8 ms·

Want to Know Julian Assange’s Endgame? He Told You a Decade Ago

70 points by rainhacker 10y ago

carsongross 10y ago
I suppose one potential upside to a Trump presidency would be the possibility of a pardon for Assange and Snowden, out of sheer spite.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Not likely to happen. http://www.politicususa.com/2016/02/27/trump-freedom-press-not-people.html http://www.politicususa.com/2016/02/27/trump-freedom-press-n...
  - DominikR 10y ago
    This is not related in any way to whistleblowing. In fact what he wants to do is to hold media accountable for maliciously twisting information in order to manipulate public opinion and the elections. Can you honestly say that you feel he is treated in a fair way by the media and they are not trying their best to prevent a Trump presidency even if that includes outright lying? If he wanted to force them to lie for him it would be a completely different thing. But since he wants media to report more truthfully I see more alignment between Trump and Assange than seeing them at odds with each others.
    - jwatte 10y ago
      Yes, I can honestly say that the one who lies the most in the current media landscape is Trump himself. If anything, media has gone way too easy on Trump fact checking, perhaps because they make more money if the race is close!
      - wanderer2323 10y ago
        The most? Compared to "Nothing I've ever sent or received was marked classified" Hillary? Your 'honestly' is just like her 'honestly' it seems.
      - DominikR 10y ago
        I did not say Trump lies or doesn't lie. I say he isn't treated in a fair way and that there is a concerted effort by media to bring him down in any way they can. He's been in the media for 40 years without anyone calling him racist and he's been around supermodels without anyone calling him a sexual predator or anything like that. But all of a sudden they find he is all of that and even worse. And on the other hand, how much negative stuff is reported about Hillary? There certainly is lots of material with all that WikiLeaks has put out. Almost zero, she is instead praised like a Soviet leader. She's a wonderful human being and politician that somehow made $250 million while in office.
        Uehreka 10y ago
        He wasn't running for president before. The public can often turn a blind eye to a random celebrity, but not to a person who is running to represent them on the world stage. Furthermore, plenty has been said about Hillary. The Wikileaks leak was on the front page of the NYTimes, WaPo, and tons of other newspapers. So were the allegations about her health in September. Unfortunately for Trump, none of these attacks have stuck with voters.
        ams6110 10y ago
        Hillary is the most brazenly dishonest, corrupt individual I can think of to seek the presidency in my memory, which goes back to Nixon.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        eplanit 10y ago
        > none of these attacks have stuck with voters But "voters" haven't had a voice since the primaries...only the media has. "none...stuck with the voters" = not covered by the media.
    - mcphage 10y ago
      > But since he wants media to report more truthfully I see more alignment between Trump and Assange than seeing them at odds with each others. Does he? He seems pretty upset when media calls him on his lies. Or is that first "he" Assange?
- ajross 10y ago
  Assange is a refugee from Swedish law enforcement. A US pardon wouldn't help him.
  - waterphone 10y ago
    However, his excuse for not surrendering to Swedish law enforcement is that the U.S. could extradite/rendition him while in Swedish custody. Considering multiple U.S. officials have declared him an enemy of the U.S. and (including, allegedly, Hillary Clinton) even called for his assassination, it's perhaps not necessarily excessively paranoid.
    - ajross 10y ago
      And how would a pardon protect him against assassination?
DominikR 10y ago
Fascinating, I did not know that these were Assange's goals. I agree that there should be a way for Whistleblowers to legally leak information to the public in order to uncover illegal actions, but there should also be a process in place to prevent people from getting killed as a result. One example why this secrecy is hurting the West and most parts of the world is what is going on in Syria. A few weeks ago the US bombed a position of the Syrian army killing 80 soldiers, while ISIS launched an offensive on that same position almost simultaneously. Russia in response bombed some bunkers in Aleppo. What later came out was that apparently Russian soldiers were killed because they were present at the position where the US bombed and that about 30 US/French soldiers were killed in the bunker Russia struck in retaliation. (they were helping "moderate" Islamist opposition) Secrecy only allows governments to act in a way that could potentially cause a war with Russia and it also allows them to support Radical Islamic terrorists. Who exactly benefits from that? Not the West, not the Russians and certainly not the Syrians. I wouldn't have Millions of Arab men roaming the streets here in the EU, some of them plotting terror attacks, Syria would probably not even have had a civil war, Libya wouldn't be a large terrorist training camp and the same goes for Iraq. And people around the world want us dead for it, many parts of the world that once were safe to travel cannot be visited anymore. I just can't see how continuing in the current direction can have any other result than destroying our civilisation.
- jwatte 10y ago
  The "invisible hand" from Adam Smith works if rational actors make decisions based on perfect information. Currently, a large part of the US rejects rationality, and our governments and corporations give us nothing like perfect information. So, not surprising that the market fails to serve the people at large well.
- pvg 10y ago
  What later came out was that apparently Russian soldiers were killed because they were present at the position where the US bombed and that about 30 US/French soldiers were killed in the bunker Russia struck in retaliation. Where did this 'come out'? Either of these, as you describe them, would have been a major international incident.
dmix 10y ago
But if wasn't for Russia they wouldn't have been incentivized to leak the recent dumps and hacks like that wouldn't have happened otherwise. /s Assange may be flawed but no one can accuse him of not being ideologically consistent here.
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  what are you talking about? your first paragraph is completely unintelligible. you realize Russia gave them the documents to leak right? no one is saying they gave them an incentive. they are just pawns and will release anything they get.
  - Tannic 10y ago
    There is no actual evidence it came from Russia. Even the "official statement" from DHS is ridiculously vague to the point of meaninglessness. Assange implied heavily the DNC leaks came from a staffer who was subsequently murdered...
  - dmix 10y ago
    > they are just pawns and will release anything they get The media can and often does publish anything they get from government sources. Wikileaks isn't unique here. NYT is notorious for writing articles daily with "anonymous government sources" as the only source. Often unquestionably supporting a pro-US policy position. Does that make NYT/WaPo/etc pawns? Wikileaks is not immune from being manipulated by Intel agencies to push agendas. You're fooling yourself if you think the news organizations who have been accusing Wikileaks of doing this with moral outrage aren't also doing the same. There's probably a good argument in favour of the fact Wikileaks actually releases the raw data without caring about the source. Rather than continually taking quotes from 'anonymous' sources while feigning neutrality.
    - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
      i didn't pass any judgement in using the word "pawns" or say that other news sources weren't. i've actually been a supporter of wikileaks for years. the post i was responding to however highly suggested that somehow the russians weren't involved which is silly bs promoted by trump. i also do feel that a source like wikileaks can be dangerous in the situation were currently in where one side of a political race has a bunch of its stuff leaked but the other side has none.
jwatte 10y ago
Is there a niche for a closed information system that doesn't allow easy dumps? Like, Lotus Notes, except run through a bitmap video stream to a secure server?
- gruez 10y ago
  In other words, put all the sensitive documents on a server and make everyone access them using a thin client?
sverige 10y ago
I've always thought Assange was a bit of a twit. This actually makes sense, though. I wish there were someone willing to leak the secrets of lots of other organizations, but I won't name them because I don't want to be killed for saying that.
- Uehreka 10y ago
  I'm tired of seeing this kind of paranoid attitude on HN, so here it goes: I'd love it if Wikileaks released tons of documents exposing the DEA, FBI, CIA, NSA, DoD, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, Peter Thiel's vampire cult and everything that happened in Bohemian Grove. From my HN username, you can link to my Twitter handle, and then my website, which has my real name. Do your worst, I'm here to teach the controversy.
  - kilroy123 10y ago
    Peter Thiel's vampire cult?
    - Uehreka 10y ago
      Yeah, so... He intends to live forever by injecting himself with the blood of younger people (along with HGH, etc.). Google "peter thiel blood", or just check out this article, he seems pretty serious about this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2016/08/02/peter-thiel-is-out-for-young-peoples-blood/#3d3711dce864 http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2016/08/02/peter-thiel-...
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        It's pretty amusing when you consider it's based on mouse study involving geriatric and juvenile mice surgically joined. Pretty typically the "shared vascular system" thing has been diluted to its "take a multivitamin" form which appears to be, "A bit of young blood can help". It's laughable, but no one ever said that having money freed you from the terror of your own extinction, or made you any brighter than you were born.
mcphage 10y ago
Getting rid of all organizational secrecy seems like a pretty bad goal—it makes negotiation impossible.
- dmix 10y ago
  Bad for whom? Those benefiting from the negotiation results? The problem is that with secrecy the latter has historically tendend not to be the public who the negotiators are supposed to represent. See TPP or if you're from EU/Canada see CETA for the rewards of secret negotiations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Trade_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Tra... Once trust erodes in the state these leaks tend to happen such as in the Iraq war post WMD debacle with the Manning leaks, or NSA preceding Snowden leaks, outcry over TTP negotiations, etc, etc, there is a real positive incentive in transparency over the benefits that come from secrecy. Otherwise the government has a habit of losing sight of whose interests they are supposed to be representing.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    > Bad for whom? Those benefiting from the negotiation results? Bad for everyone involved. Not every deal is bad, and deals often can happen only because good gets packaged with the bad. If every negotiation happened in public, no nations would ever be able to sign agreements with one another. That's a recipe for paralysis and disaster.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." - Adam Smith
    - dmix 10y ago
      > only because good gets packaged with the bad. Particularly when the packaging is done without scrutiny. Or waiting for scrutiny until after the fact where it becomes a black or white proposal... past the negotiation stage where details are debated. The public is left to mearly accept or deny it. Just look at CETA, a particularly harmful clause was dropped only after they were called out for lacking transparency and decided to respond to the public uproar. Even with that minor revision the whole deal is at risk of totally failing because it contains too many controversial sections to pass each EU legislatior. Had they considered and included the public years earlier, rather than focusing just on the vested parties in backroom negotiation, this could have been avoided. The public shouldnt have to fight tooth and nail be listened to. If they were capable of making good deals in secret in a way that maintained the public trust then I'd otherwise completely agree with you. Because it's inefficient otherwise. But given the string of policies that came out recently, trust clearly has eroded and these types of deals are a good example of why.
mruniverse 10y ago
I don't understand. No privacy for organizations or no privacy for everyone? And who decides what an organization is? Two people? Three?
- contingencies 10y ago
  This tired argument is neither logical nor relevant. The reality is that in a pre-Wikileaks world, leaks also existed. The new reality is not "evil persona holds dagger to your throat", rather that motivated persons are empowered to securely spill secrets the world over. By turning around the fallacious "nothing to hide" argument, Assange is making some secretive groups quite literally pay and squirm against the possibility of unknown assailants and the 'threat' of real transparency. Good job.
  - justifier 10y ago
    fair, but the parent was bringing attention to the notion of editorialising received leaks pay and squirm sounds vindicative and that sentiment is self referencing because the ones paying and squirming are doing so because how they would editorialise is fundamentally different then those doing the editorialising from the site as of this writing under the submit page(o): > WikiLeaks publishes documents of political or historical importance that are censored or otherwise suppressed. We specialise in strategic global publishing and large archives. importance is the language of an editor.. censor? (o) https://wikileaks.com/#submit https://wikileaks.com/#submit
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    There can be another argument in this, leaks effectively only affect already open and democratic societies, since authoritarian regimes are considerably less vulnerable to them and even immune natural selection would actually play against you. Leaks may very well not lead to some liberal pseudo anarchist utopia but lead to further consolidation of power, secrecy and more and more tougher reactions and control of information. And while you might think that this won't happen it will, leaks don't play that well in the public when they start touching individuals especially when you can spin them as an attack. Unconditional release of information especially in large leaks leads to the public being against the leakers. Releasing some DNC emails/documents might be acceptable by the majority of the public, releasing all the documents including donor information and private information of simple low level employees, volunteers or anyone who has registered or shown interest in a political party would not be well received by the public even without any spins.
sergiotapia 10y ago
>The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. Precisely. It's funny how the media and Clinton campaign want to spin this as "The Russians!", and completely ignore the cesspool contained within those leaks.
redthrowaway 10y ago
It's been pretty obvious for a number of years that his endgame is whatever Putin dictates. This election has simply made it harder to deny that Wikileaks operates as a front for Russian intelligence, but the evidence was there years ago. Their deep involvement in the Snowden affair and their steering him towards Russia and arranging for him to obtain Russian travel documents to that end should have been a much bigger story than it was at the time.
- tanderson92 10y ago
  And Snowden has what exactly to do with Wikileaks? (apart from criticizing their means of releasing documents: not a thing) As for your statement that Snowden fled to Russia: false! Snowden was on his way to latin america and the State Dept froze his passport en route, stranding him in Moscow when his plane landed for a connection. This misinformation will never die. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Russia
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    Well, on the subject of Russia and WL, today there was the allegation that RT (that's Russia Today, guess where they're based) had information about WL's latest "leaks" before WL had announced them. Some kind of information channel must exist there.
    - tanderson92 10y ago
      What does that have to do with Snowden?
      - ubernostrum 10y ago
        The comment you replied to began by saying: This election has simply made it harder to deny that Wikileaks operates as a front for Russian intelligence, but the evidence was there years ago.
update 10y ago
The author of this Wired piece: > Trump has, of course, faced the leaks of his 1995 tax returns and a [1]damning video where he brags about sexual assault The author links to an article with this headline: [1] "Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005" != "Trump brags about sexual assault" (implying guilt) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-havin... I do not like the opinion/politicization going on in the article. There is no evidence of sexual assault in the tape the author links. Makes me question the bias of this whole article...
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  There is no evidence of sexual assault in the tape the author links. The quotes from Trump state outright that he engages in sexual conduct with women, without obtaining consent from them to do so. Engaging in sexual conduct with someone without their consent is sexual assault.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    It's sexual assault if they press charges and successfully convict the offender. The US may have a lot of unsavory parts, but rule of law and presumption of innocence are not one of them. Perhaps the progressives can stop trying to undermine them in the name of unguided censorship (e.g. trying to censor "bro banter" by painting it as sexual assault) Was it even a non-private conversation?
    - update 10y ago
      > The US may have a lot of unsavory parts, but rule of law and presumption of innocence are not one of them. Perhaps the progressives can stop trying to undermine them in the name of unguided censorship (e.g. trying to censor "bro banter" by painting it as sexual assault) This is my point exactly. Yet somehow I've gotten 4 downvotes for stating so. To be fair, I was prepared to be downvoted for that comment. Anything remotely pro-trump here is downvoted to hell.
_nalply 10y ago
This is my understanding. Secret organisations with hidden agendas are at a disadvantage. They have to reduce internal communication because secrets leak. However this cripples them. In the long term they can't compete against transparent and beneficial organisations. This leads to a better world. This is brilliant. Mr Assange is worth a Peace Nobel prize.
- Tiquor 10y ago
  The problem is they also leak a lot of just petty human stuff between government functionaries. The tool is blunter than Asange makes it out to be.
- davidy123 10y ago
  Any organization that uses organized communication methods is at a disadvantage. The more they do so, the more they are at a disadvantage. If an organization using digital communications produced 10000 "units" of good and 100 units of bad, and another organization that did not produced 100 units of good and 10000 units of bad, the organization using digital communication will be at a huge disadvantage in Assange's world. This is not a positive effect if digital communications are valued. It makes me think of this fascinating article [1]: «The problem, Seetah said, was that these protests led to a situation where butchers were afraid to let the public see how animals are killed. So they stopped bull-baiting, but a new lack of transparency descended on the meat industry. And that led directly to the hidden abattoir system, which ultimately led to more abuse. So there's a kind of vicious circle, where humanity's ethical concerns about butchery can actually backfire and drive the practice of meat production out of public view.» and I'm concerned that Wikileaks in its striving for stature is going to end up subverting political system by trying to play games to force them to be better — though of course what I would like to see is a completely transparent form of government. 1. http://arstechnica.com/video/2016/04/ars-technica-live-1-the-archaeology-of-meat-and-butchery-with-guest-krish-seetah/ http://arstechnica.com/video/2016/04/ars-technica-live-1-the...

70 points by rainhacker 10y ago

I suppose one potential upside to a Trump presidency would be the possibility of a pardon for Assange and Snowden, out of sheer spite.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
Not likely to happen. http://www.politicususa.com/2016/02/27/trump-freedom-press-not-people.html http://www.politicususa.com/2016/02/27/trump-freedom-press-n...
- DominikR 10y ago
  This is not related in any way to whistleblowing. In fact what he wants to do is to hold media accountable for maliciously twisting information in order to manipulate public opinion and the elections. Can you honestly say that you feel he is treated in a fair way by the media and they are not trying their best to prevent a Trump presidency even if that includes outright lying? If he wanted to force them to lie for him it would be a completely different thing. But since he wants media to report more truthfully I see more alignment between Trump and Assange than seeing them at odds with each others.
  - jwatte 10y ago
    Yes, I can honestly say that the one who lies the most in the current media landscape is Trump himself. If anything, media has gone way too easy on Trump fact checking, perhaps because they make more money if the race is close!
    - wanderer2323 10y ago
      The most? Compared to "Nothing I've ever sent or received was marked classified" Hillary? Your 'honestly' is just like her 'honestly' it seems.
    - DominikR 10y ago
      I did not say Trump lies or doesn't lie. I say he isn't treated in a fair way and that there is a concerted effort by media to bring him down in any way they can. He's been in the media for 40 years without anyone calling him racist and he's been around supermodels without anyone calling him a sexual predator or anything like that. But all of a sudden they find he is all of that and even worse. And on the other hand, how much negative stuff is reported about Hillary? There certainly is lots of material with all that WikiLeaks has put out. Almost zero, she is instead praised like a Soviet leader. She's a wonderful human being and politician that somehow made $250 million while in office.
      - Uehreka 10y ago
        He wasn't running for president before. The public can often turn a blind eye to a random celebrity, but not to a person who is running to represent them on the world stage. Furthermore, plenty has been said about Hillary. The Wikileaks leak was on the front page of the NYTimes, WaPo, and tons of other newspapers. So were the allegations about her health in September. Unfortunately for Trump, none of these attacks have stuck with voters.
        ams6110 10y ago
        Hillary is the most brazenly dishonest, corrupt individual I can think of to seek the presidency in my memory, which goes back to Nixon.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        eplanit 10y ago
        > none of these attacks have stuck with voters But "voters" haven't had a voice since the primaries...only the media has. "none...stuck with the voters" = not covered by the media.
  - mcphage 10y ago
    > But since he wants media to report more truthfully I see more alignment between Trump and Assange than seeing them at odds with each others. Does he? He seems pretty upset when media calls him on his lies. Or is that first "he" Assange?
ajross 10y ago
Assange is a refugee from Swedish law enforcement. A US pardon wouldn't help him.
- waterphone 10y ago
  However, his excuse for not surrendering to Swedish law enforcement is that the U.S. could extradite/rendition him while in Swedish custody. Considering multiple U.S. officials have declared him an enemy of the U.S. and (including, allegedly, Hillary Clinton) even called for his assassination, it's perhaps not necessarily excessively paranoid.
  - ajross 10y ago
    And how would a pardon protect him against assassination?

DominikR 10y ago

Fascinating, I did not know that these were Assange's goals. I agree that there should be a way for Whistleblowers to legally leak information to the public in order to uncover illegal actions, but there should also be a process in place to prevent people from getting killed as a result. One example why this secrecy is hurting the West and most parts of the world is what is going on in Syria. A few weeks ago the US bombed a position of the Syrian army killing 80 soldiers, while ISIS launched an offensive on that same position almost simultaneously. Russia in response bombed some bunkers in Aleppo. What later came out was that apparently Russian soldiers were killed because they were present at the position where the US bombed and that about 30 US/French soldiers were killed in the bunker Russia struck in retaliation. (they were helping "moderate" Islamist opposition) Secrecy only allows governments to act in a way that could potentially cause a war with Russia and it also allows them to support Radical Islamic terrorists. Who exactly benefits from that? Not the West, not the Russians and certainly not the Syrians. I wouldn't have Millions of Arab men roaming the streets here in the EU, some of them plotting terror attacks, Syria would probably not even have had a civil war, Libya wouldn't be a large terrorist training camp and the same goes for Iraq. And people around the world want us dead for it, many parts of the world that once were safe to travel cannot be visited anymore. I just can't see how continuing in the current direction can have any other result than destroying our civilisation.

jwatte 10y ago
The "invisible hand" from Adam Smith works if rational actors make decisions based on perfect information. Currently, a large part of the US rejects rationality, and our governments and corporations give us nothing like perfect information. So, not surprising that the market fails to serve the people at large well.
pvg 10y ago
What later came out was that apparently Russian soldiers were killed because they were present at the position where the US bombed and that about 30 US/French soldiers were killed in the bunker Russia struck in retaliation. Where did this 'come out'? Either of these, as you describe them, would have been a major international incident.

dmix 10y ago

But if wasn't for Russia they wouldn't have been incentivized to leak the recent dumps and hacks like that wouldn't have happened otherwise. /s Assange may be flawed but no one can accuse him of not being ideologically consistent here.

thesimpsons1022 10y ago
what are you talking about? your first paragraph is completely unintelligible. you realize Russia gave them the documents to leak right? no one is saying they gave them an incentive. they are just pawns and will release anything they get.
- Tannic 10y ago
  There is no actual evidence it came from Russia. Even the "official statement" from DHS is ridiculously vague to the point of meaninglessness. Assange implied heavily the DNC leaks came from a staffer who was subsequently murdered...
- dmix 10y ago
  > they are just pawns and will release anything they get The media can and often does publish anything they get from government sources. Wikileaks isn't unique here. NYT is notorious for writing articles daily with "anonymous government sources" as the only source. Often unquestionably supporting a pro-US policy position. Does that make NYT/WaPo/etc pawns? Wikileaks is not immune from being manipulated by Intel agencies to push agendas. You're fooling yourself if you think the news organizations who have been accusing Wikileaks of doing this with moral outrage aren't also doing the same. There's probably a good argument in favour of the fact Wikileaks actually releases the raw data without caring about the source. Rather than continually taking quotes from 'anonymous' sources while feigning neutrality.
  - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
    i didn't pass any judgement in using the word "pawns" or say that other news sources weren't. i've actually been a supporter of wikileaks for years. the post i was responding to however highly suggested that somehow the russians weren't involved which is silly bs promoted by trump. i also do feel that a source like wikileaks can be dangerous in the situation were currently in where one side of a political race has a bunch of its stuff leaked but the other side has none.

jwatte 10y ago

Is there a niche for a closed information system that doesn't allow easy dumps? Like, Lotus Notes, except run through a bitmap video stream to a secure server?

gruez 10y ago
In other words, put all the sensitive documents on a server and make everyone access them using a thin client?

sverige 10y ago

I've always thought Assange was a bit of a twit. This actually makes sense, though. I wish there were someone willing to leak the secrets of lots of other organizations, but I won't name them because I don't want to be killed for saying that.

Uehreka 10y ago
I'm tired of seeing this kind of paranoid attitude on HN, so here it goes: I'd love it if Wikileaks released tons of documents exposing the DEA, FBI, CIA, NSA, DoD, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, Peter Thiel's vampire cult and everything that happened in Bohemian Grove. From my HN username, you can link to my Twitter handle, and then my website, which has my real name. Do your worst, I'm here to teach the controversy.
- kilroy123 10y ago
  Peter Thiel's vampire cult?
  - Uehreka 10y ago
    Yeah, so... He intends to live forever by injecting himself with the blood of younger people (along with HGH, etc.). Google "peter thiel blood", or just check out this article, he seems pretty serious about this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2016/08/02/peter-thiel-is-out-for-young-peoples-blood/#3d3711dce864 http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2016/08/02/peter-thiel-...
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      It's pretty amusing when you consider it's based on mouse study involving geriatric and juvenile mice surgically joined. Pretty typically the "shared vascular system" thing has been diluted to its "take a multivitamin" form which appears to be, "A bit of young blood can help". It's laughable, but no one ever said that having money freed you from the terror of your own extinction, or made you any brighter than you were born.

mcphage 10y ago

Getting rid of all organizational secrecy seems like a pretty bad goal—it makes negotiation impossible.

dmix 10y ago
Bad for whom? Those benefiting from the negotiation results? The problem is that with secrecy the latter has historically tendend not to be the public who the negotiators are supposed to represent. See TPP or if you're from EU/Canada see CETA for the rewards of secret negotiations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Trade_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Tra... Once trust erodes in the state these leaks tend to happen such as in the Iraq war post WMD debacle with the Manning leaks, or NSA preceding Snowden leaks, outcry over TTP negotiations, etc, etc, there is a real positive incentive in transparency over the benefits that come from secrecy. Otherwise the government has a habit of losing sight of whose interests they are supposed to be representing.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  > Bad for whom? Those benefiting from the negotiation results? Bad for everyone involved. Not every deal is bad, and deals often can happen only because good gets packaged with the bad. If every negotiation happened in public, no nations would ever be able to sign agreements with one another. That's a recipe for paralysis and disaster.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." - Adam Smith
  - dmix 10y ago
    > only because good gets packaged with the bad. Particularly when the packaging is done without scrutiny. Or waiting for scrutiny until after the fact where it becomes a black or white proposal... past the negotiation stage where details are debated. The public is left to mearly accept or deny it. Just look at CETA, a particularly harmful clause was dropped only after they were called out for lacking transparency and decided to respond to the public uproar. Even with that minor revision the whole deal is at risk of totally failing because it contains too many controversial sections to pass each EU legislatior. Had they considered and included the public years earlier, rather than focusing just on the vested parties in backroom negotiation, this could have been avoided. The public shouldnt have to fight tooth and nail be listened to. If they were capable of making good deals in secret in a way that maintained the public trust then I'd otherwise completely agree with you. Because it's inefficient otherwise. But given the string of policies that came out recently, trust clearly has eroded and these types of deals are a good example of why.

mruniverse 10y ago

I don't understand. No privacy for organizations or no privacy for everyone? And who decides what an organization is? Two people? Three?

contingencies 10y ago
This tired argument is neither logical nor relevant. The reality is that in a pre-Wikileaks world, leaks also existed. The new reality is not "evil persona holds dagger to your throat", rather that motivated persons are empowered to securely spill secrets the world over. By turning around the fallacious "nothing to hide" argument, Assange is making some secretive groups quite literally pay and squirm against the possibility of unknown assailants and the 'threat' of real transparency. Good job.
- justifier 10y ago
  fair, but the parent was bringing attention to the notion of editorialising received leaks pay and squirm sounds vindicative and that sentiment is self referencing because the ones paying and squirming are doing so because how they would editorialise is fundamentally different then those doing the editorialising from the site as of this writing under the submit page(o): > WikiLeaks publishes documents of political or historical importance that are censored or otherwise suppressed. We specialise in strategic global publishing and large archives. importance is the language of an editor.. censor? (o) https://wikileaks.com/#submit https://wikileaks.com/#submit
- dogma1138 10y ago
  There can be another argument in this, leaks effectively only affect already open and democratic societies, since authoritarian regimes are considerably less vulnerable to them and even immune natural selection would actually play against you. Leaks may very well not lead to some liberal pseudo anarchist utopia but lead to further consolidation of power, secrecy and more and more tougher reactions and control of information. And while you might think that this won't happen it will, leaks don't play that well in the public when they start touching individuals especially when you can spin them as an attack. Unconditional release of information especially in large leaks leads to the public being against the leakers. Releasing some DNC emails/documents might be acceptable by the majority of the public, releasing all the documents including donor information and private information of simple low level employees, volunteers or anyone who has registered or shown interest in a political party would not be well received by the public even without any spins.

sergiotapia 10y ago

>The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. Precisely. It's funny how the media and Clinton campaign want to spin this as "The Russians!", and completely ignore the cesspool contained within those leaks.

redthrowaway 10y ago

It's been pretty obvious for a number of years that his endgame is whatever Putin dictates. This election has simply made it harder to deny that Wikileaks operates as a front for Russian intelligence, but the evidence was there years ago. Their deep involvement in the Snowden affair and their steering him towards Russia and arranging for him to obtain Russian travel documents to that end should have been a much bigger story than it was at the time.

tanderson92 10y ago
And Snowden has what exactly to do with Wikileaks? (apart from criticizing their means of releasing documents: not a thing) As for your statement that Snowden fled to Russia: false! Snowden was on his way to latin america and the State Dept froze his passport en route, stranding him in Moscow when his plane landed for a connection. This misinformation will never die. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Russia
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  Well, on the subject of Russia and WL, today there was the allegation that RT (that's Russia Today, guess where they're based) had information about WL's latest "leaks" before WL had announced them. Some kind of information channel must exist there.
  - tanderson92 10y ago
    What does that have to do with Snowden?
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      The comment you replied to began by saying: This election has simply made it harder to deny that Wikileaks operates as a front for Russian intelligence, but the evidence was there years ago.

update 10y ago

The author of this Wired piece: > Trump has, of course, faced the leaks of his 1995 tax returns and a [1]damning video where he brags about sexual assault The author links to an article with this headline: [1] "Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005" != "Trump brags about sexual assault" (implying guilt) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-havin... I do not like the opinion/politicization going on in the article. There is no evidence of sexual assault in the tape the author links. Makes me question the bias of this whole article...

ubernostrum 10y ago
There is no evidence of sexual assault in the tape the author links. The quotes from Trump state outright that he engages in sexual conduct with women, without obtaining consent from them to do so. Engaging in sexual conduct with someone without their consent is sexual assault.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- antisthenes 10y ago
  It's sexual assault if they press charges and successfully convict the offender. The US may have a lot of unsavory parts, but rule of law and presumption of innocence are not one of them. Perhaps the progressives can stop trying to undermine them in the name of unguided censorship (e.g. trying to censor "bro banter" by painting it as sexual assault) Was it even a non-private conversation?
  - update 10y ago
    > The US may have a lot of unsavory parts, but rule of law and presumption of innocence are not one of them. Perhaps the progressives can stop trying to undermine them in the name of unguided censorship (e.g. trying to censor "bro banter" by painting it as sexual assault) This is my point exactly. Yet somehow I've gotten 4 downvotes for stating so. To be fair, I was prepared to be downvoted for that comment. Anything remotely pro-trump here is downvoted to hell.

_nalply 10y ago

This is my understanding. Secret organisations with hidden agendas are at a disadvantage. They have to reduce internal communication because secrets leak. However this cripples them. In the long term they can't compete against transparent and beneficial organisations. This leads to a better world. This is brilliant. Mr Assange is worth a Peace Nobel prize.

Tiquor 10y ago
The problem is they also leak a lot of just petty human stuff between government functionaries. The tool is blunter than Asange makes it out to be.
davidy123 10y ago
Any organization that uses organized communication methods is at a disadvantage. The more they do so, the more they are at a disadvantage. If an organization using digital communications produced 10000 "units" of good and 100 units of bad, and another organization that did not produced 100 units of good and 10000 units of bad, the organization using digital communication will be at a huge disadvantage in Assange's world. This is not a positive effect if digital communications are valued. It makes me think of this fascinating article [1]: «The problem, Seetah said, was that these protests led to a situation where butchers were afraid to let the public see how animals are killed. So they stopped bull-baiting, but a new lack of transparency descended on the meat industry. And that led directly to the hidden abattoir system, which ultimately led to more abuse. So there's a kind of vicious circle, where humanity's ethical concerns about butchery can actually backfire and drive the practice of meat production out of public view.» and I'm concerned that Wikileaks in its striving for stature is going to end up subverting political system by trying to play games to force them to be better — though of course what I would like to see is a completely transparent form of government. 1. http://arstechnica.com/video/2016/04/ars-technica-live-1-the-archaeology-of-meat-and-butchery-with-guest-krish-seetah/ http://arstechnica.com/video/2016/04/ars-technica-live-1-the...