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"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 sou
by 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 agogovernments can leak information with or without the help of wikileaks. all wikileaks cares about is complete transparency and access to information.
- skywhopper 10y agoif Wikileaks lets itself be used to prefer political candidates then they are failing in this mission.
- ovibos 10y agoHow? In what way does preferentiality damage the transparency or validity of the information?
- revelation 10y agoYou 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.
- forrestbrazeal 10y agoI'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that WikiLeaks' guiding philosophy as espoused in this article seems almost willfully naive.
- admax88q 10y agoWhat would you propose they do? Not leak documents based upon who the source is? If the documents are authentic, why does it matter who the source was? If A leaks documents on B revealing corruption about B, just because A's motives may not be pure, doesn't make B any less corrupt.
- forrestbrazeal 10y ago"Authentic" does not always equal "worth publishing", of course. I have no problem with them publishing stuff that's legitimately concerning. But a lot of the Clinton leaks (and I'm no Clinton fan) seemed to me like little more than doxxing, in the full knowledge that the emails would pick up a tinge of scandal by association simply because they showed up on WikiLeaks.
- mcphage 10y agoWell, they could have released them all at once, rather in daily drips and drabs in an effort to make it look like there was more newsworthy information than there actually was.
- mehwoot 10y agoWhat would you propose they do? Not leak documents based upon who the source is? Actually as far as I remember, this has always been part of their method of operation from the beginning, and they explicitly state this: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/784873305463459841 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/784873305463459841. They are more than just someone who releases whatever is given to them- they attempt to vet the information and publicise it as well. Which are functions that probably should be done, but it's very hard to appear impartial when you do that...
- eclipsetheworld 10y agoWhat would have happened to Hillary's emails if WikiLeaks would not have existed? Russia (probably?) still would have released them. WikiLeaks is merely a tool for entities wishing to release secret information and documents. Personally, I prefer WikiLeaks to be indiscriminate towards the secret documents they are entrusted with. If they weren't, another service would probably pop up doing exactly that.
- hackuser 10y ago> What would have happened to Hillary's emails if WikiLeaks would not have existed? You mean the alleged (never verified) DNC emails. Hillary's emails were released by the FBI and in response to a lawsuit.
- hackuser 10y agoI believe strongly in transparency as a way to prevent corruption, but spreading misinformation doesn't stop corruption, it furthers it. It doesn't 'shine a light', it creates shadows where a brutal dictator can hide while he hurts others. Look up "useful idiots" to understand the role they played. It's too easy to cite principle such as "transparency" in order to ignore the difficult questions of responsibility and consequences. If Wikileaks wants to help the world and 'shine a light' - well that sounds like what journalists do; why shouldn't Wikileaks also verify and corroborate information before giving it to the public? Why would I trust any of the information if they don't? In a way, Wikileaks is the epitome of the propaganda and fake online news that influenced the U.S. campaign.
- forrestbrazeal 10y agoThe linked article claims that WikiLeaks does "research, validate and contextualize the submissions we receive". Of course, this process is conducted with an odd lack of transparency.
- seabass 10y agoTo be fair, they have a better track record than most media outlets. They don't trust the information at face value until, according to them at least, it has been verified. What that verification process is I have no idea, but so far it does appear to be working. I might just be out of the loop, though, so if that is the case what misinformation have they spread?
- hackuser 10y agoI've never heard of them verifying the information. They said they didn't even know where it came from. I doubt the DNC helped verify the emails. > what misinformation have they spread? Russian intelligence provided them with the data. I think we can assume it wasn't the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. EDIT: You are correct that I can't prove that it's misinformation. However, that is a normal part of a sophisticated misinformation campaign - that its targets can't discern real info from misinfo. It doesn't make my assertion correct but the absence of proof hardly makes it unlikely.
- grandalf 10y ago> So they prefer to be unwitting pawns? Yes, just as journalists often are when someone comes forward with a story or leaks information, etc. By not making the sort of editorial decisions that would slant the meaning of the leaked data, WL stays above that. Other journalists are free to dig deeper and write full-scale investigative stories based on the data.
- mcphage 10y agoChoosing not to exercise judgement doesn't mean you stay above politics, it just means you're merely at the whim of it.
- grandalf 10y agoOnly in the short term, in the long term naked truth is more important than the political concerns of the moment.
- mcphage 10y agoYeah long term I don't see Wikileaks coming out of all this looking very good. Their final write up will be "Russian stooge".
- xnull2guest 10y agoRight, the US National Security apparatus will be the author of the writeup, and Americans won't have any access to a story outside the bubble.
- locusm 10y agoHave we seen a single shred of evidence of Russian involvement? Military types with a chest of medals saying so on CNN doesn't count btw.
- grandalf 10y agoClapper today said that the government doesn't know how WL got the emails. And earlier statements have said that a "state actor" was suspected for circumstantial reasons (the claim was that government officials in a variety of nations were targeted). So you are correct, there has been zero evidence.
- krenoten 10y agohttps://medium.com/@thegrugq/evidence-guccifer-2-0-is-russian-intel-55f9f8b3f135#.gowhfb40t https://medium.com/@thegrugq/evidence-guccifer-2-0-is-russia...
- alphonsegaston 10y agoCopying and pasting from down-thread - 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...
- ErikVandeWater 10y ago1. If they know who their sources are, if they are compromised, their source is compromised. 2. They don't need to rationalize it. It benefits Wikileaks to pit multiple parts of the "unaccountable network" against one another, increasing the number of leaks and therefore the transparency available to the common man, and weakening the overall "unaccountable network."
- monsterix 10y ago> to step back and acknowledge that you're being used by a foreign power? No. It is for people of America to acknowledge the wrongdoings of its Government and defend itself from internalizing that such overreaches from USG are unstoppable. Starting from inhuman torture of Chelsea Manning to outrageous house arrest (and cut-off) of Julian Assange in another country to landing a plane of another country's leader to capture Edward Snowden on basis of a "rumor" to millions of innocents put behind bars for life for petty or no crimes at all to meaningless killings of unarmed black people to pushing hackers to committing suicide (Aaron Schwartz) for no rhyme or reason. Clearing you're doing a disservice to this nation by moving the real elephant out of the room.
- elihu 10y agoThere are two explanations for their seemingly biased reporting: either they had leaks from the Republican side and chose not to release them, or the only leaks they had were on the Democratic side. From the outside, it's hard to know which one is correct. Perhaps what the world needs is multiple WikiLeaks-like organizations that don't have the same editorial slant as Wikileaks? That way leakers can leak their data in several places and it's more likely to be published. (One might even build an anonymous submission tool that makes the submitted data available to all such organizations at the same time.) Of course, if the problem is simply that no one is bothering to attack the RNC, then no amount of additional organizations to publish the data would help. It might, though, lend some credibility to the claim that data isn't being withheld deliberately.