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Or they're just a front for Russian intelligence, as has been suggested for years, as evidenced by the fact that Assange says there's no need to report on Russi

Or they're just a front for Russian intelligence, as has been suggested for years, as evidenced by the fact that Assange says there's no need to report on Russia because of the "free and open media" they have, as evidenced by his show on RT, as evidenced by their facilitating Snowden's defection, as evidenced by... It seems like there are a few die-hards left who thought Assange and Manning were the greatest thing ever exposes the big bad USG, and are refusing to acknowledge the obvious: wikileaks exists so the FSB can run agitprop against its geopolitical foes. Edit: I'd just like to point out the fact that all of these downvotes are flooding in at 3:00 am PST on a Friday night. Can anyone think of a timezone that might coincide with?

bberrry 10y ago
Mind giving the source where Assange said that?
- confounded 10y ago
  See: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of-julian-assanges-interview-went-viral-and-was-completely-false/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of...
  - redthrowaway 10y ago
    Look, you either believe people like Assange, Greenwald, and Snowden are honest people, or you don't. I do not, to say the least. The three of them strike me as some of the most fundamentally dishonest people in the public sphere.
    - smcl 10y ago
      I'm kinda fascinated - why do you think they're fundamentally dishonest? I could maybe understand you thinking this about Assange/Greenwald (I personally don't) since they're essentially reporters - so we have to rely on them accurately reporting what they have been informed by sources, and being able to judge whether the source is credible, and to elect to report on anything regardless of whether it conflicts with their viewpoints etc. But to apply the same criticism to Edward Snowden is a whole different thing altogether. He has produced reams of evidence on the practices of the US intelligence agencies, for him to be "fundamentally dishonest" would involve fabricating large chunks of that, and if I believed that then I wouldn't stop at "dishonest" I'd go with "crazy" or worse.
      - redthrowaway 10y ago
        They all lie constantly, and have been proven to lie constantly. Snowden lied about pretty much every part of his story. He didn't have the access he claimed, he didn't have the knowledge he claimed, he lied about the timeline of his defection, he lied about reading or screening the documents he stole, he lied about the actual behaviours he exposed, he lied about the safeguards in place... the list goes on. Snowden, Assange, and Greenwald are all of the same mould: they're anti-American western leftists who believe the United States' foreign policy is the biggest source of evil in the world, and that any lie told in service of taking it down is therefore justifiable.
        smcl 10y ago
        I didn't downvote you, but I think you're being downvoted because you're being a little vague. If Snowden is lying constantly (particularly as you say about the behaviours he exposed) I'd expect the criticism to be more specific than what you said. Also the "they want to take down the United States" thing is pretty extreme and a bit "InfoWars" sounding, and if you listen to him and his justifications for what he did then it's pretty apparent that this is not something he stands for.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        redthrowaway 10y ago
        >I'd expect the criticism to be more specific than what you said. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/the-lies-edward-snowden-tells/360893/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/the... http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/17/either-edward-snowden-is-lying-or-his-former-boss-is.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/17/either-edwa... http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fable-of-edward-snowden-1483143143 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fable-of-edward-snowden-1483... https://www.yahoo.com/news/5-ways-nsa-leaker-edward-snowdens-story-isnt-115500971.html?ref=gs https://www.yahoo.com/news/5-ways-nsa-leaker-edward-snowdens... https://ca.news.yahoo.com/snowden-lied-and-acted-out-of-pique-house-report-charges-232035140.html https://ca.news.yahoo.com/snowden-lied-and-acted-out-of-piqu... >hey want to take down the United States" thing is pretty extreme and a bit "InfoWars" sounding USG, not US. There's a very specific sort of western libertarian/leftist that believes the US' foreign policy is evil, that the military-intelligence wing is a tool of evil, and that opposing it in any way possible is an unalloyed good. I put all three of them in that camp. You could add the likes of Chomsky to that mix. That doesn't mean they don't like their conception of what America is or could be, but they see America's actions in the world as evil and in need of opposing.
    - indy 10y ago
      Glenn Greenwald is known for taking quotes out of context in order to deliberately misrepresent people such as Sam Harris.
      - nikcub 10y ago
        I'd be interested in an example of this if you have one, because I read all the source materials in this story and found his arguments compelling (after initially buying into the narrative)
        indy 10y ago
        Here are some links describing incidents where Glenn Greenwald has taken quotes out of context: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2 http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2 http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-mechanics-of-defamation http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-mechanics-of-defam... https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/803464221786677248 https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/803464221786677248 Edit: And just to add in this particular case I'm in agreement with you, his arguments do seem compelling.
        confounded 10y ago
        I've only read the first two stories, but I'm struggling to see how they reflect badly on Greenwald. The context does not change the meaning in either context.
        FabHK 10y ago
        This is not the right place for this discussion, but in both cases the accusations in the pieces retweeted by Greenwald (Harris as 1. a bigoted "scientific racist", 2. a "genocidal fascist maniac") are not supported when Harris' quotes are seen in context. Greenwald's condemnation of The Guardian's summary of Assange's interview seems accurate. But Greenwald's assessment of Harris, and his tweets in that matter, seem very biased.
    - JoachimS 10y ago
      I don't think its fair to bundle them together. What Assange is doing and acting is way differnt from Snowden, Greenwald. Or Poitras, Manning for that matter. Each of these people should be looked at based on their own actions.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
Findeton 10y ago
Maybe you are a front for the US intelligence, given that you provide no source for your claims about Assange saying that.
- redthrowaway 10y ago
  >He said: “In Russia, there are many vibrant publications, online blogs, and Kremlin critics such as [Alexey] Navalny are part of that spectrum. There are also newspapers like “Novaya Gazeta”, in which different parts of society in Moscow are permitted to critique each other and it is tolerated, generally, because it isn’t a big TV channel that might have a mass popular effect, its audience is educated people in Moscow. So my interpretation is that in Russia there are competitors to WikiLeaks.” In addition, he claimed “no WikiLeaks staff speak Russian, so for a strong culture which has its own language, you have to be seen as a local player.” https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/24/julian-assange-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-interview https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/24/julian-assange... On Wikileaks facilitating Snowden's defection: http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-assange-wikileaks-and-russia-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-assange-wikileaks-and... Oh, and here's him requesting FSB security guards inside the Ecuadorian embassy, because that's totally a normal thing that normal people do: https://archive.is/wEW0o#selection-867.62-867.223 https://archive.is/wEW0o#selection-867.62-867.223 And here's just a decent run-down of the whole shebang: https://20committee.com/2015/08/31/wikileaks-is-a-front-for-russian-intelligence/ https://20committee.com/2015/08/31/wikileaks-is-a-front-for-...
  - Findeton 10y ago
    The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of-julian-assanges-interview-went-viral-and-was-completely-false/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of... Please don't try to spread FAKE NEWS.
    - redthrowaway 10y ago
      You'll forgive me if I decline to take the world of one of the most fundamentally dishonest and unprincipled people in the public sphere on this matter. I'm no fan of the guardian, but if they said the sky was green and he said it was blue, I'd go outside and check.
myotherusername 10y ago
Yeah... "barely any need" to report on the Russian land of freedom where people are arrested for things like twerking.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
maxt 10y ago
I recall about a week after the Snowden disclosures some people saying the Snowden leaks were deliberate and that NSA has kept up this tradition of false flag disclosures. If anything, the whole web is certainly more secure now, and Snowden is even quoted as saying: "I still work for the NSA" after the leaks. I don't buy the rhetoric that NSA is simply all about slurping up plaintext. They have a duty to secure the web too. It's a weird paradox that they both want more security and want all the plaintext they can salvage.
dang 10y ago
Making an inflammatory claim and calling it "obvious" guarantees the kind of thread we don't want on HN. That amounts to trolling. Please don't do it, and please don't stoke flamewars once they get going, either. Accusations of astroturfing or shilling without evidence are not allowed on HN. Rushing to that as an explanation is, invariably, evidence of sloppy thinking—or maybe non-thinking, of the kind that political passion leads us all to. It should have been obvious that there are many countries where people were reading HN at that hour and that you'd given plenty of them plenty of reason to downvote. It's embarrassing to see a comment here insinuate that only Russian spies could possibly disagree, and just as embarrassing to see how many users upvote such an absurdity. This community is deeply divided on divisive issues. People on all sides need to conduct themselves more civilly than this, so please don't do it again. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13343037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13343037 and marked it off-topic.

bberrry 10y ago

Mind giving the source where Assange said that?

confounded 10y ago
See: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of-julian-assanges-interview-went-viral-and-was-completely-false/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of...
- redthrowaway 10y ago
  Look, you either believe people like Assange, Greenwald, and Snowden are honest people, or you don't. I do not, to say the least. The three of them strike me as some of the most fundamentally dishonest people in the public sphere.
  - smcl 10y ago
    I'm kinda fascinated - why do you think they're fundamentally dishonest? I could maybe understand you thinking this about Assange/Greenwald (I personally don't) since they're essentially reporters - so we have to rely on them accurately reporting what they have been informed by sources, and being able to judge whether the source is credible, and to elect to report on anything regardless of whether it conflicts with their viewpoints etc. But to apply the same criticism to Edward Snowden is a whole different thing altogether. He has produced reams of evidence on the practices of the US intelligence agencies, for him to be "fundamentally dishonest" would involve fabricating large chunks of that, and if I believed that then I wouldn't stop at "dishonest" I'd go with "crazy" or worse.
    - redthrowaway 10y ago
      They all lie constantly, and have been proven to lie constantly. Snowden lied about pretty much every part of his story. He didn't have the access he claimed, he didn't have the knowledge he claimed, he lied about the timeline of his defection, he lied about reading or screening the documents he stole, he lied about the actual behaviours he exposed, he lied about the safeguards in place... the list goes on. Snowden, Assange, and Greenwald are all of the same mould: they're anti-American western leftists who believe the United States' foreign policy is the biggest source of evil in the world, and that any lie told in service of taking it down is therefore justifiable.
      - smcl 10y ago
        I didn't downvote you, but I think you're being downvoted because you're being a little vague. If Snowden is lying constantly (particularly as you say about the behaviours he exposed) I'd expect the criticism to be more specific than what you said. Also the "they want to take down the United States" thing is pretty extreme and a bit "InfoWars" sounding, and if you listen to him and his justifications for what he did then it's pretty apparent that this is not something he stands for.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        redthrowaway 10y ago
        >I'd expect the criticism to be more specific than what you said. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/the-lies-edward-snowden-tells/360893/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/the... http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/17/either-edward-snowden-is-lying-or-his-former-boss-is.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/17/either-edwa... http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fable-of-edward-snowden-1483143143 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fable-of-edward-snowden-1483... https://www.yahoo.com/news/5-ways-nsa-leaker-edward-snowdens-story-isnt-115500971.html?ref=gs https://www.yahoo.com/news/5-ways-nsa-leaker-edward-snowdens... https://ca.news.yahoo.com/snowden-lied-and-acted-out-of-pique-house-report-charges-232035140.html https://ca.news.yahoo.com/snowden-lied-and-acted-out-of-piqu... >hey want to take down the United States" thing is pretty extreme and a bit "InfoWars" sounding USG, not US. There's a very specific sort of western libertarian/leftist that believes the US' foreign policy is evil, that the military-intelligence wing is a tool of evil, and that opposing it in any way possible is an unalloyed good. I put all three of them in that camp. You could add the likes of Chomsky to that mix. That doesn't mean they don't like their conception of what America is or could be, but they see America's actions in the world as evil and in need of opposing.
  - indy 10y ago
    Glenn Greenwald is known for taking quotes out of context in order to deliberately misrepresent people such as Sam Harris.
    - nikcub 10y ago
      I'd be interested in an example of this if you have one, because I read all the source materials in this story and found his arguments compelling (after initially buying into the narrative)
      - indy 10y ago
        Here are some links describing incidents where Glenn Greenwald has taken quotes out of context: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2 http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2 http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-mechanics-of-defamation http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-mechanics-of-defam... https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/803464221786677248 https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/803464221786677248 Edit: And just to add in this particular case I'm in agreement with you, his arguments do seem compelling.
        confounded 10y ago
        I've only read the first two stories, but I'm struggling to see how they reflect badly on Greenwald. The context does not change the meaning in either context.
        FabHK 10y ago
        This is not the right place for this discussion, but in both cases the accusations in the pieces retweeted by Greenwald (Harris as 1. a bigoted "scientific racist", 2. a "genocidal fascist maniac") are not supported when Harris' quotes are seen in context. Greenwald's condemnation of The Guardian's summary of Assange's interview seems accurate. But Greenwald's assessment of Harris, and his tweets in that matter, seem very biased.
  - JoachimS 10y ago
    I don't think its fair to bundle them together. What Assange is doing and acting is way differnt from Snowden, Greenwald. Or Poitras, Manning for that matter. Each of these people should be looked at based on their own actions.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

Findeton 10y ago

Maybe you are a front for the US intelligence, given that you provide no source for your claims about Assange saying that.

redthrowaway 10y ago
>He said: “In Russia, there are many vibrant publications, online blogs, and Kremlin critics such as [Alexey] Navalny are part of that spectrum. There are also newspapers like “Novaya Gazeta”, in which different parts of society in Moscow are permitted to critique each other and it is tolerated, generally, because it isn’t a big TV channel that might have a mass popular effect, its audience is educated people in Moscow. So my interpretation is that in Russia there are competitors to WikiLeaks.” In addition, he claimed “no WikiLeaks staff speak Russian, so for a strong culture which has its own language, you have to be seen as a local player.” https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/24/julian-assange-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-interview https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/24/julian-assange... On Wikileaks facilitating Snowden's defection: http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-assange-wikileaks-and-russia-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-assange-wikileaks-and... Oh, and here's him requesting FSB security guards inside the Ecuadorian embassy, because that's totally a normal thing that normal people do: https://archive.is/wEW0o#selection-867.62-867.223 https://archive.is/wEW0o#selection-867.62-867.223 And here's just a decent run-down of the whole shebang: https://20committee.com/2015/08/31/wikileaks-is-a-front-for-russian-intelligence/ https://20committee.com/2015/08/31/wikileaks-is-a-front-for-...
- Findeton 10y ago
  The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of-julian-assanges-interview-went-viral-and-was-completely-false/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of... Please don't try to spread FAKE NEWS.
  - redthrowaway 10y ago
    You'll forgive me if I decline to take the world of one of the most fundamentally dishonest and unprincipled people in the public sphere on this matter. I'm no fan of the guardian, but if they said the sky was green and he said it was blue, I'd go outside and check.

myotherusername 10y ago

Yeah... "barely any need" to report on the Russian land of freedom where people are arrested for things like twerking.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

maxt 10y ago

I recall about a week after the Snowden disclosures some people saying the Snowden leaks were deliberate and that NSA has kept up this tradition of false flag disclosures. If anything, the whole web is certainly more secure now, and Snowden is even quoted as saying: "I still work for the NSA" after the leaks. I don't buy the rhetoric that NSA is simply all about slurping up plaintext. They have a duty to secure the web too. It's a weird paradox that they both want more security and want all the plaintext they can salvage.

dang 10y ago

Making an inflammatory claim and calling it "obvious" guarantees the kind of thread we don't want on HN. That amounts to trolling. Please don't do it, and please don't stoke flamewars once they get going, either. Accusations of astroturfing or shilling without evidence are not allowed on HN. Rushing to that as an explanation is, invariably, evidence of sloppy thinking—or maybe non-thinking, of the kind that political passion leads us all to. It should have been obvious that there are many countries where people were reading HN at that hour and that you'd given plenty of them plenty of reason to downvote. It's embarrassing to see a comment here insinuate that only Russian spies could possibly disagree, and just as embarrassing to see how many users upvote such an absurdity. This community is deeply divided on divisive issues. People on all sides need to conduct themselves more civilly than this, so please don't do it again. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13343037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13343037 and marked it off-topic.