9 ms·

Why the World Needs WikiLeaks

118 points by danielam 10y ago

fooker 10y ago
A friendly reminder that there has been no proof that Julian Assange is alive, for quite a while. Also their 'insurance' file hashes no longer match the files. And the latest messages are not digitally signed. Also there was a set of moderators added all over related subreddits to suppress this.
- shrewduser 10y ago
  what is the significance of the insurance file hashes no longer matching the files?
  - jakewins 10y ago
    None - they never did match the (encrypted) files. WL commented on this conspiracy theory earlier today, both saying Assange appreciates the concerns that he's dead, and saying that "obviously" the hashes are for decrypted files, not the encrypted ones: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/798997378552299521 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/798997378552299521
    - fooker 10y ago
      Y : X is compromised. X : X is not compromised.
    - ovibos 10y ago
      > they never did match the (encrypted) files The pre-commitment hashes have always matched the encrypted files, up to this point.
  - fooker 10y ago
    This should provide some context. https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/5cz1fz/wikileaks_latest_insurance_files_dont_match_hashes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/5cz1fz/wikileaks_la...
- ritchiea 10y ago
  It seems as though he's alive and it would be quite a massive conspiracy if he turned out not to be: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/prosecutor-arrives-to-quiz-assange-after-pamela-anderson-dropped-off-veggie-burgers-a3394771.html http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/prosecutor-arrives-to-...
- bigtones 10y ago
  LOL, he was questioned just two days ago by Swedish lawyers: http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/14/europe/julian-assange-questioning-sweden/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/14/europe/julian-assange-question...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - benbenolson 10y ago
    I'm inclined to believe that he's all right, but to be fair, that "questioning" was through a third party, and Assange never faced them directly.
- ygaels_armpit 10y ago
  That seems out of the blue, to me, though I don't follow it (my soul died long ago with seeing how bad this corruption is). What indications are there you think he might have been murdered? Edit: Got trolled I think.
ccvannorman 10y ago
It seems pretty obvious that WikiLeaks has been compromised - is anyone buying this defense? And more importantly, who/what will replace WikiLeaks?
- ryanSrich 10y ago
  I feel like I'm out of the loop. When was wikileaks compromised? I've passively followed their work over the years, but I've tried to tune out most of the internet the past couple months.
  - ovibos 10y ago
    There hasn't been a proof-of-life from Julian himself in some time, and there was recently insurance files released that didn't have matching hashes. No hard evidence, but it is worrying, especially when there are so many parties that would benefit from wikileak's infiltration/de-legitimization.
    - fulafel 10y ago
      It may be hard to prove if the employ soft ways of influence, the traditional craft of intelligence agencies: extortion, bribery, forged threats from the opposing side etc.
  - alphonsegaston 10y ago
    A Putin apparatchik was gloating to the Guardian that they helped sway the election the day after the results came in (ctrl+f "wikileaks": https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/putin-applauds-trump-win-and-hails-new-era-of-positive-ties-with-us https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/putin-applau...
- fixxer 10y ago
  How does it seem obvious?
- mplewis 10y ago
  Who will replace WikiLeaks? Any legitimate news organization that actually vets potentially harmful material before releasing it.
forrestbrazeal 10y ago
"Some have accused us of being pawns of the Russian government, but this misrepresents our principles and basic operations. ...We prefer not to know who our sources are; we do not want to.." So they prefer to be unwitting pawns? Transparency is great, freedom of information is great, but is there some point at which you have to step back and acknowledge that you're being used by a foreign power? Doesn't that undermine the good work that Wikileaks claims to be doing? Again from the article: "The world is connected by largely unaccountable networks of power that span industries and countries, political parties, corporations and institutions; WikiLeaks shines a light on these by revealing not just individual incidents, but information about entire structures of power." How does Wikileaks rationalize away the fact that one part of that 'unaccountable network' seems to be using them to exploit some other part?
- shrewduser 10y ago
  governments can leak information with or without the help of wikileaks. all wikileaks cares about is complete transparency and access to information.
  - skywhopper 10y ago
    if Wikileaks lets itself be used to prefer political candidates then they are failing in this mission.
    - ovibos 10y ago
      How? In what way does preferentiality damage the transparency or validity of the information?
- revelation 10y ago
  You are saying we should ignore the abuses of our ruling power because some foreign ruling power is rumored to expose them? I don't want to live in fascism just so the communists don't win, that doesn't seem like a worthwhile tradeoff.
crystaln 10y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wikileaks released information the timing of which was clearly meant to influence the US elections in a very particular way. Secondly, Assange issued statements clearly indicating his intentions to harm Clinton, not promote transparency. Why would the NYT publish this obvious garbage without counterpoint?
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  they do that a lot in their opinion pieces.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago
  We're living in strange days, and it's only gonna get weirder. NPR aired a pull your punches interview with a white supremacist today, the New York Times is publishing doublespeak missives from what increasingly appears to be either the useful idiots or willing collaborators of Russian intelligence services. It's like Trump malware has turned the mainstream media into a spam-serving botnet for a league of fascists.
  - mc32 10y ago
    That NPR bit was to associate Trump's rise as a consequence of the alt-right and their (racist) view of America. It's not that they pulled punches, it's that they want to alarm non alt-rights to make it look like they are taking over the Republican party. If NRP were on the right, they'd get something along the lines of black-power revolution types up there and let them go off and make it look like all Dems are like that. It's a mechanism to show the worst group of one side and associate it with a mainstream group so as to pollute the opinion of the mainstream group.
    - alphonsegaston 10y ago
      I understand that this was their intent, but this in no way seemed to me be the effect (not to mention that this strategy has already proven entirely incapable of checking the rise of Trump). The strategy of the alt-right is to couch Neo-Nazi ideology with just enough politeness and intellectual poise as to entice "ordinary people" into their ranks, further normalizing their cause. If you're well-mannered accountant is commenting on Breitbart while you gather together your tax documents, how bad can they really be? Fascist groups know they need white collar members, because the thugs are the first things they have to sacrifice when they gain real political power (both to appease military and law enforcement institutions as well as to demonstrate that they've shed their brutish origins). The only way to counter it is to give these guys enough rope to hang themselves, and then openly and clearly expose their intellectual dishonesty and historical record. This requires a far greater skill at interviewing and rhetoric than is on display anywhere at NPR. The harshest rebuff the interviewer gave Spencer was something along the lines of "but don't people of all races get along on the NYC subway?" Spencer walked away from that interview quite happy with the seeds he planted.
skywhopper 10y ago
Wikileaks has released some important things, but they should be embarrassed that they thought the personal emails of Hillary's campaign staff saying sometimes silly things to each other was at all newsworthy. It was sensational, sure, but it revealed nothing important or even interesting. Anyone who spends a moment considering the question would expect campaign operatives to gripe about their opponents in over the top terms, to use unthoughtful language and spitball dumb ideas to their boss. Turns out the Clinton campaign did these things. The DNC emails showing that they preferred a solid Member of the Democratic Party win the nomination over someone who has not spent decades supporting the party should surprise and upset no one. And without the context of seeing Trump's campaign staff's emails or the RNC's emails in a similar perspective, the release of so much pointless but unflattering material related to Hillary and the Democrats does a major disservice to the public.
- mattnewton 10y ago
  I disagree with you about the DNC emails, they go above and beyond preference into outright campaign strategy coordination and undermine the whole idea of the primary process. I think if they could have had and released the emails sooner the behavior could have been addressed and that would have been a service to Democrats and the public. It's awful medicine sure, but something has to wake the patient up. I have not read the subsequent email leaks so I don't have an opinion on whether they were worth releasing or not. For what it is worth, I think their effect on the election was overblown and people who distrusted Hillary would have continued to do so in the absence of such weak evidence.
  - dsharlet 10y ago
    > I disagree with you about the DNC emails, they go above and beyond preference into outright campaign strategy coordination and undermine the whole idea of the primary process. What exactly do you think the primaries are? They are not official elections. The democratic party (and the republican party) exist to help the candidates they want to support get elected. Note the mere existence of superdelegates. Primaries are designed to allow people to have some influence on the party's choice (and to get the electorate feeling invested in the party's choice of candidate... obviously the DNC messed that up), but really, the primaries are designed to maximize exposure for the candidates to help them in the general election. Trump is the perfect example of why the parties want some control over who they lend their name to in the general election. I'm sure that the emails flying around the RNC while they had a chance of influencing Trump's election put the DNC to absolute shame. Bernie was not even a democrat at all prior to this election. Bernie has been an independent for his whole political career. He joined the democratic party just for this election, and he's now an independent again. It seems absurd to expect party support with that context. I think Bernie made a deliberate choice to run in the Democratic primary (despite not being a Democrat) to avoid the spoiler effect in the general election, knowing that it was unlikely he would get DNC support. I respect him a lot for that decision. Don't get me wrong, I would have been very happy if Bernie won (especially over Trump), but this idea that the DNC is a rotten institution that deserves an organizational death penalty for working with Clinton over Bernie is ridiculous.
saboot 10y ago
I'm not really sure what high and mighty role wikileaks can claim. Most major journalism outlets have ways for submitting information online anonymously. With their editorial standards they can avoid many of the (in some cases deadly) mistakes wikileaks has done by publishing blindly.
- admax88q 10y ago
  > (in some cases deadly) Prove it. I have never seen any credible claim that wikileaks has had deadly mistakes.
  - monsterix 10y ago
    He can't. Therefore, blame and run. And at the same time people like him with powers use their overreach to arrest and torture an individual without charges. Lame.
- xnull2guest 10y ago
  The American media hasn't avoided the deadly mistake of propagandizing the American public on the behalf of the US government into the Iraq war, for instance, and it has fed Americans a steady died of thinly veiled nationalism and imperialism with selective stories and whitewashing of American accountability for my entire adult life. Or - take the recent National Security Advisor's own bragging about making the US media into an echo chamber of support for controversial policies. Having myself submitted articles to major US news media syndicates, I can only express my frustration with their editorializing - as it consistently and repeatedly has rewritten very specifically chosen words into weasel words and apologisms, changing the meaning and implications of my articles. The worst part is that the editorializing (and choosing of misleading headlines) often actually makes the article read more clearly. Given the huge role of former propaganda directors and national security administrators in high levels of the US press today along with a very dependent relationship on the US government for access, stories and purchases - it's not at all surprising that the media functions in this manner. But that doesn't prevent it from being frustrating, or the US media from making 'deadly' mistakes.
emersonrsantos 10y ago
And two months ago, for NYTimes, WikiLeaks was evil [1]. Now the world "needs" it. This doesn't make much sense... [1] http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sp2hsr http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sp2hsr
- davmre 10y ago
  It's almost as though the Times publishes pieces by multiple contributors representing a diverse range of perspectives.
throwaway7876 10y ago
At times it feels that they should be called american-govmnt-leaks.org. Where are all the juicy leaks from Russian, Chinease, French, Mexican, Brazilian, Egyptian, or other nation states. Where are the leaks from mafia, drug cartels, or other criminal organizations. Records from financial institutions, law firms, drug companies. Records from catholic church and other religious organizations. There is so much corruption in the world, that it seems incredible that Wikileaks so much focuses on the US. Maybe leak some information on people that stole $18B from republic of Moldova. Or how tobacco, big oil, pharma or others are using their profits to gain even more profits. Where is all that?
- tiles 10y ago
  And really, dnc-hacks.org. These aren't leaks from inside the organization and its whistleblowers. Wikileaks has been posting political voyeurism at the behest of a hacking organization. It's about as reputable as The Fappening celebrity nude photos being posted to 4chan "for transparency".
- grandalf 10y ago
  There have been many leaks about foreign countries. The US is a very dominant country and so of course there will be more leaked info.
- xnull2guest 10y ago
  I remember the WikiLeaks of Turkish emails that built and led up to the near successful coup of the Erdogan regime. In any case, I definitely welcome leaks from other countries. But I don't want those exclusively. As an American it's been repeatedly proven throughout my adult life that the US media does not perform due diligence in its role as the "fourth estate". The most important leaks for me are the ones providing transparency into my government. If there were leak sites for every government I would check the American leaks by far the most often.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  They did release stuff from other countries. I hope they release more. I'd imagine counter-balancing a billion dollar new conglomerate coverage of CNN, NBC, CBS and others wasn't that bad with just some emails. So wish they'd do more Eastern Europe (I am from there originally). If they had Trump material, I wish they'd release that as well. I think I might donate to them, maybe they are understaffed and need more resources. So far I did find information there rather useful and helpful. Surprisingly more so than what I found form the traditional mass media.
ycp217 10y ago
"Sarah Harrison is a journalist and editor for WikiLeaks."
dimino 10y ago
The world may or may not need something that serves the same function as WikiLeaks, but it certainly does not need WikiLeaks specifically, not anymore. I'm sick of Julian Assange. I don't think he's a rapist, but based on what I've read, he certainly is a self-aggrandizing opportunistic asshole.
sfdf 10y ago
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hyperion2010 10y ago
Trump has been a public figure for far, far too long for there not to be 'EMAILS' equivalents. The fact that a large fraction of the time when wikileaks is discussed there is no visible questioning about why they haven't released about Trump tells me that something fucked up is going on. See this for an excellent summary [0]. 0. https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wikileaks_staff_despite_our_editor/d9utp64/?context=3&st=ivn9nf8l&sh=49a14cf1 https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wiki...
- grandalf 10y ago
  That's a pretty embarrassing, angry rant. Do you really doubt that Wikileaks would have released information about Trump if any had been leaked that was significant?
  - hyperion2010 10y ago
    Check the 7th bullet point in the link.
    - grandalf 10y ago
      I read it, I don't see your point. One must believe that WL was actively trying to help Trump to think it would just sit on relevant information. I don't believe that as Assange likened both candidates to various diseases in one of his earlier statements.
- benbenolson 10y ago
  Trump has said himself that he does not use email. Wikileaks has released lots of negative information on various Republican candidates, as well (see their Iraq collection involving Bush), and have no bias toward any political entity. That's the entire point of their existence.
- droopybuns 10y ago
  That summary is terrible. Apparently, the op of the summary will only be satisfied if an equal and opposite leak happens to the trump campaign. Not everyone falls for obvious phishing attempts. Shouldn't we consider your susceptibility to phishing as evidence of judgement? Shouldn't it be evidence of your qualification as a Leader? Shouldn't it reflect on you if your trusted advisors get owned by bit.ly links for gmail password resets?
grandalf 10y ago
I recently bought a few Wikileaks T shirts. The US has lost its adversarial, investigative press. Wikileaks keeps that spirit alive and offers hope that one day our press will do a far better job at holding our officials accountable.
partycoder 10y ago
How do you validate a leak? What if it's 90% true except for the part that matters? The true strategists convince the enemy they're getting what they want, and then profit from it. If wikileaks was real they would be targeted by state sponsored hackers regularly. There's a strong possibility this is a facade.
- grandalf 10y ago
  Most of the tens of thousands of emails were cryptographically verified as authentic by DKIM headers.
rdtsc 10y ago
I think out of all the "news" media so far Wikileaks is probably the most trustworthy. I've seen people claim they altered the emails or Russians wrote the emails, I think they'd have to point to specific instances for me to see it. I don't remember a single instance of them altering an email. I don't remember anyone credible refuting and saying they didn't write it. How do we know these emails are interesting and useful -- we listen to the CNN of course, remember folks "...it is illegal to possess these stolen documents. It is different from the media. So everything you learn about this, you are learning from us." that was my first hint documents should be read very closely. When mass media lies about something it overcompensates, and one heuristic I use is I just reverse the meaning of it. "don't read the documents" and I interpret it as "that's a place to take a look", or "we are exporting democracy to the Middle East" that means "we are installing puppet regimes there" and so on. It is a funny exercise.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > I've seen people claim they altered the emails or Russians wrote the emails, I think they'd have to point to specific instances for me to see it. I don't remember a single instance of them altering an email. I don't remember anyone credible refuting and saying they didn't write it. Yes, once Wikileaks showed cryptographic proof that the emails were authentic, those criticisms stopped.
- TAForObvReasons 10y ago
  > I don't remember anyone credible refuting and saying they didn't write it. The criticisms were generally of a different sort: editorializing in their selection of leaks. "selective omission", if you will. They have information about Trump but chose not to release it. According to Breitbart (so you know it's not from a "liberal media" source): http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/27/wikileaks-info-donald-trump/ http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/27/wikileaks-info-dona... > “We do have some information about the Republican campaign,” Assange said. “I mean, it’s from a point of view of an investigative journalist organization like WikiLeaks, the problem with the Trump campaign is it’s actually hard for us to publish much more controversial material than what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every second day ..." I don't know about you, but I feel like it would have been helpful for the people to know what they had on Trump. Seems oddly opaque and politically motivated. It really doesn't help that they were selling explicitly anti-Clinton merchandise in their store: http://i.imgur.com/AjsWfqg.jpg http://i.imgur.com/AjsWfqg.jpg This is one example. In other cases, such as the Syria files, known-to-have-existed emails that involved Russia mysteriously weren't leaked and many people have speculated that stemmed from a pro-Russia bias. If they were releasing everything they had, it would be hard to criticize. But when you see the pattern of leaks and omissions, it's hard not to make the argument that they are playing politics.
kinghajj 10y ago
Is this post being brigaded? Surprised it's fallen off the front page already.
- xnull2guest 10y ago
  Brigaded threads are the norm for the internet now. Governments around the world including the US and UK hire military contractors to brigade, trolls brigade, and motivated communities brigade. It's sad, I agree.
dmode 10y ago
While overall I agree that an organization like Wikileaks is necessary to hold institutions accountable, I find their actions during the last Presidential election questionable. They simply guy played by Russia. My biggest problem with their approach during the election is that they provided assymetric information to the public that heavily biased people's opinion. So DNC was working with Clinton campaign against Sanders, and I am pretty sure RNC was working against Trump as well. If there were some media collaboration on one side, I am confident this is a campaign norm and happened plenty on the other side. Especially when you got the Breitbart executive running the campaign. But by publishing one side of the story Wikileaks did a disservice to the Democracy that it longs to protect. Ideally, they should have hold on those emails until after the election or until there was comparable material available from the other side
davesque 10y ago
I'm totally done with Wikileaks. Just look at their Twitter feed for five minutes and it's not hard to see that they've been heavily biased against one side of the political spectrum in the United States. Not only this, their tweets have at times been erratic, peddling things ranging from outrageous conspiracy theories: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/794450623404113920?lang=en https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/794450623404113920?lang... to anti-semitism: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/25/what_wikileaks_might_have_meant_by_that_anti_semitic_tweet.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/25/what_wikil... I'm all for anti-secrecy organizations that hold powerful figures accountable, but Wikileaks appears to have lost their way. My own little conspiracy theory is that they've been coerced somehow into doing the bidding of the Russian government.
pdimitar 10y ago
As they say in The Matrix: "you might be just another -- more advanced -- form of control". I find it somewhat amusing how WikiLeaks releases things widely only when a certain topic becomes relevant and gets public attention. And then it chooses to keep silent on other topics but still vocally declares they have info on them. Fishy as hell for me. It seems they are aiming for popularity and relevance at this point; and not to make any real change in the world. I refuse to accept there is a "nuclear-level-of-unstable-and-dangerous" information. Just release it all on several big torrent trackers and move on. What'll happen exactly? A world war? We're past that point, several times now, ever since the 1960s up until today. It didn't happen even in the Cuba crisis, I don't think it'll happen over the racist slurs of a popular politician (one random example). I fear WikiLeaks have been compromised long ago. Did we all forget that Julian Assange was questioned in private for a long time? Everybody can be either bought or threatened to submission. Everybody.

118 points by danielam 10y ago

A friendly reminder that there has been no proof that Julian Assange is alive, for quite a while. Also their 'insurance' file hashes no longer match the files. And the latest messages are not digitally signed. Also there was a set of moderators added all over related subreddits to suppress this.

shrewduser 10y ago
what is the significance of the insurance file hashes no longer matching the files?
- jakewins 10y ago
  None - they never did match the (encrypted) files. WL commented on this conspiracy theory earlier today, both saying Assange appreciates the concerns that he's dead, and saying that "obviously" the hashes are for decrypted files, not the encrypted ones: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/798997378552299521 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/798997378552299521
  - fooker 10y ago
    Y : X is compromised. X : X is not compromised.
  - ovibos 10y ago
    > they never did match the (encrypted) files The pre-commitment hashes have always matched the encrypted files, up to this point.
- fooker 10y ago
  This should provide some context. https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/5cz1fz/wikileaks_latest_insurance_files_dont_match_hashes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/5cz1fz/wikileaks_la...
ritchiea 10y ago
It seems as though he's alive and it would be quite a massive conspiracy if he turned out not to be: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/prosecutor-arrives-to-quiz-assange-after-pamela-anderson-dropped-off-veggie-burgers-a3394771.html http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/prosecutor-arrives-to-...
bigtones 10y ago
LOL, he was questioned just two days ago by Swedish lawyers: http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/14/europe/julian-assange-questioning-sweden/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/14/europe/julian-assange-question...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- benbenolson 10y ago
  I'm inclined to believe that he's all right, but to be fair, that "questioning" was through a third party, and Assange never faced them directly.
ygaels_armpit 10y ago
That seems out of the blue, to me, though I don't follow it (my soul died long ago with seeing how bad this corruption is). What indications are there you think he might have been murdered? Edit: Got trolled I think.

ccvannorman 10y ago

It seems pretty obvious that WikiLeaks has been compromised - is anyone buying this defense? And more importantly, who/what will replace WikiLeaks?

ryanSrich 10y ago
I feel like I'm out of the loop. When was wikileaks compromised? I've passively followed their work over the years, but I've tried to tune out most of the internet the past couple months.
- ovibos 10y ago
  There hasn't been a proof-of-life from Julian himself in some time, and there was recently insurance files released that didn't have matching hashes. No hard evidence, but it is worrying, especially when there are so many parties that would benefit from wikileak's infiltration/de-legitimization.
  - fulafel 10y ago
    It may be hard to prove if the employ soft ways of influence, the traditional craft of intelligence agencies: extortion, bribery, forged threats from the opposing side etc.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago
  A Putin apparatchik was gloating to the Guardian that they helped sway the election the day after the results came in (ctrl+f "wikileaks": https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/putin-applauds-trump-win-and-hails-new-era-of-positive-ties-with-us https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/putin-applau...
fixxer 10y ago
How does it seem obvious?
mplewis 10y ago
Who will replace WikiLeaks? Any legitimate news organization that actually vets potentially harmful material before releasing it.

forrestbrazeal 10y ago

"Some have accused us of being pawns of the Russian government, but this misrepresents our principles and basic operations. ...We prefer not to know who our sources are; we do not want to.." So they prefer to be unwitting pawns? Transparency is great, freedom of information is great, but is there some point at which you have to step back and acknowledge that you're being used by a foreign power? Doesn't that undermine the good work that Wikileaks claims to be doing? Again from the article: "The world is connected by largely unaccountable networks of power that span industries and countries, political parties, corporations and institutions; WikiLeaks shines a light on these by revealing not just individual incidents, but information about entire structures of power." How does Wikileaks rationalize away the fact that one part of that 'unaccountable network' seems to be using them to exploit some other part?

shrewduser 10y ago
governments can leak information with or without the help of wikileaks. all wikileaks cares about is complete transparency and access to information.
- skywhopper 10y ago
  if Wikileaks lets itself be used to prefer political candidates then they are failing in this mission.
  - ovibos 10y ago
    How? In what way does preferentiality damage the transparency or validity of the information?
revelation 10y ago
You are saying we should ignore the abuses of our ruling power because some foreign ruling power is rumored to expose them? I don't want to live in fascism just so the communists don't win, that doesn't seem like a worthwhile tradeoff.

crystaln 10y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wikileaks released information the timing of which was clearly meant to influence the US elections in a very particular way. Secondly, Assange issued statements clearly indicating his intentions to harm Clinton, not promote transparency. Why would the NYT publish this obvious garbage without counterpoint?

thesimpsons1022 10y ago
they do that a lot in their opinion pieces.
alphonsegaston 10y ago
We're living in strange days, and it's only gonna get weirder. NPR aired a pull your punches interview with a white supremacist today, the New York Times is publishing doublespeak missives from what increasingly appears to be either the useful idiots or willing collaborators of Russian intelligence services. It's like Trump malware has turned the mainstream media into a spam-serving botnet for a league of fascists.
- mc32 10y ago
  That NPR bit was to associate Trump's rise as a consequence of the alt-right and their (racist) view of America. It's not that they pulled punches, it's that they want to alarm non alt-rights to make it look like they are taking over the Republican party. If NRP were on the right, they'd get something along the lines of black-power revolution types up there and let them go off and make it look like all Dems are like that. It's a mechanism to show the worst group of one side and associate it with a mainstream group so as to pollute the opinion of the mainstream group.
  - alphonsegaston 10y ago
    I understand that this was their intent, but this in no way seemed to me be the effect (not to mention that this strategy has already proven entirely incapable of checking the rise of Trump). The strategy of the alt-right is to couch Neo-Nazi ideology with just enough politeness and intellectual poise as to entice "ordinary people" into their ranks, further normalizing their cause. If you're well-mannered accountant is commenting on Breitbart while you gather together your tax documents, how bad can they really be? Fascist groups know they need white collar members, because the thugs are the first things they have to sacrifice when they gain real political power (both to appease military and law enforcement institutions as well as to demonstrate that they've shed their brutish origins). The only way to counter it is to give these guys enough rope to hang themselves, and then openly and clearly expose their intellectual dishonesty and historical record. This requires a far greater skill at interviewing and rhetoric than is on display anywhere at NPR. The harshest rebuff the interviewer gave Spencer was something along the lines of "but don't people of all races get along on the NYC subway?" Spencer walked away from that interview quite happy with the seeds he planted.

skywhopper 10y ago

Wikileaks has released some important things, but they should be embarrassed that they thought the personal emails of Hillary's campaign staff saying sometimes silly things to each other was at all newsworthy. It was sensational, sure, but it revealed nothing important or even interesting. Anyone who spends a moment considering the question would expect campaign operatives to gripe about their opponents in over the top terms, to use unthoughtful language and spitball dumb ideas to their boss. Turns out the Clinton campaign did these things. The DNC emails showing that they preferred a solid Member of the Democratic Party win the nomination over someone who has not spent decades supporting the party should surprise and upset no one. And without the context of seeing Trump's campaign staff's emails or the RNC's emails in a similar perspective, the release of so much pointless but unflattering material related to Hillary and the Democrats does a major disservice to the public.

mattnewton 10y ago
I disagree with you about the DNC emails, they go above and beyond preference into outright campaign strategy coordination and undermine the whole idea of the primary process. I think if they could have had and released the emails sooner the behavior could have been addressed and that would have been a service to Democrats and the public. It's awful medicine sure, but something has to wake the patient up. I have not read the subsequent email leaks so I don't have an opinion on whether they were worth releasing or not. For what it is worth, I think their effect on the election was overblown and people who distrusted Hillary would have continued to do so in the absence of such weak evidence.
- dsharlet 10y ago
  > I disagree with you about the DNC emails, they go above and beyond preference into outright campaign strategy coordination and undermine the whole idea of the primary process. What exactly do you think the primaries are? They are not official elections. The democratic party (and the republican party) exist to help the candidates they want to support get elected. Note the mere existence of superdelegates. Primaries are designed to allow people to have some influence on the party's choice (and to get the electorate feeling invested in the party's choice of candidate... obviously the DNC messed that up), but really, the primaries are designed to maximize exposure for the candidates to help them in the general election. Trump is the perfect example of why the parties want some control over who they lend their name to in the general election. I'm sure that the emails flying around the RNC while they had a chance of influencing Trump's election put the DNC to absolute shame. Bernie was not even a democrat at all prior to this election. Bernie has been an independent for his whole political career. He joined the democratic party just for this election, and he's now an independent again. It seems absurd to expect party support with that context. I think Bernie made a deliberate choice to run in the Democratic primary (despite not being a Democrat) to avoid the spoiler effect in the general election, knowing that it was unlikely he would get DNC support. I respect him a lot for that decision. Don't get me wrong, I would have been very happy if Bernie won (especially over Trump), but this idea that the DNC is a rotten institution that deserves an organizational death penalty for working with Clinton over Bernie is ridiculous.

saboot 10y ago

I'm not really sure what high and mighty role wikileaks can claim. Most major journalism outlets have ways for submitting information online anonymously. With their editorial standards they can avoid many of the (in some cases deadly) mistakes wikileaks has done by publishing blindly.

admax88q 10y ago
> (in some cases deadly) Prove it. I have never seen any credible claim that wikileaks has had deadly mistakes.
- monsterix 10y ago
  He can't. Therefore, blame and run. And at the same time people like him with powers use their overreach to arrest and torture an individual without charges. Lame.
xnull2guest 10y ago
The American media hasn't avoided the deadly mistake of propagandizing the American public on the behalf of the US government into the Iraq war, for instance, and it has fed Americans a steady died of thinly veiled nationalism and imperialism with selective stories and whitewashing of American accountability for my entire adult life. Or - take the recent National Security Advisor's own bragging about making the US media into an echo chamber of support for controversial policies. Having myself submitted articles to major US news media syndicates, I can only express my frustration with their editorializing - as it consistently and repeatedly has rewritten very specifically chosen words into weasel words and apologisms, changing the meaning and implications of my articles. The worst part is that the editorializing (and choosing of misleading headlines) often actually makes the article read more clearly. Given the huge role of former propaganda directors and national security administrators in high levels of the US press today along with a very dependent relationship on the US government for access, stories and purchases - it's not at all surprising that the media functions in this manner. But that doesn't prevent it from being frustrating, or the US media from making 'deadly' mistakes.

emersonrsantos 10y ago

And two months ago, for NYTimes, WikiLeaks was evil [1]. Now the world "needs" it. This doesn't make much sense... [1] http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sp2hsr http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sp2hsr

davmre 10y ago
It's almost as though the Times publishes pieces by multiple contributors representing a diverse range of perspectives.

throwaway7876 10y ago

At times it feels that they should be called american-govmnt-leaks.org. Where are all the juicy leaks from Russian, Chinease, French, Mexican, Brazilian, Egyptian, or other nation states. Where are the leaks from mafia, drug cartels, or other criminal organizations. Records from financial institutions, law firms, drug companies. Records from catholic church and other religious organizations. There is so much corruption in the world, that it seems incredible that Wikileaks so much focuses on the US. Maybe leak some information on people that stole $18B from republic of Moldova. Or how tobacco, big oil, pharma or others are using their profits to gain even more profits. Where is all that?

tiles 10y ago
And really, dnc-hacks.org. These aren't leaks from inside the organization and its whistleblowers. Wikileaks has been posting political voyeurism at the behest of a hacking organization. It's about as reputable as The Fappening celebrity nude photos being posted to 4chan "for transparency".
grandalf 10y ago
There have been many leaks about foreign countries. The US is a very dominant country and so of course there will be more leaked info.
xnull2guest 10y ago
I remember the WikiLeaks of Turkish emails that built and led up to the near successful coup of the Erdogan regime. In any case, I definitely welcome leaks from other countries. But I don't want those exclusively. As an American it's been repeatedly proven throughout my adult life that the US media does not perform due diligence in its role as the "fourth estate". The most important leaks for me are the ones providing transparency into my government. If there were leak sites for every government I would check the American leaks by far the most often.
rdtsc 10y ago
They did release stuff from other countries. I hope they release more. I'd imagine counter-balancing a billion dollar new conglomerate coverage of CNN, NBC, CBS and others wasn't that bad with just some emails. So wish they'd do more Eastern Europe (I am from there originally). If they had Trump material, I wish they'd release that as well. I think I might donate to them, maybe they are understaffed and need more resources. So far I did find information there rather useful and helpful. Surprisingly more so than what I found form the traditional mass media.

ycp217 10y ago

"Sarah Harrison is a journalist and editor for WikiLeaks."

dimino 10y ago

The world may or may not need something that serves the same function as WikiLeaks, but it certainly does not need WikiLeaks specifically, not anymore. I'm sick of Julian Assange. I don't think he's a rapist, but based on what I've read, he certainly is a self-aggrandizing opportunistic asshole.

sfdf 10y ago

g \d f d d d d d d d dd d d dd d dd

hyperion2010 10y ago

Trump has been a public figure for far, far too long for there not to be 'EMAILS' equivalents. The fact that a large fraction of the time when wikileaks is discussed there is no visible questioning about why they haven't released about Trump tells me that something fucked up is going on. See this for an excellent summary [0]. 0. https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wikileaks_staff_despite_our_editor/d9utp64/?context=3&st=ivn9nf8l&sh=49a14cf1 https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wiki...

grandalf 10y ago
That's a pretty embarrassing, angry rant. Do you really doubt that Wikileaks would have released information about Trump if any had been leaked that was significant?
- hyperion2010 10y ago
  Check the 7th bullet point in the link.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    I read it, I don't see your point. One must believe that WL was actively trying to help Trump to think it would just sit on relevant information. I don't believe that as Assange likened both candidates to various diseases in one of his earlier statements.
benbenolson 10y ago
Trump has said himself that he does not use email. Wikileaks has released lots of negative information on various Republican candidates, as well (see their Iraq collection involving Bush), and have no bias toward any political entity. That's the entire point of their existence.
droopybuns 10y ago
That summary is terrible. Apparently, the op of the summary will only be satisfied if an equal and opposite leak happens to the trump campaign. Not everyone falls for obvious phishing attempts. Shouldn't we consider your susceptibility to phishing as evidence of judgement? Shouldn't it be evidence of your qualification as a Leader? Shouldn't it reflect on you if your trusted advisors get owned by bit.ly links for gmail password resets?

grandalf 10y ago

I recently bought a few Wikileaks T shirts. The US has lost its adversarial, investigative press. Wikileaks keeps that spirit alive and offers hope that one day our press will do a far better job at holding our officials accountable.

partycoder 10y ago

How do you validate a leak? What if it's 90% true except for the part that matters? The true strategists convince the enemy they're getting what they want, and then profit from it. If wikileaks was real they would be targeted by state sponsored hackers regularly. There's a strong possibility this is a facade.

grandalf 10y ago
Most of the tens of thousands of emails were cryptographically verified as authentic by DKIM headers.

rdtsc 10y ago

I think out of all the "news" media so far Wikileaks is probably the most trustworthy. I've seen people claim they altered the emails or Russians wrote the emails, I think they'd have to point to specific instances for me to see it. I don't remember a single instance of them altering an email. I don't remember anyone credible refuting and saying they didn't write it. How do we know these emails are interesting and useful -- we listen to the CNN of course, remember folks "...it is illegal to possess these stolen documents. It is different from the media. So everything you learn about this, you are learning from us." that was my first hint documents should be read very closely. When mass media lies about something it overcompensates, and one heuristic I use is I just reverse the meaning of it. "don't read the documents" and I interpret it as "that's a place to take a look", or "we are exporting democracy to the Middle East" that means "we are installing puppet regimes there" and so on. It is a funny exercise.

grandalf 10y ago
> I've seen people claim they altered the emails or Russians wrote the emails, I think they'd have to point to specific instances for me to see it. I don't remember a single instance of them altering an email. I don't remember anyone credible refuting and saying they didn't write it. Yes, once Wikileaks showed cryptographic proof that the emails were authentic, those criticisms stopped.
TAForObvReasons 10y ago
> I don't remember anyone credible refuting and saying they didn't write it. The criticisms were generally of a different sort: editorializing in their selection of leaks. "selective omission", if you will. They have information about Trump but chose not to release it. According to Breitbart (so you know it's not from a "liberal media" source): http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/27/wikileaks-info-donald-trump/ http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/27/wikileaks-info-dona... > “We do have some information about the Republican campaign,” Assange said. “I mean, it’s from a point of view of an investigative journalist organization like WikiLeaks, the problem with the Trump campaign is it’s actually hard for us to publish much more controversial material than what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every second day ..." I don't know about you, but I feel like it would have been helpful for the people to know what they had on Trump. Seems oddly opaque and politically motivated. It really doesn't help that they were selling explicitly anti-Clinton merchandise in their store: http://i.imgur.com/AjsWfqg.jpg http://i.imgur.com/AjsWfqg.jpg This is one example. In other cases, such as the Syria files, known-to-have-existed emails that involved Russia mysteriously weren't leaked and many people have speculated that stemmed from a pro-Russia bias. If they were releasing everything they had, it would be hard to criticize. But when you see the pattern of leaks and omissions, it's hard not to make the argument that they are playing politics.

kinghajj 10y ago

Is this post being brigaded? Surprised it's fallen off the front page already.

xnull2guest 10y ago
Brigaded threads are the norm for the internet now. Governments around the world including the US and UK hire military contractors to brigade, trolls brigade, and motivated communities brigade. It's sad, I agree.

dmode 10y ago

While overall I agree that an organization like Wikileaks is necessary to hold institutions accountable, I find their actions during the last Presidential election questionable. They simply guy played by Russia. My biggest problem with their approach during the election is that they provided assymetric information to the public that heavily biased people's opinion. So DNC was working with Clinton campaign against Sanders, and I am pretty sure RNC was working against Trump as well. If there were some media collaboration on one side, I am confident this is a campaign norm and happened plenty on the other side. Especially when you got the Breitbart executive running the campaign. But by publishing one side of the story Wikileaks did a disservice to the Democracy that it longs to protect. Ideally, they should have hold on those emails until after the election or until there was comparable material available from the other side

davesque 10y ago

I'm totally done with Wikileaks. Just look at their Twitter feed for five minutes and it's not hard to see that they've been heavily biased against one side of the political spectrum in the United States. Not only this, their tweets have at times been erratic, peddling things ranging from outrageous conspiracy theories: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/794450623404113920?lang=en https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/794450623404113920?lang... to anti-semitism: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/25/what_wikileaks_might_have_meant_by_that_anti_semitic_tweet.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/25/what_wikil... I'm all for anti-secrecy organizations that hold powerful figures accountable, but Wikileaks appears to have lost their way. My own little conspiracy theory is that they've been coerced somehow into doing the bidding of the Russian government.

pdimitar 10y ago

As they say in The Matrix: "you might be just another -- more advanced -- form of control". I find it somewhat amusing how WikiLeaks releases things widely only when a certain topic becomes relevant and gets public attention. And then it chooses to keep silent on other topics but still vocally declares they have info on them. Fishy as hell for me. It seems they are aiming for popularity and relevance at this point; and not to make any real change in the world. I refuse to accept there is a "nuclear-level-of-unstable-and-dangerous" information. Just release it all on several big torrent trackers and move on. What'll happen exactly? A world war? We're past that point, several times now, ever since the 1960s up until today. It didn't happen even in the Cuba crisis, I don't think it'll happen over the racist slurs of a popular politician (one random example). I fear WikiLeaks have been compromised long ago. Did we all forget that Julian Assange was questioned in private for a long time? Everybody can be either bought or threatened to submission. Everybody.