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

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

#561

Post by nogbit » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:27 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #213

jacquesm wrote: post #127

- Is the whole embassy shut down? - Is there any direct reason for the timing (US elections, attack on Mosul or other current headlines)? - Was there any imminent release? (last week there was an announcement of a leak but it didn't materialize as far as I know) http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/4/13159914/wikileaks-hillary... - You'd assume that Wikileaks the organization will continue to work even without Assange hav…

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.

Exactly, an "errant" backhoe.

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

#562

Post by FireBeyond » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #222

jonknee wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea or it could just be the internet is down. It happens to regular people all the time.

Unlikely, there are clearly moves being made today against Russian-backed and allegedly Russian-backed propaganda outfits. RT just had its bank accounts frozen in the UK as well. Also, have you ever heard of LTE?

It's "unlikely"? No, you're right, clearly the most obvious motive is conspiracy.

Also, other people have reported, and it's pretty common in a lot of embassies, not just the Ecuadorian, that cell phones are either actively jammed or the embassy is built as a Faraday cage. I had no cell service in the US embassy in Sydney, despite being in the middle of a capital city within 10 ft of a window.

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

#563

Post by davesque » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #105

sflicht wrote: post #43

A little more unsubstantiated info from Reddit [0]. [0] https://np.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/57vu5l/red_alert...

Don't forget this is the subreddit that has believed every bizarre, alt-right conspiracy theory under the sun. You do nothing but make yourself look ridiculous posting that nonsense.

Wow...I can understand that not everyone would agree with this comment, but how can this end up in the grey?? Have people actually visited /r/the_donald lately?

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

#564

Post by tptacek » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #487

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…

Could you link to statements where Assange is given praise to Trump and encouraging people to vote for Trump, you know like quality comments do that make assertion about peoples intentions. It would be a nice change to the many political opinions being thrown around here that assume that people can't just hate both political figures and view them both as corrupt and harmful.

This is one of those weird arguments I hear all the time from WL supporters that I don't understand why I'm supposed to even take it seriously; it's gaslighty in the same way Mike Pence's claim that Trump hadn't said those things about Syria and Russia are.

Obviously, he doesn't have to say anything positive about Trump at all to support him, and in fact the kind of support he's offering (a drip-drip feed of the products of Russian hacking calculated to create an "October Surprise") is far more valuable than any verbal support he could give Trump directly.

I mean here to be dismissive without being too disrespectful. But I'll be candid: people who say Assange isn't supporting Trump sound pretty silly. Like, the claim says more about them than it does about the election.

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

#565

Post by mikeash » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #555

mikeash wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be pretty weird if SMS were available but not data.

No it wouldn't. SMS is actually a control message on the voice stream (my words might not be precise). You can send SMS with no data connectivity.

I meant in this particular case it would be weird, because it would mean that the perpetrators are somehow blocking mobile data but neglected to block SMS.

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

#566

Post by cloudjacker » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:31 PM UTC

AvenueIngres wrote: post #370

SCdF wrote: post #338

Instead of jumping on this as a giant conspiracy, it might be worth considering that it's just that his internet went down. I mean, until there is actual evidence that Hillary Clinton[1] deployed a highly trained collection of seals (the animal, not the US military contingent) to cut through his tube wires in the death of the night and then pelt across hide park and hide in the serpentine, perhaps we should just cons…

1/ Unless you have dumped massive datasets of classified USG data I fail to see how your situation is similar to Assange's. What might be coincidental for you is not when it comes to JA. 2/ Since you post on HN I guess you sure understand that there is no need to alter the physical layer if you want to ostracize a subnetwork from the Internet.

I mean, Wikileaks doesn't host their servers inside the Ecuadorian embassy. They could just time the release of the data in advance, so that they don't need Assange's ongoing internet capabilities to do anything... right?

Doesn't that make almost too much sense?

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

#567

Post by pdx » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:31 PM UTC

the_duke wrote: post #483

gragas wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If hundreds of pieces of direct evidence don't suffice, then I'm not sure what does. The Clinton Foundation has done countless extremely illegal and unethical things. Between CTR, the Bernie fiasco, the fake Craigslist ads, the "public and private" positions, I'm not sure how you can say that HRC isn't trying to create an alternate reality.

Every politician has public and private positions. That's just how politics works. The view the plebs demands often don't align with either the politicians vision for the country, what's possible near or long term, or the people you are indebted to (donors, etc). In many cases it's acceptable and even advisable, in my opinion. A head of state has insight into facts and knowledge of others about realities and facts th…

Your cognitive dissonance is astounding, but perhaps understandable.

You recognize and admit (as you have no choice doing, after the mountain of proof) that the media willingly prostitutes itself to further the cause of the current administration, with no regard for actual truth.

But you allow yourself to be influenced in your opinion of Donald Trump by that same media.

Imagine if a mean girl in your office told everybody that you were a brown-nosing little weasel who stared at her all the time, even though it's not true. Nobody will sit next to you at lunch, and you refuse to sit next to Billy, since that same girl said he picks is nose and eats it. Can't you understand that once you know she's a liar, you can't trust her about Billy either?

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

#568

Post by rtx » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

postcarnival wrote: post #515

AvenueIngres wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Directly related to what you are saying, DNC consultants and execs caught on tape explaining how they plant fake Trump supporters at rallies to disrupt them or get negative media coverage. It is pretty interesting from: 1/ a partisan PoV, 2/ a methodological PoV; you are right there is a war for information that is being waged. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY

wow this is crazy...

Or scary

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

#569

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #560

HN was particularly skilled at seeing through the FUD around the FBI iPhone crack, and this forum has also held a healthy skepticism for the way in which the FBI was able to break Tor and find DPR of Silk Road. I don't think it's an outrageous claim to say that in general, a sizable portion of this website (though perhaps still a minority) believes that the FBI has historically held-back information to the point of i…

> In the interest of full disclosure, I tend to lean more conservative than most people, especially relative to HN. So maybe I have my partisan goggles on here, but why are so many people buying into the idea that there is solid evidence that Russia is actually behind these leaks?

Among other reasons, because cybersecurity experts who, insofar as they have partisan political bias that they might act on would be more likely to oppose Clinton and the Democrats than aid them, were the first to confidently attribute the hacks to specific threat actors tied to specific components of the Russian intelligence apparatus. (DHS and NSA much later jointly announced the same conclusion that private cybersecurity experts had previously reached.)

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

#570

Post by pvg » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:35 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #553

pvg wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All your theories rest on the assumption that someone deliberately and maliciously 'cut' his internet access. There's no evidence of that or even that his access has been 'cut', whatever that means.

It's certainly a lot easier to conceive how announcement that state level actors had interfered with his internet access benefits Assange than how a deliberate, malicious and above all temporary and ineffective cut in his internet access on this particular day benefits state actors. On the one hand we have a guy with the big cache of emails he really wants people to pay more attention to before November 9th, and a po…

To me, the simplest and obvious explanation, barring any new evidence from independent sources, is that Wikileaks (the only source so far) is simply trying to generate attention and stay in the news cycle. It's not like these email releases have produced anything mildly interesting, let alone scandalous.