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John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies

nytimes.com

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Re: John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies

#11

Post by maneesh »

wyldfire wrote: post #10
pwinnski wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to look at 46 years ago without seeing through the lens of four years ago, so I imagine people's opinions on Raines closely mirror their opinions on Snowden. Which is fine by me, as I think both Raines and Snowden should be viewed closer to the "heroic whistle-blowers" end of the spectrum. But I suspect there are many who see both Raines and Snowden as traitors. I'd be very interested in hearing the r…

How do Snowden and Greenwald feel about having collaborated with Wikileaks given that they seem totally discredited by the revelation of their correspondence w/the Trump campaign?

Why are they discredited?

Re: John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies

#12

Post by ikeboy »

Bartweiss wrote: post #6
pwinnski wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to look at 46 years ago without seeing through the lens of four years ago, so I imagine people's opinions on Raines closely mirror their opinions on Snowden. Which is fine by me, as I think both Raines and Snowden should be viewed closer to the "heroic whistle-blowers" end of the spectrum. But I suspect there are many who see both Raines and Snowden as traitors. I'd be very interested in hearing the r…

It seems likely that anyone with split opinions would support Raines over Snowden; the obvious difference between the two cases is J. Edgar Hoover. Snowden exposed a mass surveillance program, some of which appears to have been illegal. Raines did likewise, but also exposed a serious campaign of harassment against activists - one prosecuted by an FBI director who was apparently viewed as beyond the control of even th…

The first thing that would come to mind is that people may feel threatened by what Snowden revealed, but not by Raines

Re: John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies

#13

Post by gtcode »

Bartweiss wrote: post #6
pwinnski wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to look at 46 years ago without seeing through the lens of four years ago, so I imagine people's opinions on Raines closely mirror their opinions on Snowden. Which is fine by me, as I think both Raines and Snowden should be viewed closer to the "heroic whistle-blowers" end of the spectrum. But I suspect there are many who see both Raines and Snowden as traitors. I'd be very interested in hearing the r…

It seems likely that anyone with split opinions would support Raines over Snowden; the obvious difference between the two cases is J. Edgar Hoover. Snowden exposed a mass surveillance program, some of which appears to have been illegal. Raines did likewise, but also exposed a serious campaign of harassment against activists - one prosecuted by an FBI director who was apparently viewed as beyond the control of even th…

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Re: John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies

#14

Post by timthelion »

maneesh wrote: post #11
wyldfire wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do Snowden and Greenwald feel about having collaborated with Wikileaks given that they seem totally discredited by the revelation of their correspondence w/the Trump campaign?

Why are they discredited?

It appears that wikileaks did work directly with Trump Jr. to coordinate pro Trump leaks and campaigning [1]. Whether wikileaks was actually pro-Trump, or merely playing the part with the hope of developing a relationship which could lead to their acquisition of confidential information is unclear.

"“Hey Don. We have an unusual idea,” WikiLeaks wrote on October 21, 2016. “Leak us one or more of your father’s tax returns.” WikiLeaks then laid out three reasons why this would benefit both the Trumps and WikiLeaks. One, The New York Times had already published a fragment of Trump’s tax returns on October 1; two, the rest could come out any time “through the most biased source (e.g. NYT/MSNBC).”"

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...

Re: John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies

#15

Post by wyldfire »

timthelion wrote: post #14
maneesh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they discredited?

It appears that wikileaks did work directly with Trump Jr. to coordinate pro Trump leaks and campaigning [1]. Whether wikileaks was actually pro-Trump, or merely playing the part with the hope of developing a relationship which could lead to their acquisition of confidential information is unclear. "“Hey Don. We have an unusual idea,” WikiLeaks wrote on October 21, 2016. “Leak us one or more of your father’s tax retu…

You left out the part that I find horrifying:

> It is the third reason, though, WikiLeaks wrote, that “is the real kicker.” “If we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality,” WikiLeaks explained. “That means that the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher impact, because it won’t be perceived as coming from a ‘pro-Trump’ ‘pro-Russia’ source.” It then provided an email address and link where the Trump campaign could send the tax returns, and adds, “The same for any other negative stuff (documents, recordings) that you think has a decent chance of coming out. Let us put it out.”

> Trump Jr. did not respond to this message.

"improve the perception of our impartiality" sounds as if "we're not impartial, and the world is figuring that out. If you have nothing to lose otherwise, please make it seem as if we were impartial."

Re: John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies

#16

Post by opportune »

gtcode wrote: post #13
Bartweiss wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems likely that anyone with split opinions would support Raines over Snowden; the obvious difference between the two cases is J. Edgar Hoover. Snowden exposed a mass surveillance program, some of which appears to have been illegal. Raines did likewise, but also exposed a serious campaign of harassment against activists - one prosecuted by an FBI director who was apparently viewed as beyond the control of even th…

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By damage do you mean indirect political damage stemming from the controversy surrounding Snowden, or direct damage to the US intel programs caused by the actual information that he released? To my knowledge there wasn't really any direct damage at all as a result of Snowden's actions (which is not always true of leakers, see Chelsea Manning)

Re: John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies

#18

Post by opportune »

wyldfire wrote: post #10
pwinnski wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to look at 46 years ago without seeing through the lens of four years ago, so I imagine people's opinions on Raines closely mirror their opinions on Snowden. Which is fine by me, as I think both Raines and Snowden should be viewed closer to the "heroic whistle-blowers" end of the spectrum. But I suspect there are many who see both Raines and Snowden as traitors. I'd be very interested in hearing the r…

How do Snowden and Greenwald feel about having collaborated with Wikileaks given that they seem totally discredited by the revelation of their correspondence w/the Trump campaign?

We still don't have the whole story. I'm under the impression that Wikileaks started with good intentions but that Assange became compromised in some way by Russia after a certain time period. That doesn't discredit what they've published in the sense of it being false, moreso in the sense that its clearly biased and they're operating under an ulterior motive

Re: John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies

#19

Post by Bartweiss »

gtcode wrote: post #13
Bartweiss wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems likely that anyone with split opinions would support Raines over Snowden; the obvious difference between the two cases is J. Edgar Hoover. Snowden exposed a mass surveillance program, some of which appears to have been illegal. Raines did likewise, but also exposed a serious campaign of harassment against activists - one prosecuted by an FBI director who was apparently viewed as beyond the control of even th…

-

...?

I see this sort of comment every time Snowden comes up on HN. Someone alludes to secret knowledge about him, then makes a dramatic statement that doesn't have any actually-testable component. It's true, the extent of the damage Snowden caused may never be known - even if there wasn't any!

Could you perhaps clarify any of this?

I'm particularly interested by "the Honolulu hackerspace that he later used for his politics". To my knowledge, the only involvement he ever had was to throw a single crypto party there, which none of the attendees have described as being especially political or unusual. Hosting crypto parties at hackerspaces is a pretty standard practice from what I've seen.

Did Snowden do something else political or detrimental at HiCapacity? And does that somehow tie into knowing "a thing or two" about him, given that no one at HiCapacity (or anywhere) seems to have known about the leaks until they were national news?

edit: Seeing as the parent was deleted, I should say that there wasn't anything interesting there. A weird allusion to Snowden screwing up a hackerspace, but no actual substance to justify the mystery.

Re: John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies

#20

Post by nindalf »

yuchi wrote: post #17

Can someone explain this in simple-english? It’s pretty difficult to understand good-doers from evil-doers here… Edit/clarification: non native english speaker here…

* America fought a war in Vietnam

* This war was deeply unpopular. Many people protested these in groups

* The head of the FBI at the time, J Edgar Hoover, was immensely powerful. He decided to crush the dissident groups by ordering FBI agents to infiltrate them. According to the article, he is the bad guy (I personally agree with this)

* John Raines and a few friends (the good guys) broke into the FBI office, stole the documents and sent it to newspapers.

* A serious investigation into the FBI's practices was the result of this publication.

* The good guys were never caught.

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