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WikiLeaks offers $100k for details of Obama’s trade deal
- ohitsdom 11y agoTPP details definitely need to be in the public, but I'm surprised WikiLeaks is offering a bounty. Have they done this before? Not that I can recall. And I would think offering money would change the tone of prosecuting the "whistle-blower". It'd be hard to claim that you are a whistle-blower when you are receiving money- that seems a lot more like standard espionage to me.
- scrrr 11y agoWell I assume the information would be made publicly available to anyone.
- blowski 11y agoSorry, I don't quite understand what you mean here. I understood the OP as saying that Edward Snowden (and people like him) justify their actions as being altruistic, for the greater good of society. If you give a financial incentive to someone to be a whistleblower, it no longer looks like altruism.
- zeeed 11y agois that a reasonable assumption? This is meant as a serious question. Would the details of the agreement be made public, eventually?
- belorn 11y agoI remember when the music/movie industry argued that it was perfectly legal to pay informers, who then just happen to gain access to private servers owned by release groups. Several complains was sent in to the police and nothing came out of it, so I would assume, being that the law treats everyone equal, that this is equally legal.
- Cthulhu_ 11y agoPaying people to divulge information about illegal activities is perfectly legal, yes - leaking classified government information, however, is not. One thing is not like the other. It's not about paying people to share information, it's what kind of information, and which laws protect said information.
- istvan__ 11y agoWhat is the classified information a crime committed by the government? :)
- JupiterMoon 11y agoIs it strictly legal (visa-vi US constitution) for the US government to operate in secret as they are doing with TPP?
- tedunangst 11y agoNothing in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 seems to require the discussions take place in public.
- JupiterMoon 11y agoFair enough. I was genuinely curious. I'm jealous of countries with constitutions to protect them from particularly egregious laws. But I guess no constitution is perfect.
- xorcist 11y agoWhile I appreciate your knowledge of the Swedish juridical system, the point of the infiltration belorn mentions above was that it was in fact the paid infiltrators who had uploaded the illegal content the server owners was busted over. That is something of a moral gray area, if not a legal one.
- twoodfin 11y agoTPP details definitely need to be in the public... Details? Why? Obviously agreements will be public before they become law (nobody disputes this), but why force negotiators making difficult tradeoffs to hash them out in the open?
- Someone1234 11y ago> Obviously agreements will be public before they become law (nobody disputes this) Obviously? They've already fast tracked it even before it is available to the public. They've made it available to members of congress without it being available to the public. While on paper they might release it just before it became law, they could easily release it a week before giving nobody time to mount a real challenge. I'd have no issue if I thought it was going to take six months to pass, and members of the public could have a say, but fast tracking makes that highly unlikely.
- twoodfin 11y agoNot to put too fine a point on it, but members of the (U.S.) public had their say when they voted for their President, Senators and Congressfolk. Who, not coincidentally, negotiate all sorts of critically important legislation in private. Besides, the version of TPA under consideration by the House this month requires that any agreement be public for at least 60 days before it can be signed by the President and submitted to Congress for enabling legislation.
- imron 11y ago> but members of the (U.S.) public had their say when they voted for their President, Senators and Congressfolk. That's not how it works. If it was, we'd have SOPA, but we don't. Citizens telling their representatives what they do and don't want is fundamental aspect of a well-functioning democracy.
- dragonwriter 11y agoAgreed, there are few more harmful concepts to a representative democracy, especially one with as poor of an electoral system as the US, but any representative democracy as well, as the idea that citizen input begins and ends with voting. It's like saying a boss's input on an employee's work is limited to hiring and firing.
- eli 11y agoIANAL but I don't think whistleblower protections would ever apply to leaking a confidential document to wikileaks regardless of whether you're paid or not.
- snowwrestler 11y agoI highly doubt that whistleblower protections would apply to leaking a draft trade agreement. Typically those protections are intended to provide protection for people who disclose wrongdoing that would otherwise be unknown. But in the eyes of the law, negotiating a trade deal is not wrongdoing. It is one of the enumerated powers of the executive branch.
- eli 11y agoGood point!
- draugadrotten 11y agoStrange move. It also changes WikiLeaks from observer and passive receiver of information to actor, instigator. That can't be good. Will WikiLeaks still pay 100K for the information if it was obtained by killing someone?
- jberryman 11y ago> It also changes WikiLeaks from observer and passive receiver of information to actor, instigator. I think WikiLeaks has only ever seemed passive and neutral to people who agree with its agenda
- JupiterMoon 11y ago> I think WikiLeaks has only ever seemed passive and neutral to people who agree with its agenda No the idea has previously been that any information gets dumped onto wikileaks rather than wikileaks seeking specific pieces of information. This makes them passive. You can dislike the idea of information being dumped and this would make you disagree with its agenda but it does not mean that wikileaks has (previously) been active rather than passive.
- jberryman 11y ago> No the idea has previously been that any information gets dumped onto wikileaks rather than wikileaks seeking specific pieces of information. I'm not sure the distinction between "dumped onto" vs "seeking out" is a real one, but my main objection is that I don't see any evidence that wikileaks has been a passive conduit for leaks that come their way; they do curation of "leaks" that arrive in their inbox, they choose to promote certain leaks in certain ways, etc.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago> I'm not sure the distinction between "dumped onto" vs "seeking out" is a real one It is huge. It is also recognised as such by laws in many countries. E.g. UK libel act 2013 and US DMCA act (safe harbour provisions). In both cases publishers are protected from legal trouble if they act as an intermediary rather than as a publisher. > but my main objection is that I don't see any evidence that wikileaks has been a passive conduit for leaks that come their way; they do curation of "leaks" that arrive in their inbox, they choose to promote certain leaks in certain ways, etc. This is a valid point. But offering money for leaks is a whole different thing.
- robotkilla 11y agoI had the same reaction at first, but are there any laws stating that the details can't be disclosed? Meaning - is this paying someone to breach a contract or something worse?
- kauffj 11y agoAn individual holds information that is in the public good to be released. Said individual is threatened with significant harm by states if the information is released. Only those with tremendous conscious, like Snowden or Manning, step up in the face of odds like that. Financial compensation shifts the balance to make dangerous humanitarian disclosures more self-interested. It means that more information that should be public becomes public. What's wrong with that?
- jpwagner 11y agoWhat's wrong with that? In the past, Wikileaks has not been the moral arbiter. If a whistleblower decides that exposing information is in the public interest, that is on them, Wikileaks provides a medium. Here, whether or not information should remain secret, there is an incentive to expose it. Wikileaks has decided what deserves to be public -- it's irrelevant if I, personally, agree with that judgment when I say: this makes me question Wikileaks as a trusted medium.
- evgen 11y agoIf this is the first thing that has made you question Wikileaks as a trusted medium then you have not been paying attention.
- StavrosK 11y agoI have not been paying attention, would you care to enlighten me?
- tedunangst 11y agoAfter months of talking up the BofA files, "oops, they're all gone."
- StavrosK 11y agoOh wow. What do people supposed happened?
- amelius 11y agoI don't know... $100,000 to change your identity, suddenly it sounds like a small fee.
- Cthulhu_ 11y agoThat depends on whether the whistleblower's identity is published. If Snowden hadn't gone missing, enough people had the same access as he did, and there wasn't a log of who accessed what documents in place (or it was removed), he could've remained anonymous too.
- codingdave 11y agoI'm more concerned about the crowdsourcing of it. How would that work if "they" decide to come after anyone who leaks it. Does putting in a few bucks mean you can be criminally charged if that cash leads to a bounty that leads to a leak? I'm all for government transparency. But this seems like an unwise mechanism to achieve it.
- josu 11y agoI guess that's the reason why they are accepting bitcoin.
- LyndsySimon 11y agoIf they were also offering Bitcoin to the person who discloses the information, that person could remain anonymous while still benefiting from the bounty. This is an "assassination market", but for information. I'm very intrigued by this concept.
- ohitsdom 11y agoI would guess it would be very difficult for the leaker to remain anonymous to the government. I'm sure they have careful revisioning and at least some compartmentalization, so I think whoever blows the whistle has to do it with the assumption of it becoming public (and it may be in the interest of their safety to follow the Snowden route).
- josu 11y agoI'm not sure, there are too many governments and agencies involved in the negotiations. It could even be a computer engineer that has nothing to do with the negotiations.
- sliverstorm 11y agoTo me "crowdsourcing" it sounds like a convenient way of intelligence-for-hire PLUS the ability for the buyers to remain hidden among the crowd.
- mc32 11y agoAgree with this. Money taints the appearance of neutrality. They are no longer a neutral medium but rather an information marketplace. It's no longer based on moral guidance but monetary and economic guidance.
- kauffj 11y agoInformation wants to be $100,000.
- snowwrestler 11y agoThe actual original quote is: "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive." The second half frequently gets forgotten. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free
- StavrosK 11y agoWait, so the quote actually means "information wants to be gratis", rather than "information wants to be libre"? I've been parsing it wrong this whole time.
- JonnieCache 11y agoYeah, its actually about technology forcing prices to 0.
- snowwrestler 11y agoYes, and I think that the distinction between "gratis" and "libre" is not actually that clear. When folks pirate movies they wave the banner of libre, but they are also getting their movie gratis. What would a piece of information look like that is libre but not gratis? In the free software movement, the whole point is to permit end users to acquire and share the source code, which for software is the entire product. There's no mechanism to charge for things that anyone can share with anyone else.
- StavrosK 11y agoPersonally, I don't want movies to be gratis or libre, I just want the MPAA to stop clinging to its antiquated business model by hook or crook. Something that is libre but not gratis looks like many things today, like websites, services, etc that don't change you directly. Patreon is a good example of such a business model.
- untog 11y agoThis adds a lot of weird uncertainty to the idea of Wikileaks, IMO. Where will the money be coming from (it's crowdsourced)? Where will it be going to?
- stuaxo 11y agoLooks like croudsourced https://wikileaks.org/pledge/#rd-6 https://wikileaks.org/pledge/#rd-6
- harry8 11y agofrom: crowdsourced - article content to: person who leaks - fairly obviously
- untog 11y agoRight, but who are the crowdsourcers? And who will be the person who leaks? Presumably we won't know either. Which is what is shady.
- harry8 11y agoSo not knowing is shady.
- Cthulhu_ 11y agoExcept the person who leaks, if his/her identity is known, will be prosecuted for sharing trade secrets - and given there's trillion-dollar companies behind TTP, s/he will spend the rest of their life, if they are arrested, either in lawsuits, prison, or just disappearing. Snowden and Assange are both effectively banished from any country that has an extradition policy with the US, and even where they live now their location has to be kept secret - if they weren't as public figures as they are (and in Assange's case, locked up in an embassy), I'm sure they would've 'disappeared' a while ago, regardless of where they were hiding.
- untog 11y agoAnd you think that trying to give this person $100k will make it easier for them to remain anonymous?
- vonklaus 11y agoLeaving aside how important dissemination of this topic is. What is the plan? Raise a 100K from netizens, and then wire it to the whistleblower? Then what, they are hung for treason?
- moonbug 11y agoBecause whistle-blowing for cash is much more defensible than doing it for conscience.
- vaadu 11y agohttp://money.cnn.com/2013/11/04/news/johnson-and-johnson-whistleblower-payout/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/04/news/johnson-and-johnson-whi... This type of whistleblowing should not just be for pharmaceuticals. It should apply to all government and commercial activities too. Publicity is the best disinfectant.
- davotoula 11y agoWhy stop here... Let's crowdsource bribes, I mean lobby funds, for politicians and finally get some people's wishes through.
- kauffj 11y agoIf there were a completely transparent market for bribes, I think that would be a far superior system to the one we have today.
- draugadrotten 11y ago> there were a completely transparent market for bribes, There's a disruptive startup opportunity hiding in there. Think "Uber for bribes", where politicians can sign up as 'advisors' and people can pay for 'advice'.
- snowwrestler 11y agoCrowdsourcing funds for lobbying is essentially what advocacy nonprofits do, like the Sierra Club, ACLU, EFF, Heritage Action, NRA, etc. Edit to add: But lobbying is not bribery because lobbying money is never given to elected officials. Lobbying expenditures pay for things like salaries, research, events, mailers, ad campaigns, websites, etc.
- kissickas 11y agoetc. including but not limited to fundraisers and otherwise raising money for political campaigns, "awards" for championing a certain issue, and of course having a third party pay for meals or other personal perks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#Lobbying_methods_and_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#...
- jamesk_au 11y agoThere are many reasons favouring disclosure of this information, but is offering to buy the information really the best approach here? The public officials who possess the information are likely bound by legal duties not to disclose it to those not entitled to see it. If an official chooses to leak confidential information in the public interest, that may be one thing, but selling confidential information for personal financial gain is corrupt conduct. To be fair to WikiLeaks, they describe the money as a "reward" for turning over the missing chapters, and do not overtly say they are looking to buy, but it seems to come awfully close to offering a financial inducement to break the law. The only people who have the information are those who are bound not to reveal it or who should never have had it in the first place.
- kauffj 11y agoThe individual who leaks this information is doing so for the public good. Why not also allow them to be compensated for assuming that risk?
- scuba7183 11y agoHow do you know they're not leaking it for the cash?
- yellowapple 11y agoWhy do we care, so long as the leak is accurate and - therefore - public well-being is achieved?
- TeMPOraL 11y agoBecause the leak may not end up being really accurate; when the contribution is done for cash and not out of care for public well-being, then all bets are off.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoYou generally don't want to do this, because it perverts the incentives. When you offer cash for something that should be done out of some sense of morality, you turn it from a terminal value ("I do this because I want it to be done") into an instrumental value ("I don't care about this but I do it because I want the reward"). You'll start getting much more noise with the signal because of various "entrepreneurs" who smell the occasion for a quick buck. There's ton of psychological/sociological research which shows that people generally get funny in the head when you substitute social incentives for economic ones.
- geophile 11y agoIt would be great to make the TPP documents public, but this isn't the way. The leaker can rightly claimed to be in it for the money, and this will taint any further anti-TPP action based on the content of the leaked documents. We need another Edward Snowden.
- joshstrange 11y agoMy first reaction is this goes too far but on second thought is this just the state of the world now? We are going to come out of the shadows and just be upfront about what we are doing? Is it a "The rich and the powerful lie, cheat, steal, bribe, corrupt, etc. Why shouldn't we?" situation? I think money in politics is ruining the USA, is using money to fight back against these dirty politicians and lobbyists the only tool we have left?
- shit_parade2 11y agoThe power and authority of the state emanates from the people, don't let your government convince you otherwise. If enough enough people woke this morning deciding their government was no longer legitimate those in power would be gone by night fall.
- FD3SA 11y agoThat is a little idealistic, don't you think? The Occupy movement got crushed by the police. It is in the state's best interest to prevent social movements from reaching critical mass. As such, they use their massive enforcement arms to nip the troublemakers in the bud.
- jimrandomh 11y agoThe classy thing to do would be to leak the trade deal, and tell WikiLeaks to donate the money to a GiveWell-recommended charity.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tim333 11y agoGood on them. I just pledged a small amount towards the $100k. I think the purpose of this is more a PR stunt to make more people aware that the governments that are supposed to serve us are trying to sign us up to a bunch of dubious stuff behind our backs than bribery. Indeed "Putting the public back into the public interest." as they put it on their site. https://wikileaks.org/pledge/ https://wikileaks.org/pledge/
- drawkbox 11y agoWikiLeaks is getting into the lobbying game, not a bribe, a lobby. You can't tell me companies don't do this same thing to politicians. It would be something for someone to actually get prosecuted for releasing a bill/law that will affect us all. What message would that send? When releasing a bill in Congress is illegal, I think we have seriously lost it. Bills throughout the process should be public at all times once our representatives are going over it for sure.
- oskarth 11y agoIt's a publicity stunt. The goal is to raise awareness for the shady nature of this trade deal, and hopefully get someone to step up and release the rest of the documents. So far it's been going well - this article was written the Washington Post, and it raises awareness of TPP. What remains to be seen is whether someone will step up.
- snowwrestler 11y agoI agree that it's a publicity stunt. Most of the agreement will be totally boring to HN type folks--pages and pages of fine-grained calibration of relative tariffs on agricultural products, etc. The most controversion provisions are probably already known (ISDS, which has been a standard part of trade deals for years), or leaked (the IP chapter). That said, I'll be interested to see the language on cross-border data flows. One of the reported provisions is that signatories to the TPP will have to treat data from all signatories equally (i.e. no nation-based filtering). Another is that signatories will not be able to require tech companies to house their servers locally to provide services locally. Those both sound like they would be welcomed by tech companies.
- mdariani 11y agoBrave Move. Still not sure what the reactions by the U.S. government will be. behind the door agreements in politics are bad for everyone everywhere.
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoMaybe I'm wrong (and please correct me if I am) but I thought the agreement was being done in secret until it's completed at which point it will go to the legislature of all of the nations involved. Since it's being "fast-tracked" that means congress can't add or remove things from the bill but can vote on it and it will be fully accessible publicly. They certainly shouldn't be doing the writing of this thing in secret and we should be able to comment on it now but it will be fully available before being voted on so $100,000 seems a bit much to getting it a few months early. Again, as far as I understand everything so please correct me if I'm wrong.
- Tloewald 11y agoThere are plenty of reasons why virtually all international negotiations are conducted in secret. For one tiny example, imagine the effect on the markets and perhaps worse the effect of markets on the negotiations. If the process were made transparent then the negotiations would simply take place somewhere else. Just remember, when you see a "public negotiation" of a treaty of some kind, that the actual negotiations took place well in advance of any announcements and in complete secrecy. Do you think nuclear arms control treaties are negotiated in public? Which do you think is more important -- negotiations that could result in the end of the world, or negotiations over tariff policy?
- stdgy 11y agoBut the market's largest participants already know what's going into the negotiations. They're privy to the draft texts of the deal and are the executive's primary 'consultants'. They know as much as, if not more than, our actual elected Representatives. So I'm not sure what you mean by 'imagine the effect on the markets' or 'the effect of the markets on negotiations'. The market's most powerful players are already guiding the legislation. The only people that seemingly aren't allowed to directly guide the agreement are a country's citizens and its smaller market players, neither of whom are allowed a seat at the table. The pessimist/realist in me suspects the final text will directly reflect this lopsided representation, such that the most powerful will become even more powerful and the least powerful will continue their decline.
- genericuser 11y agoHilarious twist option Obama gives WikiLeaks and everyone else the trade deal details, and claims the 100k. He could then just put it back into the government where 100k will not even be noticed, donate to some charity in some sort of PR stunt, or whatever as I am sure there are both better and more entertaining options.
- Cthulhu_ 11y agoWould be funny, but I doubt Obama has access or much of a say in the matter, and he himself would get arrested and sued for leaking secrets - the president is not above the law.
- balls187 11y ago> the [US] president is not above the law. Except when it comes to extraordinary rendition and torture.
- o0-0o 11y ago...or murdering US citizens, or making executive orders that ignore current precedent with regards to illegal immigration, or spending taxpayer money on lavish vacations for you and your family, or using non-profits for political fund raising, or a million other things these days. Just sayin'
- genericuser 11y agoWhen is an option labeled 'Hilarious twist option' ever a good option to actually do when pursuing serious issues in real life? I never suggested the president was above the law, I made a joke, and I thought I labeled it as such. Apparently not enough though, so here I go the post was a joke, an attempt at humor. I am aware it was probably not very funny, but everyone is so serious that I thought a little on topic humor might lighten things up.
- 0xffff2 11y agoMaybe Obama can't personally hand over the documents, but he almost certainly has the authority to authorize their release, which from a PR perspective is basically the same thing.
- shit_parade2 11y agoThe document is classified and supposed to be kept secret for four years after the entry into force of the TPP agreement or, if no agreement is reached, for four years from the close of the negotiations. How do people put up with this craziness? You all are talking about the rule of law while your congress is going to pass something many of them can't read, can't read in full, can't read with the help of aids, and can't disclose, and can't disclose even after it becomes law. That's not law, that's tyranny.
- bernardom 11y agoThis seems illegal. Any lawyers here? Two reasons: 1- Offering money for someone to commit a crime. If somebody obtains the details illegally, Wikileaks would be liable for that. 2- Interfering with the executive branch's negotiation of a treaty is definitely illegal, though not necessarily always enforced. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_the...) All that said, Wikileaks probably doesn't care. They already leaked a ton of US gov't classified data, so why would more indictments matter?
- genericuser 11y agoAnother thing to consider is as soon as the details are public, we will be assaulted by ad campaigns by various interest groups which this negatively effects telling us why it will ruin our lives. While the general Hacker News population may be too smart to be swayed from reason by these ads, ads like this exist because they work. A portion of the public will be swayed by the plight of the American Pipe Layers Union or whoever is potentially going to lose a little bit of business as the ads, like others of their kind, will provide them with a partial picture of the deal and telling them why this is horrible, without providing enough context for them to come to a different conclusion. Some portion of the public outcry when something like this becomes public will be due these special interest groups effectively buying the opinions of the public by telling them what to think in the same manner they usually do.
- 0xffff2 11y agoI was under the impression that most of the Hacker News population needs no help in being set against the TPP...
- genericuser 11y agoI agree with you, but I do not agree with what seems to be the prevailing opinion here which I would summarize as "If you don't have information about something, that something is bad" I realize I phrased this in what is probably an offensive way to many, and I apologize I didn't want to spend 20 minutes rewording it so I could figure out how to insult as few people as possible. I agree it is better to have transparency but honestly, because not all actors (businesses, special interest groups, other countries) are guaranteed to act transparently, sometimes it is actually in the American public's best interest for some level of obfuscation. Is this one of those instances? Hell if I know. Transparency from only one party in an arrangement between many parties has costs as well as benefits is my point, costs which should be considered.
- yellowapple 11y agoWhat? Obfuscation is never in the best interests of a democracy. Democracy relies on the public being able to make informed decisions, and that ability is physically impossible when the relevant information is obfuscated.
- andor 11y agoHow do they intend to transfer $100,000 to an anonymous source?
- vesinisa 11y agoBitcoin?
- andor 11y agoDoes Bitcoin mixing work well enough to anonymize transfers of this size?
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoCash?
- billiam 11y agoSince the rich and powerful have effectively diluted our most precious right, free speech (ask the relatives of the Yangtzee River tragedy about that) by having the Supreme Court make money equivalent to speech through Citizens United, I find it pretty funny to see the Obama administration's obsession with secrecy challenged via the same mechanism we use to fund video games and fanciful geek hardware. Of course, the real joke is that there's plenty of money chasing the secrets of the TPP already--only not to show those secrets to the public, but just to corporations and governments that want to benefit from them. The only thing stopping that would be the civil (and criminal?) penalties that would face anyone who could spill the beans.
- dharma1 11y agoMaybe a PR stunt because people are starting to forget WikiLeaks?
- kyleblarson 11y agoMost transparent presidential administration in history.....
- throwaway12357 11y agoIf governments aren't doing anything wrong, why are they hiding the TPP?
- cbsmith 11y agoIt's soooo not Obama's deal.
- mayneack 11y agoHow so? He's pushing pretty hard for it. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/us/path-to-pacific-trade-deal-may-open-in-senate-after-all.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/us/path-to-pacific-trade-d...
- themeek 11y agoThe decision to pivot to Asia started during the Bush years and through its inception had the backing of a wide number of individuals including Secretary Clinton. The actual discussions being had involve 11 other nations and hundreds of international corporations. The now "Rebalance" to Asia is an Obama term and the TPP negotiating position of the United States is informed by its national security interests to contain China - but it can hardly be called "President Obama's Deal".
- cbsmith 11y agoThe origins of the treaty trace back to 2002, and the US formally joined negotiations in January 2008. Later that year, Susan C. Schwab (an appointee under then President GWB) announced to the world that the US was entering in to negotiations to join it. It is entirely possible the treaty won't be ratified until the next President is in office (or never). There are 12 countries that are actively involved in the negotiations, of which four signed on to the original TPSEP in 2005, and 8 were formally involved in negotiations before Obama ever entered the White House. What we know of the negotiations show that the US is looking for terms very different from the other nations, which at least creates a realistic possibility that much of what is in the treaty agreement is not what the US, let alone President Obama, would want. In the end, the negotiations are driven by apolitical business interests (which you can take as a positive or negative, I think a reasonable case can be made that it is neither). No question he's been involved in negotiations, promoting it and in favour of it. His administration has obviously played a significant role in negotiations. But this thing is way, way bigger than any President. The forces driving the negotiation cross at least a dozen nations and both the Republican & Democratic parties in the US. Suggesting it is Obama's deal is to completely misrepresent the scope and nature of the deal, the process by which it is structured, and creates a mythos of it being a part of a domestic partisan political agenda.
- alexc05 11y agoI hate to be overly facetious here, but $100k would pay for one hell of a funeral. At the very least it may be difficult to spend that money from a life in exile. I agree that it should be made public - but the money would only serve to create a paper trail that you could be traced by. Doesn't it increase the risk?
- jebblue 11y agoIf I were rich (which I'm not) I'd offer a higher bounty to black hats to shut down WikiLeaks until they get out of politics and back to exposing secrets for the public good.
- dublinben 11y ago"Exposing secrets for the public good" is inherently political.
- singularity2001 11y agoTechnical question: Are there any programs that try to roughly measure the shill factor in conversations? I.e. by taking statistics over all commenters, whether they ever submitted/commented before etc? Would be nice if HN would measure this in-house, since they have access to IP addresses.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoCan someone explain why this needs to be a secret and why the Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply?
- JumpCrisscross 11y agoThe purpose of a trade deal is to lower protectionism. Like corn subsidies. Corn subsidies are a blatant manifestation of American protectionism. Imagine U.S. trade negotiators trying to cut corn subsidies in exchange for something. The same forces that created the subsidies – a motivated minority mobilising against a dis-interested, harmed majority – will defeat any attempt to kill them. Repeat this process by interest groups across every country and you may see why Doha failed. Secrecy is annoying, and our present government gives us reason to distrust it. But if you believe in free trade and are realistic about how negotiations (and interest groups) work, you understand why they must be secret.
- harry8 11y agoBut apparently they aren't secret from the interest groups where such interest groups donate large sums to political parties. See copyright extensions that we know are coming in this. "Believe in free trade.." Fry and Laurie made me laugh about that line back in the day. YMMV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcMwvf0iyWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcMwvf0iyWs If you believe in free trade you know that there are massive gains to be had from abolishing rubbish like corn subsidies period. Just do it, it's a win for any domestic economy. If you don't "believe in free trade" then you need this secret nonsense to pretend to abolish it then not actually do it. Again.
- jokoon 11y agoThat's either ballsy or desperate, or both. I'd be interested to check the donors though. I want to trust Assange, but I kinda trust Obama too. I agree that things could be better, but you can't always argue that secrecy is always against the interest of the public. Leader sometimes have to be able to have discretion when the want to take decisions, if not, some will just be able to anticipate those decisions, and it won't work. It's true that mandatory secrecy is bad, but it can be difficult to have it everywhere. I'm really not an expert though, so I could be wrong. It's true that the US is trying to make strategic moves for its own interests, and it can be scary and dubious waters for US citizens, but it's the game of international relations. I don't think you can always mix the debate on secrecy and healthy democracy. Maybe Obama has legitimate reasons to use secrecy. Although it's expected from wikileaks to make moves about it. Anyway Washington is really not going to like it. At all.
- JonFish85 11y agoHow is a person supposed to collect on this? I imagine it'd be difficult for a person to claim their $100k without immediately being outed. I guess Bitcoin might work, but even then, there's the problem of actually using it without someone noticing.
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