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It is sad to see how low WikiLeaks has fallen, and makes me think more and more that there has never been much of WL beyond Assange himself. It has reached com
by ucaetano 8y ago
It is sad to see how low WikiLeaks has fallen, and makes me think more and more that there has never been much of WL beyond Assange himself.
It has reached comical levels of insanity, illusion of grandeur and narcissism.
- marpstar 8y agoWikiLeaks has almost certainly been compromised by global intelligence agencies and is operating as a front.
- ucaetano 8y agoBut the real question is: has Assange/WL ever been any different? Has it ever not been a tool sponsored/handled by some intelligence agency?
- porphyrogene 8y ago> almost certainly What are you criteria for near certainty and what evidence-supported claims are there that satisfy those criteria?
- enraged_camel 8y agoI don't see why you are downvoted. It's a very valid question. Wild claims made without evidence are essentially conspiracy theories. Surely HN has higher standards than that?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ucaetano 8y ago> I don't see why you are downvoted There are views which are verboten on HN: supporting AMP, supporting ad-based business models, telling people not to use free services if they don't like them, and criticizing certain public figures. You might voice them, but prepare for the downvotes.
- justtopost 8y agoOh, the bubble is real. Anyone not annoyingly vegan, anti-car, urban yimby-yuppie who still rents and making at least 300k making socially regressive technology, badly, with the newest popular framework is going to have to make sure to not only be relevant, but tickle the egos of the great majority while making their soon to be buried point.
- mywittyname 8y agoIf there were solid evidence of this fact, the statement wouldn't need a qualifier. Their behavior is consistent with what you'd expect from an intelligence agency. Such as well-timed releases during the 2016 US Presidential Election which seemed to heavily favor a candidate with strong ties to a foreign government well known for their intelligence capabilities.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago>Their behavior is consistent with what you'd expect from an intelligence agency. Such as well-timed releases during the 2016 US Presidential Election which seemed to heavily favor a candidate with strong ties to a foreign government well known for their intelligence capabilities. Alright... Help me understand how this does not reflect WaPo, CNN, NYT, and others in an identical way.
- hannasanarion 8y agoDid any of those sources make a big announcement that they have super-duper incriminating emails about a candidate and then slowly release them in a trickle over the course of 30 days leading up to the election? Emails which, by the way, were so boring and mundane and contained so little evidence of misconduct that people determined to hate Clinton needed to treat "pizza" as secret code for "child sex slaves", to extract a scandal from them.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoSo, your answer is an anecdote about the release of TRUE information you don't like the timing of, and an entirely unrelated topic of conspiracy theorists. I'm sorry, I still don't understand. Perhaps you could re-read the initial exchange and try again?
- porphyrogene 8y agoI think you are confusing a conceivable narrative for a well-reasoned explanation.
- soundwave106 8y agoI don't think we have any document released yet that describes any full picture. We do have this statement (and a little more detail inside) in a report by a joint report by the US Intelligence Community (regarding Russian interference with elections): "We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks." Source: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf But that doesn't explain whether Assange is either a "compromised front" for the GRU or someone else, or more a "useful idiot" to Russian intelligence for their goals. Nonetheless, I will say, at minimum, Wikileaks and Julian Assange can no longer be seen as a neutral player, at minimum. And not a reliable narrator, either. For example, some of their tweets on the Panama Papers, which in theory I would think would be something they would in theory support, were rather strange, and actually stooped into ridiculous conspiracy theory involving USAID and George Soros (eg https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717670056650530816 https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7176700566505308... and https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717458064324964352 https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7174580643249643...). I generally don't treat sources that delve into conspiracy theory with a whole lot of respect...
- dragonwriter 8y ago> the US National Intelligence Agency It's a joint report by the US Intelligence Community. There is no “US National Intelligence Agency”; the position of Director of National Intelligence was created to specifically split the role of overall head of the intelligence community (the DNI) from the head of a particular agency (the overall head of the IC used to be the Director of the CIA.)
- soundwave106 8y agoThanks for the clarification, I have corrected the text.
- mrguyorama 8y ago
- reaperducer 8y agoIrony from the memo: It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange is, or has ever been, an agent or officer of any intelligence service
- excalibur 8y agoOkay, but that's kind of overshadowed by the massive irony of Wikileaks asking that this memo be kept secret and it promptly leaking.
- jessaustin 8y agoMaybe that was the best way for them to get our attention? After all nobody seems to care about their actual releases anymore...
- ohithereyou 8y agoJulian Assange doesn't have to be an agent or officer of any intelligence service for Wikileaks to be used as a front. He could just be a useful idiot.
- marknutter 8y agoWhat are you basing this wild claim on?
- smacktoward 8y agoIt's not clear to me that intelligence agencies would have ever needed to compromise WikiLeaks-the-organization. WikiLeaks' whole methodology was to publish, unedited and unredacted, any documents anyone handed them. Any intelligence agency that wanted a clean way to get some illicitly-obtained documents out into public view could therefore do so just by handing them to WikiLeaks, without needing to subvert the organization in any way. WikiLeaks made a perfect front just by working the way it was designed to work.
- hannasanarion 8y agoWe can tell that wikileaks is now a front precisely because they have stopped operating in the way you describe. They no longer publish everything they have been given (Assange once claimed to have documents embarassing to Russia but they are as yet unpublished). They no longer publish documents indiscriminately (Podesta emails trickled out over the course of October 2016 for maximum political effect on the election) If that wasn't enough, everyone should've been convinced that wikileaks is compromised when Assange refused to demonstrate that he held the wikileaks signing private key during his reddit AMA
- zozbot123 8y agoThat's all Assange's doing, though. He's doing the political equivalent of s--tposting, same as the foreign "trolls" you hear and read about, because he's independently pursuing very similar goals.
- lkdjjdjjjdskjd 8y agoSo if he is just "shitposting", why pursue him?
- Varcht 8y ago"It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have not published critical information on Russia, Syria or Donald Trump [in fact, WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of documents on Russia, millions on Syria, and thousands on Donald Trump, see https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/ https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/, https://search.wikileaks.org/?query=russia%7Cputin%7Cmoscow#results https://search.wikileaks.org/?query=russia%7Cputin%7Cmoscow#..., https://wikileaks.org/syria-files/ https://wikileaks.org/syria-files/ & https://search.wikileaks.org/?query=trump#results https://search.wikileaks.org/?query=trump#results]."
- fixermark 8y agoThat's precisely the kind of conspiracy theory that, were it true, we'd expect Wikileaks to publish a document describing. ... except that they couldn't, because they would be compromised and operating as a front. Wheels within wheels... ;)
- paxys 8y agoIt's more likely that the organization realized just how much influence they had, and wanted to be a force in global politics rather than just a dumping ground for data.
- lawnchair_larry 8y agoWe can be quite certain that this is not the case.
- elif 8y agoIt is comically insane to clarify matters when lies are being spread about you?
- fixermark 8y agoI wouldn't say "insane," but it's comical to watch an organization ostensibly dedicated to shining the light of truth into the dark places of power crawling this far up its own nethers to attempt to damage-control their own leader's bad behavior.
- elif 8y agoWhich bad behavior are you referring to?
- fixermark 8y agoHe's continued to claim asylum to dodge a credible rape accusation rather than face justice. [EDIT: his claims of fear of extradition to the US are credible; there was a leaked charge against him in US courts. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assange-indictment-wikileaks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assang...] At this point, he's dodging Sweden's justice system because he can and because Ecuador allows him to. And all of this distracts from Wikileaks' ostensible goal of shining light into the dark places of power; public trust in them weakens as they continue to refuse to cut ties with an accused rapist dodging charges.
- elif 8y agoAt this point, sweden has no investigation or request to interview Assange. He was never charged with a crime, but they were satisfied by their interview 2 years ago and dropped all investigations, as was requested by the alleged victim years prior. Also the sealed indictment allowing for Assange to be extradicted has been leaked. It is very real.
- 8y ago
- throwaway6356 8y ago> insanity, illusion of grandeur and narcissism they did change the outcome of a US election, and probably the course of world history, which is more than all of the anti-trump media combined, so that is a pretty big accomplishment ...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fixermark 8y agoMaybe. They likely had an impact. The money spent by Russian intelligence to run propaganda via social media should likely be counted as at least as influential.
- darkpuma 8y agoHow much money did Russian intelligence spend on such ads on social media? I googled "how much money did russia spend on facebook ads" but the numbers I see in that result are surprisingly small, so I'm wondering if you have a better source.
- fixermark 8y agoIt's not the quantity they spent; it's the efficacy of the micro-targeting. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-election-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-e...
- darkpuma 8y agoAll parties involved were microtargetting, no? The Trump side certainly was, what with all that Cambridge Analytical shit and whatnot. How much did Trump and similar non-Russian PACs spend on microtargetted facebook ads, compared to Russian intelligence? Your article contains no hint of this. I think we're all aware that Russian intelligence was buying a lot of ads on social media, but I'm trying to understand the relative scope of this. To be frank, the scope of Russian propaganda seems dwarfed by domestic propaganda. The propagandists who deserve the most blame are probably Americans, or were paid by Americans.