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Mass Hacks of Private Email Aren’t Whistleblowing, They Are at Odds with It
- camperman 10y ago"But to anyone who sees civic and political participation as the most important way to advance democracy, and to beat back any capture by special interests, this is not medicine. It is poison." Nonsense. The mass hacks have shone much-needed light into formerly dark places. It's a bit late to think civic and political participation has a chance against sentiment like this: "And as I've mentioned, we've all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry", from https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3599 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3599
- mazelife 10y agoI don't believe the passage you quote from supports your assertion in any way. Here it is in full: "I'm certain the poll-directed insiders are sure things will default to policy as soon as the conventions are over, but I think not. And as I've mentioned, we've all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness remains strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly. This problem demands some serious, serious thinking - and not just poll driven, demographically-inspired messaging." To unpack that (along with context from the rest of the email), Podesta's correspondent is bemoaning the fact that politics has begun to be covered as entertainment and celebrity gossip. He suggests that any hope that things will take a turn for the better after the election is misplaced, and that there's a larger issue: "we"—and by this he clearly means media elites, people in public office, and in general the milieu to which he belongs rather than some shadowy cabal of which he is a member—have not upheld their duty to help keep an informed and skeptical citizenry. He suggests that misguided attempts by the media to keep people compliant and docile have started to wear thin, but that in the absence of information and understanding all that anger is liable to attach itself to a demagogue like Donald Trump. In short, he is advocating the exact thing mentioned in the article: informed civic and political participation! This is a perfectly anodyne line of thinking, and I don't really see what cause is served by stealing and leaking this person's private correspondence. And who is this dark and Machiavellian correspondent? This guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey
- camperman 10y ago"To unpack that, Podesta's correspondent is bemoaning the fact that politics has begun to be covered as entertainment and celebrity gossip." I thought he was saying they've all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and conspire to produce a compliant and unaware citizenry. That's what he says. "He suggests that any hope that things will take a turn for the better after the election is misplaced, and that there's a larger issue: "we"—and by this he clearly means media elites, people in public office, and in general the milieu to which he belongs rather than some shadowy cabal of which he is a member—have not upheld their duty to help keep an informed and skeptical citizenry." Except he says 'we've all been quite content to ... conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry', exactly the opposite meaning. "He suggests that misguided attempts by the media to keep people compliant and docile have started to wear thin but that in the absence of information and understanding all that anger is liable to attach itself to a demagogue like Donald Trump." Indeed. "In short, he is advocating the exact thing mentioned in the article: informed civic and political participation!" War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. "And who is this dark and Machiavellian correspondent? This guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey" So, a close confidant of the Clintons (Bill made him Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts) and with strong connections to the current Dems (team leader in Arts and Humanities for the Obama transition).
- dsp1234 10y agoWar is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Ignoring Context is Enlightenment.
- burkaman 10y agoLet me compare this sentence with a similar example. When Obama says something like "we've been blind to the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts on this nation", does that mean he's advocating being blind? Is he explaining why he supports more mayhem? Is he literally talking about himself, or is this a different use of the word "we"? Is it possible that sometimes people exaggerate a position of the establishment that they are themselves a part of, in order to make a point and push for a change?
- pandalicious 10y agoDid you even read that email? It's from an academic in the Arts and Humanities world and the whole email is basically just a guy waxing philosophic to Podesta about the current election. In context, there is NOTHING revelatory about that email. It's just private correspondence. That email is the perfect example of wikileaks publishing material irresponsibly. There is nothing in there that is in the public interest, nothing to justify the violation of the privacy of Podesta or the sender.
- camperman 10y ago"It's from an academic in the Arts and Humanities world and the whole email is basically just a guy waxing philosophic" Not just 'a guy' - a highly intelligent, extremely well-connected confidant of the Clintons who used to serve in President Clinton's administration and who has warned before of the dangers of this approach. "That email is the perfect example of wikileaks publishing material irresponsibly. There is nothing in there that is in the public interest, nothing to justify the violation of the privacy of Podesta or the sender." Preach it, unaware and compliant citizen, preach it.
- maxerickson 10y agoHe's being cynical there, rejecting the contentment, not endorsing it.
- gavinpc 10y agoPlease update your post to indicate that the quote is taken from a message to Podesta. The URL is misleading as you have it.
- camperman 10y agoI don't make Wikileaks URLs - they do. If someone can't be bothered to click a link and see what the context of a quote is, then I'm not going to spoonfeed them.
- jsprogrammer 10y ago>As Steven Levy has observed, this sort of leak is a digital counterpart to what had been sought by the Watergate burglars by bugging the offices of the DNC — occasioned through hacking, rather than breaking and entering. Watergate thus looms not only as an example of a cover-up that was revealed through whistleblowing — the covered-up burglary was itself a roundly-denounced, and criminal, attempt to procure a political rival’s private conversations. I'd never heard that the Nixon team planned to release their recordings to the public.
- mcv 10y agoIs any invasion of privacy okay as long as the results are released to the public? I think to many people that would be even worse than only having the government snoop at their private email. The point of whistleblowing is that you reveal actual crimes, not just sharing private conversations.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoThe US has a prohibition on government snooping. There is no such prohibition on private intelligence gathering; in fact, the publication of such intelligence is specifically protected.
- mcv 10y agoReally? There's no protection for communication between private individuals in the US?
- vkou 10y agoStrange - in my state, recording a conversation without notifying the other party is a felony.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoSounds like a seriously repressive state. If the law were used, it could be invalidated as it is in violation of a person's right to make records of their observations and, especially, their right to publish those records.
- trendia 10y agoMany, but not all, of the emails about to be released would have been subject to: 1) subpoena 2) FOIA request So Americans (either government officials or private citizens) should have had access to them anyway. Public servants in the US make a deal: if they want control or influence over the legislative process, then they have to be willing to release their emails. Of course -- I dislike releasing emails for purely partisan purposes or releasing emails that don't expose any wrongdoing. But, if we do not have some sort of punishment for people who refuse to respond to subpoenas or FOIA requests, then we open the door for these rules to be ignored.
- tunap 10y agoAnd additionally severe punishments for those who knowingly circumvent said checks & balances. GW had his private email server, just like HRC.
- unethical_ban 10y agoIs the Democratic National Committee held to FOIA requests? It is a private organization.
- trendia 10y agoDNC is not subject to FOIA, but it makes you wonder whether they should be. They are intricately linked to the government, have immense influence over the policies of their Congresspeople, and get to pick 1 of the 2 candidates who will likely become President.
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoWhen you have an oligopoly on government, you shouldn't be counted as private anymore. Either the major political parties become publicly-owned, democratically accountable organizations, or we need to switch to proportional representation. Or both.
- maxerickson 10y agoWhen you force them to record their in person meetings, they will just have extra in person meetings that they don't record. I don't see where else the line of thinking that we deserve to have access to their email ends up, and it's pretty easy to argue that Podesta picking the brains of people he knows is not actually official party business.
- gjolund 10y agoThinly veiled propaganda. Until our government actually starts being transparent these hacks are the only insight into the actual thoughts and motivations of our world leaders.
- trendia 10y agoThe government reads Americans emails: "Deal with it." Americans read the government's emails: "This is an outrage!"
- mtgx 10y agoThis is really the only thing you need to say to people having the same views as the author. It's the government that should be the more transparent one - not the citizens, who are supposed to "own" the government. Yet things are very much the other way around right now - by a long shot. Government secrecy has only expanded under Obama, even after promising more transparency compared to Bush's own secrecy. Almost every remotely sensitive government document gets "classified" these days. This nonsense needs to stop. It's even worse when the media colludes with the government to tell citizens that it's "illegal" to read these emails. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161019/07004935835/cnn-tells-viewers-illegal-them-to-read-wikileaks-document-dumps-cnn-is-wrong.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161019/07004935835/cnn-t...
- refurb 10y agoYou do realize that gov't emails are supposed to be public, right? That's the law.
- trendia 10y agoOf course -- through FOIA and recent subpoenas -- which is why the outrage over the release of these emails is even more hypocritical
- schoen 10y agoI'm sure that Zittrain doesn't think that the government reading the public's e-mails is OK. While this asymmetry is certainly a charge that could be raised against many people, I don't think it works against this particular author. I'm pretty confident Zittrain would like to see greatly reduced government secrecy and greatly increased privacy protections and doesn't mean to defend the status quo around either of those things.
- squozzer 10y agoWere we in another era, where citizens and governments acted harmoniously in the interests of the people, I would probably agree with the author. But we're not. We're in a cold war, not with Russia or China, but with our own government, who views the citizenry as a threat pool, even when history overwhelmingly reveals that most threats to governments come from opportunists within governments, and not from plebian revolts or terrorists. FWIW, the DNC leaks have been rather underwhelming, at best revealing that nominating a candidate for POTUS is not much different than nominating a high school class president, i.e. it's mostly an exercise in clique formation. The author might better spend their time and energy teaching the government how to act transparently and respect privacy than trying to convince the proles their sense of payback is immoral.
- zemo 10y agothis is a gorgeously written piece. The knee-jerk reactions in here that this is propaganda without merit seem to lack reading comprehension or imagination. The piece does not say "never leak emails ever", the piece says "only link emails that are of civil interest", which is exactly the position that Snowden has been espousing for some time. It says "with great power comes great responsibility", not "all hackers are bad! obey the government!" It doubly says that if we permit all leaked emails, governments could use this against us by leaking things anonymously. The suggestion here is that honoring anonymously leaked troves of emails without considering their civil merit is itself a back door around the fourth amendment. At some point the government will anonymously leak something to wikileaks and use it against a citizen. The danger here is that were the government to effectively coop wikileaks itself, which you think is anti-government, it would become a brutal and effective trojan horse. If we put blind faith in wikileaks, it will eventually be co-opted by the institutions for which it was designed to provide oversight. This piece is a defense of your right to privacy. I'm confused as to why it's being met with such resistance here.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoThe faith in WikiLeaks isn't blind. It will only take one false publication to destroy its credibility. All that matters is whether the facts published are accurate. Maligning the source (particularly on speculation) is a pre-emptive ad hominem non-sequitor.
- Goronmon 10y agoThe faith in WikiLeaks isn't blind. It will only take one false publication to destroy its credibility. So, if WikiLeaks starting dumping private emails for random people, that would be acceptable because none of the information is actually false?
- admax88q 10y agoThat's not what they said. They said a false publication would destroy its credibility. They did not say that WikiLeaks is always in the right so long as they publish accurate information.
- bakhy 10y agothis is a very good point. these e-mail leaks are really just lowering this election even further into the mud. and nothing is really gained. it's not hard to see how shitty both candidates are. this reeks of spite and frustration, like a kind of revenge-porn motivated by the frustrating situation with these candidates. while the frustration is totally legitimate, this is just mudslinging.
- Glyptodon 10y agoMeh. While email hacks are obviously different than "whistleblowing" nobody would be batting an eye if somebody had hacked a trove of Mafia (or other organized crime) emails and released them publicly. The reality is that sometimes hacking is in the public interest and sometimes it's not, but figuring out when is not easy or black and white. One aspect to these discussions that I find sort of befuddling is the idea that somehow those involved in "making the news" (so to speak) shouldn't have to think about what they're saying or how they're saying it unless they're "on the record," that we should expect their public face to be a mask hiding any insight into the private face behind it, and that somehow they ought to be magically protected from the potential publicizing of recordings, hacks, or eavesdropping. Clearly the public at large is somewhat jaded and cynical, but there's still a very obvious desire to have "honest" and "open" candidates who make their goals, intentions, and ideologies clear. Of course the public theoretically wants to know how the sausage is made. That the candidates can't recognize this and can't or won't operate as though the public might be watching without crying foul seems to me a bigger farce than pretending that one's own words are a conspiracy... but what do I know? I guess the idea that one ought to maintain some level restraint and conviviality both publicly and privately is dated and quaint.
- SamBam 10y ago> Meh. While email hacks are obviously different than "whistleblowing" nobody would be batting an eye if somebody had hacked a trove of Mafia (or other organized crime) emails and released them publicly. ...but the Mafia are a priori criminals, while politicians are not (except in a sophomoric "all politicians are liars" kind of way). What crime did Powell commit to have his everyday privacies exposed to the world?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- zekevermillion 10y agoLet's say we want a society where civil disobedience is tolerated, but we also want to live under rule of law. To engage in civil disobedience ethically, I think one must be prepared to bear the personal consequences of breaking the law. However, when the consequences for military / intelligence community leaks are anything up to and including life in prison, or death by hanging, this forces an extreme ethical dilemma. If we value civil disobedience as a society, maybe we ought to give it some protection under the laws. Obviously we can't allow disclosure of secrets based on subjective intent. But we could offer a sort of safe harbor where, if the leaker only discloses information that pertains to government actions or policies that he or she has a bona fide belief are illegal or immoral, then the penalties are limited to X years in prison. Would this tend to encourage leaks? Yes. But, it would still require a person to make a difficult personal decision before breaking secrecy laws.
- zekevermillion 10y agoOne problem with selective leaking is that it tends to reduce the credibility of the leaker. If I filter the information I disclose, then inevitably it passes through the lens of my own biases and agenda. Whereas if I dump it all on w.l., that sort of signals that the info is not skewed. (This does not solve any of the ethical or moral issues raised by the author, mind you, but is a practical impediment to effectiveness of selective disclosure.)
- anindha 10y agoElected officials treat honesty even in Senate hearings as optional. If we trusted them breaching their privacy wouldn't be necessary.
- Daviey 10y ago<deleted>
- wnoise 10y agoThat's a thread on terms of use for Tesla autopilot.