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He should not have spent all of this time being persecuted by the US government, but he should have been ostracized by the public long ago. I believe that if no

He should not have spent all of this time being persecuted by the US government, but he should have been ostracized by the public long ago. I believe that if not for the prior, the latter would have occurred much more readily. > A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." A silence fell on the table as the reporters realised that the man the gullible hailed as the pioneer of a new age of transparency was willing to hand death lists to psychopaths. They persuaded Assange to remove names before publishing the State Department Afghanistan cables. But Assange's disillusioned associates suggest that the failure to expose "informants" niggled in his mind. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian-assange-wikileaks-nick-cohen https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian...

Log_out_ 2y ago
Didn't know that and yes, that is condemning. The conclusion for future leak prevention is clear, all sensitive data storage must be tainted with false positives, that only a need to know filter window exposes time and access sensitive.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
TeeMassive 2y ago
The sources are out of context quotes coming from hear say sources; those sources being clearly politically motivated think tanks.
- Aloisius 2y ago
  The source was Declan Walsh, who was a journalist for the Guardian and now the NYT.
  - kevinventullo 2y ago
    So definitely not politically motivated!
    - mint2 2y ago
      But would political motivation even be relevant? With how politically motivated assange was, political motivation is clearly not an issue in his context. Or would it be a classic case of “it’s okay when my guy does it, but people I don’t like aren’t allowed to”
      - TeeMassive 2y ago
        Political motivation is what makes hearsay bad. Wikileaks never relied on hearsay.
4bpp 2y ago
What part of the US government or its decision-makers spent 10 years stewing in prison for bribing Afghans to expose themselves to that same risk of death, or straight up killing many more Afghans for no other reason that they happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? Does the US government have some special natural right to toy with the lives of Afghans that Assange does not have? Unless you believe it to be so, it seems quite strange to assign any significant share of the blame to Assange for any hypothetical deaths that may occur as a result of him taking actions to reduce the US government's ability to kill people abroad, akin to blaming police who stop a hostage-taker because this might have prompted the hostage-taker to kill the hostage but holding the hostage-taker himself blameless.
- consumer451 2y ago
  > Does the US government have some special natural right to toy with the lives of Afghans that Assange does not have? Your argument appears to boil down to the idea that two wrongs make a right.
  - kevinventullo 2y ago
    Obviously there is more nuance than that. If police kill an active school shooter, is your response “Tsk, tsk, two wrongs don’t make a right”?
    - consumer451 2y ago
      In your analogy, Assange publicly outing Afgan translators is equivalent to police killing an active school shooter? Maybe I am misunderstanding.
      - calf 2y ago
        The argument is simply that the ultimate responsibility falls on the entity that created the problem, and so it is inherently not symmetric. Whereas you made the assumption that two "wrongs" are symmetric and so have equal moral status. Another standard way for explaining this is that when judging something, one ought to account for the actual power dynamics between the conflicting parties. The problem is, prejudice, classism, and bigotry tend to distort what people think and perceive as the actual power dynamics, hence long and controversial news threads like these.
blast 2y ago
Assange denies having said that, according to the article linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40786073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40786073. Is there proof that he did, such as a recording? "Willing to hand death lists to psychopaths" is the language of a hit piece so your link seems a little biased.
- consumer451 2y ago
  Since this was written in the UK, couldn't he use their libel laws to sue if he hadn't said it? The article states that there were multiple journalists who could be called as witnesses, and could testify as to what happened, one way or the other.
  - blast 2y ago
    "he didn't sue me for libel" is not much of an argument. Most false reports don't end up in a libel suit even in the UK. I'm not saying it's false, I don't know, but the reporting on this has been hotly contested and there are charges of politicization all around.
    - consumer451 2y ago
      If I was him, and never said this, I would fight tooth and nail to prove that this was the case. He certainly appears to have enough supporters to fund such an endeavor.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        In fairness, he's been busy with another legal battle that he appears to consider a matter of life-and-death. (I don't buy the argument that it was actually that, but I'm willing to believe that he convinced himself that it was).
        consumer451 2y ago
        > In fairness, he's been busy with another legal battle that he appears to consider a matter of life-and-death. Agreed, it will be very interesting to see how this particular thing goes forward from today. Ideally, he would defend himself. I wouldn't hate to be proven wrong, as heroes are few and far between. However, post-release, becoming a main character in a certain political branch of the podcast-sphere might allow him to ignore any of these annoying factual issues and do just fine. /cynical
Salgat 2y ago
Don't forget being a tool for Russians leaking Democrat emails prior to the 2016 election.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kappuchino 2y ago
Given the complicated relationship at least between David Leigh and Julian Assange of which I have personal knowledge: If there are not tapes or video recordings, I would not trust the memory or perception of even a group of people around Assange. Assange had his own reality distorion field. Like inflating the number of servers wikileaks had, the numbers of active members, etc. etc. I could sense he and Daniel Schmidt aka Domscheid-Berg were making up things on the go, but I and others didn't speak up because we believed we were wrong (How could we doubt wikileaks in 2010ish?). I personally met David Leigh during the offshore leaks investigation. Dumb & innocent as I was, I asked him right away about the password incident. For those who don't know: At first, the cables were only released in part and redacted, but there was an archive zip encoded with aes encryption and a very long password "ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#" that Leigh used as a headline in his book. Of course someone figured out it matched to that archive and so the cables became unredacted. Well, Leigh was really pissed about the question. To his defense, Leigh said to me: he was under the impression that the password/archive were digital self destruct. I know, this does not make sense in any way and reality. But given how little Leigh knew about information security, encryption, tech in general - maybe he was told by Assange this as a prank, maybe he assumed it, who knows. But boy, these people in that time - journos and hackers - back than, most of them were not thinking about any bad outcomes, it mostly about making a splash and spotlight. And that was, is and will not be enough. I battled "on the hill" to protect a whistleblower and to block a release of information which may have resulted in people being prosecuted in countries with a death penalty. It cost me a lot, but if you're not willing to walk away from prestige and fame for other peoples lives, maybe you should find another job.
mikrotikker 2y ago
If this is true name a single Afghan that was killed

Log_out_ 2y ago

Didn't know that and yes, that is condemning. The conclusion for future leak prevention is clear, all sensitive data storage must be tainted with false positives, that only a need to know filter window exposes time and access sensitive.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

TeeMassive 2y ago

The sources are out of context quotes coming from hear say sources; those sources being clearly politically motivated think tanks.

Aloisius 2y ago
The source was Declan Walsh, who was a journalist for the Guardian and now the NYT.
- kevinventullo 2y ago
  So definitely not politically motivated!
  - mint2 2y ago
    But would political motivation even be relevant? With how politically motivated assange was, political motivation is clearly not an issue in his context. Or would it be a classic case of “it’s okay when my guy does it, but people I don’t like aren’t allowed to”
    - TeeMassive 2y ago
      Political motivation is what makes hearsay bad. Wikileaks never relied on hearsay.

4bpp 2y ago

What part of the US government or its decision-makers spent 10 years stewing in prison for bribing Afghans to expose themselves to that same risk of death, or straight up killing many more Afghans for no other reason that they happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? Does the US government have some special natural right to toy with the lives of Afghans that Assange does not have? Unless you believe it to be so, it seems quite strange to assign any significant share of the blame to Assange for any hypothetical deaths that may occur as a result of him taking actions to reduce the US government's ability to kill people abroad, akin to blaming police who stop a hostage-taker because this might have prompted the hostage-taker to kill the hostage but holding the hostage-taker himself blameless.

consumer451 2y ago
> Does the US government have some special natural right to toy with the lives of Afghans that Assange does not have? Your argument appears to boil down to the idea that two wrongs make a right.
- kevinventullo 2y ago
  Obviously there is more nuance than that. If police kill an active school shooter, is your response “Tsk, tsk, two wrongs don’t make a right”?
  - consumer451 2y ago
    In your analogy, Assange publicly outing Afgan translators is equivalent to police killing an active school shooter? Maybe I am misunderstanding.
    - calf 2y ago
      The argument is simply that the ultimate responsibility falls on the entity that created the problem, and so it is inherently not symmetric. Whereas you made the assumption that two "wrongs" are symmetric and so have equal moral status. Another standard way for explaining this is that when judging something, one ought to account for the actual power dynamics between the conflicting parties. The problem is, prejudice, classism, and bigotry tend to distort what people think and perceive as the actual power dynamics, hence long and controversial news threads like these.

blast 2y ago

Assange denies having said that, according to the article linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40786073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40786073. Is there proof that he did, such as a recording? "Willing to hand death lists to psychopaths" is the language of a hit piece so your link seems a little biased.

consumer451 2y ago
Since this was written in the UK, couldn't he use their libel laws to sue if he hadn't said it? The article states that there were multiple journalists who could be called as witnesses, and could testify as to what happened, one way or the other.
- blast 2y ago
  "he didn't sue me for libel" is not much of an argument. Most false reports don't end up in a libel suit even in the UK. I'm not saying it's false, I don't know, but the reporting on this has been hotly contested and there are charges of politicization all around.
  - consumer451 2y ago
    If I was him, and never said this, I would fight tooth and nail to prove that this was the case. He certainly appears to have enough supporters to fund such an endeavor.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      In fairness, he's been busy with another legal battle that he appears to consider a matter of life-and-death. (I don't buy the argument that it was actually that, but I'm willing to believe that he convinced himself that it was).
      - consumer451 2y ago
        > In fairness, he's been busy with another legal battle that he appears to consider a matter of life-and-death. Agreed, it will be very interesting to see how this particular thing goes forward from today. Ideally, he would defend himself. I wouldn't hate to be proven wrong, as heroes are few and far between. However, post-release, becoming a main character in a certain political branch of the podcast-sphere might allow him to ignore any of these annoying factual issues and do just fine. /cynical

Salgat 2y ago

Don't forget being a tool for Russians leaking Democrat emails prior to the 2016 election.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

kappuchino 2y ago

Given the complicated relationship at least between David Leigh and Julian Assange of which I have personal knowledge: If there are not tapes or video recordings, I would not trust the memory or perception of even a group of people around Assange. Assange had his own reality distorion field. Like inflating the number of servers wikileaks had, the numbers of active members, etc. etc. I could sense he and Daniel Schmidt aka Domscheid-Berg were making up things on the go, but I and others didn't speak up because we believed we were wrong (How could we doubt wikileaks in 2010ish?). I personally met David Leigh during the offshore leaks investigation. Dumb & innocent as I was, I asked him right away about the password incident. For those who don't know: At first, the cables were only released in part and redacted, but there was an archive zip encoded with aes encryption and a very long password "ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#" that Leigh used as a headline in his book. Of course someone figured out it matched to that archive and so the cables became unredacted. Well, Leigh was really pissed about the question. To his defense, Leigh said to me: he was under the impression that the password/archive were digital self destruct. I know, this does not make sense in any way and reality. But given how little Leigh knew about information security, encryption, tech in general - maybe he was told by Assange this as a prank, maybe he assumed it, who knows. But boy, these people in that time - journos and hackers - back than, most of them were not thinking about any bad outcomes, it mostly about making a splash and spotlight. And that was, is and will not be enough. I battled "on the hill" to protect a whistleblower and to block a release of information which may have resulted in people being prosecuted in countries with a death penalty. It cost me a lot, but if you're not willing to walk away from prestige and fame for other peoples lives, maybe you should find another job.

mikrotikker 2y ago

If this is true name a single Afghan that was killed