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>> His objective is to sever or degrade the links between nodes in the graph by exposing secrets. Not sure how you would classify the DNC emails as being "secr

>> His objective is to sever or degrade the links between nodes in the graph by exposing secrets. Not sure how you would classify the DNC emails as being "secrets". Hacking a DNC email server and then sending them to Assange to me doesn't really qualify as exposing secrets. If they were important, the DNC would've been encrypting their emails to protect what they were talking about. The funny thing is people misconstrue the emails as an attempt to influence our election instead of actually looking at the fact that it exposed the idea that the DNC was already in the bag for Hilary long before the primaries even started. If you want a conspiracy, you should look at how incredibly slanted the DNC was in favor of electing Clinton. All the emails did was confirm what a lot of people had long suspected was already going on.

maxerickson 10y ago
The people talking about the emails influencing the election are talking about the Podesta emails that were dribbled out long after the D primary had concluded.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Sure. But they undermined the legitimacy of the DNC primary process, which undermined the legitimacy of Hillary as the candidate produced by that process. That has (at least potentially) the ability to influence pro-Democratic turnout in the general election.
graedus 10y ago
> If they were important, the DNC would've been encrypting their emails to protect what they were talking about. Don't you think this vastly overestimates the technical competence and infosec understanding/awareness of the organization in question? It seems obvious that they presumed that their unencrypted emails were not going to become public information.
- mhurron 10y ago
  > Don't you think this vastly overestimates the technical competence and infosec understanding/awareness of the organization in question? It vastly overestimating the technical competence of every organization. That the DNC presumed their unencrypted emails were not going to become public is the default stance of pretty much everyone.
- grzm 10y ago
  I found this article eye-opening as to infosec wrt the DNC email server: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-emails-2016-server-state-department-fbi-214307 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/hillary-clint... What was particularly interesting was how behind-the-times White House IT was.
Bartweiss 10y ago
>> Not sure how you would classify the DNC emails as being "secrets". Hacking a DNC email server and then sending them to Assange to me doesn't really qualify as exposing secrets. If they were important, the DNC would've been encrypting their emails to protect what they were talking about. This seems to have a baseline assumption of competence that I don't think is warranted. There's shockingly little relationship between privacy intentions and privacy actions. Presumably "let's attack Sanders for being Jewish" isn't something the DNC wanted to see on the front page of a newspaper, no matter how clumsy they were about protecting it. More broadly, what you describe in the other two paragraphs is exactly what Assange has been pulling for. Elsewhere, he's talked about raising the difficulty of secret dealings until powerful organizations have the choice of being ethical or inefficient. If transparent dealings are enough easier than opaque ones, opaque and anti-public-interest dealings should become rarer. There are a bunch of criticisms here, some of which are quite reasonable. Assange nominally respects personal privacy while opposing institutional privacy, but revealing institutional behavior after the fact almost always compromises some personal information. And anti-public-interest is not 1-to-1 with opaque; plenty of groups do incredibly harmful things based on deniability or sheer boringness instead of secrecy. Even so, I think things like "showing the DNC was in Clinton's pocket" are exactly in Assange's wheelhouse. If the DNC was neutral (as their bylaws required), there would have been no problem. If it had been an open pro-Clinton PAC it would have been non-notable. As is, he's hopefully raised the difficulty of screwing the public as a nominally-neutral organization.

maxerickson 10y ago

The people talking about the emails influencing the election are talking about the Podesta emails that were dribbled out long after the D primary had concluded.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
Sure. But they undermined the legitimacy of the DNC primary process, which undermined the legitimacy of Hillary as the candidate produced by that process. That has (at least potentially) the ability to influence pro-Democratic turnout in the general election.

graedus 10y ago

> If they were important, the DNC would've been encrypting their emails to protect what they were talking about. Don't you think this vastly overestimates the technical competence and infosec understanding/awareness of the organization in question? It seems obvious that they presumed that their unencrypted emails were not going to become public information.

mhurron 10y ago
> Don't you think this vastly overestimates the technical competence and infosec understanding/awareness of the organization in question? It vastly overestimating the technical competence of every organization. That the DNC presumed their unencrypted emails were not going to become public is the default stance of pretty much everyone.
grzm 10y ago
I found this article eye-opening as to infosec wrt the DNC email server: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-emails-2016-server-state-department-fbi-214307 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/hillary-clint... What was particularly interesting was how behind-the-times White House IT was.

Bartweiss 10y ago

>> Not sure how you would classify the DNC emails as being "secrets". Hacking a DNC email server and then sending them to Assange to me doesn't really qualify as exposing secrets. If they were important, the DNC would've been encrypting their emails to protect what they were talking about. This seems to have a baseline assumption of competence that I don't think is warranted. There's shockingly little relationship between privacy intentions and privacy actions. Presumably "let's attack Sanders for being Jewish" isn't something the DNC wanted to see on the front page of a newspaper, no matter how clumsy they were about protecting it. More broadly, what you describe in the other two paragraphs is exactly what Assange has been pulling for. Elsewhere, he's talked about raising the difficulty of secret dealings until powerful organizations have the choice of being ethical or inefficient. If transparent dealings are enough easier than opaque ones, opaque and anti-public-interest dealings should become rarer. There are a bunch of criticisms here, some of which are quite reasonable. Assange nominally respects personal privacy while opposing institutional privacy, but revealing institutional behavior after the fact almost always compromises some personal information. And anti-public-interest is not 1-to-1 with opaque; plenty of groups do incredibly harmful things based on deniability or sheer boringness instead of secrecy. Even so, I think things like "showing the DNC was in Clinton's pocket" are exactly in Assange's wheelhouse. If the DNC was neutral (as their bylaws required), there would have been no problem. If it had been an open pro-Clinton PAC it would have been non-notable. As is, he's hopefully raised the difficulty of screwing the public as a nominally-neutral organization.