The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange • Hacker News Board

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#331

Post by kahirsch » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:00 AM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #249

kuwze wrote: post #190

If he had kept his promise after Obama pardoned Chelsea Manning I would care.

What a silly point on which to turn your concerns about government misconduct, especially when it involves the 1st amendment. > Obama pardoned Chelsea Manning First of all, that never happened. You are drastically exaggerating the relief offered by the government. The government tortured this person for years and then, even after offering this (in the great scheme of things, small) gesture of commuting her sentence,…

• 15 Sep 2016 "If Obama grants Manning clemency, Assange will agree to US prison in exchange -- despite its clear unlawfulness" [1]

• 12 Jan 2017 "If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case" [2]

• 17 Jan 2017 "Assange lawyer @themtchair on Assange-Manning extradition 'deal': "Everything that he has said he's standing by." [3]

[1] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/776437869376262144

[2] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/819630102787059713

[3] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/821528189625372672

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#332

Post by resters » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:05 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #322

resters wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also wapo is pretty much all political propaganda of some sort now. It’s been getting worse by the day since Bezos bought it for some reason.

This seems a non-sequitur. Which part of that article seems to be political propaganda? It seems to be a decently piece of reporting on justice department thinking at the time?

There is rarely outright falsehood, but lots of misdirection and omission, and a ton of fluffy echo chamber pieces.

There are some good articles but I personally would not rely upon the paper's content as accurate unless all of the facts and assertions were independently verified elsewhere.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#333

Post by rdtsc » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:08 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #318

rdtsc wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his case will be closely studied for years. And it is how propaganda works. There is no coordination between the 5 or 6 or however many media outlets but it seems as if there is turn almost based on how quickly he went from a martir to Russian puppet in just a year or less. Same thing kind of happened to Greenwald though to a lesser degree.

> There is no coordination between the 5 or 6 or however many media outlets What evidence do you have for that claim?

Was mainly going by this book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

It's well known and has good research on how multiple media outlets can produce the same output basically.

Did you mean they do explicitly coordinate? I haven't seen or heard of that happening. Not that it's impossible.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#334

Post by roywiggins » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:10 AM UTC

hnmonkey wrote: post #156

roywiggins wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be accurate to model his operations in two phases. The first, when he was exposing secrets on his own. The second, when (it seems) Russia used him as a deniable way to launder secrets they had stolen into the American press. Exactly when one phase begins and the other ends, whether he knew it was happening at the time, and whether he committed any crimes against the United States during the second phase is m…

I agree with you somewhat. It seems that he initially wanted to buck the system and expose secrets for the purpose of exposing secrets and anarchy. It's possible this was a fantastic cover and he's always worked at someone's behest. Agreed completely with your 2nd phase. I don't think it works for Snowden. I actually believe he was ardently an American patriot who wanted to expose what he thought were illegalities an…

Yup, I'm agreeing with you there- I don't think Snowden ever intended to end up exiled in Russia. He might be beholden to the Russians now- for his physical safety- he's very likely more blameless in that than Assange might be, I haven't seen actual evidence that he wanted to end up in Russia.

Whereas Assange might have (depending on the facts) happily taken help from the Russian state in the name of sowing chaos. Assange has no particular ties to the US, and might have found a way to square it with whatever his morals are. Or he found an encrypted archive in his email and he just published it, provenance unknown.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#335

Post by resters » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:10 AM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #239

hnmonkey wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While some of the things that were exposed were certainly illegal and should be handled as such, it's hard to feel any empathy for a guy who is essentially a Russian asset. If you think of him as an extension of Russian military intelligence conducting propaganda wars against its adversaries then it becomes a lot easier to understand why prosecuting him is a genuinely good thing. Russia airing the dirty laundry of ot…

Russia airing the dirty laundry through a side channel is MUCH more benevolent than the other things (like blackmailing our world leaders) they could do with this. I don't think all of Wikileaks' revelations are from Russia, but even if they all are - and Russia had selfish motivations - it was a benevolent act toward the world. Truth is power, and revealing the truth to the powerless is never an evil act.

Exactly. As I put it in another comment, if someone leaked information that led to Jerry Sandusky being stopped several years sooner, would it matter if the leaker was affiliated with a rival football program?

Because of how WL releases full, minimally redacted documents, there is really no reason to worry about the details. Failures of journalistic integrity happen because of strategic omissions or intentional misdirection. WL essentially can't do that because it releases the source material in essentially raw form.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#336

Post by Apocryphon » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:13 AM UTC

visibly-visible wrote: post #6

Apocryphon wrote: post #4

So much for WikiLeaks thinking there was a lesser evil back in 2016

The HN comment section is turning into Reddit

Because it’s become politicized? Well, tech has become incredibly politicized in the last few years. And Assange and WikiLeaks are both political and have played politics.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#337

Post by anarazel » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:13 AM UTC

Myrmornis wrote: post #216

anarazel wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point wasn't to belittle the contributions, but to point out that he wasn't a "key figure".

Yes, "key figure" was clearly inaccurate. But "A few small changes." "just a minor rewrite of parts of the commandline client. Mostly made verbose by by renaming structs members / moving members around." People...really find learning programming hard. Many, many people, even if they try, won't manage to have the intellectual discipline to learn C to the level that you're disparaging. I'm pretty sure that you and I bo…

> I'm pretty sure that you and I both agree that we shouldn't refer to someone else's hard work in that way.

I only said they're not large changes. small != worthless.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#338

Post by auslander » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:16 AM UTC

Assange should hand the site over to Anonymous, just in case.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#339

Post by colordrops » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:18 AM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #301

rdtsc wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his case will be closely studied for years. And it is how propaganda works. There is no coordination between the 5 or 6 or however many media outlets but it seems as if there is turn almost based on how quickly he went from a martir to Russian puppet in just a year or less. Same thing kind of happened to Greenwald though to a lesser degree.

The consensus is that Greenwald isn't a Russian agent. He's just stupid. His reporting has consistently had large and obvious errors at least since he was writing for Common Dreams.

How would you compare his reporting to the likes of CNN and FOX?

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#340

Post by resters » Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 3:19 AM UTC

azernik wrote: post #311

cwkoss wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the New York Times gets an anonymous tip from a Russian spy (which is fact checked and found to be true), would you consider the New York Times as a Russian asset? Where is the line? When is transmitting factual information to the public journalism and when is it not?

If they then release it without reporting on context, taking the Russian source's politically-motivated narrative at face value? Absolutely. Same as if they're acting as a politician's assets if they do likewise with an anonymous political source, only with the added twist of international politics.

I don't think this holds up. Who leaks information to a journalist and doesn't have some kind of motive for doing so?

Wikileaks actually changes the game on malicious leaks because it won't publish the typical "a high ranking source who wishes not to be named claims that ___" rubbish. Instead, it forces the source to provide the full context of the leak in the form of complete documents.

Think about how much mischief a high ranking official could cause by leaking selective or misleading tidbits to reporters... FWIW it happens all the time for obviously political reasons.

For typical journalists, the relationship with those high ranking sources is a major form of career capital, and so the journalist must accept whatever tidbits are offered, and is incentivized to present them as requested by the source.

In the normal press, leaks are used as propaganda by government officials all the time and journalists play along happily, not caring that they are often spreading propaganda in the form of off the record comments.

WL operates at an entirely different level and demands that sources not engage in mischief and supply the source material in its entirety so that the material can be judged on its own merits.