

> When Wikileaks revealed the DNC gamed the 2016 Democratic Party primaries, the punditry judged democratic derailments not newsworthy when the higher good was resistance to Trump. Media ran faster with narratives ripping Assange than questioning or correcting them.

And rightfully so. Leaking classified government information about war-crimes is fundamentally different then hacking into the private email correspondence of organizations with the explicit intention of damaging them politically. And conflating the two is absolute madness and is antithetical to privacy advocacy.

We have a right to know if the American election has been the victim of a CIA style mis-information campaign from a foreign government. Assange's ability to be an absolute hippocrate about transparency and play a dangerous shell game about where the emails came from has convinced me that the only people Assange believes deserve privacy are the people useful to Assange.

I support Wikileaks. I do not think I support Assange.

The entire premise of the article is that Assange is good because he might have saved us from the Iraq war, while completely ignoring his alliance with Trump and disinformation like Seth Rich conspiracy. We can't prove the counterfactual but we can see what he actually did.

Note that you unwittingly confirm parent's point on tribalism and sides by discounting Assange based on Trump. There are valid points to be made against both but guilt by association should not be one of them.

Given the choice, Trump pardoned rappers and war criminals but not him. A man that did more to expose the swamp than anyone. Was Trump just rhetoric, and bolster with no backbone. Other then twitter trolling, what exactly did he accomplish.

Right, if you want to drain the swamp, shouldn't pardoning Assange and Snowden be the first thing you do?

Back in the J. Edgar Hoover days the FBI kept dossiers on Presidents so they could be blackmailed.

Trump was under active FBI criminal investigations, spanning every aspect of his life, for the entirety of his presidency. Two of his lawyers had their offices raided by the FBI, all looking for anything they could find on him.

Maybe that had something to do with it?

Our press, in coordination with the intelligence apparatus of the United States, turned Wikileaks into a referendum on Assange and his personality.

This has always and obviously been a psyop/frame job, ever since Robert Mueller's FBI agents were kicked out of Iceland for their efforts to attack Wikileaks.

It is only since the neoliberal generation, which controls power, felt themselves threatened by their own supposed ideals, that they were more than happy to hop in bed with the spy apparatus and hang Assange high.

If the alternative to neoliberalism is fascism, I'll take neoliberalism.

To dislodge an incumbent orthodoxy you have to actually offer something better, not something profoundly worse.

Since when is there only one alternative?

There are many sane alternatives. I was speaking of the specific alternative pushed during the 20-teens starting with the Gamergate era and proceeding all the way up through MAGA, the alt-right, and Qanon, and with which Assange was clearly either allied or serving as a useful idiot. That alternative is significantly worse than the orthodoxy.

BTW authoritarian Marxism is not a sane alternative either. I see people pushing that too, but they never got close to real political power.

Far from alternatives, more like bedfellows or twins. The specious labels belie the hard reality that the US political, bureaucratic, and secret police apparatus is powerful, extensive, and weaponized.

The reality of the situation we are in, the rise of Trump, the alt right, Le Pen, and others is this: for neoliberals, if the alternative to leftism is fascism, they will actually choose fascism.

As people all over the US (and the world) are becoming more receptive to traditionally leftist talking points - labor vs owners, corporate control of the media, poverty, the evils of globalism etc. - neoliberals have been investing good money in supporting the alt right, neo-fascist voices that blame these problems on immigrants and jewish conspiracy theories. Fascism is much safer for the rich than even social-democracy (not to mention the, to them, terrifying spectre of socialism).

Assange has been using Wikileaks as human shields against his own terrible behavior for years. If they're collateral damage, then they're only that way because he made it that way.

Your allegations of "terrible behavior" are false, conveyed by intelligence agencies directly out of your keyboard, intended to short-circuit actual thinking on freedom of information.

The fun thing about freedom of information is that it ceases to be that way when you act as a gatekeeper. Poor little Julian had political axes to grind using information that didn't belong to him and thought that to be a journalist, all he had to do was claim to be one. His ego outmatched his wits, and that's why he's in the situation he finds himself.

Right, because information is best delivered in the service of the Rich and Powerful. Journalists™ and Journ-o-lists are the best form of right-think and certified information.

Even great journalists have editors for a reason.

Got it. We need properly-placed editors to govern the flow of information, to ensure the well-being of the Rich and Powerful.

No, we need editors so half-cocked idiots don't ruin the credibility of their entire organization.

Understood. Credibility derives from whether or not the people who receive information like it or not.

No, but I can understand how someone committed to being an ideologue might pretend to think that. Just turn your brain off and pretend you're carrying that cross.

That's pretty mean for hacker news. I think you've broken the rules.

I've noticed a pattern that attacks against Assange supporters are tolerated here.

Totally. Because having a negative opinion of Assange due to his rhetoric, behavior, and hypocrisy is simply showered with positivity here. So enjoyable to have people talk past you in an insulting manner because they hate addressing your points directly.

I stand behind this dialogue as testament to the full strength of your argument and the quality of your logic.

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