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Comment by csandreasen | Hacker News Reader

After surfing around https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Countries for a minute or two:

  - Category:Russia - 57 pages total
  - Cyprus - 54 pages
  - Latvia - 50 pages
  - Lithuania - 47 pages
  - Estonia - 46 pages
    ------- 
  - Japan: 90 pages
  - Italy: 99 pages
  - France: 128 pages
  - Canada: 153 pages
  - Germany: 278 pages
  - United Kingdom: 384 pages
  - United States: 9729 pages

Interesting set of priorities they have there... I'm curious as to why a G8 country has as much information posted as a country with 1/140 its population.

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Whistleblowing is a process that relies on people. The Russians are probably a lot more effective at ensuring that (1) (potential) whistleblowers do not gain access to sensitive information in quantities that move the needle, (2) are much less likely to 'outsource' their intelligence affairs to contractors and (3) have a history of killing people that are not friendly to the local government even when they were living abroad.

All of these are very effective deterrents against whistleblowers stepping forward.

That we don't have much information on Russia however should definitely not be read as 'wikileaks is slacking in Russia' or 'the Russian government is not doing much that can't stand the light of day', rather the opposite.

I'm not worried about WL slacking off on Russia, or about corruption in Russia (I'm also not worried about whether water is wet). I am a little concerned about whether the narrative I'm being fed by Wikileaks is being manipulated.

That's not a baseless concern. Wikileaks has an agenda, and it is not simply "transparency".

They either release verifiable true information or they don't.

Their agenda is irrelevant, as is the personality of the people involved, their political affiliations, their haircolour and their dietary and or sexual habits.

And let's hope that others with other agendas and goals will do their bit and release as much or more information as well.

If you only accept facts from sources that are 100% neutral then you end up having to make up your mind without any facts at all, no news outlet, no journalist, no TV station and no editor is able to say that they have 'no agenda', in fact it is entirely safe to assume that anybody that sends facts out into the world has an agenda and wishes to further that agenda by the selective release of the facts that support their cause best.

Wikileaks has been slammed in the past for 'uncontrolled releases', which I thought were actually far more balanced than any kind of editorial control and or selective release.

In that sense they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

I agree that the only issue is what they release, not why they release it. My concern is about the whats, not the whys.

I would also imagine that it's very much a cultural issue as well. You can't get these documents without people who believe strongly that they are making the world a better place by collecting them and releasing them.

Now the US has a lot of idealism going on, so much so that many people grow up idolizing institutions like the CIA and the NSA. They join these institutions as believers, but day after day they are exposed to more details on the inside that bursts that idealism and one day cognitive dissonance gets the better of them and they choose to collect information to become a whistleblower.

Compare this with other countries where there isn't as much blind reverence cultivated for such institutions. The same talented kids that would grow up under circumstances where they would have a much more realistic view of the good and bad these institutions are capable of. This in and of itself is a major limiting factor in how high you would rise in such an institution, assuming you chose to join in the first place. You can't be a whistleblower if you don't have access to anything to whistleblow about.

Whistleblowing happens when values clash with reality. If values are never really part of the equation, and you have organizations where "the ends justify the means" is not only accepted, but rewarded, then you don't get whistleblowers.

With things like Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, drone assassinations, and all these realizations from the Snowden docs, I fully expect that idolization bubble to be pretty much popped by now insofar as institutions like the NSA and CIA are concerned. For that reason more than any other I expect whistleblowing to become less frequent for these institutions. If and when whistleblowing drops for these institutions drops, it's will be explained by better security measures, but I would expect it having more to do with those who have the personality to be whistleblowers never joining or rising high enough to have that opportunity.

Could you provide a similar list of news article from the bigs news papers (BBC, NY Times, ectra), and list the number of articles and associated page views regarding corrupt Russia officials and the Russian Mafia?

Movies and TV shows like to use corruption in Russia as a stereotypical movie plot, but that makes it less news worthy for news papers. If there isn't a large interest from readers then there is no ad revenues to be gained, and no interest for journalist to write about it.

Of course one could be conspiratorial and accuse all the large media companies to be pro-Russia or having a curios set of priorities, but I find the simple answer to be more likely. tptacek conspiracy theory need to eliminate those simple answers before I will consider it anything more than a political view.

Corruption in Russia is not a myth. In fact, it's so widespread and open it would make more sense to signal the absence of corruption rather than its presence.

I guess India is somewhat worse, but you get the idea.

I would assume so too, and thus the lack of articles regarding corruption in Russia. Publishing that there is corruption in Russia or that water is wet will not gain any readers.

If someone leaked that there is an absence of corruption then that would news worthy, but such false information doesn't seem to be the kind of articles Wikileaks would publish. Logically, if you can't publish about the existence of corruption because everyone knows about it and you can't publish about the absence of corruption because it would be false, then Russian coverage regarding corruption will be lackluster. Maybe they should just post a bunch of empty pages with the title "Russia corruption" to make statistics like the parent posted look better.

> Could you provide a similar list ...

I may very well be able to do that, but it wouldn't do anything to disprove the notion that Wikileaks has a pro- Russian, anti-US bias.

I see two simple reasons for the lack of Russian coverage at Wikileaks: either Russians aren't providing material, or Assange isn't publishing it.

Probably because Russia has a very different approach to whistleblowers compared to most other countries on their list.

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