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Lots of journalists, say, in France for example, hurl shit in the face of US every day, with lots of investigations, and they still are more or less protected a

Lots of journalists, say, in France for example, hurl shit in the face of US every day, with lots of investigations, and they still are more or less protected and the country where they live abide by the law... So, that's what personally I would have expected and hoped about Assange too. The reality is different from what you present: it is not common that journalists opposing to US are (internationally) repressed at all. And, of course, because such repression is illegal, it is not expectable.

umvi 6y ago
What do you think would happen if an <insert nation> journalist started trying to help hackers recover secrets from French Intelligence agencies and then published them for the whole world to see? What if the leaked secrets were mostly true? Do you think the French Government would celebrate the <insert nation> journalist? Or would they do everything in their power to stop them?
- henearkr 6y ago
  That's an easy one, because spying on France industrial or state secrets by foreign powers happens all the time. For example: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/09/27/business/hackers-tried-steal-airbus-secrets-via-contractors-china-link-suspected-afp/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/09/27/business/hacker... So, to answer your question: they do not try to extradite the foreign operators responsible to the leaks, and they do everything to strengthen their IT security. Also, they possibly build or reinforce their cyber-defense team to cyber-counter or cyber-retaliate. This kind of response is just how it happens when abiding to the international law. Still, they are far from doing nothing, and they are efficient.
  - umvi 6y ago
    > So, to answer your question: they do not try to extradite the foreign operators responsible to the leaks Do you think that would change if they had more power? It's like criticizing the response of a super corporation like Microsoft and saying a smaller company like GitLab handles the same scenario better. Probably true, but also if you scaled GitLab to the size and power of Microsoft, maybe they would've had a different response.
    - henearkr 6y ago
      I honestly don't know. It really is very difficult to resist the temptation to misuse power, when a lot of it is concentrated in one's hands. On the other hand, let's analyse: - on the "means" side: France certainly has a lot of military power. It does drone-killing of terrorist heads in African Sahel. It launches successful intelligence operations abroad. It also succeeds to counter foreign agents on its own soil (ref the identification in 2018 of a GRU cell in France). It has a very solid cyber-defense. Also, between strengthening the IT, cyber-army, and intelligence services, and just extraditing journalists after-the-fact (or, imagine, abduct them, drone-kill them, etc), which is most resource-intensive? As an engineer, you know that the part where you develop your own system to be more robust and more capable is harder than just band-aid retaliation around past mistakes. Guess what, US is doing both, so it's seat-belt and airbag at the same time. Very great, France is doing only seat-belt. - on the "results" side: France tries (currently) to preserve its image, to appear as "good" (not judging if that's true), by playing by the rules internationally, fighting great causes, etc. Whereas US soft power took a huge tall in its (indirect) handling of Assange case. It is now seen as more "evil" as before. More people, especially a lot of intelligent people, are despising US more. So, supposing the overflow of power hasn't busted the brains out of the government, they should be weighting means and results, and decide in consequence.
      - fsloth 6y ago
        "More people, especially a lot of intelligent people, are despising US more." If they are more offended by treatment of Assange than innocents kept in Guantanamo Bay 'camp' without a trial and summary drone executions with huge collateral death toll I'm not sure I would call them that intelligent. I mean really, US government has a huge assassination list whose targets are taken down by bomb raids killing and maiming civilians and one hacker being manhandled pushes you over the edge? Those are some sick values.
        henearkr 6y ago
        They are on your side. The supporters of Assange are guaranteed to be also revolted by Guantanamo Camp and drone executions. Assange's supporters like him precisely because, among other things, he (and Wikileaks) is a champion of the cause fighting against the wrongdoings of US army and US extrajudicial penitentiary system: - Guantanamo Files https://wikileaks.org/gitmo/ https://wikileaks.org/gitmo/ - Collateral Murder https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/ https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/ These are actually precisely the reason why US government is extraditing Assange.
- gus_massa 6y ago
  This articles is not about journalists, but it is somewhat related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
  - henearkr 6y ago
    You are saying France did bad shit, and that's true, you forgot Napoleon slaughters throughout Europe, Nazis collaboration and Petain, colonial rule and enslaving of American, African and Asian nations, nuclear tests, and I forgot a lot. Still, you are hardly touching the subject. We are speaking about the here and now, how we should abide by the international law when responding to cyber threats, in the context of a transparent and globalized world.
    - gus_massa 6y ago
      This was like 35 year ago [1]. I'd say this was already a "transparent and globalized world". [1] Suddenly, I'm feeling old.
      - henearkr 6y ago
        No, this is just a different topic. What I brought up was an example of good response to a cyber threat. You bring up some bad things, be it old or new it does not matter, it still is a different topic. My point was to illustrate what I call a good response. The bad ones just illustrate the bad responses, that's all. Good for contrasting, maybe. But the way you bring it does not seem to make clear anything, to the contrary. And it is not even remotely about "cyber" anything, nor about journalism or the right to know the truth about anything. And for contrasting we already have the example at hand, the case of Julian Assange! So I really don't understand your point. Sounds like you hate France and you disliked that I used a French example as a good response to a cyber threat. I don't know why you want so much to avoid giving a nice role to France, personally I don't care, but I am a positive person, so I'd like you to find a good response example by an other country (easy, there are plenty) to balance my comment, instead of balancing it trying to find a bad cyber-response from France (which you failed to do). Also, the world was hardly as transparent as today. No social media, hardly any internet, newspapers in different languages but few people knowing anything else than their mother tongue... Years after, there was investigation by news agencies in France about the Rainbow Warrior tragedy. The government did not throw them in jail! So that, too, is really different from the Assange case.
chasd00 6y ago
It depends on what line is crossed. Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize and still assassinated a US citizen on foreign soil without due process and justified it with a loop hole in the law. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/us-justification-drone-killing-american-citizen-awlaki https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/us-justificati... the take away is this, when you're on the US Gov. shit list you're safe until you're not.
- henearkr 6y ago
  Yeah but, 1/ not a journalist, 2/ member of a huge killers club, 3/ propagandist of religious numbness contrary to the diffusing of facts and contrary to the useful understanding of the world's mechanics. So he was totally not helping people know the truth, as a journalist would be, and instead he was totally trying to kill or help killing people and destroy civilizations. Also, this was the context of war, on a war field (and with a terrorist organization).
  - chasd00 6y ago
    point made, what I cited is an extreme case. However, i think the point stands that push far enough and everything becomes on the table and what "far enough" means isn't clear and always changing.
fsloth 6y ago
US seems to be totally fine about opinions expressed from freely available data. They don't like a campaign to leak everything that can be caught hold of. So I would not compare the reaction to Assange to a general reaction to journalism.
- henearkr 6y ago
  How can you form adequate opinions if you know only one part of the truth? The part you know can be easily manipulated so that your opinion corresponds to the wishes of the government in control. This is why journalism is mainly about publishing information. The part where the writer gives their opinion is actually optional. Also, this is why good news organizations (Reuters, etc) are doing investigations (this is investigative journalism). They do not just publish already available data, they go seeking the truth where it is. Btw, the sheer existence of investigative journalism is also what makes difficult to believe all the conspiracy theories. If something fishy that huge was going on, there is an overwhelming likelihood that some news organization (also, some whistle-blower) would have revealed it. (that shows also the importance of the existence of whistle-blowers)
  - fsloth 6y ago
    I didn’t say truth seeking was not valuable. I totally agree what you said. I would just not assign the professional title of journalist to Assange. I’m not sure if there even is a proper current term for his professional-like activities.

umvi 6y ago

What do you think would happen if an <insert nation> journalist started trying to help hackers recover secrets from French Intelligence agencies and then published them for the whole world to see? What if the leaked secrets were mostly true? Do you think the French Government would celebrate the <insert nation> journalist? Or would they do everything in their power to stop them?

henearkr 6y ago
That's an easy one, because spying on France industrial or state secrets by foreign powers happens all the time. For example: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/09/27/business/hackers-tried-steal-airbus-secrets-via-contractors-china-link-suspected-afp/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/09/27/business/hacker... So, to answer your question: they do not try to extradite the foreign operators responsible to the leaks, and they do everything to strengthen their IT security. Also, they possibly build or reinforce their cyber-defense team to cyber-counter or cyber-retaliate. This kind of response is just how it happens when abiding to the international law. Still, they are far from doing nothing, and they are efficient.
- umvi 6y ago
  > So, to answer your question: they do not try to extradite the foreign operators responsible to the leaks Do you think that would change if they had more power? It's like criticizing the response of a super corporation like Microsoft and saying a smaller company like GitLab handles the same scenario better. Probably true, but also if you scaled GitLab to the size and power of Microsoft, maybe they would've had a different response.
  - henearkr 6y ago
    I honestly don't know. It really is very difficult to resist the temptation to misuse power, when a lot of it is concentrated in one's hands. On the other hand, let's analyse: - on the "means" side: France certainly has a lot of military power. It does drone-killing of terrorist heads in African Sahel. It launches successful intelligence operations abroad. It also succeeds to counter foreign agents on its own soil (ref the identification in 2018 of a GRU cell in France). It has a very solid cyber-defense. Also, between strengthening the IT, cyber-army, and intelligence services, and just extraditing journalists after-the-fact (or, imagine, abduct them, drone-kill them, etc), which is most resource-intensive? As an engineer, you know that the part where you develop your own system to be more robust and more capable is harder than just band-aid retaliation around past mistakes. Guess what, US is doing both, so it's seat-belt and airbag at the same time. Very great, France is doing only seat-belt. - on the "results" side: France tries (currently) to preserve its image, to appear as "good" (not judging if that's true), by playing by the rules internationally, fighting great causes, etc. Whereas US soft power took a huge tall in its (indirect) handling of Assange case. It is now seen as more "evil" as before. More people, especially a lot of intelligent people, are despising US more. So, supposing the overflow of power hasn't busted the brains out of the government, they should be weighting means and results, and decide in consequence.
    - fsloth 6y ago
      "More people, especially a lot of intelligent people, are despising US more." If they are more offended by treatment of Assange than innocents kept in Guantanamo Bay 'camp' without a trial and summary drone executions with huge collateral death toll I'm not sure I would call them that intelligent. I mean really, US government has a huge assassination list whose targets are taken down by bomb raids killing and maiming civilians and one hacker being manhandled pushes you over the edge? Those are some sick values.
      - henearkr 6y ago
        They are on your side. The supporters of Assange are guaranteed to be also revolted by Guantanamo Camp and drone executions. Assange's supporters like him precisely because, among other things, he (and Wikileaks) is a champion of the cause fighting against the wrongdoings of US army and US extrajudicial penitentiary system: - Guantanamo Files https://wikileaks.org/gitmo/ https://wikileaks.org/gitmo/ - Collateral Murder https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/ https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/ These are actually precisely the reason why US government is extraditing Assange.
gus_massa 6y ago
This articles is not about journalists, but it is somewhat related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
- henearkr 6y ago
  You are saying France did bad shit, and that's true, you forgot Napoleon slaughters throughout Europe, Nazis collaboration and Petain, colonial rule and enslaving of American, African and Asian nations, nuclear tests, and I forgot a lot. Still, you are hardly touching the subject. We are speaking about the here and now, how we should abide by the international law when responding to cyber threats, in the context of a transparent and globalized world.
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    This was like 35 year ago [1]. I'd say this was already a "transparent and globalized world". [1] Suddenly, I'm feeling old.
    - henearkr 6y ago
      No, this is just a different topic. What I brought up was an example of good response to a cyber threat. You bring up some bad things, be it old or new it does not matter, it still is a different topic. My point was to illustrate what I call a good response. The bad ones just illustrate the bad responses, that's all. Good for contrasting, maybe. But the way you bring it does not seem to make clear anything, to the contrary. And it is not even remotely about "cyber" anything, nor about journalism or the right to know the truth about anything. And for contrasting we already have the example at hand, the case of Julian Assange! So I really don't understand your point. Sounds like you hate France and you disliked that I used a French example as a good response to a cyber threat. I don't know why you want so much to avoid giving a nice role to France, personally I don't care, but I am a positive person, so I'd like you to find a good response example by an other country (easy, there are plenty) to balance my comment, instead of balancing it trying to find a bad cyber-response from France (which you failed to do). Also, the world was hardly as transparent as today. No social media, hardly any internet, newspapers in different languages but few people knowing anything else than their mother tongue... Years after, there was investigation by news agencies in France about the Rainbow Warrior tragedy. The government did not throw them in jail! So that, too, is really different from the Assange case.

chasd00 6y ago

It depends on what line is crossed. Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize and still assassinated a US citizen on foreign soil without due process and justified it with a loop hole in the law. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/us-justification-drone-killing-american-citizen-awlaki https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/us-justificati... the take away is this, when you're on the US Gov. shit list you're safe until you're not.

henearkr 6y ago
Yeah but, 1/ not a journalist, 2/ member of a huge killers club, 3/ propagandist of religious numbness contrary to the diffusing of facts and contrary to the useful understanding of the world's mechanics. So he was totally not helping people know the truth, as a journalist would be, and instead he was totally trying to kill or help killing people and destroy civilizations. Also, this was the context of war, on a war field (and with a terrorist organization).
- chasd00 6y ago
  point made, what I cited is an extreme case. However, i think the point stands that push far enough and everything becomes on the table and what "far enough" means isn't clear and always changing.

fsloth 6y ago

US seems to be totally fine about opinions expressed from freely available data. They don't like a campaign to leak everything that can be caught hold of. So I would not compare the reaction to Assange to a general reaction to journalism.

henearkr 6y ago
How can you form adequate opinions if you know only one part of the truth? The part you know can be easily manipulated so that your opinion corresponds to the wishes of the government in control. This is why journalism is mainly about publishing information. The part where the writer gives their opinion is actually optional. Also, this is why good news organizations (Reuters, etc) are doing investigations (this is investigative journalism). They do not just publish already available data, they go seeking the truth where it is. Btw, the sheer existence of investigative journalism is also what makes difficult to believe all the conspiracy theories. If something fishy that huge was going on, there is an overwhelming likelihood that some news organization (also, some whistle-blower) would have revealed it. (that shows also the importance of the existence of whistle-blowers)
- fsloth 6y ago
  I didn’t say truth seeking was not valuable. I totally agree what you said. I would just not assign the professional title of journalist to Assange. I’m not sure if there even is a proper current term for his professional-like activities.