Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut' • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

#491

Post by saint_fiasco » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

chvid wrote: post #388

I assume the guy has more than one internet connection (ie. 3G and cable) and that they have all been cut. What is the point of these tweets: pre-commitment 1: John Kerry 4bb96075acadc3d80b5ac872874c3037a386f4f595fe99e687439aabd0219809 pre-commitment 2: Ecuador eae5c9b064ed649ba468f0800abf8b56ae5cfe355b93b1ce90a1b92a48a9ab72 pre-commitment 3: UK FCO f33a6de5c627e3270ed3e02f62cd0c857467a780cf6123d2172d80d02a072f74 ? (…

It says pre-commitment so it looks like a dead man switch. If something really bad happens to Assange and someone releases documents about Kerry/Ecuador/FCO we can look at the hashes and see if they match. That way we know it's not some fake leak by an opportunist.

Re: Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

#492

Post by dpweb » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #402

tptacek wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's pretty well known that Assange claims to have a vendetta against HRC. The details of that vendetta don't make much sense. It's clearly easier for him and his supporters to claim that they're acting out of enmity towards Clinton --- a minor figure in virtually all of Assange's dealings with the US --- than to simply cop to the fact that they are aggressively and overly supporting Donald Trump. Nerddom and the…

> The simple fact is that Assange is campaigning for Donald Trump. One possible explanation for this is that Assange will support the candidate that he believes will hurt US interests most.

Assange/Wikileaks nemesis is secrecy and corruption, not HRC specifically. Now if they view her as the most corrupt, they would naturally be against her, and inevitably that supports Trump. But that is not the same as the rabid right wing supporter of Trump.

Assange is savvy enough to know their position inevitably supports Trump, but there isn't any reason to think if they viewed Trump as more corrupt they would be against him. So it is possible they take a principled position while wrongly accused of having a preference in who wins the election.

Re: Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

#493

Post by JohnStrange » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

anthony_romeo wrote: post #237

We're in the middle of some crazy propaganda war right now, and it's been this way for quite a while. It became completely transparent when the Podesta e-mails were released mere minutes after Trump's videos regarding possible sexual assault were released. Ever since the DNC leaks and the subsequent accusations against Russia, it became clear to me that, at some point, the attempts to tarnish Wikileaks's name was to…

I completely agree with your analysis. To add to this, I've been watching US media closely over the past few months and have never seen them so biased in any matter before, including past elections. It appears to me that there is not a single news source in the US that does not entirely follow some political agenda. There seem to be no dissenters or cautious writers left.

Most of them are biased against Trump, of course, and follow a fairly obvious strategy: "Hillary is extremely unpopular, we cannot make her more popular, so let's make Trump even less popular."

It works very well. Just to make this clear, I'm a European left-wing liberal democratic socialist, not a Trump or Hillary supporter of any kind. But I've seen many US elections and it was never like that before. It's as if all US media and news organizations have sold out to the highest bidder at once. (To be fair, I don't follow that many of them, just a few newspaper sites like L.A. times, NY times, TV channels like CNN, Fox, nbc and a few social media sites.)

Re: Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

#494

Post by ghostly_s » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:42 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #386

edanm wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty well known that Assange has a vendetta against Hillary Clinton. Just searching for Assange Clinton on Google brings up lots of articles on the subject.

No, it's pretty well known that Assange claims to have a vendetta against HRC. The details of that vendetta don't make much sense. It's clearly easier for him and his supporters to claim that they're acting out of enmity towards Clinton --- a minor figure in virtually all of Assange's dealings with the US --- than to simply cop to the fact that they are aggressively and overly supporting Donald Trump. Nerddom and the…

What possible reason could Assange have to support Trump?

Re: Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

#495

Post by xwoudm » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #406

steamer25 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anchor is tweeting about his side of the story: https://twitter.com/ChrisCuomo . E.g., https://twitter.com/ChrisCuomo/status/788025611730227201 I am not a lawyer but I'd say this is a legal gray area. The leaker probably broke a law. E.g., hacking Podesta's private emails would have been illegal under computer fraud and abuse. It's alternately possible that the leaker had legal access but breached contract to rel…

>A central theme of the leaks so far is that large segments of the media have been overly cooperative with the Clinton campaign in spite of feigned objectivity. This is a nice bit of propaganda you've put forth here. Here's a Harvard study into the majority of the 2016 election coverage including primaries which shows a demonstrably strong bias in the media pro-Trump and anti-Clinton and demonstrates that Clinton has…

Yes, it's almost as if Trump's positive media attention in late 2015 was coordinated somehow. Like they were instructed to take him seriously or something...

Hrm: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/785615427913199616

Re: Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

#496

Post by SixSigma » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

anthony_romeo wrote: post #237

We're in the middle of some crazy propaganda war right now, and it's been this way for quite a while. It became completely transparent when the Podesta e-mails were released mere minutes after Trump's videos regarding possible sexual assault were released. Ever since the DNC leaks and the subsequent accusations against Russia, it became clear to me that, at some point, the attempts to tarnish Wikileaks's name was to…

Never mind the info war how about DNC co-ordinating with paid agitators to start violence at Trump rallies

6m50s > "The thing that we have to watch is making sure there is a double blind between the campaign and the actual DNC and what we're doing. There's a double blind there. So they can plausibly deny that they knew anything about it."

9m35s > Aaron Black, DNC Rapid Response Coordinator, boasts about coordinating a Chicago protest at a Trump event. Two Chicago police reporters were injured and this event got a lot of news coverage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY

Re: Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

#497

Post by etjossem » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

sickbeard wrote: post #437

joshuaheard wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Assange is a partisan. He's Australian after all and has no stake in this election. I think he is releasing info on Hillary because that is what he has and is timing the release for maximum public exposure. If he had similar info on Trump, I firmly believe he would be doing the same thing.

So why does wiki leaks retweet Gulliani? https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/785571152836042752

Because they are desperate for recognition from any serious political figure who will mention them aloud.

Re: Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

#498

Post by tonecluster » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

gragas wrote: post #480

jsutton wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the countless and extremely illegal and unethical things?

- Hillary and her team deliberately trying to trick the FBI by giving them a "slightly broader" set of emails [1]: "What that means specifically is that they are going to turn over all the Blumenthal emails to the Committee that they hav along with some other HRC emails that include a slightly broader set of search terms than the original batch. That of course includes the emails Sid turned over that HRC didn't, whic…

Can anyone provide any evidence of confirmed illegal activity from a source other than wikileaks? E.g., results of any official investigation, etc.

Re: Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

#499

Post by ghostly_s » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #344

mikeash wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't possibly isolate it to just Assange, so it must be the whole embassy. My money is on this being an errant backhoe or similar, and Assange is just turning it into a big deal because he can.

> They can't possibly isolate it to just Assange, so it must be the whole embassy. Maybe not specifically to Assange, but they might be able to get close to that. An embassy probably wants to have separate, isolated networks to keep various classes of users apart. The top diplomats and officials who deal with the most important, most secret stuff on one. Another for lower level officials who deal with secret, but mor…

I believe he's staying in some sort of separate guest house on the embassy grounds...of course forcing him to walk across the lawn to the main building hardly seems like a worthwhile op.

Re: Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

#500

Post by JohnStrange » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

PJDK wrote: post #452

a3n wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the phone, the Gov would just have to tell the carrier to turn off the acount.

You can literally buy phones from vending machines in the UK.

Yes, but Assange cannot step out of the embassy to buy one himself, and he's fairly paranoid. There are probably only very few people in the world from whom he would accept a phone to enter all of his precious passwords, if he is willing to use a phone for that at all.