4 ms·

Lamo bad. Poulsen bad. Ok. But it does not therefore follow that Manning is good. Or that Wikileaks is acting ethically and performing a vital service. Fortuna

by madair 16y ago

Lamo bad. Poulsen bad. Ok. But it does not therefore follow that Manning is good. Or that Wikileaks is acting ethically and performing a vital service. Fortunately Greenwald gave us his actual reasoning, rather than the logical reduction which you provided here. You might not agree, but don't give us tripe about his reasoning.

tptacek 16y ago
His contribution to "Wikileaks good" here is that Wikileaks didn't compromise its source, Lamo (and to a lesser extent Poulsen) did. But that's a straw man argument. Nobody is arguing that Wikileaks is bad because it might rat out its sources. What frustrates me about Greenwald's overall take on Wikileaks (not just in this article) is that it takes Wikileaks supposed ideals at face value. He's actually not arguing for Wikileaks; he's arguing for the idea of a Wikileaks. Unfortunately for all of us, in the real world, human beings with normal human incentives are going to have to run Wikileaks, and we have to consider Wikileaks as it actually exists and not simply Wikileaks "as a long-term force for positive change in the world".
- samd 16y ago
  What are some of the ways that actual-Wikileaks differs from ideal-Wikileaks?
  - tptacek 16y ago
    A real simple one is that an ideal-Wikileaks would only safely shuttle information from leakers to the public, and not reframe and editorialize the information to favor Wikileaks own political agenda. Another one would be than an ideal-Wikileaks wouldn't have a critical operational stakeholder going on media tours, which make Wikileaks less about the information itself and more about the personalities of the people running Wikileaks (which are ultimately irrelevant), and, more importantly, which create situations in which the security of the whole endeavor could be compromised by a single arrest. There are lots of others I'm sure I could come up with. The fact of the matter is, for all you know, Wikileaks could be a very elaborate 4chan hoax. You know nothing at all about this organization or its true motivations, which is as it must be, since a "transparent" Wikileaks would immediately be shut down.
    - samd 16y ago
      Those things are all bad, but Wikileaks still publishes raw data from whistleblowers to the public. The other stuff is, as you said, a sideshow; it doesn't detract from their primary function. The only thing that would make actual-Wikileaks evil is if they didn't publish information that didn't agree with their agenda. But I suspect that if a whistleblower gave information to Wikileaks which then went unpublished, they'd find some other way to get the information out there.
    - yread 16y ago
      Wikileaks said when publicizing the video that the leaker himself asked for it to editorialized for largest media impact. Which kinda makes sense when reading the transcripts of idealistic Manning confessing to Lamo that he gave it to them to start "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms"
      - tptacek 16y ago
        NOT. RELEVANT. An ideal-Wikileaks would not taint every subsequent disclosure it had a hand in by overtly participating in the editorialization of the information it was disclosing. From now on, every time they publish anything we have to wonder not only whether the leaker is giving us the whole story, but whether Wikileaks is being faithful to the material as well. An ideal-Wikileaks would stay out of the story and allow third parties to maximize the media impact. The real-world Wikileaks wants to sit across from Stephen Colbert.
        niels_olson 16y ago
        ah, no. As I'm sure you know, true neutrality is rare, and in a social system, where people come and go, neutrality is an unstable equilibrium. There is a story about a Soviet diplomat and an American diplomat at a treaty conference. The Russian observes "I envy your propoganda. In the USSR, at least we know Pravda is lying. In the US, you don't even know that." I would prefer Assange's idea: admit that neutrality is unstable and instead, take a stand, but back it up by publishing your source material. This is precisely what scientists do. Rare is the scientific article that publishes all the data from the study. Instead, they publish their analysis of the data: graphs, tables, words. The WikiLeaks model is actually more rigourous than most scientific literature: they publish the whole dataset on top of the analysis and editorial."
- madair 16y ago
  I'm really confused, I'm not just trying to rile you up here, are you really sure that Greenwald has a idealized view of Wikileaks, the narrative of his article seems to find some motivations of Manning, and as he says, he has already come to his separate belief that the service that Wikileaks performs is positive and true to its aims. We could weasel-word that and say Wikileaks "seems generally true to its aims" or "seems trying to stay true to its aims", but don't we all generally assume bias in all parties in contemporary intellectual debate? What am I missing here? Is it that you think that Greenwald doesn't recognize or understand ingrained and universal bias? Is it that you think Wikileaks should simply not have any opinions and only relay the facts? I guess that might be an improvement in the sense that they don't impart an incomplete or biased narrative? Isn't that called marketing? Should activists not market? Only information-related activists? Which activists are not in the information business anyway? Is activism within the media inherently and broadly frustrating to you too? There's some piece of information missing I think that connects the dots of why humans at Wikileaks having opinions and marketing them is frustrating to you. ITN news from the U.K. used to have a policy of impassive presentation of the facts. I loved it. But not many people watch ITN news, in fact I think they've gone away or changed or something because it wasn't viable or something of the sort, I need to look that up.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    So, Wikileaks isn't a reliable facility for safely getting information from inside large non-transparent governments and corporations. It's a left-wing activist organization. You can't have it both ways. You're either one or the other. The notion that Wikileaks was in some way obligated to "market" this material is nonsense. Virtually anyone else in the world could have contributed the "marketing" once the material was out there. There was no need whatsoever for Wikileaks to trade its credibility for promotional value. The only motivation I can detect behind it doing so is, again, that Julian Assange wanted to get on TV.

by madair 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago

His contribution to "Wikileaks good" here is that Wikileaks didn't compromise its source, Lamo (and to a lesser extent Poulsen) did. But that's a straw man argument. Nobody is arguing that Wikileaks is bad because it might rat out its sources. What frustrates me about Greenwald's overall take on Wikileaks (not just in this article) is that it takes Wikileaks supposed ideals at face value. He's actually not arguing for Wikileaks; he's arguing for the idea of a Wikileaks. Unfortunately for all of us, in the real world, human beings with normal human incentives are going to have to run Wikileaks, and we have to consider Wikileaks as it actually exists and not simply Wikileaks "as a long-term force for positive change in the world".

samd 16y ago
What are some of the ways that actual-Wikileaks differs from ideal-Wikileaks?
- tptacek 16y ago
  A real simple one is that an ideal-Wikileaks would only safely shuttle information from leakers to the public, and not reframe and editorialize the information to favor Wikileaks own political agenda. Another one would be than an ideal-Wikileaks wouldn't have a critical operational stakeholder going on media tours, which make Wikileaks less about the information itself and more about the personalities of the people running Wikileaks (which are ultimately irrelevant), and, more importantly, which create situations in which the security of the whole endeavor could be compromised by a single arrest. There are lots of others I'm sure I could come up with. The fact of the matter is, for all you know, Wikileaks could be a very elaborate 4chan hoax. You know nothing at all about this organization or its true motivations, which is as it must be, since a "transparent" Wikileaks would immediately be shut down.
  - samd 16y ago
    Those things are all bad, but Wikileaks still publishes raw data from whistleblowers to the public. The other stuff is, as you said, a sideshow; it doesn't detract from their primary function. The only thing that would make actual-Wikileaks evil is if they didn't publish information that didn't agree with their agenda. But I suspect that if a whistleblower gave information to Wikileaks which then went unpublished, they'd find some other way to get the information out there.
  - yread 16y ago
    Wikileaks said when publicizing the video that the leaker himself asked for it to editorialized for largest media impact. Which kinda makes sense when reading the transcripts of idealistic Manning confessing to Lamo that he gave it to them to start "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms"
    - tptacek 16y ago
      NOT. RELEVANT. An ideal-Wikileaks would not taint every subsequent disclosure it had a hand in by overtly participating in the editorialization of the information it was disclosing. From now on, every time they publish anything we have to wonder not only whether the leaker is giving us the whole story, but whether Wikileaks is being faithful to the material as well. An ideal-Wikileaks would stay out of the story and allow third parties to maximize the media impact. The real-world Wikileaks wants to sit across from Stephen Colbert.
      - niels_olson 16y ago
        ah, no. As I'm sure you know, true neutrality is rare, and in a social system, where people come and go, neutrality is an unstable equilibrium. There is a story about a Soviet diplomat and an American diplomat at a treaty conference. The Russian observes "I envy your propoganda. In the USSR, at least we know Pravda is lying. In the US, you don't even know that." I would prefer Assange's idea: admit that neutrality is unstable and instead, take a stand, but back it up by publishing your source material. This is precisely what scientists do. Rare is the scientific article that publishes all the data from the study. Instead, they publish their analysis of the data: graphs, tables, words. The WikiLeaks model is actually more rigourous than most scientific literature: they publish the whole dataset on top of the analysis and editorial."
madair 16y ago
I'm really confused, I'm not just trying to rile you up here, are you really sure that Greenwald has a idealized view of Wikileaks, the narrative of his article seems to find some motivations of Manning, and as he says, he has already come to his separate belief that the service that Wikileaks performs is positive and true to its aims. We could weasel-word that and say Wikileaks "seems generally true to its aims" or "seems trying to stay true to its aims", but don't we all generally assume bias in all parties in contemporary intellectual debate? What am I missing here? Is it that you think that Greenwald doesn't recognize or understand ingrained and universal bias? Is it that you think Wikileaks should simply not have any opinions and only relay the facts? I guess that might be an improvement in the sense that they don't impart an incomplete or biased narrative? Isn't that called marketing? Should activists not market? Only information-related activists? Which activists are not in the information business anyway? Is activism within the media inherently and broadly frustrating to you too? There's some piece of information missing I think that connects the dots of why humans at Wikileaks having opinions and marketing them is frustrating to you. ITN news from the U.K. used to have a policy of impassive presentation of the facts. I loved it. But not many people watch ITN news, in fact I think they've gone away or changed or something because it wasn't viable or something of the sort, I need to look that up.
- tptacek 16y ago
  So, Wikileaks isn't a reliable facility for safely getting information from inside large non-transparent governments and corporations. It's a left-wing activist organization. You can't have it both ways. You're either one or the other. The notion that Wikileaks was in some way obligated to "market" this material is nonsense. Virtually anyone else in the world could have contributed the "marketing" once the material was out there. There was no need whatsoever for Wikileaks to trade its credibility for promotional value. The only motivation I can detect behind it doing so is, again, that Julian Assange wanted to get on TV.