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

Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 286 posts

Re: Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

#231

Post by bitofhope »

na85 wrote: post #225
eeeuo wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaking secrets is not a freedom of speech issue. I would agree with you if Snowden narrowly leaked the details of the PRISM program. I think if he did that he would have been a genuine hero. But he didn't. He downloaded as much secret information as he could, and gave them to organizations that were openly hostile to American interests. Consider the level of detail of methods and sources in the information leaked by…

>organizations that were openly hostile to American interests. Exactly which organizations are you referring to?

Yea I'd like to have this elaborated on. As is the GP makes The Guardian sound like Daesh.

Re: Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

#232

Post by nradov »

guitarbill wrote: post #203
nradov wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UN working groups have no legal authority.

Yes, apparently. And that somehow makes it okay to ignore? Meanwhile, the UK continues the farce, costing a disproportionate amount of taxpayer money given the accusations.

Yes it's okay to ignore the recommendations of working groups. The UK is under no obligation to take them seriously.

Re: Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

#233

Post by resters »

bootlooped wrote: post #201
blhack wrote: post #9

What I've wanted for Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and if Obama would have done it before leaving office, it would have earned him infinite respect: Try them, possibly even find them guilty of something, but also award them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What these people have done is probably illegal, but it is unquestionably about the most American, patriotic act you could commit. Sp…

Julian Assange does many things that seem to have the sole purpose of embarrassing the US. I don't see how he could be a candidate for any type of award from the US government. Any benefit Wikileaks has had on the US, primarily by helping spark a debate about domestic surveillance, is overshadowed by the harm they've done due to his radical anti-secrecy zealotry. Take the Vault 7 releases for example. What was the pu…

Since the US is the most powerful nation, of course it will be the target of some of the politically motivated leaks.

With respect to Vault 7, once the secrecy of the tools was compromised they already had zero value to the US arsenal. In fact, I would not be surprised if the US Government leaked Vault 7 itself, to prevent the thief from being able to use them effectively.

Consider the value of the Vault 7 tools if they were known only by a small group of hackers with a halfway decent budget. They'd be worth many billions of dollars.

But once leaked, their value decreases substantially, since the zero days can be patched and the exploits mitigated.

Any state actor who stole Vault 7 would have no interest in releasing it to Wikileaks. Even Russia would benefit more by knowing about it and leveraging that knowledge than by leaking it in its entirety.

Also don't forget about the government hoarding zero days which put American firms at risk.

Per your last point, let's not worry too much about Assange's personality or character. The important thing to focus on is the leaked information, not the messenger.

Re: Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

#234

Post by dmix »

eeeuo wrote: post #168
blhack wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, and this is why it would have gained him so much respect in my eyes. I think it's possible to both recognize the importance of intelligence agencies, and recognize why whistleblowing should be discouraged, but at the same time recognize the patriotism required to do it anyway. Giving these people the Medal of Freedom, to me, would have been an acknowledgment of that. "Yeah, you shouldn't have done that, but y…

Leaking secrets is not a freedom of speech issue. I would agree with you if Snowden narrowly leaked the details of the PRISM program. I think if he did that he would have been a genuine hero. But he didn't. He downloaded as much secret information as he could, and gave them to organizations that were openly hostile to American interests. Consider the level of detail of methods and sources in the information leaked by…

Isn't it also naive to think China and Russia weren't fully aware of the NSA's capabilities? If anything the only effect it had on intelligence agencies is it accelerated the smaller countries towards this type of mass surveillance, they learned thoroughly what was possible - beyond what you can buy at miltech trade shows. And now we see many awful countries mimicking this type of stuff now, like in Ethiopia.

But otherwise for 99% of it the only one it was new and valuable to was the public.

As good as the FBI/IC is at counter-intelligence if Snowden can do this stuff I'm sure a highly trained spy recruited by any top tier agency could get similar access.

Also notably Snowden did not leak the really sensitive TAO stuff, which was well compartmentalized. He mostly leaked spreadsheets for the 'middle management' in NSA. I'm sure he only revealed a small portion of their top-teir capabilities. And the stuff he did leak was almost always very vague, often just a few bullet points in a spreadsheet was all we had to work with...

Re: Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

#235

Post by remarkEon »

bachbach wrote: post #197
eeeuo wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaking secrets is not a freedom of speech issue. I would agree with you if Snowden narrowly leaked the details of the PRISM program. I think if he did that he would have been a genuine hero. But he didn't. He downloaded as much secret information as he could, and gave them to organizations that were openly hostile to American interests. Consider the level of detail of methods and sources in the information leaked by…

You may correct me if you know better, but I have not seen any information that was leaked that I didn't imagine Russia or China already being very aware of. Was this information revealed to only Russia/China and kept from journalists? If so how do you know about it?

"They probably already know about it" seems like a weird standard to use for answering the question of if making a particular state secret public harms the National interest.

Re: Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

#236

Post by boomboomsubban »

kej wrote: post #153
resters wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were Assange and you were trying to convince Trump Jr to hand over documents to you, would you pretend to be indifferent about the outcome of the election? Assange wants to help reveal any secret information that will help fix the many problems stemming from secrecy and corruption of governments and institutions. Every one of his actions have supported that mission. The focus on Assange's alleged political vie…

WikiLeaks sat on Manafort's group sex and blood money texts, but released Podesta's emails less than an hour after the Access Hollywood tape was published. His agenda was more than an act to get on Don Jr.'s good side.

>WikiLeaks sat on...

Source for them "sitting on" time sensitive material?

Re: Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

#237

Post by forapurpose »

blhack wrote: post #9

What I've wanted for Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and if Obama would have done it before leaving office, it would have earned him infinite respect: Try them, possibly even find them guilty of something, but also award them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What these people have done is probably illegal, but it is unquestionably about the most American, patriotic act you could commit. Sp…

Obama pardoned (or at least freed) Chelsea Manning.

> He's a hero in every sense of the word.

I think we can have an intelligent discussion of his conduct, but let's not waste time and attention with hyperbole. We all know that some people believe he is and some believe he's not; what substantiated, well-considered knowledge can we add?

Re: Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

#238

Post by boomboomsubban »

bootlooped wrote: post #201
blhack wrote: post #9

What I've wanted for Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and if Obama would have done it before leaving office, it would have earned him infinite respect: Try them, possibly even find them guilty of something, but also award them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What these people have done is probably illegal, but it is unquestionably about the most American, patriotic act you could commit. Sp…

Julian Assange does many things that seem to have the sole purpose of embarrassing the US. I don't see how he could be a candidate for any type of award from the US government. Any benefit Wikileaks has had on the US, primarily by helping spark a debate about domestic surveillance, is overshadowed by the harm they've done due to his radical anti-secrecy zealotry. Take the Vault 7 releases for example. What was the pu…

>Take the Vault 7 releases for example. What was the public good done by that information being published? Those are our weapons,

They have gone out of their way to ensure that there aren't any unpatched exploits released with the info, even with most of the tech community being unwilling to help.

They are not "our weapons," they're a detailed rundown of what our weapons can do and how we use them. Our alleged "enemies" couldn't do any more damage with them than we do by ourselves.

Re: Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

#239

Post by api »

blhack wrote: post #9

What I've wanted for Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and if Obama would have done it before leaving office, it would have earned him infinite respect: Try them, possibly even find them guilty of something, but also award them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What these people have done is probably illegal, but it is unquestionably about the most American, patriotic act you could commit. Sp…

One of these is not like the others. Snowden and Manning seem genuine. Assange may have been genuine once but it's quite clear that in recent years he was either compromised, turned, or himself adopted some kind of rather loathsome fascist ideology.

Re: Ecuador will hand over Julian Assange to the UK

#240

Post by biggusdickus »

bootlooped wrote: post #201
blhack wrote: post #9

What I've wanted for Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and if Obama would have done it before leaving office, it would have earned him infinite respect: Try them, possibly even find them guilty of something, but also award them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What these people have done is probably illegal, but it is unquestionably about the most American, patriotic act you could commit. Sp…

Julian Assange does many things that seem to have the sole purpose of embarrassing the US. I don't see how he could be a candidate for any type of award from the US government. Any benefit Wikileaks has had on the US, primarily by helping spark a debate about domestic surveillance, is overshadowed by the harm they've done due to his radical anti-secrecy zealotry. Take the Vault 7 releases for example. What was the pu…

You are being dishonest. He said that he will accept extradition if Manning gets pardoned. Manning was never pardoned, Obama just commuted his sentence.
Post reply on HN