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Russia airing the dirty laundry through a side channel is MUCH more benevolent than the other things (like blackmailing our world leaders) they could do with th

by cwkoss 8y ago

Russia airing the dirty laundry through a side channel is MUCH more benevolent than the other things (like blackmailing our world leaders) they could do with this. I don't think all of Wikileaks' revelations are from Russia, but even if they all are - and Russia had selfish motivations - it was a benevolent act toward the world. Truth is power, and revealing the truth to the powerless is never an evil act.

misterprime 8y ago
Well said. Thank you.
plandis 8y ago
I fully expect you to publically release all your emails. Even if you don’t do anything illegally. Truth is power, after all even if nothing illegal was done.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  If I ever am employed in a position where my salary is funded by taxpayer money, I will do whatever I can to make all of my correspondence and documents public ASAP.
resters 8y ago
Exactly. As I put it in another comment, if someone leaked information that led to Jerry Sandusky being stopped several years sooner, would it matter if the leaker was affiliated with a rival football program? Because of how WL releases full, minimally redacted documents, there is really no reason to worry about the details. Failures of journalistic integrity happen because of strategic omissions or intentional misdirection. WL essentially can't do that because it releases the source material in essentially raw form.
- bestnameever 8y ago
  > WL essentially can't do that because it releases the source material in essentially raw form. But they can decline to release certain groups of documents that go contrary to whichever narrative they are trying to build.
  - cwkoss 8y ago
    Thats why we need dozens of Wikileaks 'competitors'
- stef25 8y ago
  Technically, how is it even possible to verify the authenticity and completeness of leaked emails unless by the owner or the hoster?
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    this is a good question, see rester's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466194 DKIM DomainKey Identified Mail, obviously diplomatic communications must prevent spoofing (!), so those mails are signed anyway, ensuring provenance of the emails
    - stef25 8y ago
      Thanks for the link. Aside from provenance, can it be proven that the contents of the leaked emails is valid and untampered with? Like one would use hashes for file verification. I have to admit I have no clue as to what is the format of "leaked emails".
      - DoctorOetker 8y ago
        signatures are evaluated over the hash of the contents protecting integrity, the associated public key proves the provenance... I do remember some of the diplomatic mails being scrubbed of identifying information of individuals (say names). This would have a low entropy, so it would seem easy to download the archives from WL, take an email with a singlle censored name, then bruteforce over alphabetic characters, and verify the hash signature. Unless WL has taken the precaution to censor at least x unpredictable bits (i.e. a single character in a name or word does NOT equate to 8 bits) where x is an infeasible bruteforce depth, in theory it should be possible to recover redactions by WL. Edit: I may be conflating the scrubbing of names with the Snowden leaks, but I believe WL has also scrubbed some individual's nammes...
      - resters 8y ago
        Yes, DKIM/DomainKeys is a hash of the content and some of the message headers of an email, which is added as an additional header. A public key for the domain name owner is used to verify the hash was generated (and thus the email sent) by the owner of the domain. Email systems can thus quickly/easily check the validity of the hash when receiving inbound messages and flag or discard messages which lack the header or which fail the test.
kristjansson 8y ago
The question is whether WL has passively (or worse, actively) allowed its position as a conduit of information to be leveraged by malevolent actors to shape (or distort) the truth? Obviously leaks that reveal actual wrongdoing are an unalloyed good. When the leaks that merely provide voyeuristic windows into the routine business of institutions (e.g. the diplomatic cables), the social value of the visibility becomes less clear. When leaks of that sort dominate, and consistently target American and western interests we have to question the motives and the integrity of the conduit. Truth is power, yes, but is that power being granted to you, or used over you?
- reversionary 8y ago
  If by American and Western interests, you mean the values western society is built on, the answer should be pretty simple: national security is no excuse for secret courts, secret prosecutions and secret rulings. It's also to be expected that this society is going to provide more opportunities for leaks in the first place, as opposed to more totalitarian societies. Not that there isn't sufficient grounds for arguing that distinction has already blurred for the most relevant purposes. It's also to be expected that WL's every move is scrutinized. But anti-WL action went much, much further, including a complete financial boycott from above. That was years before any allegations of Russian meddling ever entered the picture. The US has openly targeted them for years, but if they hold any grudge about this in return in the form of not pulling punches and maximizing publication impact, it is supposed to reflect badly on them? That seems more than a little unbalanced. The skepticism only goes one way. WL has a perfect track record in accuracy. Their own story however is regularly misrepresented and misstated. Plus, never forget that it was a Guardian journalist who was dumb enough to leak the crucial password to the full diplomatic archive, in the same book where they admitted to being too dumb to Google how to open a 7zip file. Such their missteps from the traditional press are casually excused in a game of closing ranks that reminds one more of cops than renegades. So much for the enlightened and free press: they needed a bunch of crypto nerds to show them how it is done, after the tech industry stole their collective lunches, and they handed over control of their platforms and income to hordes of shady surveillance capitalists. The traditional press' warmongering and American mythologizing is also a naked fact. So much that they even held off on the Trump bashing for a while, when he was banging that drum, calling it "presidential". So who is really using power over whom? Who is using truth for whuch cause, and who is publishing self serving fluff pieces instead? Why should we worry about WL, when the American fish is clearly rotting from the head down, and those who are supposed to stop that are incapable of doing so?
stef25 8y ago
So you'd have no problem with your neighbor hacking and dumping your entire inbox online for the whole world to see?
- kazagistar 8y ago
  There is a difference between individuals and governments. Public servants like politicians choose to enter the public space willingly, and must be held accountable and responsible. The only safe way for a government to hold power is via transparancy and auditability. Of course those to whom we relinquish the power of life and death should be held to a different standard of lower privacy. Having the government secretly spying on private citizens is such a disgusting and dangerous reversal of how it should be, and your comparison is completely off base.
  - stef25 8y ago
    I agree with politicians choosing to enter the public space and that they should be held accountable. Spying on private citizens is wrong but has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make, which is - despite the fact govt should be held accountable, that does not mean they aren't entitled to private communication. The public doesn't need to know every letter they wrote during their political career and their communications certainly don't have to be accessible by anyone wholesale, which is in fact exactly what WL is trying to achieve. Lower privacy != no privacy. WL completely ignores the concepts of confidentiality, security clearances, NDAs at all levels of government, from your standard office clerk all the way up to the president and everything in between. There's no way that can be justified.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  I'd have a problem with my neighbor hacking me. If they found that I was involved in a scandal, and gave that information to the New York Times, and they fact checked and published it, would be ridiculous for me to try go after NYT.
dTal 8y ago
I don't think it's true that truth is always power and that revealing truth is always benevolent. You can skew people's opinions quite severely by selectively telling them things, especially when they are true, and particularly when done anonymously. You do not have to lie to be dishonest.

by cwkoss 8y ago

misterprime 8y ago

Well said. Thank you.

plandis 8y ago

I fully expect you to publically release all your emails. Even if you don’t do anything illegally. Truth is power, after all even if nothing illegal was done.

cwkoss 8y ago
If I ever am employed in a position where my salary is funded by taxpayer money, I will do whatever I can to make all of my correspondence and documents public ASAP.

resters 8y ago

Exactly. As I put it in another comment, if someone leaked information that led to Jerry Sandusky being stopped several years sooner, would it matter if the leaker was affiliated with a rival football program? Because of how WL releases full, minimally redacted documents, there is really no reason to worry about the details. Failures of journalistic integrity happen because of strategic omissions or intentional misdirection. WL essentially can't do that because it releases the source material in essentially raw form.

bestnameever 8y ago
> WL essentially can't do that because it releases the source material in essentially raw form. But they can decline to release certain groups of documents that go contrary to whichever narrative they are trying to build.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  Thats why we need dozens of Wikileaks 'competitors'
stef25 8y ago
Technically, how is it even possible to verify the authenticity and completeness of leaked emails unless by the owner or the hoster?
- DoctorOetker 8y ago
  this is a good question, see rester's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466194 DKIM DomainKey Identified Mail, obviously diplomatic communications must prevent spoofing (!), so those mails are signed anyway, ensuring provenance of the emails
  - stef25 8y ago
    Thanks for the link. Aside from provenance, can it be proven that the contents of the leaked emails is valid and untampered with? Like one would use hashes for file verification. I have to admit I have no clue as to what is the format of "leaked emails".
    - DoctorOetker 8y ago
      signatures are evaluated over the hash of the contents protecting integrity, the associated public key proves the provenance... I do remember some of the diplomatic mails being scrubbed of identifying information of individuals (say names). This would have a low entropy, so it would seem easy to download the archives from WL, take an email with a singlle censored name, then bruteforce over alphabetic characters, and verify the hash signature. Unless WL has taken the precaution to censor at least x unpredictable bits (i.e. a single character in a name or word does NOT equate to 8 bits) where x is an infeasible bruteforce depth, in theory it should be possible to recover redactions by WL. Edit: I may be conflating the scrubbing of names with the Snowden leaks, but I believe WL has also scrubbed some individual's nammes...
    - resters 8y ago
      Yes, DKIM/DomainKeys is a hash of the content and some of the message headers of an email, which is added as an additional header. A public key for the domain name owner is used to verify the hash was generated (and thus the email sent) by the owner of the domain. Email systems can thus quickly/easily check the validity of the hash when receiving inbound messages and flag or discard messages which lack the header or which fail the test.

kristjansson 8y ago

The question is whether WL has passively (or worse, actively) allowed its position as a conduit of information to be leveraged by malevolent actors to shape (or distort) the truth? Obviously leaks that reveal actual wrongdoing are an unalloyed good. When the leaks that merely provide voyeuristic windows into the routine business of institutions (e.g. the diplomatic cables), the social value of the visibility becomes less clear. When leaks of that sort dominate, and consistently target American and western interests we have to question the motives and the integrity of the conduit. Truth is power, yes, but is that power being granted to you, or used over you?

reversionary 8y ago
If by American and Western interests, you mean the values western society is built on, the answer should be pretty simple: national security is no excuse for secret courts, secret prosecutions and secret rulings. It's also to be expected that this society is going to provide more opportunities for leaks in the first place, as opposed to more totalitarian societies. Not that there isn't sufficient grounds for arguing that distinction has already blurred for the most relevant purposes. It's also to be expected that WL's every move is scrutinized. But anti-WL action went much, much further, including a complete financial boycott from above. That was years before any allegations of Russian meddling ever entered the picture. The US has openly targeted them for years, but if they hold any grudge about this in return in the form of not pulling punches and maximizing publication impact, it is supposed to reflect badly on them? That seems more than a little unbalanced. The skepticism only goes one way. WL has a perfect track record in accuracy. Their own story however is regularly misrepresented and misstated. Plus, never forget that it was a Guardian journalist who was dumb enough to leak the crucial password to the full diplomatic archive, in the same book where they admitted to being too dumb to Google how to open a 7zip file. Such their missteps from the traditional press are casually excused in a game of closing ranks that reminds one more of cops than renegades. So much for the enlightened and free press: they needed a bunch of crypto nerds to show them how it is done, after the tech industry stole their collective lunches, and they handed over control of their platforms and income to hordes of shady surveillance capitalists. The traditional press' warmongering and American mythologizing is also a naked fact. So much that they even held off on the Trump bashing for a while, when he was banging that drum, calling it "presidential". So who is really using power over whom? Who is using truth for whuch cause, and who is publishing self serving fluff pieces instead? Why should we worry about WL, when the American fish is clearly rotting from the head down, and those who are supposed to stop that are incapable of doing so?

stef25 8y ago

So you'd have no problem with your neighbor hacking and dumping your entire inbox online for the whole world to see?

kazagistar 8y ago
There is a difference between individuals and governments. Public servants like politicians choose to enter the public space willingly, and must be held accountable and responsible. The only safe way for a government to hold power is via transparancy and auditability. Of course those to whom we relinquish the power of life and death should be held to a different standard of lower privacy. Having the government secretly spying on private citizens is such a disgusting and dangerous reversal of how it should be, and your comparison is completely off base.
- stef25 8y ago
  I agree with politicians choosing to enter the public space and that they should be held accountable. Spying on private citizens is wrong but has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make, which is - despite the fact govt should be held accountable, that does not mean they aren't entitled to private communication. The public doesn't need to know every letter they wrote during their political career and their communications certainly don't have to be accessible by anyone wholesale, which is in fact exactly what WL is trying to achieve. Lower privacy != no privacy. WL completely ignores the concepts of confidentiality, security clearances, NDAs at all levels of government, from your standard office clerk all the way up to the president and everything in between. There's no way that can be justified.
cwkoss 8y ago
I'd have a problem with my neighbor hacking me. If they found that I was involved in a scandal, and gave that information to the New York Times, and they fact checked and published it, would be ridiculous for me to try go after NYT.

dTal 8y ago

I don't think it's true that truth is always power and that revealing truth is always benevolent. You can skew people's opinions quite severely by selectively telling them things, especially when they are true, and particularly when done anonymously. You do not have to lie to be dishonest.