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This unacceptable and outright disgusting. For me, Wikileaks lost all credibility. It is wrong to violate the privacy and confidentiality of employees and conta

This unacceptable and outright disgusting. For me, Wikileaks lost all credibility. It is wrong to violate the privacy and confidentiality of employees and contacts of the company. It does not matter if there are clues of wrongdoing or if somebody calls the contents trivial. Government ties, connections to the military industry and support for politicians? How is that a scandal? And how is that worth violating people's rights. Nothing is redacted. Nothing is explained in context. This is awful. If something is worth a scandal, it's the chutzpa of Wikileaks.

xroche 12y ago
> Government ties You mean, corruption ? Yes, this is worth publishing. Even if this corruption has become mainstream.
- einrealist 12y ago
  Your interpretation of corruption may not be equal to its lawful meaning. If you have a problem with the donations to for example Cuomo, than you can lobby for change (e.g. by donating to a politician who shares your view). Again, there is no reason for violating people's rights even when they can be _accused_ of wrongdoing. It is for courts to decide.
  - toyg 12y ago
    Can you see the irony in your comment? "If you'd like to change a certain behaviour, you should indulge in that same behaviour as much as you can." How do you fix a broken process, if the only way to do it is going through the same broken process?
    - einrealist 12y ago
      That was intended. We all know that there are problems with the balance of influence. But that does not excuse the publishings.
    - Lorento 12y ago
      That's not the only way. You can vote for the politician who shares your views. You still have democracy in America, you can still vote. But somehow most Americans always vote for politicians who support those donations.
      - nitrogen 12y ago
        One can only vote for a politician who is running for office, so if no viable candidates share one's views, one is out of luck.
    - learnstats2 12y ago
      Getting a political message out there costs money, just as everything else - small parties can't even afford to mailshot the electorate in order to identify their beliefs. Promoting an anti-donation message directly benefits Cuomo and the parties of big business and finance. Their backers are not going to hear that message, and their opponents' backers are more likely to act on it.
  - jekrb 12y ago
    A human framed lawful meaning is not the same as a morally correct meaning. What your essentially saying is that if we want to end corruption then we need to partake in corruption ourselves (bribe a politician for change). This doesn't make things better.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    First you have to get it into a court. Compare the recent rise of public video documenting US police shootings. There's no way the alleged wrongdoing would be seriously investigated if there wasn't video widely available to the public.
  - netcan 12y ago
    This is exactly the reason this question is difficult, with a strong case on both sides. There are laws. Those laws have intent. Then, there is the actual behavior of individuals and corporations in practice. Loopholes, perhaps intentionally left open. There is a law limiting corporate donations. There is a practice for circumventing it. Without reveals like this, it looks like lots of private individuals donated money but in reality, a corporation effectively got around the legal restriction placed on it. Those restrictions are there to prevent auctioning off legislation and policy. This is no joke. These are not pictures of your wife in lingerie. This is squarely in the public interest. It's in the pubic interest to have the law updated so that this will be illegal, so that courts can do something about it.
  - Lancey 12y ago
    This may not be the legal definition of corruption, but there's also no legal right being violated here.
  - xroche 12y ago
    > Your interpretation of corruption may not be equal to its lawful meaning Corruption has been legalized thanks to... corruption. You see the problem ? When the law is written by lobbyists, lawful does not bear anymore any meaning.
  - yellowapple 12y ago
    I don't have $5k of disposable income to give to a political candidate willy-nilly. Sony's execs apparently do. That puts them at an advantage in our supposedly-democratic system.
mironathetin 12y ago
"Government ties, connections to the military industry and support for politicians? How is that a scandal?" The archive is made public to enable us to find out exactly that. Edit: so many angry reactions. I was answering to a post that seem to hold the point that it wouldn't be a scandal, if a multinational company buys influence from politics. With this I indeed disagree. What your comments suggest is that I think it is ok to publish illegally hacked material. I don't and I did not write that. On the other hand I have some trust in wikileaks that they don't publish the data just for everybody to sneak into private affairs. I expect it to contain proof of illegal action. That's now for journalists and investigators to find out. But there is still the issue of illegally acquired data. Where I come from, this must not even be used in court and thus would be worthless.
- laichzeit0 12y ago
  This kind of implies that all private company correspondence is "fair game" for us to find out if they're doing anything bad if you're clever enough to obtain it. e.g. via hacking, whistleblowing, crappy security policies, etc.
  - themartorana 12y ago
    Yup exactly. I'm assuming GP is anti-NSA eavesdropping (he/she posts on HN) so it makes it even more eye-opening how quickly he/she turned to "if they have nothing to hide..." when the victim is someone else.
    - thuffy 12y ago
      One force having all knowledge and controlling it, even using their advantage of information asymmetry to control it, I would say, is different enough from EVERYONE KNOWING THE TRUTH, that yes, perhaps we can have this discussion.
  - jasonwocky 12y ago
    Yeah, I don't understand. If the government hacked a private corporation and published 50,000 internal documents online, there would be a shitstorm. But some group of rogue hackers does it and suddenly it might be ok? What's the difference?
ghshephard 12y ago
While I agree that it's distasteful revealing people's email, and I've had no interest in looking in what was revealed, it's not clear to me what rights are being violated here. These were corporate accounts, and, anyone who is an employee of a corporation, knows that every email they write/send on a corporate mail server, absolutely can come into public purview, quite often during legal discovery. The old saying, "Do not put anything in email if you don't want it to appear on the front page of the New York Times" is absolutely correct. (True story - while I was working for desktop support at Netscape, one of my fellow technicians ended up having one of his emails end up in the New York Times - and he had sent it to our internal lawyers. Turns out even that can't protect you). Sony probably has strong grounds to come after whoever breached their security, and send them to prison for many, many years - but I don't know if their are specific individual "rights" being breached by wikileaks here.
- gtirloni 12y ago
  anyone who is an employee of a corporation, knows that every email they write/send on a corporate mail server, absolutely can come into public purview Is this coming from the HN crowd that registers domains with contact information anonymity enabled, loves to incorporate in Delaware and complains about privacy and NSA spy programs? Could you please turn your emails public so we can review them in case you might be doing something wrong? No? Thought so. It's for the courts to decide if Sony is doing something wrong. Wikileaks is a nice idea and I've supported them for a while, but they can't help but shoot themselves in the foot with dubious behavior like this.
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    One key difference, of course, is that the NSA is spying on everyone, and has all the powers of a government agency, and its many billions of dollars. What both of them are doing is distasteful. To some degree, though, I compare this behavior to that guy who walks up to people with a video camera, a couple feet away, and just points it at them. They become very uncomfortable, and upset, and yell at him. What he's doing with this "performance art" - as annoying as it is, is making people realize that they are already under constant surveillance. Anybody who previously didn't understand why privacy is so important to individuals, making them claim, "Oh, I have nothing to hide." - certainly is probably aware now how important it is to them after the Sony Dump. And, while not defending WikiLeaks (much), can we at least agree that there is a difference between dumping people's personal emails/photos (which is 100% unjustifiable) and exposing corporate machinations of Sony?
toyg 12y ago
The thing is, Sony in the past acted like a bully. Now the bully is being bullied. Turnabout is fair play? I don't know, but that's the sentiment behind this sort of action. Look at the positive: I bet loads of corporate execs are now going to give their IT teams extra money to "not end up like those Sony guys".
- nemothekid 12y ago
  Ah yes, bully the bully. I'm sure the NSA will remember this legal defense when its on trial for corporate espionage. We only hacked & spied on Apple because they were bullying 3rd party developers!
  - toyg 12y ago
    The NSA will never be on trial for corporate espionage, so I'm not sure what you're going on about. The problem with the NSA is that they're a government entity doing something very dangerous from a democratic point of view and of dubious value overall. It's a totally different problem from private citizens publishing stuff they may or may not be entitled to.
q2 12y ago
This is more freedom and more transparency. What is wrong with that? Remember, openness and transparency has many levels. You may be at different level than Wikileaks. If this level of openness is uncomfortable, so be it but there may be many who feel, this level is ok. Look at how some Govt's point at others as closed societies. Just in this case, there is some one who took more higher level of openness than traditional ones.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "This is freedom and complete transparency. What is wrong with that?" It's stolen documents of a private company. Most of the information is nothing more than embarrassing. >> "If this level of openness is uncomfortable, so be it but there may be many who feel, this level is ok." So you publish your communications openly then? Seriously, one minute HN is complaining (rightly so) about government invasions of privacy and the next it's congratulating theft of private communications from someone it doesn't like. Wikileaks has lost what little remaining credibility it had in my eyes. This is little more than stolen documents to satisfy the kinds of people that read gossip sites.
  - sdoering 12y ago
    I second this.
  - q2 12y ago
    All societies, at some point in the past, may have started at similar level of privacy ...etc. Due to various reasons, if we see now, some societies are more open than the rest and this is due to the choices they made consciously or accidentally or made by influencing entities in those societies. Wikileaks is following the same trend but may be with more speed/velocity. If we see history, there are no absolute boundaries of privacy and it changes with time and it may feel outrageous now but if we see multiple similar incidents, then it becomes natural,common and after few years, it becomes standard of life and I won't be surprised if future generations in these societies feel proud of that level of transparency and make fun of those who lack that level of openness.
kbart 12y ago
"It is wrong to violate the privacy and confidentiality of employees and contacts of the company" I don't see a problem here. It's not like private communication was leaked, it's a business communication from a mega corp that happened to reveal a lot of dirty details from inside the industry, so public should know that. If you used business email for personal communication, well then, next time you should know better.
appleflaxen 12y ago
I would be more inclined to agree with you if this company didn't have so much control over policy decisions in Washington. Besides, it's /Sony/, who put rootkits on our PCs in the name of copy protection, and who have never respected individual privacy in the past. You raise a good point: at what point do you draw the line. I don't have an answer for you, but this example is nowhere near it.
netcan 12y ago
I'm having trouble falling on either side of this whole-heartedly. On one hand privacy, rights… On the other, secrecy at the heart of how our societies function, trivialization of democracy, public interest, free press. Take this example (pointed out by randomname2): "NY law only allows corporations to give him $5,000 (which we’ve done)… and, with Michael’s support, we are trying to raise $50k overall. This means I need to ask individual senior execs for support… ..consider contributing $5,000 to Gov. Cuomo?" This is at the heart of how a lot of our democratic systems work, the money-in-politics question, the corruption of our systems of government. Surely that's something that is important to bring into the light, no? The criticism I've had with wikileaks from the start is still somewhat valid. Wikileaks are press. We have a culture of protecting, empowering & respecting the press. We have legal protections for the press. There are cultures within the press for balancing need to know against other considerations. But wikileaks (mores earlier on) never really saw or projected themselves this way, free press. To most people, including their supports they always seemed more like activists than journalists. When Assange was originally targeted I stopped to sign a petition in Melbourne. I read it. A Caricaturized synopsis might be "Free Assange! Free Gaza. Troops Out of Iraq! Fuck America! Abortion! Gays! Aboriginal RIghts! Like I said, caricature. But I don't think these guys were a million miles away from how wikileaks saw (or at least presented) themselves. Activists more than press. I think that's part of the problem you are sort of pointing to. Activists stealing documents sounds different to journalists with secret sources. The latter is an important part of democracy.
- res0nat0r 12y ago
  > Wikileaks are press. Wikileaks are most assuredly not the press.
  - netcan 12y ago
    What makes you say that? From wikipedia: "WikiLeaks is an international, non-profit,[3] journalistic[6][7][8] organisation, which publishes secret information, news leaks,[9] and classified media from anonymous sources.[3][10]." Based on the number of references for that sentence, I think we can conclude you are not the only one disputing this. What's your definition of press or what disqualifies Wikleaks?
thuffy 12y ago
Not at all. The court of the people have subpoenaed this corporate information. Anyone knows that the corporate veil will be pierced in discovery.
Nemcue 12y ago
Oh no — someone is being a meanie to the megacorps! Disgusting.
phaus 12y ago
Why have they lost your respect now and not years ago? Didn't they publish 750,000 unrelated and benign files along with the couple of files that showed government wrongdoing when they leaked Manning's stuff? Its not like Wikileaks changed recently, its more like people are just finding out what Wikileaks is.
- rjaco31 12y ago
  That was official government documents. Here the difference is that it's people emails.
  - phaus 12y ago
    So official government emails vs official company emails? These weren't individuals' private emails, they were emails sent on company information systems. When you send private emails on a company system, they become company emails. There is definitely a difference between the two, but I don't think it matters much in these particular cases.

xroche 12y ago

> Government ties You mean, corruption ? Yes, this is worth publishing. Even if this corruption has become mainstream.

einrealist 12y ago
Your interpretation of corruption may not be equal to its lawful meaning. If you have a problem with the donations to for example Cuomo, than you can lobby for change (e.g. by donating to a politician who shares your view). Again, there is no reason for violating people's rights even when they can be _accused_ of wrongdoing. It is for courts to decide.
- toyg 12y ago
  Can you see the irony in your comment? "If you'd like to change a certain behaviour, you should indulge in that same behaviour as much as you can." How do you fix a broken process, if the only way to do it is going through the same broken process?
  - einrealist 12y ago
    That was intended. We all know that there are problems with the balance of influence. But that does not excuse the publishings.
  - Lorento 12y ago
    That's not the only way. You can vote for the politician who shares your views. You still have democracy in America, you can still vote. But somehow most Americans always vote for politicians who support those donations.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      One can only vote for a politician who is running for office, so if no viable candidates share one's views, one is out of luck.
  - learnstats2 12y ago
    Getting a political message out there costs money, just as everything else - small parties can't even afford to mailshot the electorate in order to identify their beliefs. Promoting an anti-donation message directly benefits Cuomo and the parties of big business and finance. Their backers are not going to hear that message, and their opponents' backers are more likely to act on it.
- jekrb 12y ago
  A human framed lawful meaning is not the same as a morally correct meaning. What your essentially saying is that if we want to end corruption then we need to partake in corruption ourselves (bribe a politician for change). This doesn't make things better.
- pjc50 12y ago
  First you have to get it into a court. Compare the recent rise of public video documenting US police shootings. There's no way the alleged wrongdoing would be seriously investigated if there wasn't video widely available to the public.
- netcan 12y ago
  This is exactly the reason this question is difficult, with a strong case on both sides. There are laws. Those laws have intent. Then, there is the actual behavior of individuals and corporations in practice. Loopholes, perhaps intentionally left open. There is a law limiting corporate donations. There is a practice for circumventing it. Without reveals like this, it looks like lots of private individuals donated money but in reality, a corporation effectively got around the legal restriction placed on it. Those restrictions are there to prevent auctioning off legislation and policy. This is no joke. These are not pictures of your wife in lingerie. This is squarely in the public interest. It's in the pubic interest to have the law updated so that this will be illegal, so that courts can do something about it.
- Lancey 12y ago
  This may not be the legal definition of corruption, but there's also no legal right being violated here.
- xroche 12y ago
  > Your interpretation of corruption may not be equal to its lawful meaning Corruption has been legalized thanks to... corruption. You see the problem ? When the law is written by lobbyists, lawful does not bear anymore any meaning.
- yellowapple 12y ago
  I don't have $5k of disposable income to give to a political candidate willy-nilly. Sony's execs apparently do. That puts them at an advantage in our supposedly-democratic system.

mironathetin 12y ago

"Government ties, connections to the military industry and support for politicians? How is that a scandal?" The archive is made public to enable us to find out exactly that. Edit: so many angry reactions. I was answering to a post that seem to hold the point that it wouldn't be a scandal, if a multinational company buys influence from politics. With this I indeed disagree. What your comments suggest is that I think it is ok to publish illegally hacked material. I don't and I did not write that. On the other hand I have some trust in wikileaks that they don't publish the data just for everybody to sneak into private affairs. I expect it to contain proof of illegal action. That's now for journalists and investigators to find out. But there is still the issue of illegally acquired data. Where I come from, this must not even be used in court and thus would be worthless.

laichzeit0 12y ago
This kind of implies that all private company correspondence is "fair game" for us to find out if they're doing anything bad if you're clever enough to obtain it. e.g. via hacking, whistleblowing, crappy security policies, etc.
- themartorana 12y ago
  Yup exactly. I'm assuming GP is anti-NSA eavesdropping (he/she posts on HN) so it makes it even more eye-opening how quickly he/she turned to "if they have nothing to hide..." when the victim is someone else.
  - thuffy 12y ago
    One force having all knowledge and controlling it, even using their advantage of information asymmetry to control it, I would say, is different enough from EVERYONE KNOWING THE TRUTH, that yes, perhaps we can have this discussion.
- jasonwocky 12y ago
  Yeah, I don't understand. If the government hacked a private corporation and published 50,000 internal documents online, there would be a shitstorm. But some group of rogue hackers does it and suddenly it might be ok? What's the difference?

ghshephard 12y ago

While I agree that it's distasteful revealing people's email, and I've had no interest in looking in what was revealed, it's not clear to me what rights are being violated here. These were corporate accounts, and, anyone who is an employee of a corporation, knows that every email they write/send on a corporate mail server, absolutely can come into public purview, quite often during legal discovery. The old saying, "Do not put anything in email if you don't want it to appear on the front page of the New York Times" is absolutely correct. (True story - while I was working for desktop support at Netscape, one of my fellow technicians ended up having one of his emails end up in the New York Times - and he had sent it to our internal lawyers. Turns out even that can't protect you). Sony probably has strong grounds to come after whoever breached their security, and send them to prison for many, many years - but I don't know if their are specific individual "rights" being breached by wikileaks here.

gtirloni 12y ago
anyone who is an employee of a corporation, knows that every email they write/send on a corporate mail server, absolutely can come into public purview Is this coming from the HN crowd that registers domains with contact information anonymity enabled, loves to incorporate in Delaware and complains about privacy and NSA spy programs? Could you please turn your emails public so we can review them in case you might be doing something wrong? No? Thought so. It's for the courts to decide if Sony is doing something wrong. Wikileaks is a nice idea and I've supported them for a while, but they can't help but shoot themselves in the foot with dubious behavior like this.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  One key difference, of course, is that the NSA is spying on everyone, and has all the powers of a government agency, and its many billions of dollars. What both of them are doing is distasteful. To some degree, though, I compare this behavior to that guy who walks up to people with a video camera, a couple feet away, and just points it at them. They become very uncomfortable, and upset, and yell at him. What he's doing with this "performance art" - as annoying as it is, is making people realize that they are already under constant surveillance. Anybody who previously didn't understand why privacy is so important to individuals, making them claim, "Oh, I have nothing to hide." - certainly is probably aware now how important it is to them after the Sony Dump. And, while not defending WikiLeaks (much), can we at least agree that there is a difference between dumping people's personal emails/photos (which is 100% unjustifiable) and exposing corporate machinations of Sony?

toyg 12y ago

The thing is, Sony in the past acted like a bully. Now the bully is being bullied. Turnabout is fair play? I don't know, but that's the sentiment behind this sort of action. Look at the positive: I bet loads of corporate execs are now going to give their IT teams extra money to "not end up like those Sony guys".

nemothekid 12y ago
Ah yes, bully the bully. I'm sure the NSA will remember this legal defense when its on trial for corporate espionage. We only hacked & spied on Apple because they were bullying 3rd party developers!
- toyg 12y ago
  The NSA will never be on trial for corporate espionage, so I'm not sure what you're going on about. The problem with the NSA is that they're a government entity doing something very dangerous from a democratic point of view and of dubious value overall. It's a totally different problem from private citizens publishing stuff they may or may not be entitled to.

q2 12y ago

This is more freedom and more transparency. What is wrong with that? Remember, openness and transparency has many levels. You may be at different level than Wikileaks. If this level of openness is uncomfortable, so be it but there may be many who feel, this level is ok. Look at how some Govt's point at others as closed societies. Just in this case, there is some one who took more higher level of openness than traditional ones.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "This is freedom and complete transparency. What is wrong with that?" It's stolen documents of a private company. Most of the information is nothing more than embarrassing. >> "If this level of openness is uncomfortable, so be it but there may be many who feel, this level is ok." So you publish your communications openly then? Seriously, one minute HN is complaining (rightly so) about government invasions of privacy and the next it's congratulating theft of private communications from someone it doesn't like. Wikileaks has lost what little remaining credibility it had in my eyes. This is little more than stolen documents to satisfy the kinds of people that read gossip sites.
- sdoering 12y ago
  I second this.
- q2 12y ago
  All societies, at some point in the past, may have started at similar level of privacy ...etc. Due to various reasons, if we see now, some societies are more open than the rest and this is due to the choices they made consciously or accidentally or made by influencing entities in those societies. Wikileaks is following the same trend but may be with more speed/velocity. If we see history, there are no absolute boundaries of privacy and it changes with time and it may feel outrageous now but if we see multiple similar incidents, then it becomes natural,common and after few years, it becomes standard of life and I won't be surprised if future generations in these societies feel proud of that level of transparency and make fun of those who lack that level of openness.

kbart 12y ago

"It is wrong to violate the privacy and confidentiality of employees and contacts of the company" I don't see a problem here. It's not like private communication was leaked, it's a business communication from a mega corp that happened to reveal a lot of dirty details from inside the industry, so public should know that. If you used business email for personal communication, well then, next time you should know better.

appleflaxen 12y ago

I would be more inclined to agree with you if this company didn't have so much control over policy decisions in Washington. Besides, it's /Sony/, who put rootkits on our PCs in the name of copy protection, and who have never respected individual privacy in the past. You raise a good point: at what point do you draw the line. I don't have an answer for you, but this example is nowhere near it.

netcan 12y ago

I'm having trouble falling on either side of this whole-heartedly. On one hand privacy, rights… On the other, secrecy at the heart of how our societies function, trivialization of democracy, public interest, free press. Take this example (pointed out by randomname2): "NY law only allows corporations to give him $5,000 (which we’ve done)… and, with Michael’s support, we are trying to raise $50k overall. This means I need to ask individual senior execs for support… ..consider contributing $5,000 to Gov. Cuomo?" This is at the heart of how a lot of our democratic systems work, the money-in-politics question, the corruption of our systems of government. Surely that's something that is important to bring into the light, no? The criticism I've had with wikileaks from the start is still somewhat valid. Wikileaks are press. We have a culture of protecting, empowering & respecting the press. We have legal protections for the press. There are cultures within the press for balancing need to know against other considerations. But wikileaks (mores earlier on) never really saw or projected themselves this way, free press. To most people, including their supports they always seemed more like activists than journalists. When Assange was originally targeted I stopped to sign a petition in Melbourne. I read it. A Caricaturized synopsis might be "Free Assange! Free Gaza. Troops Out of Iraq! Fuck America! Abortion! Gays! Aboriginal RIghts! Like I said, caricature. But I don't think these guys were a million miles away from how wikileaks saw (or at least presented) themselves. Activists more than press. I think that's part of the problem you are sort of pointing to. Activists stealing documents sounds different to journalists with secret sources. The latter is an important part of democracy.

res0nat0r 12y ago
> Wikileaks are press. Wikileaks are most assuredly not the press.
- netcan 12y ago
  What makes you say that? From wikipedia: "WikiLeaks is an international, non-profit,[3] journalistic[6][7][8] organisation, which publishes secret information, news leaks,[9] and classified media from anonymous sources.[3][10]." Based on the number of references for that sentence, I think we can conclude you are not the only one disputing this. What's your definition of press or what disqualifies Wikleaks?

thuffy 12y ago

Not at all. The court of the people have subpoenaed this corporate information. Anyone knows that the corporate veil will be pierced in discovery.

Nemcue 12y ago

Oh no — someone is being a meanie to the megacorps! Disgusting.

phaus 12y ago

Why have they lost your respect now and not years ago? Didn't they publish 750,000 unrelated and benign files along with the couple of files that showed government wrongdoing when they leaked Manning's stuff? Its not like Wikileaks changed recently, its more like people are just finding out what Wikileaks is.

rjaco31 12y ago
That was official government documents. Here the difference is that it's people emails.
- phaus 12y ago
  So official government emails vs official company emails? These weren't individuals' private emails, they were emails sent on company information systems. When you send private emails on a company system, they become company emails. There is definitely a difference between the two, but I don't think it matters much in these particular cases.