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"Government investigators suspect that he provided WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, with a stolen archive of documents detailing the C.I.A.’s hacking o

"Government investigators suspect that he provided WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, with a stolen archive of documents detailing the C.I.A.’s hacking operations, but they had not initially charged him in that crime." Wikileaks is a news organization, not an anti-secrecy organization who's First Amendment Right to Freedom of the Press has been illegally infringed upon by the US Government.

wyldfire 8y ago
Or option C: a propaganda arm of the Russian Government. EDIT: downvoters aren't offering a response, so I'll just hope or assume that they want evidence: [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses-panama-papers-as-an-attempt-to-destabilise-russia https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses... [3] http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.771716 http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.771716 [4] http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politics/cambridge-analytica-julian-assange-wikileaks-clinton-emails/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politics/cambridge-analyti... [5] https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/07/28/on-weaponized-transparency/ https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/07/28/on-weaponized-tran... [6] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...
- Chris_Chambers 8y ago
  MUH RUSSIA
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- DINKDINK 8y ago
  Do you mind enlightening us how Wikileaks was a propaganda arm of the Russian government when they released video of US war crimes (murder of journalists in the Collateral Murder video)? If another news organization received the DNC leaks and chose to not publish them, do you think that would have been ethical? Is your position that, one cannot be a US citizen and oppose the US government and if you do you're a Russian agent?
  - rosser 8y ago
    The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity. Julian Assange has an agenda against certain people/parties, and has demonstrably leaked things that support that, and not leaked things that refute it. I say that as a detractor of many of the same people and institutions Assange dislikes, so check your assumptions of bias before you throw them, please.
    - vkou 8y ago
      > The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity. It really doesn't, though. You don't have to be unbiased to be a journalist, a journalistic entity, or whatever you want to call it. Fox News, biased as it is, is still news.
      - rosser 8y ago
        Fox News isn't journalism. It's opinion wrapped around selective "reporting". EDIT: Yes, of course it's impossible to eliminate bias. To extrapolate from that to accepting overtly biased and selectively published content as journalism is unsupported, at best. It's the selectivity of reporting that compromises the claim of journalism, not the bias. When you don't report on things that don't support your narrative, you're no longer reporting.
        EdSharkey 8y ago
        American journalism is pathetic. I hope you're just using Fox News as an example and not singling them out as the only exemplar.
        rosser 8y ago
        Of course not. They're among the worst offenders, they're far from alone in playing that game.
    - woah 8y ago
- colordrops 8y ago
  Calling wikileaks a propaganda arm of the Russian Government is just US propaganda. 1984 double-speak here. Can you point to ANYTHING that wikileaks has reported or released that is untrue?
  - abiox 8y ago
    does anything necessarily need to be 'untrue'? (a lot of propaganda is 'true')
  - alpha_squared 8y ago
    You can tell the truth and still be deceitful. Claiming to have had evidence on Russian corruption and publicly declaring an intent to release followed by silence and unwillingness to do so indicate two things, to me anyway. 1. The original claim is a lie. There is no evidence of Russian corruption and the claim was made for attention or some other purpose. Remind me, again, how many lies it takes to make someone untrustworthy? 2. The original claim is true, but something or someone prevents information from being released. This is the more insidious reason. It means that the organization will only release "the truth" that jibes with the messages/agenda they want to push, which is propaganda. Regardless of whether or not Russia has a direct influence of the release is unknown, but it becomes propaganda nonetheless. My personal opinion is that Assange is virtually inseparable from Wikileaks and appears to have a god complex, using the platform as his mouthpiece on his view of the state of things while enjoying the comforts of avoiding consequence.
    - colordrops 8y ago
      By that measure, the New York Times, Fox News, Washington Post, CNN, and Wall Street Journal are all propaganda.
      - abiox 8y ago
        they have their moments. they all tend to be good at cheerleading war, for example. msnbc fired phil donohue for being against the iraq war. last election, the washington post (in)famously ran a glut of anti-sanders material in a short time span (16 articles in 16 hours, i believe it was).
- LMYahooTFY 8y ago
  What evidence? None of your links contain any "evidence". Evidence shouldn't be difficult to explain. Loosely connected assumptions, however, are often difficult to articulate. The argument you propose is that practically anyone who exposes corruption in western organizations could be Russian government propagandists.
- admiralEyebrows 8y ago
  Before scrambling to gather a handful of news articles (though no proof) which confirm 'option C' to avoid down votes, are you certain that you are not regurgitating the propaganda of a different government or corporation? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...
- vkou 8y ago
  Good God. I don't like Wikileaks, but even if they are a 'propaganda arm of the Russian government', they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization I agree. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect individuals or companies from any and all prosecution.
- zeth___ 8y ago
  Dear god this thread is being hit hard by people pushing the US government narrative. I'm not saying you're all paid trolls, but HN is to the tech scene what reddit was 10 years ago which is when we first saw shilling hit it hard and fast.
  - Cacti 8y ago
    Look in the mirror, man. You're accusing people, without a shred of evidence, of being government shills simply because you disagree with them.
    - zeth___ 8y ago
      I'm looking at your post history. At the point when you have posted 17 times in a thread with half of them being a literal copy of what the prosecution is charging him with, while by omission implying that the information there is somehow impartial, the fact of being a paid or unpaid shill is immaterial. You are the only person in this thread pushing the government narrative and taking their words at face value. Anyone who has kept track of these persecutions knows that unmentionable facts are thrown in constantly to try and get the defendants to break. Viz, Daniel Ellsberg being called a homosexual.
burger_moon 8y ago
They don't actually publish news articles like the NYTimes though right? anti-secrecy seems to be a part of what wikileaks does but I'm not sure that would be an appropriate name either.
- krapp 8y ago
  >They don't actually publish news articles like the NYTimes though right? No, they publish classified documents. What they do is more akin to public espionage than journalism.
  - zaroth 8y ago
    Ever heard of the Pentagon Papers?
    - krapp 8y ago
      Yes. But the press didn't simply publish them in their entirety without comment or context, did they? I understand people want to lionize Wikileaks and consider Julian Assange to be the modern day equivalent to Woodward and Bernstein, but to consider what they do journalism is to discredit journalism. There's a reason Edward Snowden went to the actual press and not Wikileaks.
      - mmjaa 8y ago
        >Yes. But the press didn't simply publish them in their entirety without comment or context, did they? Even better - Senator Gravel, doing his job, brought them into Congress .. something that was necessary, because the press was compromised and wasn't doing their job.

wyldfire 8y ago

Or option C: a propaganda arm of the Russian Government. EDIT: downvoters aren't offering a response, so I'll just hope or assume that they want evidence: [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses-panama-papers-as-an-attempt-to-destabilise-russia https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses... [3] http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.771716 http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.771716 [4] http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politics/cambridge-analytica-julian-assange-wikileaks-clinton-emails/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politics/cambridge-analyti... [5] https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/07/28/on-weaponized-transparency/ https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/07/28/on-weaponized-tran... [6] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...

Chris_Chambers 8y ago
MUH RUSSIA
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
DINKDINK 8y ago
Do you mind enlightening us how Wikileaks was a propaganda arm of the Russian government when they released video of US war crimes (murder of journalists in the Collateral Murder video)? If another news organization received the DNC leaks and chose to not publish them, do you think that would have been ethical? Is your position that, one cannot be a US citizen and oppose the US government and if you do you're a Russian agent?
- rosser 8y ago
  The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity. Julian Assange has an agenda against certain people/parties, and has demonstrably leaked things that support that, and not leaked things that refute it. I say that as a detractor of many of the same people and institutions Assange dislikes, so check your assumptions of bias before you throw them, please.
  - vkou 8y ago
    > The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity. It really doesn't, though. You don't have to be unbiased to be a journalist, a journalistic entity, or whatever you want to call it. Fox News, biased as it is, is still news.
    - rosser 8y ago
      Fox News isn't journalism. It's opinion wrapped around selective "reporting". EDIT: Yes, of course it's impossible to eliminate bias. To extrapolate from that to accepting overtly biased and selectively published content as journalism is unsupported, at best. It's the selectivity of reporting that compromises the claim of journalism, not the bias. When you don't report on things that don't support your narrative, you're no longer reporting.
      - EdSharkey 8y ago
        American journalism is pathetic. I hope you're just using Fox News as an example and not singling them out as the only exemplar.
        rosser 8y ago
        Of course not. They're among the worst offenders, they're far from alone in playing that game.
  - woah 8y ago
colordrops 8y ago
Calling wikileaks a propaganda arm of the Russian Government is just US propaganda. 1984 double-speak here. Can you point to ANYTHING that wikileaks has reported or released that is untrue?
- abiox 8y ago
  does anything necessarily need to be 'untrue'? (a lot of propaganda is 'true')
- alpha_squared 8y ago
  You can tell the truth and still be deceitful. Claiming to have had evidence on Russian corruption and publicly declaring an intent to release followed by silence and unwillingness to do so indicate two things, to me anyway. 1. The original claim is a lie. There is no evidence of Russian corruption and the claim was made for attention or some other purpose. Remind me, again, how many lies it takes to make someone untrustworthy? 2. The original claim is true, but something or someone prevents information from being released. This is the more insidious reason. It means that the organization will only release "the truth" that jibes with the messages/agenda they want to push, which is propaganda. Regardless of whether or not Russia has a direct influence of the release is unknown, but it becomes propaganda nonetheless. My personal opinion is that Assange is virtually inseparable from Wikileaks and appears to have a god complex, using the platform as his mouthpiece on his view of the state of things while enjoying the comforts of avoiding consequence.
  - colordrops 8y ago
    By that measure, the New York Times, Fox News, Washington Post, CNN, and Wall Street Journal are all propaganda.
    - abiox 8y ago
      they have their moments. they all tend to be good at cheerleading war, for example. msnbc fired phil donohue for being against the iraq war. last election, the washington post (in)famously ran a glut of anti-sanders material in a short time span (16 articles in 16 hours, i believe it was).
LMYahooTFY 8y ago
What evidence? None of your links contain any "evidence". Evidence shouldn't be difficult to explain. Loosely connected assumptions, however, are often difficult to articulate. The argument you propose is that practically anyone who exposes corruption in western organizations could be Russian government propagandists.
admiralEyebrows 8y ago
Before scrambling to gather a handful of news articles (though no proof) which confirm 'option C' to avoid down votes, are you certain that you are not regurgitating the propaganda of a different government or corporation? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...
vkou 8y ago
Good God. I don't like Wikileaks, but even if they are a 'propaganda arm of the Russian government', they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization I agree. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect individuals or companies from any and all prosecution.
zeth___ 8y ago
Dear god this thread is being hit hard by people pushing the US government narrative. I'm not saying you're all paid trolls, but HN is to the tech scene what reddit was 10 years ago which is when we first saw shilling hit it hard and fast.
- Cacti 8y ago
  Look in the mirror, man. You're accusing people, without a shred of evidence, of being government shills simply because you disagree with them.
  - zeth___ 8y ago
    I'm looking at your post history. At the point when you have posted 17 times in a thread with half of them being a literal copy of what the prosecution is charging him with, while by omission implying that the information there is somehow impartial, the fact of being a paid or unpaid shill is immaterial. You are the only person in this thread pushing the government narrative and taking their words at face value. Anyone who has kept track of these persecutions knows that unmentionable facts are thrown in constantly to try and get the defendants to break. Viz, Daniel Ellsberg being called a homosexual.

burger_moon 8y ago

They don't actually publish news articles like the NYTimes though right? anti-secrecy seems to be a part of what wikileaks does but I'm not sure that would be an appropriate name either.

krapp 8y ago
>They don't actually publish news articles like the NYTimes though right? No, they publish classified documents. What they do is more akin to public espionage than journalism.
- zaroth 8y ago
  Ever heard of the Pentagon Papers?
  - krapp 8y ago
    Yes. But the press didn't simply publish them in their entirety without comment or context, did they? I understand people want to lionize Wikileaks and consider Julian Assange to be the modern day equivalent to Woodward and Bernstein, but to consider what they do journalism is to discredit journalism. There's a reason Edward Snowden went to the actual press and not Wikileaks.
    - mmjaa 8y ago
      >Yes. But the press didn't simply publish them in their entirety without comment or context, did they? Even better - Senator Gravel, doing his job, brought them into Congress .. something that was necessary, because the press was compromised and wasn't doing their job.