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And what is stopping those patriotic principled leakers from leaking things to just about anyone else? If the republican party e-mails were leaked for example I

And what is stopping those patriotic principled leakers from leaking things to just about anyone else? If the republican party e-mails were leaked for example I can guarantee you'd have a huge amount of journalists willing to publish them, even if in the theoretical wikileaks wouldn't do it. At the end of the day the US is most likely the country with the highest amount of espionage in the world, maybe barring china, it's not like they can't do the same as some supposed FSB spy. Expecting anyone to be impartial is a big mistake, especially when you can conveniently persecute and try to kill said person and with that pretty much force them to cease being being "impartial" at the very least in the public perception. Under the circumstances laid out all it takes to discredit someone as an "useful idiot" is to persecute and corner them into "enemy territory". Also let's take a step back and differentiate between something being of interest to exclusively US enemies, that would be a detriment to the US directly, or a matter of international policy, which is the case of the Ukraine position you cited. The Ukraine position is not a threat to the US either way, it's just a position in foreign policy. Edit: It seems the case of an example of that exact alternative to wikileaks cited did exist already, by micheal moore of all people, focused on trump however. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-im-launching-trumpileaks-a-letter-from-michael-moore_b_5936949ae4b013c4816adee7 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-im-launching-trumpileaks-...

SilverBirch 4y ago
There's a big difference between principled citizens who choose to leak information, and foreign adversaries of the US. I would have thought this was obvious but it's down to US citizens to decide the US election, and external interference should be met as the attack on the US that it is. >At the end of the day the US is most likely the country with the highest amount of espionage in the world, maybe barring china, it's not like they can't do the Absolutely, they could, this weird whataboutism doesn't help your position. Either what I'm saying is correct - and you concede that, in which case we can talk about the US capabilities - which we can view in the correct context of capabilities operated under a free accountable democratic society. Or you don't agree, in which case your whatabouttery is moot, since you think it's fine, and therefore the US intelligence could just intervene to get their way. As you say, they probably have more capabilities.
- philippejara 4y ago
  >There's a big difference between principled citizens who choose to leak information, and foreign adversaries of the US. I would have thought this was obvious but it's down to US citizens to decide the US election, and external interference should be met as the attack on the US that it is. I can't agree with that, the election was decided by the US citizens, they saw the information and made their choice. Unless you're arguing that said leaks are fake as far as I'm concerned information is information, if the candidate did something the voter base wouldn't approve of and it was unveiled the source is completely irrelevant. Under those pretenses any kind of leak can be trivially attributed to some enemy and now its discredited, call those who report on it pawns of the $enemy_state and there you go. You can see this being attempted in real time in US politics, thankfully with waning success. My point about the capabilities of the US espionage comes in when you factor counterintel and exposing falsehoods, as I said before my position is that information is information and the only thing that can be argued against information is whether it was fabricated or not. For an example, as far as I'm concerned the entire hunter laptop scandal being completely pushed under the rug by intel agents[0] is far closer to actual manipulation than the DNC e-mail leaks, because it was a lie that it wasn't real and conveniently no journalist wanted to fact check it, just to come out now 2 years later after the election is done and walk back on it. I'm citing this to try and make clear that the veracity is far more important than the source. I do concede the point that arguing that just because the US can do the same supposed leaking of documents to another country doesn't change much, although assuming they're actual leaks i'd like them to. [0]:https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-...

SilverBirch 4y ago

There's a big difference between principled citizens who choose to leak information, and foreign adversaries of the US. I would have thought this was obvious but it's down to US citizens to decide the US election, and external interference should be met as the attack on the US that it is. >At the end of the day the US is most likely the country with the highest amount of espionage in the world, maybe barring china, it's not like they can't do the Absolutely, they could, this weird whataboutism doesn't help your position. Either what I'm saying is correct - and you concede that, in which case we can talk about the US capabilities - which we can view in the correct context of capabilities operated under a free accountable democratic society. Or you don't agree, in which case your whatabouttery is moot, since you think it's fine, and therefore the US intelligence could just intervene to get their way. As you say, they probably have more capabilities.

philippejara 4y ago
>There's a big difference between principled citizens who choose to leak information, and foreign adversaries of the US. I would have thought this was obvious but it's down to US citizens to decide the US election, and external interference should be met as the attack on the US that it is. I can't agree with that, the election was decided by the US citizens, they saw the information and made their choice. Unless you're arguing that said leaks are fake as far as I'm concerned information is information, if the candidate did something the voter base wouldn't approve of and it was unveiled the source is completely irrelevant. Under those pretenses any kind of leak can be trivially attributed to some enemy and now its discredited, call those who report on it pawns of the $enemy_state and there you go. You can see this being attempted in real time in US politics, thankfully with waning success. My point about the capabilities of the US espionage comes in when you factor counterintel and exposing falsehoods, as I said before my position is that information is information and the only thing that can be argued against information is whether it was fabricated or not. For an example, as far as I'm concerned the entire hunter laptop scandal being completely pushed under the rug by intel agents[0] is far closer to actual manipulation than the DNC e-mail leaks, because it was a lie that it wasn't real and conveniently no journalist wanted to fact check it, just to come out now 2 years later after the election is done and walk back on it. I'm citing this to try and make clear that the veracity is far more important than the source. I do concede the point that arguing that just because the US can do the same supposed leaking of documents to another country doesn't change much, although assuming they're actual leaks i'd like them to. [0]:https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-...