7 ms·

As someone who has been a big fan of Wikileaks, something about this story has always felt off to me - like this is some sort of state disinfo op rather than a

• pydry 5y ago
  What's off? RussiaGate was a Democrat talking point which Trump hated. She was put away while Trump was president and released now that Biden is in power.
• meroes 5y ago
  The leaks were subversive...to the camp that thinks Wikileaks didn't also spread state sponsored Russian disinfo (unwittingly or not).
  • cwkoss 5y ago
    Do you have a source on any instance where Wikileaks spread "disinfo"? Wikileaks likely did spread information which was provided by and served the interests of Russia, but I've never seen a credible argument that false information was published.
    • meroes 5y ago
      I view the GRU stealing private data and using Wikileaks to coordinate releasing it as disinfo.
      • cwkoss 5y ago
        I think classifying 'stolen' data that is accurate being released as "disinfo" is a horrifying and dangerous precedent. Where do you draw the line between what wikileaks did and other investigative reporting that uses information from whistleblowers? Were the pentagon papers disinfo? It seems like your position taken to its extreme would disregard all information except info willingly broadcasted by the state, and make us blind to stories of war crimes, corruption, anything else that embarrasses or threatens the state.
        • ABCLAW 5y ago
          The issue isn't the content of the data. It's the context of the release. You're trying to threaten a slippery slope wherein all information needs to be state sanctioned, but the definition of disinformation makes it clear that the only time information gains that moniker is when it's actively being spread to mislead for malicious purposes. Quite the contrary to your 'extreme' extrapolation, the term disinformation allows us to identify the use of malicious state-sponsored information warfare. It FIGHTS state sponsored narratives. It doesn't support it.
    • sdenton4 5y ago
      A carefully chosen+edited truth can be worth fifty lies... And as a result, disinformation is commonly meant to include lies of omission, etc. The wikileaks approach of 'publish all the things' was just begging to be used by a state propaganda machine.
      • cwkoss 5y ago
        Using the term "disinfo" for "accurate but incomplete info" seems like an Orwellian misuse of the term. Are there any credible sources indicating that Wikileaks selectively edited or chose what to publish based on political goals? I think they have some sort of process to validate legitimacy of leaks before they publish them, but I've never heard claims that they intentionally edited or chose not to leak information for Wikileaks own political goals. Certainly possible that Russia leaked true-but-incomplete information to Wikileaks, but isn't, like, all discussion of reality true-but-incomplete? Edit: Sibling thread found a claim of selective editing I was not previously aware of. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-russia-bank-2-billion/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r...
        • meroes 5y ago
          I view the GRU stealing private data and using Wikileaks to coordinate releasing for the purpose of sowing discord and possibly to help Trump win the election as disinfo. > After the Soviet term became widely known in the 1980s, native speakers of English broadened the term as "any government communication (either overt or covert) containing intentionally false and misleading material, often combined selectively with true information, which seeks to mislead and manipulate either elites or a mass audience."[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation - March 16: Internal WikiLeaks messages indicate the purpose of the archive is to annoy Clinton and establish WikiLeaks as a "resource/player" in the election.[29]:44–45 - June 14: The GRU uses its @dcleaks_ persona to reach out to WikiLeaks and offer to coordinate the release of sensitive information about Clinton, including financial documents.[353][29]:45 - June 22: WikiLeaks reaches out to "Guccifer 2.0" via Twitter. They ask "Guccifer 2.0" to send them material because it will have a bigger impact if they publish it. They also specifically ask for material on Clinton they can publish before the convention.[256] I'm not saying Assange is guilty of any crimes, or doctored evidence. But Wikileaks had an agenda beyond "the facts". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections#cite_note-MuellerReportAssangeSmearedDailyBeast-20190418-353 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interferen...
    • slg 5y ago
      The whole Seth Rich debacle is the most obvious example in which they strongly implied that he was the source of leaked DNC docs. We later found out that Wikileaks was still in contact with the source after Seth Rich was already dead. There are plenty of source links in the Wikipedia article[1]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#WikiLeaks_statements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#WikiLeaks_...
      • cwkoss 5y ago
        Ah, that's fair. Wikileaks' twitter account played much faster and looser than what they published on their website. I'm curious if we'll ever get an accounting of the internal organizational power struggles that occurred during the 2016 election. It felt like Assange and his proxies were seeking vengeance through Twitter (to be fair, its claimed Hillary Clinton joked "Can't we just drone this guy" about Assange - no lack of bad blood between them), but that somehow never seemed to bleed onto the Wikileaks website itself.
      • pydry 5y ago
        Strongly implied by saying "we don't comment on who our sources are"? It's not clear that Wikileaks even knew who their source was.
        • AutumnCurtain 5y ago
          While you might not know who your source was, if you're in contact with them after the proposed contact point's death you clearly are aware it is not that person. They played coy when they knew overtly he was not the contact point.
          • pydry 5y ago
            Is a good journalist supposed to hint revealingly with a nod and a wink and compromise their source? Isn't the whole point that they supposed to play coy?
            • 5y ago
    • nemo 5y ago
      Wikileaks disinfo has almost always been in deeply misleading and sometimes explicitly false editorializing and framing of leaks rather than the content. They also post a lot of misinformation to their Twitter account - falsely claiming Bob Beckel was a Clinton staffer, boosting the false Seth Rich story, boosting bogus Clinton health claims, and much more besides. They also posted selectively edited leaks to hide information that made Russia look bad: https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/09/09/wikileaks-hid-syrian-deposits-in-russian-bank https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/09/09/wikileaks-hi... Their selective choice of leaks which they did and did not choose to accept also suggests a lot of bias: 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... Their internal leaked chats from 2016 showed they were consciously and deliberately skewing their coverage to help the GOP and harm Dems: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks... They're very biased, and their biases come out in what they choose to publish, what they refuse to publish, and how they choose to editorialize, and in one known case in selective editing of a leak, but in general the leaks themselves aren't "false information" but are documents which they're spreading to create a specific narrative, and in several cases like the Syria, Podesta, DCCC, and DNC leaks it's clear they're serving as a front for Russian intelligence agencies to spread a specific narrative to aid Russian goals rather than further the truth. Since they serve as a front for foreign intelligence agencies, it's totally possible they're getting drops from other intelligence agencies with similar agendas.
      • cwkoss 5y ago
        Interesting, that's the first I've read of the selective editing claim. It seems like there is some room for ambiguity (What if RevoluSec intentionally withheld these emails to discredit wikileaks? Is RevoluSec CIA/NSA?) but certainly shifts my bayesian priors a bit. Thanks for sharing. Short of evidence that they published falsehoolds, I'd still argue that "disinfo" is a misnomer. But your above points certainly demonstrate biased reporting, as is found in any other journalistic organization.
    • pydry 5y ago
      >Wikileaks likely did spread information which was provided by and served the interests of Russia There was a strange schizophrenia about those email leaks from DNC media outlets. They routinely said that it held nothing of any interest (e.g. the story about the recipes - https://www.vox.com/2016/10/12/13253852/wikileaks-john-podesta-risotto https://www.vox.com/2016/10/12/13253852/wikileaks-john-podes... ) but that it was also done to serve the interests of Russia and derailed the election - https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17569030/mueller-indictments-russia-hackers-bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-democratic-national-convention https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17569030/mueller-indictments-r... The idea that truthfully informing voters about the views and actions of a candidate was reprehensible if it affected the outcome of the election was never actually justified, it was simply assumed.
      • kadoban 5y ago
        Those aren't contradictory, and both are supported by the evidence. Which do you actually disagree with, or do you simply not see how both can be true? Affecting the outcome of an election is not inherently wrong. Foreign countries affecting the outcome of our elections is dangerous, and has historically been very frowned upon. There's reasons that only Americans are allowed to donate to election campaigns. Our elections are supposed to be for _us_. If whatever countries want a particular outcome start having an outsized voice, our elections will be even less connected to what's best for Americans than they already were.
        • pydry 5y ago
          I disagreed that there was nothing in the emails and explained below. I also disagree with the notion that a foreign power revealing truths about a candidate is wrong. If you reject a foreign truth over a domestic lie you reject the very heart of democracy itself. It's all the more ironic given the amount of meddling the US has done in foreign elections, including Russia's.
          • kadoban 5y ago
            You didn't really say what was in them that you found valuable, unless I missed it? What important truths did they reveal? Okay, but then you're welcoming well-funded nations to spend outsized money and effort on attacking whatever candidate they will get the least from. How does that not devolve into our elections just being playthings of our enemies? What is ironic about this? I also do not think that the US should meddle in foreign elections, but that doesn't really have anything to do with this.
• sennight 5y ago
  I've got some additional tinfoil for you: both Bush and Obama worked to rollback safeguards, in place since the 70s, that protected citizens from US military counter-intel operations. I personally saw more than one operation ruined when domestic news picked up and began repeating one of our controlled opposition assets, and we had to immediately pull the plug - it was a frustrating but necessary constraint. Well, that isn't the way it is done anymore. Oh, and on a totally unrelated note: aliens! Look over here, so many aliens and UFOs! Wow - all these authorized interviews with personnel complemented by fancy video evidence!
  • pasabagi 5y ago
    What is a 'controlled opposition asset'?
    • sennight 5y ago
      A useful idiot. Somebody or something that is, unbeknownst to them or their allies, so strongly under adversarial influence that they can be controlled. Imagine the potential chaos made possible by a double agent - without the natural suspicion that accompanies a self admitted traitor.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • notavalleyman 5y ago
    Can you explain a bit more? Are you telling us that you ran counter-intel operations? In America? And, American domestic news would report on something your counter-intelligence asset was saying? Because neither of those make sense
    • sennight 5y ago
      lol, no - in almost every sense. I was intentionally cryptic, but hopefully only to a degree that reduces the likelihood of prosecution without making a productive discussion impossible. Security classification can be weird, and it rarely aligns with any kind of sensible risk management posture. This is why Snowden, despite disclosing some of the most highly restricted material that exists (ELINT TS/SCI, only topped by nuke stuff), is viewed much more positively than Manning (who dumped low level secret material) by the military rank and file. One disclosed strategic information and the other dumped operational details of no whistleblowing value. No joke - a couple of years ago I spotted a fragment of an inconsequential patrol report I filed in Fallujah, totally useless to anyone but jihadists. So I've got no interest in discussing operational stuff - which is what 99.9% of CI falls into. Anyway, it wouldn't really change anyone's pre-existing opinion if I directly made any kind of claim without evidence... teach a man to fish, etc. So with that in mind: can you think of any really silly stories, published by an American... uh, "science" magazine, that purported something totally impossible - and then never got brought up again? Something of the GWOT vintage? Something scientifically impossible, due to the way radio propagation works? Ah, I'm so tempted to do a "rhymes with"... but I know better. Actually I can think of something I can openly discuss as an example - because it was pulled by those damn dirty ruskies, not our boys, and I was long out of the know when it happened: cell tower upgrades to combat cruise missiles [0], and super advanced ballistic calculators being used against ISIS [1]. Can you see what these things have in common? Despite technically impossible claims (15m CEP for unguided munitions dropped from 6km... lol, anybody know how Kalman filters work?) - the message is uncritically spread by western media. [0] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-plans-turn-cell-phone-towers-cruise-missile-jammers-18067 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-plans-turn... [1] https://www.airrecognition.com/index.php/news/defense-aviation-news/2020/july/6485-naval-sukhoi-su-24m-to-get-svp-24-gefest-sighting-system.html https://www.airrecognition.com/index.php/news/defense-aviati...
• kordlessagain 5y ago
  Wikileaks is a broken org, started by a narcissist and was only “made” by a criminal act committed by another narcissist. If anyone really cared about building a service that held nation states accountable, they would have built it to be decentralized and secure against discovery of the operators. Instead we got Manning on marketing and Assange and his cat running operations.
• elp 5y ago
  I've always thought that the real NSA ruthlessly prosecutes anyone who leaks to the press and the "anonymous intelligence sources" quoted in the press are always fake.
  • zardo 5y ago
    Well not necessarily fake. They're officials in the press office doing the "leaking".
    • dylan604 5y ago
      I was going to comment similar as well. Anonymous leaks are typically "offical" sources releasing info as a trial balloon to test which way the political winds are blowing. This provides plausible deniablility if the winds blow in unfriendly directions.
  • dragonwriter 5y ago
    > I've always thought that the real NSA ruthlessly prosecutes The NSA might do many things, but it absolutely does not prosecute anyone (though it same-head military command might prosecute service members within its command.)
• rejectedandsad 5y ago
  It’s almost like Russiagate and a new digital Cold War happened…nah, that’s too simple an explanation.
• pessimizer 5y ago
  New NYPD press officer co-wrote The Intercept Russiagate story that landed source in prison https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/20/the-intercept-reality-winner-richard-esposito-nypd/ https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/20/the-intercept-reality-win... I think she was a nice woman who got caught up in things that were a lot larger than her. I'm glad she's out.