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Comment by snickerer | Hacker News Reader

Because in Russia it is an open message to the public 'don't mess with the KGB or we kill you and maybe your children'. Everybody knows and understands who is the sender and the message. Classic mafia move of intimidation. It is a message to the living.

In the Western World the secret services kill to silence people, not to broadcast messages to the public. Quite the opposite PR strategy.

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And when powerful people want to show off their power it tends to be less fatal and more drag-through-the-mud style tactics. Like what happened to Julian Assange. Killing him was an option on the table as far as I recall, but it wasn't what they ended up doing.

Although that being said, I wouldn't rule this out as being organised by Boeing's management or a major shareholder or something. It is a company in the military-industrial complex.

Assange talked about his dead man's switch previously. If it weren't for that the powers that be probably would have Putined him.

Is that plausible, though? Why would he not have used that leverage to prevent captivity?

I don't know. He never talked about a captivity switch.

Perhaps he is an object lesson that one should create a "switch escalator".

Perhaps a dead man's switch used in captivity could also potentially make captivity worse and remove what last remnants of hope he has. I suspect if he pulled the switch now then a lot of the sympathy he got for exposing a war crime might go out the window.

The purpose of a dead-man switch is that an action automatically happens, if a person cannot trigger that action themselves anymore. This is not required in any kind of normal captivity, where the captured still can talk to lawyers and other visitors. So, frankly, if Assange is not using the leverage (using in the sense of using it as a threat) my best explanation so far is that he does not have any (at least not anything substantial enough). But I am open to be convinced otherwise.

The insurance file is still encrypted.

There are still lots of angry articles about how it will PUT LIVES AT RISK if it is unencrypted.

The powers that be appear to be walking a tightrope between not exposing their own assets and trying to make an example out of people who expose war crimes while trying not to put lives at risk.

Should have given him protection, quite bad for the USA that they cannot let the truth succeed in this case. In the long term there is no cheating about safety possible anyhow.

Julian Assange has invalidated so much about modern America for me. Even when I think I should sort of trust the US government, his name seems to echo through my mind and I think, nahhhh, too much hypocrisy.

If the US government pardoned him they’d be doing themselves a massive favor.

Julian stopped being credible the moment he had intel on two parties but decided to only release info on one to damage them

Do you have a source for this? I recall he asked for intel on both parties, but ended up getting it only for one. The conundrum then became releasing only the one, or release nothing.

> Killing him was an option on the table as far as I recall, but it wasn't what they ended up doing.

Because this time wasn't about silencing him (too late for that), but making an example. And for this, a blatant enough assassination would likely tarnish the image the US government wants to project too much. Going through the courts, making a show of "due process", now that's looking pretty good: "hey journalists, we can't kill you if you babble too much, but we can make you wish we did, and since it's all legal good luck about rousing public opinion about it".

Think this comment is a bit too naive on the western side.

There are some high profile cases were the west (or the deep state) very clearly went "full Russian" on some figures to send a "don't mess with us" message.

David Kelly and Epstein come to mind. As also noted in this thread Assange is arguably being given a fate worse than death, rotting in a dungeon an example to terrify whistleblowers around the world.

Granted, it is only used much more sparingly than the KGB, but it is there.

Everyone with career sense in Russia will deny that, of course. They probably even believe it, in the sense that they're so indifferent to the truth of the matter that they don't even feel they are lying when they say the window-jumper was just a suicide and accusing FSB is preposterous.

Maybe you'll find a few who will say, off the record, that of course it wasn't a suicide.

But those people aren't rare in the US either! Feds are just as "paranoid" as the rest of in these matters.

Exactly. People need to understand that the murding methods in the West are just so much more civilised and polite, otherwise they just might commit suicide

well, if i had some dirty laundry from boeing i think i would have gotten a message here ...

I think also in the west you can’t be as blatant. There are checks and balances. Every murder invites journalistic investigation, so plausible deniability is important should things get out of hand.

> In the Western World the secret services kill to silence people, not to broadcast messages to the public. Quite the opposite PR strategy.

Yep. I totally didn't get the "don't mess with big corps" message at all.

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