10 ms·

Sounds like things are going as planned for Wikileaks[1]: > RS: One of the unintended consequences is the opposite effect, which is what we've seen with the De

• smallnamespace 10y ago
  Time for Wikileaks to make all their internal communications public. After all, don't they believe in full transparency?
  • cloudjacker 10y ago
    Sure when they start accepting public money or get absorbed into the Government Accountability Office
    • vkou 10y ago
      Not all of the people whose correspondence they leak accept public money, or are part of governments. They don't have much of a moral hill to stand on - unless they subscribe to the morality of "The ends justify the means." (Which most people do.)
      • saint_fiasco 10y ago
        If the ends don't justify the means, then what does?
        • Swizec 10y ago
          Maybe you shouldn't use means that need justifying in the first place?
          • saint_fiasco 10y ago
            But then why do anything at all?
        • manifestsilence 10y ago
          Exactly - certain means are perhaps inherently not justifiable. Consequentialism vs. other competing philosophical stances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism
          • saint_fiasco 10y ago
            I see. So the interesting moral claim is not "the end justify the means" (which is too obvious) but rather "For every mean there exists at least one end that can justify it", which is controversial.
      • cloudjacker 10y ago
        Now that you got that off of your chest, what does that have to do with this comment thread about them being more transparent?
  • maxerickson 10y ago
    They can be hypocrites and still accomplish their goals just fine. How many people are going to avoid leaked material because Wikileaks are hypocrites?
    • cmdrfred 10y ago
      When you say something factual why does it matter who you are? Stalin probably said "Nice night tonight" does that make the statment wrong?
      • jfoutz 10y ago
        Stalin is an interesting choice [1]. He was very much in a position to say nice night tonight, then change his mind a month later and have all of the records altered. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union#/media/File:Soviet_censorship_with_Stalin2.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So...
        • cmdrfred 10y ago
          I never had seen that image. The last one is essentially a drawing.
  • atemerev 10y ago
    Let's build Metawikileaks and gather all leaks from Wikileaks!
  • crdoconnor 10y ago
    No. Wikileaks isn't interested in revealing your emails. They go after people in positions of power who have demonstrated the willingness to abuse that power.
    • varjag 10y ago
      I'm not sure which power, say, foreign confidants to U.S. diplomats have abused.
      • tedks 10y ago
        Well, presumably their confidence to the US government helped the US in some way, or the their relationship would be pretty brief.
        • varjag 10y ago
          There's not necessarily a relationship, it's often just people blurting rumours at a reception, commentary from opposition activists and so on. What's their abuse here? That years ago, they had enough sympathy to a nation that Assange is on crusade against now?
          • tedks 10y ago
            'Blurted' (thinking this is how a diplomatic reception works is straining) utterances don't end up on Wikileaks, and the united states isn't different now, for better or worse, than it was any number of years ago. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with this. If you don't personally agree with Assange that's one thing, but I think it's irrational to think that accepting his goals, you should still be forgiving of collaborators.
            • varjag 10y ago
              No, I'm actually pretty sure assangedom comes as a package, you don't get to cherry-pick whom you oppose.
  • jerf 10y ago
    Maybe they're just OK with being "closed, conspiratorial and inefficient." It's not hypocrisy unless they insist on choosing something they're denying others, and they aren't necessarily.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • Bartweiss 10y ago
    At risk of taking bait, they explicitly don't believe in full transparency. They've backed and associated with various privacy groups and suggested that individuals and groups not in the public interest deserve privacy. Assange has complicated that a little by releasing personal, unredacted emails, but it's been their stated intent at least. Give that transcript another read: "organizations which are abusive and need to be [in] the public eye". That's not decrying privacy, its decrying use of privacy to hide abusive behaviors. I haven't seen Wikileaks accused of that; the usual accusation is that their public behaviors are politically motivated, which is very different than alleging internal corruption.
    • smallnamespace 10y ago
      Wikileaks claims they use leaks to serve the public's interest. That makes them a public interest organization. Being politically motivated can very much be a form of abuse. When you have the ability to significantly hinder or tear down public organizations through leaking, I think the public deserves to know how Wikileaks decided what to leak, how they are funded, and what interests they represent. Simple hypothetical scenario: Wikileaks gets compromising information about a left-leaning and a right-leaning organization, but they only decide to make public one of those leaks because they're biased. Or they receive some damaging info, and use it to trade for political or personal favors in return for suppressing the leak. Given that there are so many ways that Wikileaks could abuse the public's trust, their 'transparency' rhetoric very much should apply to themselves.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • Bartweiss 10y ago
        > Wikileaks claims they use leaks to serve the public's interest. That makes them a public interest organization. That's some pretty intense equivocation from where we started. Acting in the public interest does not make you "a public interest". The details of Chelsea Manning's gender identity don't influence the ethical status of her leaks. Assange's claim (which is not my claim) seems to be that groups with structural power and objective control over people's lives should be forced into transparency or inefficient secrecy. That's largely governments, and agencies like the DNC that shape them. It's also militaries, powerful investment banks, and other groups like utilities which can control access to credit or basic needs. None of that is representative of Wikileaks. Their influence all happens at one remove, by doing things which the public reacts to. If their disclosures on X are accurate and the public gets mad about X, that can be a direct conversation between X and the public that need not involve them. "Abusive" here seems to mean groups that can take direct financial/legally/physical action on people. Having said all of that, I understand how selective enforcement works. If you know that a disclosure will harm a person, and take that act to achieve your interests, it's a cop-out to blame "the public" if you're choosing what to disclose. But it's relevant that Assange has made it quite clear that he's disclosing to hurt Clinton; his political motivation is already public knowledge. There's really no good answer here. You can explain how you make your decisions, but "not leaking a document" is inherently a secretive act. No one can be sure your choice was honest and public-spirited unless you do reveal the document, so all that's left is faith. That's part of why Snowden and other leakers have gone through respected news orgs, because if someone's judgement is the deciding factor you might as well choose well-regarded judgement. I don't have much of that faith in Assange at this point. I think his leaks are probably selective and politically motivated. It would be interesting to know who funds them and what they say internally, but that couldn't possibly clear up the whole question. After all, if Assange reads one paper about Clinton and one about Trump, and says "the one about Clinton is worth leaking, but the one about Trump isn't in the public interest", how could you possibly evaluate that claim without both leaks? But none of that means Wikileaks is equivalent to the groups he's demanding disclosure for. Ethical questions on our part do not amount to hypocrisy on his part, and it's still a distinction worth drawing.
  • digler999 10y ago
    are they a governing agency with authority over people, acting under the auspices of a democratic charter ? Democratic government is supposed to be open and transparent. There is no reason for it not to be. Which is why WL do things like show secret anti-democratic cooperation between government and corporations.
• gricardo99 10y ago
  > or they can be closed, conspiratorial and inefficient The problem is he's describing exactly the modus operandi of some bad actors on wall street. Cozy relationships, exploiting advantages (gained through unethical, or illegal means), and general obfuscation of how they're able to extract fortunes from the financial system. If you create more of this, that's not a remedy, it creates more opportunities for bad actors.
• rezashirazian 10y ago
  Am I truly the only person who thinks Wikileaks is a government run honey pot? Of course I don't have any substantial evidence but just looking at it, it seems like a contrived apparatus with a James Bond like villain at the top, branding that looks like it came out of a B rated movie and 'leaks' that seem serious enough to get the media up in a frenzy and attract anyone with any real leaks. I wouldn't be surprised to read about its conception by some mid-level CIA agent in 30-40 years.
  • mabramo 10y ago
    I don't think they're government run, but I've been seeing quite a lot of information recently from Wikileaks that seems to be fabricated. Maybe I'm not doing enough research and the information I'm reading is just made up by underground conspiracy sites that tag the Wikileaks name on it for attention. Whatever the case, Wikileaks from 5 years ago seems a lot more reliable than Wikileaks today. At least to me.
  • frozenport 10y ago
    Let's be clear. Even if they are run by the KGB this does not discredit their content.
    • Spooky23 10y ago
      Sure it can. How do you prove that you didn't say something?
      • zaroth 10y ago
        It's actually pretty hard to create convincing email headers across thousands of emails. Many of these highly eyebrow raising emails are CC'd to gmail accounts, for example. If it was fake, you could ask Google for the logs to prove at least it wasn't received. And if there are DKIM headers, then that's certainly strong evidence that the header and body are legit.
        • Spooky23 10y ago
• ThomPete 10y ago
  You have to dig a little deeper to understand the actual mission of wikileaks I believe. Their claim is that technology allows governments to conspire. Not in an Alex Jones kind of way but simply that technology allow governments and people in power to exchange information effectively enough to coordinate various plans. Some of these are good some of them are bad, but ultimately the idea that the governments can conspire is bad and so Wikileaks want to make it so impractical to use technology to communicate that they are forced to use other less effective means. You can't only understand wiki-leaks if you only understand them as a political organization. You have to understand them as an techno-activist organization using information to destroy the way information is used by those in power.
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    Yeah, because people in power have always had so much trouble until e-mail. The most that can come from this is that people who might not have gotten the memo before, will have now: conspire in private, over drinks.
    • ThomPete 10y ago
      They actually did and a lot was intercepted one way or the other. It required a lot of middle men to work.
      • M_Grey 10y ago
        No need to take a cross-country train to meet your counterparts anymore; everyone ends up rubbing shoulders with everyone else far more frequently these days.
        • ThomPete 10y ago
          Because of the use of technology which is exactly what WikiLeaks is trying to obstruct.
          • 10y ago
• jt2190 10y ago
  The third option is for organizations to store loads of credible misinformation in addition to the "real" info. Probably this false information will be generated by software, so generating it will be very cheap. Hackers will have the problem of knowing what's real and what only looks real. Wikileaks will have difficulty maintaining credibility as hackers post lots of false data. (It's not like this problem hasn't been solved by the intelligence agencies already.)
  • munificent 10y ago
    > Hackers will have the problem of knowing what's real and what only looks real. So will legitimate internal members of the organization. Haven't you ever had to wade through your company's intranet wiki trying to figure out which documents were are actually useful versus the giant piles of things that are outdated, wrong, superceded, etc?
    • trprog 10y ago
      I can't imagine how painful that would be if the pile of documents also contained outright bogus documents that were never ever accurate.
  • trylist 10y ago
    That won't work because you'll be adding noise to your own data. You'll have trouble searching through your own data-sets for "real" stuff. If you do something to designate what's real, you're just back to square one.
    • jt2190 10y ago
      > That won't work because you'll be adding noise to > your own data. What does "noise" mean in this context?
      • trylist 10y ago
        If real data is signal, then fake data is noise.
• TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  o me, that is a very good outcome, because organizations can either be efficient, open and honest, or they can be closed, conspiratorial and inefficient. This seems like a false dichotomy. Wish I had more time to go in to why I think that. One counter example might be The Manhattan Project.
  • mahyarm 10y ago
    Could you do the manhattan project over 15 years without a leak? Time is a factor in these things. And I don't think necessarily the people on the project would think what they are working on as 'abusive' per say. Compared to killing civilians from a helicopter, being corrupt, dodging taxes or spying on the entire world like the gestapo, the manhattan project probably had a different feeling to it.
  • icebraining 10y ago
    Was the Manhattan Project efficient? How do you go about assessing that? Do you have any term of comparison? Do you think it's unlikely that it would have been done sooner and cheaper if it didn't have to be kept secret?
    • cushychicken 10y ago
      Well, for one thing, everyone working on the project was kept in the same big research compound in Los Alamos. No one in, no one out. It had the dual purpose of efficiency (all the researchers in one place) and secrecy (none of said researchers were allowed to leave).
      • robotresearcher 10y ago
        I don't believe that's true. Most researchers were civilians and were free to move as they pleased.