7 ms·

WikiLeaks has almost certainly been compromised by global intelligence agencies and is operating as a front.

ucaetano 8y ago
But 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 ago
  I 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 ago
      Oh, 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 ago
  If 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 ago
      Did 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 ago
        So, 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 ago
    I think you are confusing a conceivable narrative for a well-reasoned explanation.
- soundwave106 8y ago
  I 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 ago
      Thanks for the clarification, I have corrected the text.
  - mrguyorama 8y ago
reaperducer 8y ago
Irony 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 ago
  Okay, 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 ago
    Maybe that was the best way for them to get our attention? After all nobody seems to care about their actual releases anymore...
- ohithereyou 8y ago
  Julian 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 ago
What are you basing this wild claim on?
smacktoward 8y ago
It'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 ago
  We 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 ago
    That'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 ago
      So 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 ago
That'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 ago
It'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 ago
We can be quite certain that this is not the case.

But 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 ago
I 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 ago
    Oh, 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 ago
If 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 ago
    Did 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 ago
      So, 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 ago
  I think you are confusing a conceivable narrative for a well-reasoned explanation.
soundwave106 8y ago
I 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 ago
    Thanks for the clarification, I have corrected the text.
- mrguyorama 8y ago

reaperducer 8y ago

Irony 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 ago
Okay, 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 ago
  Maybe that was the best way for them to get our attention? After all nobody seems to care about their actual releases anymore...
ohithereyou 8y ago
Julian 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 ago

What are you basing this wild claim on?

smacktoward 8y ago

It'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 ago
We 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 ago
  That'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 ago
    So 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 ago

That'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 ago

It'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 ago

We can be quite certain that this is not the case.