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Absolutely shameful that WikiLeaks would choose to publish stolen, private correspondence, and frankly I'm surprised and disappointed there are people in the HN

by dewitt 11y ago

Absolutely shameful that WikiLeaks would choose to publish stolen, private correspondence, and frankly I'm surprised and disappointed there are people in the HN community that don't seem have an issue with it. Even if you supported the publishing of the NSA documents on the grounds that it was whistle-blowing, and thus aided in uncovering a greater crime, there's no such possible justification here. (Certainly not in publishing them in bulk.) We have due process for the discovery of private communication, and that process protects all of us. In fact, our personal freedoms depends on our consistent application of those protections, regardless of whether they're being use to protect you, me, our best friend, or someone we don't even like. If we decide that it's up to thieves to decide what we do or do not get to keep private in our own lives, then we'll have fallen so far as a society. Good luck when they come for you next. (Personal request: since this is obviously a polarized topic, consider posting your rebuttal as a comment, so everyone including me can learn more about the nuances of the debate.)

Lancey 11y ago
You act like WikiLeaks is some sort of guardian angel of the internet. I don't think they have to justify their actions as right or good because that's not the purpose of the site to begin with. WikiLeaks publishes information. It's not a force for good or bad, but a resource that can be used to change the world. They didn't steal the information, but they collected it. They've done no wrong in presenting it this way. I understand why you're angry - people were deceived and their (believed private) conversations were made public. But blame the hackers, the internet, Sony's infosec team, or the executives that prompted this breach. WikiLeaks had nothing to do with it.
- GabrielF00 11y ago
  They are absolutely complicit in a gross violation of privacy. I've spent some time looking through the emails. There's information about people's health (I found an email where one person informs colleagues that he was recently diagnosed with cancer), personal correspondence, a record of purchases, privileged legal documents, etc. By using their megaphone to give these documents publicity, by making them easily accessible and searchable, Wikileaks is absolutely complicit and has done wrong.
  - innguest 11y ago
    Well, the majority of the ~300 million US citizens don't seem to be up in arms against this. Is the US populace mostly complicit in this too? Can't we take their inaction as a vote of consent? In that sense you could say, in the same way that the US populace has allowed for the Fed to steal trillions from Americans over 100+ years, this same US populace sometimes picks "private" individuals and companies for targeting its complicitness. This time they picked Sony. Why do you seem to be more angry about this small choice the US populace made, when the bigger choice they made causes a lot more harm overall?
    - innguest 11y ago
      I don't get the downvotes. If I complain about business regulations people tell me I'm in the wrong and I should move out of the country, because people here have decided they will be complicit in regulating companies. Same with Sony, I say. The people have decided to be complicit in leaking company data. Sony was the target this time. If companies don't want to ever have their data leaked they can leave the country. Don't the people decide the price companies must pay to do business here? We force them to comply with regulations, and now the populace, acting as informal lobbyists, are forcing companies to be OK with leaks once in a while as part of the cost of doing business here. Actual lobbyists make much worse things happen than to cause some company to leak some data. But when the population lobbies, through tacit, implicit compliance, then everyone is suddenly holier-than-thou. I guess you need a lobbying license to avoid being judged by the HN crowd.
  - geggam 11y ago
    I chose not to look through the archive... thus to me, you are the one who violated Sony employees privacy. If the front door is unlocked and you walk in, you still chose to walk in.
    - criley2 11y ago
      "If the front door is unlocked and you walk in, you still chose to walk in." Under this analogy, WikiLeaks is putting up billboards detailing all homes with open doors, as well as providing a full searchable inventory of the contents of all homes. "We're just providing the information" they say. "Just a middle man!" EDIT: Instead of silent downvotes, can you respond with why you disagree? WikiLeaks took stolen private documents and made them easily accessible and searchable by people who otherwise would not have accessed them. Please be respectful and engage in conversation, not downvotes.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- 7952 11y ago
  That argument could be made about a site like pastebin that just hosts user content. But they went to a lot of trouble to present journalistic integrity over the Snowden affair. You can't have it both ways. If they were not trying to be "good" there would not be any justification to publish the data at all.
Aldo_MX 11y ago
Except that the stolen & private correspondence exposes political corruption and influence peddling.
- dewitt 11y ago
  Certainly some email does (expose political corruption and influence peddling), for sure. And if we published all email of every person everywhere, then we'd uncover a whole lot more. Do you think we should do that? Where is the line?
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    The line has been made so that those with the power to throw us in cages already have that info. I would say that publishing the info of the far more powerful so that the far less powerful can see it is a far lesser issue. You are asking if we should draw the line at 10 meters or 11, while it has already been drawn at 20 km.
  - Aldo_MX 11y ago
    There is no line, any line would be simply arbitrary. If you get your email stolen and the people who got access to it found out you were doing some illegal activities, then it would be irresponsible not to publish your email to expose those illegal activities, especially if you are a Fortune 500 company.
  - jklinger410 11y ago
    If you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be worried, right? Until the government protects the privacy of digital correspondence this should continue until we know all of the dirty little secrets our governments and corporations are hiding. And as other commenters have said, none of the individuals caught up in this should have had an expectation of privacy anyway. The IT dept of Sony could have already accessed this info, and it's theirs anyway. Like if your money gets stolen out of the bank.
protonfish 11y ago
I don't feel the same. When the lines between corporations and government are as blurred as they are today, I don't think they deserve the same privacy as individuals inside their homes. Organizations aren't people. EULAs, DRM, Super PACs - corporations are our rulers and we should not lay down and quietly submit.
- dewitt 11y ago
  As a hypothetical, if you started a one-person side project, or freelanced or something, would you feel it equally appropriate for your work emails to be published, in bulk, unredacted, without your permission or consent, by people who hacked into your computers? Would it be appropriate for all YC funded companies to have all of their emails published on WikiLeaks tomorrow? If not, what's the difference, and where do you draw the line?
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    I'd willingly make that sacrifice if the emails of the corrupt in power were also published.
    - res0nat0r 11y ago
      Who exactly at Sony has been "corrupt in power"?
      - rjaco31 11y ago
        The one that managed the FBI to give them a cover story with the whole "North Korea" stuff might be a good start.
  - Aldo_MX 11y ago
    If your YC funded company engaged in illegal activities, why not?
    - res0nat0r 11y ago
zxcvcxz 11y ago
Personally I feel like wikileaks is doing more good than bad. I'm glad people are getting upset over this. >If we decide that it's up to thieves to decide what we do or do not get to keep private in our own lives, then we'll have fallen so far as a society. Good luck when they come for you next. You're assuming that you can't keep your private life secure. The longer people try to hide and minimize the damage of data leaks the longer we'll have insecure systems. Wikileaks and "thieves" are creating an incentive for the tech sector to become more secure so that things like this don't happen. By continuing to sweep these things under the rug we're just leaving our selves open for another attack. Wikileaks is forcing people to take this seriously.
- balabaster 11y ago
  No matter which side of the fence you're on, it inspires debate about legal process... and that can only be a good thing. While everyone's scrutinizing the legal process and poring over it with a fine toothed comb trying to find a "side" to be on, there's less opportunity for the legal process to be subverted/perverted and corruption to rule [not to say that doesn't still happen, but it's more likely not to be allowed to go unnoticed]. I don't always agree with Wikileaks stance, however I do believe that for the larger good, releasing information about the corrupt and unjust can only be a good thing. However, that shouldn't be done at the cost of all that is right and just... so it's a bit grey. I believe in the principle for which they stand, I just find it hard to agree with the process they follow. They're kind of like the Boondock Saints for information... except they don't appear to care so much about the innocent that get hurt by the fallout - making them more like the U.S. Government in their "war on [enter trending reason of the day for going to war]"
  - krapp 11y ago
    Arguably, an organization like Wikileaks presupposes that "due process" is already a form of tyranny, as those processes support the corrupt self-interest of the state, as enshrined into law. If we don't trust governments, corporations or individuals to decide for themselves what we deserve to know, and not know, why would we trust Wikileaks to do the same? Then, they only become part of the same apparatus of censorship they exist to undermine. I think that you can have organizations like Wikileaks or you can have personal privacy and the protection of legal due process, but you cannot expect to have both. The former exists to render the latter obsolete.
wtbob 11y ago
Of course, it's absolutely shameful; Wikileaks is absolutely shameless. Note that there is also a due process for whistleblowing; there are Inspectors General whose entire professional careers are based on handling allegations of misconduct. The leakers in previous cases chose not to follow that process.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Note that there is also a due process for whistleblowing; there are Inspectors General whose entire professional careers are based on handling allegations of misconduct. Yeah, because it would have worked great for them, and the public would have learned the facts if they used those procedures...
- Someone1234 11y ago
  > Note that there is also a due process for whistleblowing The so called "due process" is a joke. Whistleblowers are often ignored, harassed, lose their job, or even jailed in some cases. If you look at historical whistleblowing (e.g. 1980s, 1970s, etc) and even today, nothing has improved. A whistleblower's life will still be "ruined" by whistleblowing. Remind me again, is Snowden back in American living free and clear? Or is he still effectively excommunicated into Russia of all places with the threat of a jacked-up criminal prosecution looming over his head? > The leakers in previous cases chose not to follow that process. If they had have followed "that process" they would have been fired, and the general public wouldn't have heard a peep about any of this. Give us an example of a whistleblower who did follow the process and that it worked out just fine.
  - csandreasen 11y ago
    > The so called "due process" is a joke. Whistleblowers are often ignored, harassed, lose their job, or even jailed in some cases. The US Department of Labor says otherwise: http://www.whistleblowers.gov/whistleblower/wb_data_FY05-14.pdf http://www.whistleblowers.gov/whistleblower/wb_data_FY05-14.... > Remind me again, is Snowden back in American living free and clear? Snowden isn't a whistle blower. He didn't report any wrongdoing to his superiors, personally stated that he took the Booz Allen job in order to get access to more information to leak, stole more documents than he possibly could have read and left the country with intent to release them and evade law enforcement. Whistle blowing is seeing something wrong and reporting it, not pulling as much information as you can get and handing it off to reporters. Regardless of whether or not you think there was benefit to the NSA leaks, what Snowden did is not whistle blowing. > Give us an example of a whistleblower who did follow the process and that it worked out just fine. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6930197.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6930197.stm After blowing the whistle on Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Joe Darby was personally thanked by Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of his unit (the ones that weren't arrested). Ironically, he claimed that it wasn't until his name was released to the public that he started to receive any harassment; and it wasn't from his employer, but regular civilians that were angry about the news. I think that says something about blasting people's personal information out to the world like Wikileaks just did.
sarciszewski 11y ago
It was already published, then taken down. The Sony attackers already had the opportunity to exploit it for any nefarious purposes they intended. The damage is done. All Wikileaks is doing is making it available, with the intent that journalists will peruse it. I don't agree with releasing these emails, I certainly wouldn't want my private correspondence published or intercepted. But in this case blaming Wikileaks is erroneous.
ubercode5 11y ago
Speaking solely to the process of discovery of private communication: What happens when you lose trust in that process or feel that process has been subverted?
throwaway9324 11y ago
It isn't private though, but corporate. You're communication is generally not protected as an employee (expectation of privacy etc. depending on jurisdiction) and a lot of things people considers personal (gossip, health, locations) generally isn't protected either.
- ovulator 11y ago
  So if I send an email to a corporation, that email should be defacto public? If a corporation sends an email back to me, that email should also be defacto public? I have a lot of emails coming to and going to corporations with very private information in them.
  - rjaco31 11y ago
    They stay private because it's in your interest that they stay so. There is nothing illegal about making your own mails public if you wish so (except if you signed a NDA).
  - Glyptodon 11y ago
    If there are no relevant laws restricting the release of said information (FIRPA? HIPPA?) it's merely social pressures and convention that leave most communication private, not the law.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > (FIRPA? HIPPA?) Pedantic, but I expect you really mean "(FERPA? HIPAA?)" here. (The first is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and the second is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.)
      - Glyptodon 11y ago
        Yeah, meant FERPA. Subliminal assault by phonics or something.
gorhill 11y ago
Between public interest and privacy, public interest wins, especially when it is shown that powerful entities are mingling behind closed doors into matters of public interest.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Is it in the public interest to release ALL of the emails though? If they published just those which show "powerful entities mingling behind closed doors" fair enough. That would be a legitimate expose.
  - Glyptodon 11y ago
    If they didn't release everything there'd be no basis to trust them. We wouldn't be able to determine what was being withheld and how it was being sculpted.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      So on what basis do we trust Snowden leaks? The Guradian releases whatever parts they want to, whenever it pleases them.
      - Glyptodon 11y ago
        Trusting the Guardian is different than trusting Snowden. He understood that if he tried to cherry pick too much it would undermine his cause by making it about a program instead of about the bigger picture. I don't think the Guardian equates to Wikileaks, in any case.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        I don't believe the Guardian equates to WikiLeaks either, but the difference between the two seems to be somewhere else than just releasing everything vs. selective publishing.
madaxe_again 11y ago
So. Enron. What should have happened there?
xnull2guest 11y ago
Wikileaks is also doing the world a huge boon by making analyzing and curating the content and making it searchable in response to their role in partnering with the US government to product foreign propaganda targeting the overthrow of a foreign regime. That is, it's hard to say that NK's hacking or WikiLeaks pubishing is 'oh so evil' while ignoring actions that SONY has taken and the contexts that they create.
phaus 11y ago
Its almost like you've never heard of Wikileaks before. This is the kind of thing they have been doing from the start. Why would you expect it to be any different this time?
skwirl 11y ago
In a sense, Wikileaks is worse than the NSA. At least when the NSA gets ahold of your private information, they don't publish it in an easily searchable database on the Internet. The cognitive dissonance in this thread is astounding.
Glyptodon 11y ago
Oh please. People should know better than to use work email for personal stuff. This is a major corporation's work email. Not 'private correspondence.' The whole idea that business email (and email in general) isn't already essentially public is a farce - the business itself has at will access to any employee's mails, and it can all be subpoena'd without warrant. At best we should feel sorry for the employees not understanding this and treating their employer as a benevolent and trustworthy party.
- mauricemir 11y ago
  and if you have to email hr about "personal " issues
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 11y ago
  Most people do not know this. I think everyone on HN knows this because we run these systems and know how easily they can be tampered and monitored.
netcan 11y ago
@dewitt So there are a few nuanced points that I think we disagree on. Together they add up to a lot. First, you seem to object to this leak on the grounds that "due process" forbids it. I agree. I just don't think due process should apply. The press is not the judiciary, they don't have the same responsibilities and duties. Second, and (I think this is something wikileaks consistently fails to clarify) Wikileaks is press. They are publishing information from a confidential source. The source may be a data thief, the data owner or a whistleblower (terrorist or freedom fighter?) but that's a judgement about whoever leaked the data, not wikileaks. There are some laws and a lot of ethical concerns regarding what the press should and shouldn't publish. There are also laws protecting and empowering the press. You might berate them for insensitivity, irresponsibility but you can't accuse them of theft, IMO. The ethical considerations of the press are about balancing things like privacy with newsworthiness and the public's right and need to know. There are definitely emails in here that do not meet that definition. Wikileaks' model is pretty scattergun, but realistically it's the only way to get that kind of volume. I'm not sure where I fall on balance but I would be more wholeheartedly pro-wikileaks if they did a better job of selecting only relevant documents for publication. I think this is where we disagree the most. Third, I don't buy the idea that corporations have all rights. A violation of a corporation's right to privacy is not as bad as a violation of an individual's. That'a a whole can of worms in itself, but perhaps we can leave this as a moral disagreement.
- dewitt 11y ago
  Thank you for the thoughtful response. I concur on a number of your points. In particular, I would be significantly more swayed by the argument that WikiLeaks is press (even responsible press) if the did indeed selectively publish only documents of clear and material public interest. I haven't looked at these documents myself (and won't) but it sounds like that's a small number indeed. Incidentally, press doesn't default to being for the net good just because it's press (which is a broad classification, and an amoral one). It still has to act on behalf of good, and on a case by case basis. As far as corporate rights go, it's not black and white, but we shouldn't lose sight that corporations are made of up people, and those people should have rights, and it's probably better not to just throw those rights away just because something was done in the context of work (since work is such a huge and generally unavoidable part of all of our lives). Thanks again for thoughtfully debating. I appreciate that.

by dewitt 11y ago

Lancey 11y ago

You act like WikiLeaks is some sort of guardian angel of the internet. I don't think they have to justify their actions as right or good because that's not the purpose of the site to begin with. WikiLeaks publishes information. It's not a force for good or bad, but a resource that can be used to change the world. They didn't steal the information, but they collected it. They've done no wrong in presenting it this way. I understand why you're angry - people were deceived and their (believed private) conversations were made public. But blame the hackers, the internet, Sony's infosec team, or the executives that prompted this breach. WikiLeaks had nothing to do with it.

GabrielF00 11y ago
They are absolutely complicit in a gross violation of privacy. I've spent some time looking through the emails. There's information about people's health (I found an email where one person informs colleagues that he was recently diagnosed with cancer), personal correspondence, a record of purchases, privileged legal documents, etc. By using their megaphone to give these documents publicity, by making them easily accessible and searchable, Wikileaks is absolutely complicit and has done wrong.
- innguest 11y ago
  Well, the majority of the ~300 million US citizens don't seem to be up in arms against this. Is the US populace mostly complicit in this too? Can't we take their inaction as a vote of consent? In that sense you could say, in the same way that the US populace has allowed for the Fed to steal trillions from Americans over 100+ years, this same US populace sometimes picks "private" individuals and companies for targeting its complicitness. This time they picked Sony. Why do you seem to be more angry about this small choice the US populace made, when the bigger choice they made causes a lot more harm overall?
  - innguest 11y ago
    I don't get the downvotes. If I complain about business regulations people tell me I'm in the wrong and I should move out of the country, because people here have decided they will be complicit in regulating companies. Same with Sony, I say. The people have decided to be complicit in leaking company data. Sony was the target this time. If companies don't want to ever have their data leaked they can leave the country. Don't the people decide the price companies must pay to do business here? We force them to comply with regulations, and now the populace, acting as informal lobbyists, are forcing companies to be OK with leaks once in a while as part of the cost of doing business here. Actual lobbyists make much worse things happen than to cause some company to leak some data. But when the population lobbies, through tacit, implicit compliance, then everyone is suddenly holier-than-thou. I guess you need a lobbying license to avoid being judged by the HN crowd.
- geggam 11y ago
  I chose not to look through the archive... thus to me, you are the one who violated Sony employees privacy. If the front door is unlocked and you walk in, you still chose to walk in.
  - criley2 11y ago
    "If the front door is unlocked and you walk in, you still chose to walk in." Under this analogy, WikiLeaks is putting up billboards detailing all homes with open doors, as well as providing a full searchable inventory of the contents of all homes. "We're just providing the information" they say. "Just a middle man!" EDIT: Instead of silent downvotes, can you respond with why you disagree? WikiLeaks took stolen private documents and made them easily accessible and searchable by people who otherwise would not have accessed them. Please be respectful and engage in conversation, not downvotes.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
7952 11y ago
That argument could be made about a site like pastebin that just hosts user content. But they went to a lot of trouble to present journalistic integrity over the Snowden affair. You can't have it both ways. If they were not trying to be "good" there would not be any justification to publish the data at all.

Aldo_MX 11y ago

Except that the stolen & private correspondence exposes political corruption and influence peddling.

dewitt 11y ago
Certainly some email does (expose political corruption and influence peddling), for sure. And if we published all email of every person everywhere, then we'd uncover a whole lot more. Do you think we should do that? Where is the line?
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  The line has been made so that those with the power to throw us in cages already have that info. I would say that publishing the info of the far more powerful so that the far less powerful can see it is a far lesser issue. You are asking if we should draw the line at 10 meters or 11, while it has already been drawn at 20 km.
- Aldo_MX 11y ago
  There is no line, any line would be simply arbitrary. If you get your email stolen and the people who got access to it found out you were doing some illegal activities, then it would be irresponsible not to publish your email to expose those illegal activities, especially if you are a Fortune 500 company.
- jklinger410 11y ago
  If you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be worried, right? Until the government protects the privacy of digital correspondence this should continue until we know all of the dirty little secrets our governments and corporations are hiding. And as other commenters have said, none of the individuals caught up in this should have had an expectation of privacy anyway. The IT dept of Sony could have already accessed this info, and it's theirs anyway. Like if your money gets stolen out of the bank.

protonfish 11y ago

I don't feel the same. When the lines between corporations and government are as blurred as they are today, I don't think they deserve the same privacy as individuals inside their homes. Organizations aren't people. EULAs, DRM, Super PACs - corporations are our rulers and we should not lay down and quietly submit.

dewitt 11y ago
As a hypothetical, if you started a one-person side project, or freelanced or something, would you feel it equally appropriate for your work emails to be published, in bulk, unredacted, without your permission or consent, by people who hacked into your computers? Would it be appropriate for all YC funded companies to have all of their emails published on WikiLeaks tomorrow? If not, what's the difference, and where do you draw the line?
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  I'd willingly make that sacrifice if the emails of the corrupt in power were also published.
  - res0nat0r 11y ago
    Who exactly at Sony has been "corrupt in power"?
    - rjaco31 11y ago
      The one that managed the FBI to give them a cover story with the whole "North Korea" stuff might be a good start.
- Aldo_MX 11y ago
  If your YC funded company engaged in illegal activities, why not?
  - res0nat0r 11y ago

zxcvcxz 11y ago

Personally I feel like wikileaks is doing more good than bad. I'm glad people are getting upset over this. >If we decide that it's up to thieves to decide what we do or do not get to keep private in our own lives, then we'll have fallen so far as a society. Good luck when they come for you next. You're assuming that you can't keep your private life secure. The longer people try to hide and minimize the damage of data leaks the longer we'll have insecure systems. Wikileaks and "thieves" are creating an incentive for the tech sector to become more secure so that things like this don't happen. By continuing to sweep these things under the rug we're just leaving our selves open for another attack. Wikileaks is forcing people to take this seriously.

balabaster 11y ago
No matter which side of the fence you're on, it inspires debate about legal process... and that can only be a good thing. While everyone's scrutinizing the legal process and poring over it with a fine toothed comb trying to find a "side" to be on, there's less opportunity for the legal process to be subverted/perverted and corruption to rule [not to say that doesn't still happen, but it's more likely not to be allowed to go unnoticed]. I don't always agree with Wikileaks stance, however I do believe that for the larger good, releasing information about the corrupt and unjust can only be a good thing. However, that shouldn't be done at the cost of all that is right and just... so it's a bit grey. I believe in the principle for which they stand, I just find it hard to agree with the process they follow. They're kind of like the Boondock Saints for information... except they don't appear to care so much about the innocent that get hurt by the fallout - making them more like the U.S. Government in their "war on [enter trending reason of the day for going to war]"
- krapp 11y ago
  Arguably, an organization like Wikileaks presupposes that "due process" is already a form of tyranny, as those processes support the corrupt self-interest of the state, as enshrined into law. If we don't trust governments, corporations or individuals to decide for themselves what we deserve to know, and not know, why would we trust Wikileaks to do the same? Then, they only become part of the same apparatus of censorship they exist to undermine. I think that you can have organizations like Wikileaks or you can have personal privacy and the protection of legal due process, but you cannot expect to have both. The former exists to render the latter obsolete.

wtbob 11y ago

Of course, it's absolutely shameful; Wikileaks is absolutely shameless. Note that there is also a due process for whistleblowing; there are Inspectors General whose entire professional careers are based on handling allegations of misconduct. The leakers in previous cases chose not to follow that process.

coldtea 11y ago
>Note that there is also a due process for whistleblowing; there are Inspectors General whose entire professional careers are based on handling allegations of misconduct. Yeah, because it would have worked great for them, and the public would have learned the facts if they used those procedures...
Someone1234 11y ago
> Note that there is also a due process for whistleblowing The so called "due process" is a joke. Whistleblowers are often ignored, harassed, lose their job, or even jailed in some cases. If you look at historical whistleblowing (e.g. 1980s, 1970s, etc) and even today, nothing has improved. A whistleblower's life will still be "ruined" by whistleblowing. Remind me again, is Snowden back in American living free and clear? Or is he still effectively excommunicated into Russia of all places with the threat of a jacked-up criminal prosecution looming over his head? > The leakers in previous cases chose not to follow that process. If they had have followed "that process" they would have been fired, and the general public wouldn't have heard a peep about any of this. Give us an example of a whistleblower who did follow the process and that it worked out just fine.
- csandreasen 11y ago
  > The so called "due process" is a joke. Whistleblowers are often ignored, harassed, lose their job, or even jailed in some cases. The US Department of Labor says otherwise: http://www.whistleblowers.gov/whistleblower/wb_data_FY05-14.pdf http://www.whistleblowers.gov/whistleblower/wb_data_FY05-14.... > Remind me again, is Snowden back in American living free and clear? Snowden isn't a whistle blower. He didn't report any wrongdoing to his superiors, personally stated that he took the Booz Allen job in order to get access to more information to leak, stole more documents than he possibly could have read and left the country with intent to release them and evade law enforcement. Whistle blowing is seeing something wrong and reporting it, not pulling as much information as you can get and handing it off to reporters. Regardless of whether or not you think there was benefit to the NSA leaks, what Snowden did is not whistle blowing. > Give us an example of a whistleblower who did follow the process and that it worked out just fine. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6930197.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6930197.stm After blowing the whistle on Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Joe Darby was personally thanked by Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of his unit (the ones that weren't arrested). Ironically, he claimed that it wasn't until his name was released to the public that he started to receive any harassment; and it wasn't from his employer, but regular civilians that were angry about the news. I think that says something about blasting people's personal information out to the world like Wikileaks just did.

sarciszewski 11y ago

It was already published, then taken down. The Sony attackers already had the opportunity to exploit it for any nefarious purposes they intended. The damage is done. All Wikileaks is doing is making it available, with the intent that journalists will peruse it. I don't agree with releasing these emails, I certainly wouldn't want my private correspondence published or intercepted. But in this case blaming Wikileaks is erroneous.

ubercode5 11y ago

Speaking solely to the process of discovery of private communication: What happens when you lose trust in that process or feel that process has been subverted?

throwaway9324 11y ago

It isn't private though, but corporate. You're communication is generally not protected as an employee (expectation of privacy etc. depending on jurisdiction) and a lot of things people considers personal (gossip, health, locations) generally isn't protected either.

ovulator 11y ago
So if I send an email to a corporation, that email should be defacto public? If a corporation sends an email back to me, that email should also be defacto public? I have a lot of emails coming to and going to corporations with very private information in them.
- rjaco31 11y ago
  They stay private because it's in your interest that they stay so. There is nothing illegal about making your own mails public if you wish so (except if you signed a NDA).
- Glyptodon 11y ago
  If there are no relevant laws restricting the release of said information (FIRPA? HIPPA?) it's merely social pressures and convention that leave most communication private, not the law.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > (FIRPA? HIPPA?) Pedantic, but I expect you really mean "(FERPA? HIPAA?)" here. (The first is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and the second is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.)
    - Glyptodon 11y ago
      Yeah, meant FERPA. Subliminal assault by phonics or something.

gorhill 11y ago

Between public interest and privacy, public interest wins, especially when it is shown that powerful entities are mingling behind closed doors into matters of public interest.

Someone1234 11y ago
Is it in the public interest to release ALL of the emails though? If they published just those which show "powerful entities mingling behind closed doors" fair enough. That would be a legitimate expose.
- Glyptodon 11y ago
  If they didn't release everything there'd be no basis to trust them. We wouldn't be able to determine what was being withheld and how it was being sculpted.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    So on what basis do we trust Snowden leaks? The Guradian releases whatever parts they want to, whenever it pleases them.
    - Glyptodon 11y ago
      Trusting the Guardian is different than trusting Snowden. He understood that if he tried to cherry pick too much it would undermine his cause by making it about a program instead of about the bigger picture. I don't think the Guardian equates to Wikileaks, in any case.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        I don't believe the Guardian equates to WikiLeaks either, but the difference between the two seems to be somewhere else than just releasing everything vs. selective publishing.

madaxe_again 11y ago

So. Enron. What should have happened there?

xnull2guest 11y ago

Wikileaks is also doing the world a huge boon by making analyzing and curating the content and making it searchable in response to their role in partnering with the US government to product foreign propaganda targeting the overthrow of a foreign regime. That is, it's hard to say that NK's hacking or WikiLeaks pubishing is 'oh so evil' while ignoring actions that SONY has taken and the contexts that they create.

phaus 11y ago

Its almost like you've never heard of Wikileaks before. This is the kind of thing they have been doing from the start. Why would you expect it to be any different this time?

skwirl 11y ago

In a sense, Wikileaks is worse than the NSA. At least when the NSA gets ahold of your private information, they don't publish it in an easily searchable database on the Internet. The cognitive dissonance in this thread is astounding.

Glyptodon 11y ago

Oh please. People should know better than to use work email for personal stuff. This is a major corporation's work email. Not 'private correspondence.' The whole idea that business email (and email in general) isn't already essentially public is a farce - the business itself has at will access to any employee's mails, and it can all be subpoena'd without warrant. At best we should feel sorry for the employees not understanding this and treating their employer as a benevolent and trustworthy party.

mauricemir 11y ago
and if you have to email hr about "personal " issues
eeeeeeeeeeeee 11y ago
Most people do not know this. I think everyone on HN knows this because we run these systems and know how easily they can be tampered and monitored.

netcan 11y ago

@dewitt So there are a few nuanced points that I think we disagree on. Together they add up to a lot. First, you seem to object to this leak on the grounds that "due process" forbids it. I agree. I just don't think due process should apply. The press is not the judiciary, they don't have the same responsibilities and duties. Second, and (I think this is something wikileaks consistently fails to clarify) Wikileaks is press. They are publishing information from a confidential source. The source may be a data thief, the data owner or a whistleblower (terrorist or freedom fighter?) but that's a judgement about whoever leaked the data, not wikileaks. There are some laws and a lot of ethical concerns regarding what the press should and shouldn't publish. There are also laws protecting and empowering the press. You might berate them for insensitivity, irresponsibility but you can't accuse them of theft, IMO. The ethical considerations of the press are about balancing things like privacy with newsworthiness and the public's right and need to know. There are definitely emails in here that do not meet that definition. Wikileaks' model is pretty scattergun, but realistically it's the only way to get that kind of volume. I'm not sure where I fall on balance but I would be more wholeheartedly pro-wikileaks if they did a better job of selecting only relevant documents for publication. I think this is where we disagree the most. Third, I don't buy the idea that corporations have all rights. A violation of a corporation's right to privacy is not as bad as a violation of an individual's. That'a a whole can of worms in itself, but perhaps we can leave this as a moral disagreement.

dewitt 11y ago
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I concur on a number of your points. In particular, I would be significantly more swayed by the argument that WikiLeaks is press (even responsible press) if the did indeed selectively publish only documents of clear and material public interest. I haven't looked at these documents myself (and won't) but it sounds like that's a small number indeed. Incidentally, press doesn't default to being for the net good just because it's press (which is a broad classification, and an amoral one). It still has to act on behalf of good, and on a case by case basis. As far as corporate rights go, it's not black and white, but we shouldn't lose sight that corporations are made of up people, and those people should have rights, and it's probably better not to just throw those rights away just because something was done in the context of work (since work is such a huge and generally unavoidable part of all of our lives). Thanks again for thoughtfully debating. I appreciate that.