Live data from Hacker News

CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

media.ccc.de

281–290 of 299 posts

Re: CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

#281
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How on earth can you get something so basic wrong? Nothing you said has any connection to whether it's journalism. He received and published politically relevant information. >We are talking about Assange's official relationship with Russian military intelligence years before he hid in the Ecuadorian embassy So based on something he did in 2016, you think that's proof he was a Russian agent from the mid 2000's that…

Russia hacked both the DNC and the RNC. They only leaked DNC material (via their cutout Wikileaks so people can claim in bad faith it wasn't really Russia), and did so at the time it was most needed by the Trump campaign. If you consider receiving state-hacked materials and leaking them in perfect coordination with a political campaign (see Roger Stone indictment) journalism, then there's nothing else to discuss. Oh,…

>If you consider receiving state-hacked materials and leaking them in perfect coordination with a political campaign (see Roger Stone indictment) journalism,

As I don't consider Assange to be a Russian agent, I don't have any issues with them receiving state-hacked information. They are under no obligation to determine the source's motive. And they are free to coordinate with a political campaign, they have the freedom of assembly as well as of the press.

The Roger Stone indictment was for obstruction of an official proceeding, false statements, and witness tampering. His discussions about Wikileaks weren't illegal, lying about them was.

>Speculation no one can answer, ignored.

What? You're the one claiming the DNC leaks prove they are a Russian agent. I don't agree, but I understand that argument. Then stretching it to include "Assange's official relationship with Russian military intelligence years before he hid in the Ecuadorian embassy" makes no sense to me.

>. If you suspect someone of espionage and they are already sitting in prison of sex crime charges, you have no reason to expose the methods and sources you used to catch said person.

I am listening to what you are saying, selective enforcement of laws absolutely violates your right to a fair trial. Without exposing their methods, we have no idea of those methods were constitutionally sound. They may not have any reason that benefits themselves, but I don't care.

Further, Snowden isn't behind bars. Why didn't they expose their methods and prevent him leaving Hong Kong rather than block his passport while layovered in Russia?

>Funny, both Assange and Snowden fled their respective "fair trails" to hide from justice.

As Assange's extradition hearing and the numerous whistleblower trials over the past fifty years have shown, they had no expectation of a fair trial. Quoting Daniel Ellsberg about his case

>(my) lawyer, exasperated, said he 'had never heard of a case where a defendant was not permitted to tell the jury why he did what he did.' The judge responded: 'Well, you're hearing one now'. And so it has been with every subsequent whistleblower under indictment.

Re: CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

#282

He makes an important point early on in outlining the mission of Wikileaks centering on making Data and Information freely accessible to all (the concept of Dataism, for those who have read Yuval Harrari’s HOMO DEUS ). However, the processing of Information into Intelligence that can be acted upon is what characterizes Intelligence agencies. Wikileaks does not concern itself with this phase. Yet, the CIA’s Pompeo is…

If I start a blog in which I take information about international affairs, and synthesize it into reports, analyses and appraisals - I am now a "Non-state intelligence agency", albeit a very small one.

So going after #2 sounds even more silly than going after #1.

As for the epithet "Dark", that's just empty rhetorical embellishment.

Re: CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

#283

He makes an important point early on in outlining the mission of Wikileaks centering on making Data and Information freely accessible to all (the concept of Dataism, for those who have read Yuval Harrari’s HOMO DEUS ). However, the processing of Information into Intelligence that can be acted upon is what characterizes Intelligence agencies. Wikileaks does not concern itself with this phase. Yet, the CIA’s Pompeo is…

I'm normally loathe to defend any aspect of the US MIC, but I think Pompeo's point is that Wikileaks knowingly publicizes information that has already been processed into Intelligence , and willfully turns a blind eye to its role as a laundromat for hostile powers under the guise of an ideology of totally free data. I, for one, think that all information should be free. I think Pompeo's motivations are suspect and ge…

> willfully turns a blind eye to its role as a laundromat for hostile powers under the guise of an ideology of totally free data.

Why "a blind eye"? An open eye. Wikileaks has no loyalty to the US government, and it isn't, nor should it be, a concern of theirs whether elements hostile to the US benefit or not from its publications. Wikileaks publishes information of public interest, and that's that.

Also, note that Wikileaks has published information about regimes the US perceives as hostile, e.g. Russia:

https://www.wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/releases/

Re: CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is there any hope to reform the corrupt political system or even to ascertain "the consent of the governed"? A shared interpretation of reality would be a good start. Most of the things you named in your first sentence happened at such low counts that they had functionally zero impact on the outcome of the election. For starters, there has been no instance of obvious election fraud caught on camera, no forensic evi…

Actually the Fraud caught on camera in Atlanta was shown to have swung the election, if you overlay the surge of Biden votes that occurred when the poll watchers were told to go home yet counting resumed. The problem is there is not institutional effort to investigate the irregularities. The problem with Election fraud is that plausible deniability & passing the buck is too easy to accomplish for any party not willin…

The events caught on camera were not fraud. They were an irregularity, but it appears they were already investigated and the relevant ballots were correctly counted. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/fact...

Every time we criticize Georgia, we should remember that the President's party is the one in charge of elections there, and the one in charge of auditing and assuring security of those elections. There is every incentive for the state election commission to cry foul if there was foul to cry; the fact they have not is extremely telling, and one really has to widen the conspiracy net to come up with an explanation that puts the state election commission of Georgia in on a conspiracy to defraud the electoral process.

> there is not institutional effort to investigate the irregularities

I don't know what you would consider "institutional effort," but there are absolutely processes for investigating irregularities and multiple investigations are currently in progress. Georgia just concluded one such audit today. https://www.ajc.com/politics/no-fraud-georgia-audit-confirms... - they don't get reported on in detail because, to be honest, the details are boring and therefore don't make for very good news; they have about as much fun as a tax audit with even fewer exciting variables. and to really get a big picture of what's going on, one has to track the news from multiple states, since every state manages its own balloting system.

A full and exhaustive audit takes time. The President commissioned such an audit at the federal level for the 2016 election, and it resolved in 2018, finding an absolute handful of actionable cases. I would expect the audits that are going on now to continue, as multiple parties are interested in pursuing them. But they take time; the one for 2016 took two years.

Re: CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

#285
post #132

Honest question, please don't snipe at me. Can someone please point me to significant leaks from out of china, russia, iran on wikileaks? Edit: since it appears no one can actually answer this question with an actual answer, and only down vote and troll, I think that probably means wikileaks does not make significant leaks from the military-industrial complexes of China or Russia.

Serious question to you, what do you think happens to Joe Schmoe when he leaks embarrassing and/classified info about Putin or a Xi?

In the US, you become a best selling author:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/books/trump-books.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/17/mary-trump-and-john-bolton-b...

https://www.thewrap.com/michael-cohen-disloyal-book-amazon-b...

Our culture and protections(1A) allow an environment of leaks. Obama’s war on whistleblowers barely made a dent:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/obamas-whistleb...

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/obamas-crackdown-w...

Re: CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

#286
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we see wrong, we try to change it. Exactly! But that's predicated on "we see wrong". What Snowden and Wikileaks (and the various paradise leaks) showed, is that there's a lot of wrongs we don't see. Maybe I didn't specify this explicitly in my earlier post, but my core position is this: attacks on Wikileaks are attacks on the ability for the voting population to see the wrongs, and as such are attacks on democracy it…

So essentially - any attack on wikileaks or journalism/the press in general is an attack on democracy?

Absolutely.

Re: CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

#287
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So essentially - any attack on wikileaks or journalism/the press in general is an attack on democracy?

Absolutely.

The current sitting president labeled the press the enemy of the people and has continually attacked it. How shall we deal with this enemy of democracy?

Re: CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

#288
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia hacked both the DNC and the RNC. They only leaked DNC material (via their cutout Wikileaks so people can claim in bad faith it wasn't really Russia), and did so at the time it was most needed by the Trump campaign. If you consider receiving state-hacked materials and leaking them in perfect coordination with a political campaign (see Roger Stone indictment) journalism, then there's nothing else to discuss. Oh,…

>If you consider receiving state-hacked materials and leaking them in perfect coordination with a political campaign (see Roger Stone indictment) journalism, As I don't consider Assange to be a Russian agent, I don't have any issues with them receiving state-hacked information. They are under no obligation to determine the source's motive. And they are free to coordinate with a political campaign, they have the freed…

> And they are free to coordinate with a political campaign, they have the freedom of assembly as well as of the press.

lol. "None of these things are crimes" is not the solid argument you think it is. To be a useful idiot aiding an autocratic government in their intelligence operations might not be technically illegal, but you give up all pretense of being "journalists" when you do so.

> His discussions about Wikileaks weren't illegal

Again, not what we are talking about. I'll take your constant efforts to move the goal posts from what constitutes journalism to what constitutes a crime as a tacit admission you don't have a leg to stand on.

> Daniel Ellsberg

A famous leaker is pro-leaker, what a shocking revelation. Difference is all of the pentagon papers were relevant to the ongoing crime of the Vietnam War. 95% of what Snowden leaked had nothing to do with domestic surveillance. Funny how that's never mentioned.

Also, maybe listen to people that actually know what they're talking about in 2020. Here's a lawyer that specializes in representing intel officers in whistleblower cases, talking about how Snowden did have options, and it's a lie to say otherwise.

https://twitter.com/MarkSZaidEsq/status/1339383062120062978

He chose to run, he chose to avoid the consequences of his actions. And in more simple terms, a whistleblower is a legal term for something he chose not to be. He leaked, then ran away. Calling him a whistleblower is an insult to the brave people that actually did seek whistleblower protection in serious matters and were willing to testify and face the consequences.

Re: CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

#289
post #268
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we know this is true if the data was burned? Sadly we don't, and likely never will. Assange mentioned the laptop data and hinted at what it might contain in an interview. We do definitely know that a large cache of data got held hostage and eventually burned when fuckhead left. Like I mentioned before, there was a whole Benedict Cumberbartch movie made about the fallout there: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18…

Using the term 'Dumbshit' or 'fuckhead' doesn't give your argument credibility.

I'm not arguing anything, I'm recounting historical events. I don't need to beg for credibility, everything I'm saying is thoroughly documented on Wikipedia and various other sources. Daniel portrays himself as a hero in the book he wrote and in the movie he helped make, but he has been ostracized from the hacker community due to the atrocity of his actions.

Read his book, watch his movie. It's fascinating to see his perspective on how it all went down, but a lot of very bad people got away with some very bad things because of his actions, so forgive me for allowing a bit of contempt to seep through.

Re: CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]

#290
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you consider receiving state-hacked materials and leaking them in perfect coordination with a political campaign (see Roger Stone indictment) journalism, As I don't consider Assange to be a Russian agent, I don't have any issues with them receiving state-hacked information. They are under no obligation to determine the source's motive. And they are free to coordinate with a political campaign, they have the freed…

> And they are free to coordinate with a political campaign, they have the freedom of assembly as well as of the press. lol. "None of these things are crimes" is not the solid argument you think it is. To be a useful idiot aiding an autocratic government in their intelligence operations might not be technically illegal, but you give up all pretense of being "journalists" when you do so. > His discussions about Wikile…

>but you give up all pretense of being "journalists" when you do so

I do not have any idea what you consider to be journalism. Why would being a useful idiot make publishing politically relevant information eliminate your pretense of being a "journalist?"

>Again, not what we are talking about.

Then explain how Stone's indictment for spying is in anyway relevant to our discussion? I assumed you brought it up to claim Assange's actions were illegal, making prosecuting his actions not violate his freedom of the press. You just wanted to show he was in contact with GOP leaders?

>famous leaker is pro-leaker, what a shocking revelation

The relevant part was a judge saying he couldn't explain his actions. Assange's case was similarly run. They had no hope of a fair trial.

I had not heard of Zaid, my research pulled up this exchange he had though

>What result could Snowden have expected had he covered the bases and his butt by approaching an inspector general’s office or congressional committees?

And replied

>“Candidly,” Zaid said, “he likely would have been frustrated immensely with the lack of results from either, given the current posture.”

Though he's a vocal critic of Snowden, even he found it unlikely that the "proper channels" would have netted results.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/o...

And on the subject of moving goal posts, why have you changed from trying to show them as Russian agents to not journalists/whistleblowers?

Post reply on HN