Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

newsweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 150 posts

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#121

Post by grandalf »

spiralx wrote: post #98
grandalf wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He is no more a neutral party when talking about Clinton than Clinton would be talking about Assange. This may or may not be true, but it does not matter since the approach WL takes is to release materials in full without editorial discretion/bias.

> This may or may not be true, but it does not matter since the approach WL takes is to release materials in full without editorial discretion/bias. Where's your proof of this? The DNC leaks certainly had a lot of missing emails that may have served to provide context for conversations that were used as "evidence" of misdoings.

I'm not aware of a single missing email.

If someone had come forward with an email and offered it as evidence that WL had withheld even a single one, I would view WL much differently.

Instead, WL took the trouble to DKIM verify as many as possible. Afaik none of the embarrassing or politically potent emails failed DKIM verification and nobody offered any evidence that emails in a chain were removed from the archive. Even claims of tampering were dropped after the DKIM verification was installed.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#122

Post by grandalf »

btown wrote: post #109
allenbrunson wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What difference does Assange's personality make? quite a lot of difference, actually. if you know someone to be driven by ego, greed, or other negative influences, then you must always question why he chooses to reveal this particular thing, at this particular time, and what other similarly important things he might be choosing not to reveal, because it doesn't suit his agenda.

It's important to remember that Assange is not simply operating a content-neutral distribution platform. He has the ability to time or suppress releases at whim to influence global politics. And so his whims are of great importance in judging the risk-vs-reward of Wikileaks.

Yes. However since he is essentially captive and sources of funding to WL have largely been blocked, he must utilize guerilla PR tactics to the fullest.

Of course I'd prefer if the leaked docs were all thoroughly vetted and used as source material by The NY Times, but due to political pressure the NYT distanced itself from assange and became one of the main propagators of the character assassination campaign against Assange.

If Assange had the ability to present major front page stories to the world, he could ignore timing, but it's the only available tactic at present.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#123

Post by grandalf »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #99
allenbrunson wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What difference does Assange's personality make? quite a lot of difference, actually. if you know someone to be driven by ego, greed, or other negative influences, then you must always question why he chooses to reveal this particular thing, at this particular time, and what other similarly important things he might be choosing not to reveal, because it doesn't suit his agenda.

Exactly. Additionally, one might be forced to take a side in who they support with time or money. Assange and his ego has forced that decision before causing his co-founder to leave his ass with the data (destroyed it). Assange always loved the spotlight, being in control, money, and so on. His recent actions should be thought about with that in back of mind.

Are you serious? Your comment sounds like someone following a soap opera.

Would you care about the personal drama of the leaker of 10 years of Trump tax returns? The story is the leaked information, not the silly drama and rumor nonsense you describe.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#124

Post by grandalf »

valuearb wrote: post #103
grandalf wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What difference does Assange's personality make? If someone revealed Donald Trump's taxes, would you care if that person was a disgruntled, mentally unstable former-employee who had served time in prison for a morally abhorrent offense? Probably not. But for some reason, when discussing Wikileaks, there is an elaborate and imaginative notion of Assange's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, etc. etc. I think we…

You can support Wikileaks and it's goals, and still know Assange is a scumbag.

True but you in no sense is Assange's personal drama remotely relevant to the larger issues revealed by WL's publications.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#125

Post by grandalf »

valuearb wrote: post #106
grandalf wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donald Trump is completely irrelevant to my support of Assange. Like many of his critics, you are making a lot of ad hominem attacks on Assange rather than focusing on his massive contributions to democracy and journalism.

And you are excusing his reprehensible personal behavior because of those contributions. Contributions that could be made by Wikileaks staffers without his presence.

I'm not sure what specifically you are referring to... but whatever it is it is being used as a distraction from the issues revealed by WL. Chances are even without Assange involved there would be attempts by many governments to discredit those operating WL.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#126

Post by grandalf »

allenbrunson wrote: post #97
grandalf wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What difference does Assange's personality make? If someone revealed Donald Trump's taxes, would you care if that person was a disgruntled, mentally unstable former-employee who had served time in prison for a morally abhorrent offense? Probably not. But for some reason, when discussing Wikileaks, there is an elaborate and imaginative notion of Assange's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, etc. etc. I think we…

> What difference does Assange's personality make? quite a lot of difference, actually. if you know someone to be driven by ego, greed, or other negative influences, then you must always question why he chooses to reveal this particular thing, at this particular time, and what other similarly important things he might be choosing not to reveal, because it doesn't suit his agenda.

Assange has been very transparent about his timing strategy, which is essentially a low budget PR strategy due to necessity.

If a single party came forward with information that had been sent to WL and ignored, you might have a point.

If you are a leaker and decide to leak to WL and the material is not published, then you can leak it elsewhere.

The idea that WL is a gatekeeper over what major leaked information sees the light of day is absurd. On the margin there may be a difference of opinion about the newsworthiness of a leak, but WL makes its policy on this extremely transparent.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#127

Post by johnny22 »

grandalf wrote: post #123
nickpsecurity wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Additionally, one might be forced to take a side in who they support with time or money. Assange and his ego has forced that decision before causing his co-founder to leave his ass with the data (destroyed it). Assange always loved the spotlight, being in control, money, and so on. His recent actions should be thought about with that in back of mind.

Are you serious? Your comment sounds like someone following a soap opera. Would you care about the personal drama of the leaker of 10 years of Trump tax returns? The story is the leaked information, not the silly drama and rumor nonsense you describe.

If there was a leaker who leaked one thing, then I'd care less about their personal drama than if they were a continued source of leaks.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#128

Post by grandalf »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #100
grandalf wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole? Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior. We basically annexed Iraq to support US regional interests and the idea that Saddam's personality had anything to do with it is absurd. The ugly sectarian conflict we supported was effectively a cleansing of many of the nation's fig…

More ironic is how the declassified documents from when we backed him described him as a "presentable, young man" and other nice things. Later was called "in some ways worse than Hitler" as U.S. and Europe gave him money or "dual-use technology." All political BS.

Excellent point

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#129

Post by nickpsecurity »

grandalf wrote: post #123
nickpsecurity wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Additionally, one might be forced to take a side in who they support with time or money. Assange and his ego has forced that decision before causing his co-founder to leave his ass with the data (destroyed it). Assange always loved the spotlight, being in control, money, and so on. His recent actions should be thought about with that in back of mind.

Are you serious? Your comment sounds like someone following a soap opera. Would you care about the personal drama of the leaker of 10 years of Trump tax returns? The story is the leaked information, not the silly drama and rumor nonsense you describe.

The only drama was what Assange caused which split up Wikileaks team. Would you rather give money to effective, honest people or drama-loving liars if you had the choice? And could you even rely on accuracy of most leaks from someone who would scheme on his people or mislead sources about their safety for his own gain?

Sourcd integrity is always relevant. It's why spies and journalists are taught to assess that about potential sources. Half-assed integrity gets corroborated extra before trusted. Low integrity often gets ignored unless an organization wants to benefit from it.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#130

Post by contingencies »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #99
allenbrunson wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What difference does Assange's personality make? quite a lot of difference, actually. if you know someone to be driven by ego, greed, or other negative influences, then you must always question why he chooses to reveal this particular thing, at this particular time, and what other similarly important things he might be choosing not to reveal, because it doesn't suit his agenda.

Exactly. Additionally, one might be forced to take a side in who they support with time or money. Assange and his ego has forced that decision before causing his co-founder to leave his ass with the data (destroyed it). Assange always loved the spotlight, being in control, money, and so on. His recent actions should be thought about with that in back of mind.

Assange always loved the spotlight, being in control, money, and so on.

Not in my experience. I had long discussions with him in 2009 and first met him in 1997. I have only seem him share information and resources and he is clearly motivated by genuine concern for the world. He was raised by left wing family on the east coast of Australia. He created an encryption system to resist torture from authoritarian governments. As early as the 1990s he released numerous hacks (strobe, traceroute spoofing, etc.) in good humour. He gave away accounts on his systems for free to others. This was all years before Wikileaks, and required mastering networking and mathematics to world-class levels at the time. These efforts and their shared results show that he has spent his lifetime motivated by factors other than greed and ego.

TLDR; In my view, which is nominally more informed than yours, you are basically re-spouting a baseless or near baseless government sponsored character assassination.

PS. Isn't this perfectly generic slander? Couldn't you mount the same accusation at anyone intelligent as soon as they get an audience?

Post reply on HN