Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment • Hacker News Board

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#41

Post by nickysielicki » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:07 PM UTC

thatlongthrow1 wrote: post #25

nickysielicki wrote: post #18

> In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack. With respect to one target, Assange asked the LulzSec leader to look for (and provide to WikiLeaks) mail and documents, databases and pdfs. In another communication, Assange told the LulzSec leader that the most impactful release of hacked…

>I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never once published anything that has been proven false. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760 He has helped launder edited material from Russian state sponsored hackers in the past. That is one instance, should I find more?

A one-off tweet from a wikileaks twitter account about some other organization publishing something questionable is not at all the same as the document dumps that wikileaks publishes and puts their name behind. I'm obviously talking about the latter.

I think it says something that this is the best you can come up with.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#42

Post by input_sh » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:07 PM UTC

Ygg2 wrote: post #22

notkaiho wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the initial news stories credible?

Aren't the news dead silent in regards to that accusation? Moment US raised its charges, the Sweden rape case is nowhere to be found. Not to mention, Assanage agreed to that investigation if they could guarantee not to be extradited to US.

That's because Sweden allegations are discontinued. Quick time frame of the latest development:

2017-05-19: Suspended investigation, revoked arrest warrant. Statement that the investigation can be resumed if Assange visited Sweden before August 2020.

2019-04-11: Case re-opened following his arrest. In September of this year 7 new witnesses were revealed.

2019-11-19: Investigation discontinued, stating "the evidence is not strong enough to form the basis for filing an indictment", adding that "the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed", but the prosecutor was still confident in the complainant.

I personally believe that he's guilty due to the sheer amount of witnesses, but that circumstances around it will result in the victims never achieving justice.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#43

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:08 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #26

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my understanding, as well. I was under the impression that Manning already had pretty carte blanche access to a lot of stuff, and that was how she was able to get it in the first place. Maybe one of the items she provided to Assange was encrypted, and he worked to break the encryption, without consulting Manning.

It's so much worse than this. Via instant messenger, Manning asked Assange whether Wikileaks could crack NTLM hashes. Assange said (paraphrasing), "Yeah, we can probably do that." Manning sent the hashes. Assange said he'd work on cracking them. A few days later, Manning asked if the hashes had been cracked. Assange replied that there hadn't been any progress. End of story. That's a federal crime. No hashes were crac…

Ah. Yes. That makes sense.

People like Manning and Snowden expose nastiness, but, at the same time, we absolutely need to ensure military and espionage secrets (Full disclosure: my father was in the CIA, but quit on moral grounds - http://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm).

People die when military secrets get exposed. That's often completely unintended, but it happens anyway.

My father had a post similar to that held by Valerie Plame. If he had been exposed (like she was), then all his contacts would have been murdered, along with, I am sure, folks he worked with legit.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#44

Post by raxxorrax » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:10 PM UTC

lapinot wrote: post #28

op03 wrote: post #17

Feels like the last decade has shown Leaking to the General Public is not very productive. As in outcomes are poor. There is always something else lined up every 2 minutes to pull attention away from the leak. I am not sure if anyone studies "leaking effectiveness" but I am guessing in info tsunami conditions larger the leak less impact it has. Cause no one knows whose network of power is going to get impacted so eve…

So now more and more mainstream OS have storage encryption easily enabled, everyone in tech seems to need to communicate about how much their product is privacy friendly and you would still say that the last decade of tech leaks hasn't been very productive? I'm not saying that it changed everything and that we're now safe, far from that. But at least that topic is now unavoidable.

Is this a joke? We have an innocent man in prison and war criminals beyond reproach. I am for setting realistic goals, but letting this fly will have severe long term repercussions.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#45

Post by nkurz » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:10 PM UTC

lambdaba wrote: post #9

pell wrote: post #6

I'm not a fan of Assange and I think the allegations in Sweden were credible. But what is currently happening to him is beyond unjust.

Why do you think they are? I ask because I haven't researched beyond the initial news stories.

A quick example might be that during his extradition trial in the UK earlier this year, Assange was kept in a locked glass box, unable to communicate effectively with his legal team:

The Armoured Glass Box is an Instrument of Torture

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/03/the-armoured...

If you are up for a deep (and biased) dive, the rest of Craig Murray's daily blog posts from that trial give many more reasons that his treatment might be considered unjust:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-...

Murray is definitely a partisan in the camp of Assange, but I think his factual reporting is accurate.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#46

Post by Traster » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:10 PM UTC

thatlongthrow1 wrote: post #19

Wikileaks used to be something, then Assange decided to filter leaks based on whatever biases he felt that day. He alienated a lot of his initial supporters doing this, focusing only on leaking content from "the west." Later fully engaging with state sponsored hackers to meddle in the US election[1] while again ignoring any leaks about Russia[2] and friends. As far as I can tell there is nothing left of Wikileaks, it…

Every account of Assange shows a deeply flawed man. Even the generous ones - and whilst he was painted as a freedom fighter for a short period, I'm not convinced that was ever due to anything more than his agenda accidentally aligning with pro government accountability campaigners for a very short time. Also, it seems unlikely there was ever anything to wikileaks beyond Assange - that's certainly what his colleagues from the early days say. Just a man with many different sock-puppet accounts.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#47

Post by thatlongthrow1 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:11 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #37

thatlongthrow1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never once published anything that has been proven false. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760 He has helped launder edited material from Russian state sponsored hackers in the past. That is one instance, should I find more?

The whole Russian story was a scam. We have documents saying that is was told to abuse FISA powers. Not that I like the persons it was employed against, but it is far larger than watergate if we had honest discussion about it. If you still talk about Russia, you have been fooled immensely and for me it is beyond comprehension how anyone could earnestly believe that story arc. You are spreading lies.

>The whole Russian story was a scam.

Tell that to Adrian Chen or anyone that has actually investigated Russia's meddling in foreign affairs:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html

This was reported before the election detailing the agency that would go on to be fingered by the state department and others in their role in US election meddling.

This involved actual reported places, actual employees. Same with with "Guccifer 2.0" and "CyberBerkut" or any of the other Russian fronts Assange worked with.

>You are spreading lies.

You'll be able to find specific things I've said and detail how they are lies right? Because you have factual information about this yes?

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#48

Post by tsimionescu » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:11 PM UTC

thatlongthrow1 wrote: post #19

Wikileaks used to be something, then Assange decided to filter leaks based on whatever biases he felt that day. He alienated a lot of his initial supporters doing this, focusing only on leaking content from "the west." Later fully engaging with state sponsored hackers to meddle in the US election[1] while again ignoring any leaks about Russia[2] and friends. As far as I can tell there is nothing left of Wikileaks, it…

So not only are Assange and the people who gave him information supposed to risk their lives to bring these things out to the public, they are also supposed to do it in an objective balanced manner?

Facts are facts. As long as they are printing true facts, they can only be doing good, even if they are only printing the truth about one particular country. Even if they were only printing leaks from a single policital party in one country (which is not the case), as long as all that they are printing is true, they are helping much more than they are hurting.

If you know that Russianoor Chinese or whatever else leaks exist, and if you have enough access to know that they are also true and that WikiLeaks refused to print them, why don't you print them yourself?

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#49

Post by thatlongthrow1 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:16 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #41

thatlongthrow1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never once published anything that has been proven false. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760 He has helped launder edited material from Russian state sponsored hackers in the past. That is one instance, should I find more?

A one-off tweet from a wikileaks twitter account about some other organization publishing something questionable is not at all the same as the document dumps that wikileaks publishes and puts their name behind. I'm obviously talking about the latter. I think it says something that this is the best you can come up with.

>I think it says something that this is the best you can come up with.

Hi I can basically see you sneering with a "gotcha" face through that text. Sorry but Assange's history of leak revisionism, favoring Russia specifically, is deep.

When Assange was working with "Anon" who was really an FBI snitch, he accepted files hacked from Syria. When they were released they were missing information about Russia including bank transfers of billions of dollars. Assange's selective leaking based on his biases has been documented for years:

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r...

>The court records, placed under seal by a Manhattan federal court and obtained by the Daily Dot through an anonymous source, show in detail how a group of hacktivists breached the Syrian government’s networks on the eve of the country’s civil war and extracted emails about major bank transactions the Syrian regime was hurriedly making amid a host of economic sanctions. In the spring of 2012, most of the emails found their way into a WikiLeaks database.

>But one set of emails in particular didn’t make it into the cache of documents published by WikiLeaks in July 2012 as “The Syria Files,” despite the fact that the hackers themselves were ecstatic at their discovery. The correspondence, which WikiLeaks has denied withholding, describes “more than” €2 billion ($2.4 billion, at current exchange rates) moving from the Central Bank of Syria to Russia’s VTB Bank.

We know this because the courts showed the data that Assange personally held back.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#50

Post by AndyMcConachie » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:17 PM UTC

thatlongthrow1 wrote: post #25

nickysielicki wrote: post #18

> In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack. With respect to one target, Assange asked the LulzSec leader to look for (and provide to WikiLeaks) mail and documents, databases and pdfs. In another communication, Assange told the LulzSec leader that the most impactful release of hacked…

>I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never once published anything that has been proven false. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760 He has helped launder edited material from Russian state sponsored hackers in the past. That is one instance, should I find more?

The only conclusion I can raise from people like yourself who argue Julian Assange be imprisoned is that you welcome ignorance. You genuinely wish to not know what powerful people are behaving in this world. And that conclusion is in many ways scarier to me than the fact that he is being prosecuted for the crime of journalism.