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Why I don't Trust Julian Assange
- blueberry 16y agoWhy I don't trust Clay Johnson: He thinks that US Army is an angel. He has ties with politicians. He is jealous of Julian Assange and it is easy for him to sit around his ass blame Assange for trying to be a Messiah while Assange has to travel constantly to protect the whistle blowers' identity and to keep organizations & governments honest.
- brent 16y agoI can't claim to know who Clay Johnson is, but I am really interested in his low contribution to Wikipedia article length ratio.
- Rod 16y agoIt's so easy to take the moral high ground when one has zero power. That briefly summarizes Clay's self-important diatribe. More to the point: who's Clay Johnson? That's right: nobody knows, and nobody cares.
- eli 16y agoHe's in charge of the tech arm of the Sunlight Foundation, a pretty cool group working for increased transparency in government. They're behind projects like opencongress.org. I'd say he's pretty well known among the "open source government" crowd.
- grandalf 16y agoHe lost me when he admitted to having been involved in the Howard Dean campaign. He clearly has a very favorable view of governmental entities and aspires to be favored by those in power.
- jfarmer 16y agoBecause he worked on a political campaign?
- grandalf 16y agoNo, that he's boasting about it as evidence of why he should be trusted over Assange.
- jfarmer 16y agoHuh? His comment was critical of Howard Dean's campaign. Here's what he said: "No organization like Wikileaks can survive a cult of personality, or one person’s delusions of grandeur. Trust me — I worked on Howard Dean’s presidential campaign." He's not saying "Trust me, I worked on a political campaign." He's saying, with a bit of dark humor, "Trust me, I know what it's like to be involved in a cult of personality and watch it fail because of it."
- eli 16y agoI don't see how you could have possibly drawn those conclusions about Clay based only on this post, and I simply disagree with the idea that Assange has to grandstand in order to protect anyone's identity.
- grandalf 16y agoHe's not grandstanding to protect peoples' identities, but to reduce the risk of his being disappeared by a government.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- shalmanese 16y agoYou go to war with the Wikileaks you have, not the Wikileaks you wish you had.
- tptacek 16y agoExactly wrong. If we're going to discuss Wikileaks, we have to discuss the one that actually exists, not the idealized fiction we wish existed or hope develops over time.
- xenophanes 16y agoErr. You say "exactly wrong" then agree with him. You've both made statements favoring the use of what actually exists.
- tptacek 16y agoYou're implying that I endorse using Wikileaks. I kind of don't.
- jacquesm 16y agoWhy not ?
- mahmud 16y agoHe is a security vendor, and that industry's biggest client is the U.S. government. Can't speak for him, but others in a similar position are usually muzzled.
- tptacek 16y agoSeriously? I'd like to think I wouldn't say something like that about someone I didn't know at all, 'mahmud. For the record, and not that it should need to be said, but we do zero business with the US Government.
- alextingle 16y ago...says some guy who works for the US Government.
- benatkin 16y ago[citation needed] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_A._Johnson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_A._Johnson None of the jobs listed is a US Government job. The Sunlight Foundation, which it seems he no longer is director of, is most certainly not a part of the US Government.
- eli 16y agoAd hominem and factually incorrect. Good one.
- cilantro 16y agoAssange's antics have turned me off to Wikileaks to the point where I will have trouble taking anything they publish at face value. He is doing a disservice to the transparency movement. It's pretty remarkable that someone can be both a paranoid recluse and shameless attention whore, but Assange pulls it off quite well. Wikileaks would be much better off with someone both low key and competent like Clay in charge.
- Alex3917 16y agoHe's paranoid for good reason, governments have a long history of killing whistleblowers. Just look at what happened to David Kelly.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mcantelon 16y agoLike his style or not, he's been fairly adept at generating press. Someone low key might not be capable of doing that.
- cilantro 16y agoThe press wikileaks was getting before Assange emerged from behind the curtain was far better than it is now. They seemed poised to become the reuters/AP of primary source data. Now that seems almost impossible.
- woodall 16y agoAssange is not that scared for his life. He appeared at the Centre for Investigative Journalism just last Friday[1]. I think George Brock said it best in his post entitled "Julian Assange and the Wikileaks agenda" where he wrote, "Assange’s style is an odd mixture of insight, nonsense and brass-neck salesmanship"[2] The fact that Wikileaks has an agenda and are out to sell information to the highest bidder does not speak well, IMO[3]. The Wau Holland Foundation has told reporters that Wikileaks receives no money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and bandwidth, however they have not produced any detailed reciepts for this[4]. As any chartiy should do- some are even required by law to do so. On their twitter feed they call cryptome out for full primary sources, this is very hypocritical on their part[5]. Many of their problems did not start until Assange took the "helm", and many will not cease until he leaves. [1] http://www.tcij.org/ http://www.tcij.org/ [2] http://georgebrock.net/?p=853 http://georgebrock.net/?p=853 [3] http://stefanmey.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/leak-o-nomy-the-economy-of-wikileaks/ http://stefanmey.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/leak-o-nomy-the-ec... [4] http://www.techeye.net/internet/wau-holland-foundation-sheds-light-on-wikileaks-donations http://www.techeye.net/internet/wau-holland-foundation-sheds... [5] http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/17960055502 http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/17960055502
- eli 16y agoNo, he's not scared, he's just very good at manipulating a certain segment of the media
- Tichy 16y agoFor somebody who runs Wikileaks to be a little bit paranoid seems forgivable. In fact even without something like running it I am already so paranoid that I don't even dream of starting something like Wikileaks. I am very much interested in freedom of information and anonymous outlets, but I don't think there is a reliable way to provide anonymity on the internet. So if you start something like Wikileaks, staying anonymous seems impossible.
- motters 16y agoWhatever the personal scruples of Julian Assange may be, I support the overall aims of Wikileaks to allow whistle blowers to post information in the public interest, exposing wrong doing, corruption, human rights violations or war crimes. In the past too many misdeeds have been hidden from public scrutiny and public accountability. Putting yourself into the public arena as Assange has done must be very difficult, and take some degree of personal courage. I'm sure there must be many powerful people from regimes of ill repute who want to cut him down a few pegs, or disappear him entirely.
- makmanalp 16y agoTo be honest, if Assange is really stands by his own principles, he probably doesn't want you to take anyone's trustability for granted (including his).
- blueberry 16y agoGood point. He probably would not want US politicians to trust him or like him either.
- masonlee 16y agoIt was Wikileaks' publishing of the private pager messages in New York from the day of 9/11 that turned me off to them. (http://911.wikileaks.org http://911.wikileaks.org) Would Wikileaks also have published all my private email from that day had they obtained it? Can't say I'd be down with that.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]