Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment • Hacker News Board

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#221

Post by umvi » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

henearkr wrote: post #150

umvi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think would happen if an journalist started trying to help hackers recover secrets from French Intelligence agencies and then published them for the whole world to see? What if the leaked secrets were mostly true? Do you think the French Government would celebrate the journalist? Or would they do everything in their power to stop them?

That's an easy one, because spying on France industrial or state secrets by foreign powers happens all the time. For example: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/09/27/business/hacker... So, to answer your question: they do not try to extradite the foreign operators responsible to the leaks, and they do everything to strengthen their IT security. Also, they possibly build or reinforce their cyber-defense team to c…

> So, to answer your question: they do not try to extradite the foreign operators responsible to the leaks

Do you think that would change if they had more power?

It's like criticizing the response of a super corporation like Microsoft and saying a smaller company like GitLab handles the same scenario better. Probably true, but also if you scaled GitLab to the size and power of Microsoft, maybe they would've had a different response.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#222

Post by cletus » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

So Americans love nothing more than to see the world as a collection of slippery slopes so there'll be the Assange defenders who argue this is an attack on press freedom but... I urge you to look a little deeper.

There are two major issues here:

1. Assange actively participated in the acquisition of classified material. This came up in the Chelsea Manning. Pointing to tools that can be useful. Prompting action. That sort of thing; and

2. Assange was playing politics. This should've been clear from Assange's actions with respect to the DNC emails.

Think about (1) for a second. Imagine the Attorney General had committed a crime. Proof of that was in a safe in his house. Which of the following is acceptable conduct in obtaining that information?

- Breaking into his house to get it;

- Destroying the safe to get at the contents;

- Holding him at gunpoint to open the safe;

- Holding his family hostage until he provides the information;

- Hiring someone to do any of the above;

- Someone offers the information to you without you knowing how it came to be in their possession;

- Someone notifies you of the information's existence and location. You pay them to acquire it. Or give them a gun. Or threaten them if they don't.

The point of these examples is to show that:

1. There is no absolute defense here and certainly not "journalism". The alternative is robbing banks as an expression of journalistic freedom; and

2. If you commit a crime, you commit a crime and the authorities can prosecute you for that.

The other side of this is recent administrations seem to have adopted a disproportionate response approach to dealing with leaks and whistleblowers, likely as a deterrent (they hope).

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#223

Post by mint2 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #79

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…

Not sure I understand your point, he is not being indicted for publishing false information. Assuming he never did, why would that make the charges bullshit?

It’s a common talking point people use to obfuscate and defend wikileaks.

As you note, it’s irrelevant but also, if true, illustrates how selectively showing true info is deceptive.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#224

Post by _curious_ » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #171

aka1234 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too am shocked that Wikileaks would publish tabloidish material with little public value. Next thing you know, I'll hear that Wikileaks posted private emails of a government official talking about pizza. Emails which spawned ridiculous conspiracies about satanic child abuse cults headquartered in the basement of a pizza shop that doesn't have a basement. That would never happen. Not at an august, hard-hitting journ…

Still waiting for a valid explanation of what pizza is code for because they certainly aren’t talking about pizza the food in those emails.

Has it been proven that those emails were real in the first place?

I too was confused by the use of what appears to be coded language, but then thought to myself: wait, is what I am reading authentic?

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#225

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

It is not unexpected. Annoying, but not unexpected.

Incidentally, since Assange technically helped current president win, I am surprised he is not getting more lenient treatment. With Hillary I fully expected a vendetta.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#226

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

AnHonestComment wrote: post #114

thatlongthrow1 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I edited to include a source after you posted: the founder of BLM refers to herself as a trained Marxist. The reason people are speaking about it more now is such Marxist groups seized part of one city (Seattle) and staged riots nationally. Generally speaking, when an ideological group uses their network to stage violent riots, people talk about it. People such as Jordan Peterson or Michael Knowles have been speaking…

These people have nothing to do with classical Marxism.

The people who seized part of Seattle are anarchists, which, if you read about the history of the labor movement, broke with the Marxists in the 19th Century over some very fundamental issues of how they view society.

Modern identity politics is diametrically opposed to classical Marxism, whatever its proponents choose to call themselves, because it emphasizes identity over class. In those circles, calling someone a "class reductionist" is an insult.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#227

Post by 83uy2982983r80 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

stormdennis wrote: post #133

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HIV can cause Kaposi’s sarcoma, so that could have caused his cancer. It’s actually not that far outside the realm of possibility. Condom use was not very common in the 70s and one can live with HIV dormant for many years.

HIV wasn't around in the 1970s (in Western countries at least) and also Jobs wasn't in the more at-risk demographics for the disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_early_HIV/AIDS_cas...

"(...) These specimens are significant not only because they are the oldest specimens of the virus known to cause AIDS, but because they show that the virus already had an extensive amount of genetic diversity in 1960.[10] This suggests the virus had either undergone recombination or been circulating for years or perhaps decades in the Kinshasa population. (...)"

Additionally,

Richard Edwin Graves Jr., a 28-year-old World War II veteran who had been stationed in the Solomon Islands, died on 26 July 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee with pneumocystis pneumonia, CMV and what some authors suggest are a sufficient number of opportunistic infections for a clinical course suggestive of an AIDS diagnosis.[8][9]

Sadayo Fujisawa, a sixty-year-old Japanese-Canadian woman, died in Montreal on 28 June 1945 of pneumocystis pneumonia with Human cytomegalovirus (CMV), diarrhea, and wasting, a group of symptoms which some authors conclude would have led to an automatic diagnosis of AIDS in the early 1980s.[6][7]

The virus was already circulating globally in the early 1900s.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#228

Post by twirlock » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:16 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?

Hey look, it's one of those spooks who actually eats all the spook dog food. Lol!

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#229

Post by okamiueru » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

DavidVoid wrote: post #215

peroporque wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also important to remember: the supposed "rape charges" turned out to have been fabricated by the swedish police. There never was an actual rape accusation against him.

If you're going to make such grand accusations against the Swedish police then at least cite a damn source. With all the baseless claims this thread almost reads like /r/conspiracy ffs.

I thought this was well established and obvious for anyone who followed the case. The timeline for this whole ordeal, the motivation for the original complaints, the contact the suppose victims had and the messages they wrote after the fact. Not to mention the breach in anonymity for these cases in Sweden.

As such, I don't think these are "grand accusations", this is more what one should reasonably conclude, if you followed the case from the beginning.

Re: Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment

#230

Post by paulchap » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

annadane wrote: post #199

paulchap wrote: post #183

Maybe I'm just too much of a pessimist, but I think Assange (and others like him) are naive to assume that bringing leaks to the general public really has that much of an effect in today's world - people just don't care enough. You won't find many people actually reading the documents... maybe they notice those going viral, but that's probably it. People don't associate WikiLeaks with the idea of transparency, they a…

What are they meant to do then? Nothing? I'm super confused by your comment

I'm not saying they shouldn't have done what they did. I'm just saying that, from what I've read from him, Assange totally miscalculated the effect this would have on the public. The Manning Documents didn't lead to fundamental changes in society. Neither did leaking US diplomatic cables.

I'm not really criticizing their actions (well, I'm calling them naive, which, in retrospect, seems like a bad choice of words). If I'm criticizing anyone, it would be our society in general, which only engages with information in a very shallow fashion.