[HN Gopher] Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indict...
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Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment
Author : eplanit
Score : 314 points
Date : 2021-06-26 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stundin.is)
(TXT) w3m dump (stundin.is)
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Important to note that nothing Wikileaks has published has ever
| had to be retracted. They've told the truth to the public about
| governments, which is why they're targeted. In fact several
| Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded thanks to their efforts.
| They've never been shown to put anyone at risk either, a
| testament to their careful vetting process, showing that they're
| responsible too.
|
| This is clearly a political attack on someone who has exposed
| some uncomfortable truths. Even if Assange is a criminal, which I
| don't think he is, there's no excuse for holding him in the
| manner which they are, treating him worse than the worst
| criminals.
|
| Finally it's been shown that the rape accusations were an
| orchestrated smear campaign as well.
| GoofballJones wrote:
| Important to note that Wikileaks wouldn't publish a retraction
| anyway, even if they were totally wrong.
|
| Come on...
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Source? Do you have a relevant example?
| ratsmack wrote:
| That's a very bold statement when history has shown
| otherwise. Don't you believe the powers that be would jump at
| the chance to discredit them? I would be so lucky if the
| generally corrupt mainstream media should be more like them.
| dagmx wrote:
| That's a fairly charitable take on WikiLeaks. They host the
| entirety of the Sony leak on their site that caused me and
| hundreds of my colleagues to face a increased lifetime risk of
| fraud and stolen identity.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Hacked by North Korea and made easy by poor security on
| Sony's part. It sucks when personal information is stolen and
| published, but that genie is out of the bottle and cannot be
| put back.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Both the leak of the DNC files, and the purported leak of files
| by a Putin critic, were found to contain numerous forged
| documents. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05
| /26/russi...)
|
| In a heinous followup, Assange claimed that a murdered DNC
| staffer was the party responsible for the DNC leak...based on
| no evidence except Assange's bro-love for Donald Trump.
| (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
| news/wikileak...)
|
| But sure, let's pretend that nothing Wikileaks has posted has
| ever been shown to be fake or falsified, or that Assange
| himself has never lied.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Both the leak of the DNC files, and the purported leak of
| files by a Putin critic, were found to contain numerous
| forged documents.
|
| Nothing in that article shows any evidence of tainted leaks
| in the DNC release. It claims some other leak had some
| tainted links, that they were carried out by the sane group,
| and that the Clinton team claimed emails were fake.
|
| Wikileaks Twitter account has been full of madness, almost as
| if it was being run by someone suffering years of torture.
| That's a separate claim from the validity of the site.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The Forbes article you link to does not say that the DNC
| files contained forgeries. Assange also never said that Seth
| Rich was responsible for the leak. He was asked about it in
| an interview and gave an evasive/vague answer.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > They've never been shown to put anyone at risk
|
| This is false. They've denied putting people at risk, but
| there's decent evidence that their leaks have directly shared
| pii and harmed large numbers of random unimportant people.
| capableweb wrote:
| Could you share this decent evidence for us who haven't seen
| it before?
| billyhoffman wrote:
| Wikileaks posted diplomatic cables without redacting the
| names or other forms of PII. Actual journalists from the
| New York Times, Der Speigel, Le Monde, The Guardian, and El
| Pais all signed a statement saying this was a gross breach
| of people's privacy and potentially put these people in
| danger.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/02/leade
| r...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_ca
| b...
| Dah00n wrote:
| You quote The Guardian, who published the decryption key?
| That's an interesting choice of source.
| stefan_ wrote:
| You mean after an "actual journalist" put the password
| for the cache of all unredacted cables that "actual
| journalists" received in his book?
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| To this day, The Guardian refuses to admit that it
| released the unredacted cables to the public, and blames
| WikiLeaks for the release. One of The Guardian's own
| journalists used the decryption key as a chapter title in
| his book about WikiLeaks. The Guardian's excuse is that
| they thought the decryption key was temporary. I don't
| know if people at The Guardian really are that
| misinformed about how encryption works, or if they're
| just being deceitful.
| C19is20 wrote:
| sauce?
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Given the publicity around the "poison pill" "insurance"
| archive, it's difficult to believe that anybody could not
| understand the severity of leaking that password.
|
| Although not required or authorized to do so, Wikileaks
| tried to limit the exposure of sources who would be at
| risk if their identities were exposed. The unredacted
| information exposed many sources and put lives at risk.
| The USG blames Wikileaks for this because they released
| the encrypted archive. I have never heard of an
| investigation or prosecution into the circumstances of
| the password release, but if Wikileaks is responsible,
| then David Leigh should be as well.
|
| https://wikileaks.org/Guardian-journalist-
| negligently.html
| macinjosh wrote:
| Lol @ "actual journalists"
|
| You do know there is no such thing as journalistic
| licensing or certification, right? They went to college.
| They have nothing above anyone else who break news
| because they are employed by a corporate outlet. That
| makes me trust them less actually.
| bitL wrote:
| Panama papers were released with names by the same
| newspapers.
| jude- wrote:
| This is the reason why I don't feel too bad for Julian
| Assange, and why I don't refer to him as a "journalist."
| Not redacting PII is such a rookie mistake that I can't
| see it as anything other than journalistic malpractice.
| iNane9000 wrote:
| Well you can't claim he is not a journalist and also
| accuse him of journalistic malpractice. It's one or the
| other.
| Dah00n wrote:
| You don't feel bad for him because you have misunderstood
| what actually happened? Wikileaks had an encrypted file
| but it was a Guardian journalist that published the key
| to decrypt it. What you are suggesting is that Wikileaks
| _should censor the source files before journalists got
| them_. That is not how proof works. Redacted files isn 't
| proof but tampered evidence. The fault is 100% on the
| person that leaked the decryption key. Blaming Julian
| Assange for this leak is jumping to conclusions.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| The two I'm aware of are
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-reportedly-
| outs-100s-... and
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/07/why-did-wikileaks-
| he..., which published the names of afghan informants to
| the us military, and the names, phone numbers, and
| addresses of half of the Turkish population, respectively.
|
| The first clearly endangered people, the second contained
| basically nothing of reporting use, it was just a trove of
| pii
| Brakenshire wrote:
| "Important to note that nothing Wikileaks has published has
| ever had to be retracted. They've told the truth to the public
| about governments"
|
| That isn't true for their social media:
|
| https://micahflee.com/2019/01/lies-that-wikileaks-tells-you/
| juanani wrote:
| This abuse of power won't end well.
| Medicineguy wrote:
| While scrolling, the web page shifts up a couple dozens of pixels
| (Android, Firefox) . It's very annoying. I had to stop reading
| after the second paragraph.
|
| Am I the only one?
| n8ta wrote:
| You are not the only one. Site is rough.
| EvRev wrote:
| It is a bug when you use VH instead of VW on your height
| attribute. Always use VW on mobile because of the default
| behavior on mobile browsers to show the address bar when
| scrolling.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| But that breaks a lot of design assumptions, since many times
| the use of vh vs vw is to avoid assuming which of the height
| or width is greater. You'd have to use a min/max calculation
| to avoid aspect ratio mayhem whn comparing landscape to
| portrait.
|
| The real big is UI elements that randomly appear and
| disappear in the browser chrome, such as scroll bars and
| address bars, that contribute to vh/vw randomly spazzing.
| yownie wrote:
| Local Icelander here, this kid has been known to be a real
| scumbag to most people here for years with much coverage of his
| sociopathic tendencies.
|
| https://grapevine.is/?s=siggi+hacker
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Stundin is a tabloid. Let's wait until this report is confirmed
| by more reputable sources before declaring Assange innocent.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Never heard of Stundin before, but it reads like a pretty well
| done report.
| 2939223 wrote:
| Nothing more jarring than the harrowing treatment of Assange by
| the US, contrasted with their subsequent lecturing and
| sanctioning of Belarus re Roman Protasevich, or Russia re
| Navalny.
|
| Zero integrity.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| Has the US tried to extra judicially murder Assange?
| belorn wrote:
| Do the US need to extra judicially murder Assange in order to
| make an example of him?
|
| I can imagine what would happen if Russia tried the same
| tactic as the US and used diplomatic channels in order to
| successfully influence the legal systems in countries like
| the UK and Sweden.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| Are you proud of what Assange actually did in Sweden?
| Taking off a condom mid sex or lying about wearing one?
|
| It's called stealthing and very much a terrible thing to
| do.
| Dah00n wrote:
| You just lost the discussion.
| 2939223 wrote:
| Yes: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/sep/30/us-
| intelligenc...
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| I know HN loves Assange but comparing an unsubstantiated
| stamenent that US persons talked about extreme measures, vs
| actual poisoning is pretty weak.
| threeseed wrote:
| That's an unproven allegation. Navalny was actually
| poisoned.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| These were claims made in court, during formal hearings.
| They weren't disputed, and as such, they are part of the
| official court record and are worth more than random
| hearsay.
|
| The US' repsponse (as quoted) was that these allegations
| were "wholly irrelevant." That doesn't sound like a
| denunciation or denial to me.
| threeseed wrote:
| Anybody can make claims in court and the US government is
| hardly going to confirm or deny poisoning someone.
|
| It's an unproven allegation and a world away from Navalny
| who was actually poisoned.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| Why would the US government not deny poisoning someone?
| [deleted]
| fscksnowden wrote:
| If Greenwald suggest to Snowden in Dec 2012 that he should steal
| more, is comrade Greenwald complicit
|
| We all know Assange not only encouraged but participated.
|
| Snowden is a thief and liar who encouraged others to leak in his
| capacity at fpf. Complicit.
|
| Snowden and Assange are traitors, in the non legal definition
| rbanffy wrote:
| Assange is not even a US citizen. How can he be a traitor?
| fscksnowden wrote:
| fair enough, he runs a so called "hostile intel svc"
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| For what, reporting the truth to the US public? That's
| called journalism and ought to be praised.
| fscksnowden wrote:
| Opinion split, many think he's an arch criminal.
| Certainly hasn't made US diplomacy any easier.
|
| I'd gander that Assange, Snowden and Trump are the main
| reasons why our alliances are shaky. (I'm an American but
| this affects the whole Western alliance)
| h_anna_h wrote:
| Not committing warcrimes, not going after whistleblowers
| and journalists, not torturing people in prison and
| keeping them confined for years without trial, and not
| spying on the citizens of your own and foreign countries
| would help the US diplomacy.
|
| It is like saying that rape victims who went to the
| police are the reason that the life of the rapist is
| ruined instead of his choice to rape people.
| fscksnowden wrote:
| What about the rest of the leaks that didn't involve the
| items you mentioned? What portion of his leaks were
| related to legitimate classified info? How many times has
| he recklessly failed to properly redact? How many lives
| put at risk? How many blown ops?
|
| Why focus on West?
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| Suck dick, idiot.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Look. I've met Assange and he felt like an asshole. I also
| agree Wikileaks was used to manipulate an election in the
| US, but, from that to claim he runs a "hostile intelligence
| service" is a bit too much.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I haven't met him. You aren't the first person who has,
| who has said that.
|
| But personality aside, I don't think it's reasonable to
| charge him with espionage and treachery. He can't be a
| traitor, because he's never been a citizen - he owes no
| loyalty. And he's no spy - he just reported the
| information that was given to him.
|
| There are accusations that he failed to "redact". The
| fact is that a Guardian journalist that Assange trusted
| with the decryption key for a large part of the dump - a
| certain Luke Harding <spit>, published the decryption
| key. Assange felt compelled to publish the whole dump, so
| that vulnerable people would know that Harding had
| exposed them, so that they could protect themselves.
|
| I think the extent to which the Guardian betrayed Assange
| is going to take a long time to come out.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I honestly have very little sympathy for Assange at this point.
| The entire organization either appears to have been a honey pot
| or front for foreign election interference.
| rendall wrote:
| This is a badly uninformed opinion
| Applejinx wrote:
| Not at all: from what I've seen, that sort of thing doesn't
| have to start out as intentional nefariousness. We've just
| got some state actors who've developed real skill and
| determination at twisting all sorts of existing entities to
| their ends: this is considerably easier in the service of
| chaos politics than it would be if they were trying to set up
| an orderly, top-down spy network or some such thing.
|
| You don't have to start OUT as a honeypot or a tool of
| foreign intelligence. It would be a pretty lousy intelligence
| service that had to start with pre-existing cooperation and
| alliance. Much better to work at twisting things, and then
| rely on rationalization and perhaps back it up with threat
| and intimidation. There's nothing new about any of this, it's
| just done with flair, ingenuity and determination. Or has
| been: I think there's a limit to how far that can go.
| sebow wrote:
| I hear this from people all the time.However the media forgets
| to mention (and obviously people wouldn't know most of the
| times without them) that Wikileaks released a ton of info on
| Russia, FSB, and other countries aswell.(Almost all parties
| involved in european geopolitics)
|
| The situation is very simple: some truth got spoiled out,
| people try to cover it. The Swedish charges were BS and a
| pretext to keep him from fleeing to early somewhere, and the
| rest is just classical silence the messenger. Wikileaks didn't
| had a lot of dirt on asian & east-asian countries, because
| obviously there are less whistleblowers and information is very
| hard to acquire.Other than that I really struggle to see how
| he's(or WL as an org) supposedly the villain and damaged the
| society.
|
| People focus on the fact that the material was acquired
| illegally, as that is somehow a good reason to ignore what
| we've learned from them.I feel kind of pathetic being in the
| 'western world' right now.
| slim wrote:
| If the wikileaks organisation does not look normal to you, it's
| probably because you did not participate in any political
| activism. For me all this amateurism looks familiar
| daenz wrote:
| For someone who has not followed Assange news for a long time,
| what is the general accusation of his crimes? Is it just that he
| published secret material that he received from other sources?
| sneak wrote:
| They are trying to get him on the conspiracy with Manning's
| unauthorized access, based on chat logs AIUI.
|
| They have already done a great job turning public opinion
| against him, though: the completely false claim that he was
| charged with rape is widely believed and repeated. Anyone who
| has fallen for this false narrative is encouraged to read the
| exact words of the women involved.
|
| He has also been effectively imprisoned without trial for about
| a decade now.
|
| Mostly he just serves as an example to what happens to people
| extrajudicially for fucking in any way with the US surveillance
| state and war apparatus.
| plandis wrote:
| > He has also been effectively imprisoned without trial for
| about a decade now.
|
| It's a bit dishonest to claim he's been imprisoned without a
| trial when he skipped on bail in 2012 and chose to stay in an
| embassy instead of turn himself in to the UK government.
|
| He was arrested in 2019 and promptly convicted of skipping on
| bail in the same year by the UK government.
| sneak wrote:
| Not at all. The UN's human rights department has found it
| to be so:
|
| from https://news.un.org/en/story/2016/02/521632-wikileaks-
| founde...
|
| > _The founder of the WikiLeaks website, which published
| confidential diplomatic information, has been arbitrarily
| detained by Sweden and the United Kingdom since his arrest
| in London in December 2010, as a result of the legal action
| against him by both Governments, the United Nations Working
| Group on Arbitrary Detention said today._
|
| Skipping bail to seek asylum in a country that will attempt
| to preserve your human rights, when not skipping bail means
| you get extradited to a country that will torture you via
| extended solitary confinement prior to trial is not what
| most people mean when they use the phrase "skipping bail".
| If any description is dishonest here, it's that.
|
| A sham trial that you get tortured before getting to attend
| is always something to be avoided. Let's not forget that
| Manning was tortured to the point of multiple suicide
| attempts in prison _prior to trial_ , as well as being
| declared guilty in public by a sitting US president (also
| before trial).
|
| Several senior officials in the US government called for
| Assange's summary execution for publishing. There is
| approximately zero chance that he will receive a fair trial
| or humane treatment in the USA.
| extra88 wrote:
| > when not skipping bail means you get extradited to a
| country that will torture you via extended solitary
| confinement prior to trial
|
| On plenty of occasions, the UK has demonstrated its
| willingness to not extradite suspects to the US out of
| concern for their welfare.
|
| > declared guilty in public by a sitting US president
| (also before trial)
|
| Because the US has not yet fallen under authoritarian
| rule and has an independent judiciary, it's possible to
| have a fair trial even when the president offers an
| opinion about the case. But offering such opinions is
| frowned upon because it's bad optics. Before you bring up
| tainting the jury pool, an upside to the lack of civic
| engagement amongst Americans is it's not difficult to
| find people who won't have heard a president's or anyone
| else's opinions.
| stordoff wrote:
| > not skipping bail means you get extradited to a country
| that will torture you via extended solitary confinement
|
| An extradition request which has so far been denied, in
| part due to the conditions he will face in the US, FWIW.
| I'm not sure that it can be taken as given that an
| earlier request (to the UK or Sweden) would have been
| successful:
|
| > Faced with conditions of near total isolation and
| without the protective factors which moderate his risk at
| HMP Belmarsh, I am satisfied that the procedures
| described by Dr. Leukefled[sic][1] will not prevent Mr.
| Assange from finding a way to commit suicide. [...] I am
| satisfied that, in these harsh conditions, Mr. Assange's
| mental health would deteriorate causing him to commit
| suicide with the "single minded determination" of his
| autism spectrum disorder. I find that the mental
| condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be
| oppressive to extradite him to the United States of
| America.[2]
|
| [1] "[Dr. Leukefeld] is a psychologist employed as the
| administrator of the psychology services branch in the
| central office of the [Bureau of Prisons]" ([2] at 350)
|
| [2] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/01/USA-v-As... at 361-363
| Miner49er wrote:
| Pretty much, he's been indicted for 17 counts of violating the
| Espionage Act, which yeah, is just for seeking/leaking
| confidential info. It's a huge attack on freedom of the press.
| The press has always been allowed to cover leaked stuff, the
| Espionage act has only been used against sources in the past,
| not reporters.
|
| He's also facing a very minor charge (max 5 years in prison)
| for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for allegedly
| helping Manning attempt to hack a computer.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| While I widely agree, if we're fair there's a difference
| between a Journalist covering leaked stuff and literally
| releasing the full unredacted documents to the public.
|
| Otherwise I agree. His treatment comes down to nothing other
| than the fact the USA govt want to make it very, very clear
| that they are willing to totally destroy anyone's lives who
| dare publish the horrific things they're doing.
| k1m wrote:
| > if we're fair there's a difference between a Journalist
| covering leaked stuff and literally releasing the full
| unredacted documents to the public.
|
| It was actually senior Guardian journalists who compromised
| the cables by publishing the password Assange had entrusted
| them with. That's what led to the unredacted copies being
| made available. Jonathan Cook has written about it here:
| https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-26/guardian-
| assan...
|
| > The Guardian book let the cat out of the bag. Once it
| gave away Assange's password, the Old Bailey hearings have
| heard, there was no going back.
|
| > Any security service in the world could now unlock the
| file containing the cables. And as they homed in on where
| the file was hidden at the end of the summer, Assange was
| forced into a desperate damage limitation operation. In
| September 2011 he published the unredacted cables so that
| anyone named in them would have advance warning and could
| go into hiding - before any hostile security services came
| looking for them.
|
| > Yes, Assange published the cables unredacted but he did
| so - was forced to do so - by the unforgivable actions of
| Leigh and the Guardian.
| fossuser wrote:
| I thought the latter CFFA charge is what helps to enable to
| former? IANAL though so I could easily be wrong about this.
|
| Basically helping to break into the computer system moves you
| out of the realm of journalist and into the realm of
| political enemy which now makes you vulnerable to espionage.
|
| I think there isn't much case law around this stuff though.
| mywacaday wrote:
| Are there any whistleblower protections in the US or why
| would they not apply to Assange?
| lazulicurio wrote:
| I think the extradition ruling[1] from the UK judge assigned to
| the case provides a pretty good overview. (In general, I'd
| suggest trying to find primary sources as much as you can,
| because there's a lot of misinformation flying about about the
| case) Below are some of the allegations not related to
| Thordarson:
|
| > It is alleged that WikiLeaks solicited material by publishing
| a list of information it wished to obtain, its "Most Wanted
| Leaks". In November 2009 this list included: "Bulk Databases"
| including "Intellipedia", (a non-public CIA database) and
| classified "Military and Intelligence" documents. In December
| 2009, Mr. Assange and a WikiLeaks affilia te gave a
| presentation to the 26th Chaos Communication Congress in which
| WikiLea ks described itself as "the leading disclosure portal
| for classified, restricted or legally threatened publications."
| In 2009 Mr. Assange spoke at the "Hack in the Box Security
| Conference" in Malaysia in which he made reference to a
| "capture the flag" hacking contest and noted that WikiLeaks had
| its own list of flags that it wanted captured.
|
| > Between November 2009 and May 2010, Ms. Manning was in direct
| contact with Mr. Assange using a chatlog (the "Jabber
| communications"). On 8 March 2010, it is alleged that Mr.
| Assange agreed to assist Ms. Manning in cracking a password
| hash stored on a DoD computer. Mr. Assange indicated that he
| was "good" at "hash-cracking" and that he had rainbow tools (a
| tool used to crack Microsoft password hashes). Ms. Manning
| provided him with an alphanumeric string. This was identical to
| an encrypted password hash stored on the Systems Account
| Manager (SAMS) registry file of a SIPRNet computer, used by Ms.
| Manning, and associated with an account that was not assigned
| to any specific user. Mr. Assange later told her that he had no
| luck yet and asked for more "hints." It is alleged that, had
| they succeeded in cracking the encrypted password hash, Ms.
| Manning might have been able to log on to computers connected
| to the classified SIPRNet network under a username that did not
| belong to her, making it more difficult for investigators to
| identify her as the source of the disclosures. It is
| specifically alleged that Mr.Assange entered into this
| agreement to assist Ms Manning's ongoing efforts to steal
| classified material.
|
| > On 31 December 2011, WikiLeaks tweeted "#antisec owning Law
| enforcement in 2012." It included links to emails and databases
| confirming that Hammond and AntiSec had hacked two US state
| police associations. On 3 January 2012, WikiLeaks tweeted a
| link to information which LulzSec/AntiSec had hacked and
| published in 2011 headed,"Anonymous/Antisec/Luzsec releases in
| 2011." In January 2012, Hammond told Sabu that "JA" had
| provided Hammond with a script to search the emails stolen from
| Intelligence Consulting Company, and that "JA" would provide
| the script to associates of Hammond as well. Hammond also
| introduced Sabu via Jabber to "JA." In January and February
| 2012, Sabu used the chatlog Jabber to communicate with
| Mr.Assange. On 27 February 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing
| emails that Hammond and others hacked from the Intelligence
| Consulting Company. On 27 February 2012 Hammond told Sabu, "we
| started giving JA" materials that had been obtained from other
| hacks. On 28 February 2012 Hammond complained to Sabu that the
| incompetence of his fellow hackers was causing him to fail to
| meet estimates he had given to Mr. Assange about the amount of
| hacked information he expected to provide to WikiLeaks,
| stating, "can't sit on all these targets dicking around when
| the booty is sitting there ... especially when we are asked to
| make it happen with WL. We repeated a 2TB number to JA. Now
| turns out it's like maybe 100GB. Would have been 40-50GB if I
| didn't go and get all the mail from [foreign cybersecurity
| company]." Hammond then asked for help with ongoing computer
| intrusion committe d by his associates against victims
| including a US law enforcement entity, a US political
| organisation, and a US cybersecurity company. In March 2012,
| Hammond was arrested.
|
| > In June 2013, media outlets reported that Edward J. Snowden
| had leaked numerous documents taken from the National Security
| Agency and was in Hong Kong. It is alleged that, to encourage
| leakers and hackers to provide stolen materials to WikiLeaks,
| Mr.Assange and others at WikiLeaks openly displayed their
| attempts to assist Snowden to evade arrest.
|
| [1] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/USA-v-
| As...
| fossuser wrote:
| No, that's not illegal for somebody without a clearance.
|
| The crime he's charged with is that he was willing to (and I
| think did?) assist in breaking into a computer system to get
| the docs. I think under the CFAA. They have communication
| records of this because the person he was talking to was
| working for the USG.
|
| Had he just been accepting docs as he was initially that would
| have been fine.
|
| It's hard to know the truth here though when nation state
| interests are at play. To what extent were the sex related
| charges against him political or flared up by nation state
| meddling?
|
| At some point Russia was also using Wikileaks as a place to
| target the USG with some plausible deniability and Assange's
| personal anti-US politics became a corrupting influence too.
|
| So, who knows?
| Miner49er wrote:
| > No, that's not illegal for somebody without a clearance.
|
| Yeah, but that's not stopping the US for charging him with
| the Espionage act for it anyway. Most of his charges are for
| leaking/seeking secret info. The charge for assisting Manning
| is 5 potential years of the 175 he faces.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > At some point Russia was also using Wikileaks as a place to
| target the USG with some plausible deniability and Assange's
| personal anti-US politics became a corrupting influence too.
|
| There's a passage in Sarah Kendzior's book (Hiding in plain
| sight: the invention of Donald Trump and the erosion of
| America) which clicked (to me): ultimately things like
| wikileaks damage societies and governments that are
| transparent. You will always find more dirt and problems in
| public/accessible records than in dictatorships. These
| initiatives are doomed to be used at some points as tools
| against healthy democracies/open states.
|
| edit: the passage
|
| > Among the few who saw the threat clearly was computer
| scientist Jaron Lanier, who, in 2010, warned the public of a
| new danger: WikiLeaks. At the time, free speech advocates
| were hailing WikiLeaks, and its founder, Julian Assange, as
| defenders of government transparency. Their lionization of
| the leaker organization was largely due to frustration with
| the criminal impunity of the Bush administration. In February
| 2010, soldier Chelsea Manning exposed war crimes by sending
| classified documents to WikiLeaks, which WikiLeaks then
| published online. The emphasis on civilian victims led human
| rights advocates to believe that WikiLeaks would prove a
| formidable opponent for autocratic regimes. But after
| WikiLeaks dropped hacked documents from the US State
| Department in November, Lanier predicted the opposite--that
| WikiLeaks would ultimately ally with dictators and that
| social media networks would abet them:
|
| >> The WikiLeaks method punishes a nation--or any human
| undertaking--that falls short of absolute, total
| transparency, which is all human undertakings, but perversely
| rewards an absolute lack of transparency. Thus an iron-shut
| government doesn't have leaks to the site, but a mostly-open
| government does.
|
| >> If the political world becomes a mirror of the Internet as
| we know it today, then the world will be restructured around
| opaque, digitally delineated power centers surrounded by a
| sea of chaotic, underachieving openness. WikiLeaks is one
| prototype of a digital power center, but others include hedge
| funds and social networking sites.
|
| >> This is the world we are headed to, it seems, since people
| are unable to resist becoming organized according to the
| digital architectures that connect us. The only way out is to
| change the architecture.
|
| > Social media sites didn't change the architecture. Instead,
| over the course of the 2010s, the architecture changed us.
| The calculus of post-Cold War politics--that democracy
| spreads through engagement, that technology enhances freedom
| --was reversed. Hostile states used digital technology not
| only to attack their own citizens but to attempt to transform
| foreign democracies into dictatorships. We saw this with
| Russian influence operations in elections in the United
| States, France, and in the Brexit referendum, among others.10
| The social media corporations that had once bragged of the
| internet's liberating power now helped the hijackers of
| democracy. Networks like Facebook abetted, whether
| intentionally or not, the "iron triangles" of organized
| crime, state corruption, and corporate criminality, and they
| were aided by complicit Western actors content to let their
| own countries die while turning a profit.
| ralph84 wrote:
| Lol no. The reason there is not as much damaging
| information leaked from dictatorships, is because any
| leakers are guaranteed to be executed. Reality Winner and
| Chelsea Manning would have been executed after a 30 minute
| show trial in a dictatorship.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Reality Winner and Chelsea Manning would have been
| executed after a 30 minute show trial in a dictatorship.
|
| And Snowden, having escaped overseas but not being
| particularly hidden, would have had an encounter with
| some kind of nerve agent delivered by someone _totally
| unconnected_ to the government he had leaked info from.
|
| None of which endorses the US treatment of any of them.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| That's not in contradiction of what I wrote. By their
| very nature transparent and healthy democracies have a
| larger surface attacks for leaks than dictatorships.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Lanier's smart, isn't he? It sounds like he was ahead of
| the curve, here.
| rbanffy wrote:
| A vehicle that publishes anything without restraint is
| just a loudspeaker. When Wikileaks got hold of leaked
| emails in the middle of a political smear campaign, I
| expected it to be better and delay the publishing.
| sonnyp wrote:
| I believe the reason you are getting down voted isn't
| because you don't cite your source, but because the
| reasoning is absurd. > You will always find
| more dirt and problems in public/accessible records than in
| dictatorships.
|
| Wikileaks isn't some sort Wikipedia of public/accessible
| records, it's a platform to publish confidential
| information.
|
| If the US gov is a healthy, democratic, open gov, how and
| why can Wikileaks be so damaging?
|
| Should we stop newspapers?
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > If the US gov is a healthy, democratic, open gov, how
| and why can Wikileaks be so damaging?
|
| Because we are still humans and fallible. No matter how
| healthy, open gov or democratic our governing bodies are
| I suppose there will always be something going off rails
| at some points and it's much easier to spot it in
| transparent governing structures (which usually means
| democracies) than in non-transparent ones (which usually
| means dictatorships).
|
| > > You will always find more dirt and problems in
| public/accessible records than in dictatorships.
|
| > Wikileaks isn't some sort Wikipedia of
| public/accessible records, it's a platform to publish
| confidential information.
|
| Yes, yes. But it's easier to feed wikileaks with
| information from democracies than from dictatorships.
|
| > I believe the reason you are getting down voted isn't
| because you don't cite your source, but because the
| reasoning is absurd.
|
| I am okay with downvotes ^^ as long as it's not a
| flamewar.
| sonnyp wrote:
| > Because we are still humans and fallible.
|
| Did you look at what Wikileaks revealed?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Leaks
|
| I don't think you realize the scale of what is happening.
| These aren't some cute human mistakes or tax evasion.
|
| We are talking war crimes, environmental disasters,
| political corruption, ...
|
| And yes - lots of it targets the US gov, maybe time to
| rethink what the US (and others) gov is and isn't ?
|
| This isn't the work of fallible humans, this is the work
| of malfunctioning states.
|
| Without Wikileaks, medias and investigation that reveals
| the wrongdoings ... dictatorship is at the end of the
| road.
|
| This is why the reasoning that Wikileaks helps
| dictatorships and hurts democracies is absurd.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > This is why the reasoning that Wikileaks helps
| dictatorships is absurd.
|
| I never wrote that nor implied it. I wrote and I maintain
| that wikileaks deals more blows to democracies than
| dictatorships and that it's because of the very nature of
| democracies (edit: notwithstanding the whole anti-US bias
| of Assange).
|
| I don't know how to make my point clearer:
|
| - Wikileaks's leaks are mainly about democracies, not
| dictatorships.
|
| - It creates tensions in these democracies and it does
| not in dictatorships.
|
| - This consumes resources and has consequences in
| democracies (civil unrest, lack of trust from the
| population, investigations, weakening of governments,
| tensions in relationships with other nations, etc.)
|
| - Whether it's a good thing or not, it's desirable or not
| doesn't change the fact that dictatorships are not
| diminished and are not the target of wikileaks while
| democracies are.
|
| > We are talking war crimes, environmental disasters,
| political corruption, ...
|
| And regarding my last point: I do not believe for a
| second that we should ignore those facts in order to
| appear strong or clean or whatever.
| [deleted]
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _wikileaks deals more blows to democracies than
| dictatorships_
|
| I think the central fallacy here is seeing the central
| operating principle of democracy, which is the informed
| public feeding their knowledge and judgement back in, as
| a blow to democracy. It is like a automotive mechanic
| saying "there's your problem, the fuel air mixture in
| your engine is exploding." The press reporting on the
| government is one link in democracy's central cycle.
|
| Your are right about seeing reporting as a blow to
| dictatorship, of course. In their case the action of an
| informed public really is a blow to the state, following
| the fact that the public is not part of the state.
|
| So in that light it's true that journalism does more to
| help free societies than it does to hurt dictatorships,
| since there's more of it in freer societies.
| slg wrote:
| >it's a platform to publish confidential information.
|
| Phrasing it like this is misleading as it implies that
| Wikileaks is a neutral platform, a dumb tool that acts at
| the leaker's discretion. That isn't what we see when we
| look at their actual behavior. They do not publish every
| leak they receive and therefore they have editorial
| control over their platform. Assange himself has said
| they have received leaks about the Trump campaign that
| they wouldn't publish. That shifts Wikileaks from a
| neutral platform to publish confidential information to a
| political entity that uses leaked confidential
| information to achieve political goals.
|
| EDIT: This is being downvoted so here is a source in
| which Assange talks about having leaked info about Trump
| and not publishing it.[1]
|
| [1] - https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-
| races/2934...
| namdnay wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're being downvoted so much, the point
| is definitely interesting
|
| Imagine a leak comes out about Putin (you don't have to
| imagine that hard..). It would hardly make any noise:
| there's no more free press to raise a stink about it, and
| the population is so used to swimming in the post-truth
| sewage spewing from the top that they'll just ignore it
| benmmurphy wrote:
| Our elites would be more secure and less embarrassed if
| they didn't have to deal with a free press but society is
| made up more than the elites and we need weigh the
| utility of the rest of society as well.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > I'm not sure why you're being downvoted so much, the
| point is definitely interesting
|
| I have observed a `shark smelling blood` thing going
| sometimes on HN. If the timing is right and if a child
| comment in an upvoted parent that is at the top of post
| gets one or two downvotes then it has some visibility and
| then it attracts downvote clicks. If there are 4 or 5
| other children they get ignored (I believe the last one
| gets all the downvote because people parse from top to
| bottom and only bother interacting with first or last
| elements... so some posts will get buried while others
| will sail through) _shrug_ , it might be all in my head
| though ;).
| h_anna_h wrote:
| His crime was that he ran hashcat
| https://blog.erratasec.com/2019/04/assange-indicted-for-
| brea...
|
| > Had he just been accepting docs as he was initially that
| would have been fine.
|
| They would just invent something else.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| >The crime he's charged with is that he was willing to (and I
| think did?) assist in breaking into a computer system to get
| the docs. I think under the CFAA. They have communication
| records of this because the person he was talking to was
| working for the USG.
|
| The US government claims this, but it's not been proven.
|
| > _At some point Russia was also using Wikileaks as a place
| to target the USG with some plausible deniability and
| Assange's personal anti-US politics became a corrupting
| influence too._
|
| This is just more Russiagate nonsense:
| https://pics.me.me/russiagate-explained-wikileaks-posted-
| the...
|
| > _To what extent were the sex related charges against him
| political or flared up by nation state meddling?_
|
| There are no charges. There never were any charges. There was
| an investigation and that's as far as it went.
|
| > _UPDATE GREAT NEWS: Swedish prosecutors are about to
| announce the dropping of the investigation into Julian
| Assange on sexual offence allegations. There never were any
| charges and the allegations were always nonsense, as detailed
| in the below article I wrote a month ago:_
|
| https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/05/no-rape-
| char...
| fossuser wrote:
| I think you're overconfident in what you believe to be true
| based on the evidence that exists.
|
| The Russian bit can be politically inconvenient for you and
| yet also be true.
| pstuart wrote:
| It is interesting that apparently the GOP's email server
| was hacked as well, but nothing was ever released
| publicly. I'm no fan at all of the DNC but if "all
| politicians are dirty" is a thing, then why did no dirt
| spill out from the other side?
|
| Was it more valuable as kompromat?
| nnvcxsstb wrote:
| Let's see your source for the claim that the GOP server
| was hacked
| pstuart wrote:
| Assumptions are be made, yes. But my comment was not
| intended to be tribalistic -- shit's being hacked
| everywhere.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2017/01/russia-hacked-older-
| republican...
| https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/04/exclusive-
| emails-o...
|
| If WikiLeaks is about exposing corruption doesn't it seem
| like they'd do so across party lines?
|
| I don't trust either party but I also don't trust
| WikiLeaks to be operating without agenda as well.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| You've provided nothing suggesting Wikileaks was offered
| the RNC hack and chose not to publish it.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Yup. Looks like it still is. You don't burn your own
| people unless they are very bad.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Also note that, at that time, the Trump organisation was
| running an EOL'ed MS Exchange server. It's reasonable to
| assume it was vulnerable and that all information it
| contained was leaked.
| zionic wrote:
| Highly misleading. The DNC's mail servers got hacked and
| they got everything done
|
| The "RNC hack" was one guy's old laptop with a years out
| of date local outlook db. Not even in the same league.
| pstuart wrote:
| > The "RNC hack" was one guy's old laptop with a years
| out of date local outlook db.
|
| You have proof of that? This says otherwise.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/obama-russia-
| election-...
|
| I'm replying for the sake of challenging your statement
| but I know it's likely not possible to have an honest
| discussion about it because you appear to be taking a
| partisan stance. I have no love for either party, and
| even if I did love the Dems, I'd be more than happy to
| acknowledge any and all failings of theirs.
|
| Can you say the same thing?
| [deleted]
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _The Russian bit can be politically inconvenient for
| you and yet also be true._
|
| I'm not sure how it's politically inconvenient for me
| when I'm a registered Pacific Green.
|
| People need to stop "thinking" in false dichotomies like
| left vs right or liberal vs. conservative. Astrology is
| six times smarter.
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm not sure how it's politically inconvenient for me
| when I'm a registered Pacific Green.
|
| The West being less hostile to and more willing to
| collaborate with Russia is a frequent position promoted
| in Pacific Green circles; Russia being tied to active
| hostile activity against Western regimes is politically
| inconvenient to that message.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| >The West being less hostile to and more willing to
| collaborate with Russia is a frequent position promoted
| in Pacific Green circles
|
| Pure DNC propaganda. Zero basis in reality.
| extra88 wrote:
| I assume by "Pacific Green" you mean the Pacific Green
| Party of Oregon. A quote from the party platform:
|
| > We the People must: [...] End the cold war with Iran
| and the resurgent cold war with Russia, forestall the
| emerging economic war with China, and withdraw from NATO.
|
| You might argue that this doesn't require being more
| willing to collaborate with Russia but it absolutely
| means being less hostile to Russia.
|
| https://www.pacificgreens.org/platform
| landemva wrote:
| I had not heard of that political party. Those positions
| seem smart and reasonable for a country drowning in
| deficit spending.
|
| Withdraw from NATO would be a good start.
|
| The not-to-be-praised former President attempted troop
| drawdown from Germany, which was quickly reversed earlier
| this year.
| fossuser wrote:
| Doesn't have to be left vs. right.
|
| Politically motivated reasoning can come from any party
| or person.
|
| The comic's content suggested some anti-Hillary
| sentiment, that paired with "Russiagate" suggested some
| pro-Bernie political lean, Green Party probably fits with
| that? Aren't they more hard-left?
|
| Sister reply is also relevant.
| rendall wrote:
| Extraordinary claims (Trump colludes with Russians,
| Russians hack DNC) requires extraordinary evidence. In
| over 5 years, this has not been presented.
| belltaco wrote:
| Plenty of evidence has been shown for this part:
|
| >Russians hack DNC
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Nope: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-
| challenge-r...
| extra88 wrote:
| Yep.
|
| The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has
| members who have done good work for the public and the
| country. However, the memo referenced in your link did
| not even have the backing all the group's members and its
| arguments have been persuasively criticized.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veteran_Intelligence_Profes
| sio...
| rendall wrote:
| These results are debatable and inconclusive, which is
| the entire point. If you're going to accuse a sitting
| President of collusion, you had best have all your ducks
| in a row. Anything less can be perceived as, or even be
| indeed, partisan hackery.
| extra88 wrote:
| Why are you bringing up Trump? This is about whether
| Russians hacked the DNC's email, that doesn't require
| collusion or even awareness from the Trump campaign.
|
| But since you did bring him up, it reminded me that in
| July 2016, weeks after the DNC announced being breached,
| he publicly called on Russia to release information about
| Clinton. Candidate Donald J. Trump, verbally and in
| writing, called on a foreign government to interfere with
| the presidential campaign against his opponent; doing it
| in public doesn't make it okay.
|
| "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find
| the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will
| probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if
| that happens. [...] By the way, they hacked -- they
| probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do. They
| probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted
| because you'd see some beauties there. So let's see."
|
| I don't think "collusion" is the right term for what he
| did (the attempts to access emails had started in March);
| I don't know what the right term is, I just know it's not
| okay.
| rendall wrote:
| No. There isn't. There are lots of people saying they
| have evidence and referring to other people who say no
| its true they really have evidence. When you dig it's
| just circular self-references all the way down.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > this has not been presented.
|
| s/presented/investigated
|
| There's a lot of things to investigate
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-
| helpe... but since the whole world saw what happened on
| the 6th and what did not after I don't think there'll
| ever be evidences extraordinary enough to act on any kind
| of claims.
| nnvcxsstb wrote:
| What happened on the sixth? You mean the Reichstag Fire?
|
| https://greenwald.substack.com/p/questions-about-the-
| fbis-ro...
|
| The whole world saw what the FBI wanted them to see on
| the sixth. Time will tell what actually happened.
| rendall wrote:
| Lots of "evidence" in the form of breathless articles
| quoting anonymous sources who say they really have a
| smoking gun. This evidence is convincing only to those
| who are inclined to believe it. What we need is
| _extraordinary_ evidence that is unambiguously convincing
| to everyone. That we do not have
| fossuser wrote:
| They traced it back to the IRA and named the specific
| people involved on the Russian side and the method (email
| phish of Podesta).
|
| The Mueller report goes into specific detail or you can
| listen to the lawfare blog podcast that goes through it.
|
| "Collusion" is a poorly defined term, the report found
| their actions didn't rise to the level of criminal
| conspiracy, but there was plenty of evidence that the
| campaign was interested in support and responded to it
| ("collusion").
|
| Donald Trump Jr. just didn't realize Russia was
| interested in getting the Magnitsky act revoked when he
| took the meeting and he was disappointed when the
| Russians didn't have the "emails" (from the private
| server, not the DNC emails). The Russians thought they
| could manipulate their self-imposed orphan adoption ban
| issue, but DTJ didn't care about orphans.
|
| American intelligence agencies (or any intelligence
| agency) are not going to provide you with the precise
| methods they use to determine where the attack came from.
|
| I suspect no evidence will meet your extraordinary
| standard because you're only looking for evidence that
| supports an existing position based primarily on
| political motivated reasoning and cognitive bias.
| rendall wrote:
| > _I suspect no evidence will meet your extraordinary
| standard because you're only looking for evidence that
| supports an existing position based primarily_
|
| Let's s start with even minimal evidence before we get to
| worrying about my cognitive biases.
|
| Read #8 in this article:
| https://taibbi.substack.com/p/aaugh-a-brief-list-of-
| official...
|
| _" Shawn Henry of Crowdstrike, testifying in secret to
| congress, ... saying there was not "concrete evidence
| that data was exfiltrated from the DNC,""_
| joshuamorton wrote:
| You've already been provided and discarded more than
| minimal evidence.
|
| For example, in the muller report, a more extensive
| investigation, the specific hacking unit is identified.
| Whether or not crowdstrike knew in 2017 doesn't matter.
| Today we know APT-28 was responsible, and they're members
| of the GRU.
| extra88 wrote:
| The claims are not extraordinary. The Trump Tower meeting
| [0] is clear evidence Trump campaign members' interest in
| colluding with foreign agents. Donald Trump personally
| had a fig leaf of deniability about that meeting but in
| interviews [1] he expressed his willingness to collude.
|
| The Trump campaign, at minimum Paul Manafort, colluded
| with agents of Russia [2].
|
| I'm not going to research how strong the public evidence
| that Russia was behind the DNC hack but again, it's not
| an extraordinary claim. [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_meeting
| [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/id-exclusive-
| interview-trump-listen-foreigners-offered-
| dirt/story?id=63669304 [2]
| https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-paul-manafort-
| russia-campaigns-konstantin-
| kilimnik-d2fdefdb37077e28eba135e21fce6ebf
| rendall wrote:
| Before you continue with a flood of poor and
| circumstantial evidence that's hard to sort through and
| falsify, the claim that a President colludes with a
| foreign power is extraordinary.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Not at all. In wealthy enough circles, power has no
| nationality. This is just capitalism in action. Where it
| gets interesting is the ways that power can take
| advantage of HUNGER for power and money. Trump was a
| kompromat machine, but remarkably easy to influence as
| the guy doesn't care about anybody or anything other than
| himself. He doesn't even particularly care about the
| Republican Party, then or now.
| extra88 wrote:
| If that's "a flood," you must live in a very dry place.
| A. He wasn't president at the time. B. While it's
| natural to assume that a candidate is aware of, and is
| ultimately responsible for, everything his campaign does,
| I've distinguished between his campaign colluding and
| Trump personally colluding. C. Everything that has
| already been made public about the campaign makes further
| claims that are less well documented not extraordinary.
|
| > poor and circumstantial evidence that's hard to sort
| through and falsify
|
| Allow me to spoon-feed an important part to you. Don Jr.
| publicly released emails about the Trump Tower meeting,
| those are real and not circumstantial evidence in his
| desire to collude and others in the campaign attended the
| meeting with foreknowledge of this. Google 'don jr "i
| love it"' and there are a zillion news stories about
| them, I don't know how you missed them at the time. An
| NPR story linked to a complete PDF [0] of what Don Jr
| released. Here's the beginning of a NY Times story [1]
| about them:
|
| > The June 3, 2016, email sent to Donald Trump Jr. could
| hardly have been more explicit: One of his father's
| former Russian business partners had been contacted by a
| senior Russian government official and was offering to
| provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton.
|
| > The documents "would incriminate Hillary and her
| dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your
| father," read the email, written by a trusted
| intermediary, who added, "This is obviously very high
| level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and
| its government's support for Mr. Trump."
|
| > If the future president's eldest son was surprised or
| disturbed by the provenance of the promised material --
| or the notion that it was part of a continuing effort by
| the Russian government to aid his father's campaign -- he
| gave no indication.
|
| > He replied within minutes: "If it's what you say I love
| it especially later in the summer." [0]
| https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3892196/Donald-
| Trump-Jr-Email-Exchange.pdf [1]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/trump-
| russia-email-clinton.html
| rendall wrote:
| And there you go with the exact flood I predicted.
|
| Here is my reply. Simple.
|
| https://taibbi.substack.com/p/aaugh-a-brief-list-of-
| official...
| [deleted]
| extra88 wrote:
| This strikes me as whataboutism. It has nothing to do
| with the message to which you replied.
|
| Your link is primarily about the press being
| insufficiently skeptical about sources in stories related
| to foreign intelligence. At yet it contains lines like
| this:
|
| > No matter what, the clear aim of this report is to cast
| certain stories about Joe or Hunter Biden as
| misinformation, _when the evidence more likely shows_
| that material like the Hunter Biden emails is real, just
| delivered from a disreputable source. [emphasis added]
|
| Taibbi is revealing his bias at the same time he's
| claiming bias influenced the contents of a report.
|
| I'm all for healthy skepticism in the public and
| especially as a part of journalists doing their jobs.
| Journalists absolutely consider what sources have to gain
| or what axes they may have to grid. But reflexively
| assuming anything from the government is a lie is just as
| bad as assuming it's true. And when there's a public
| statement or report, that _is_ news and needs to be
| reported on.
| rendall wrote:
| The guidelines require assumption of good faith. So, if
| we look at the same evidence and I find it lacking, your
| first goto assumption should not be "well, you have a
| cognitive bias while I am free of such".
|
| > _reflexively assuming anything from the government is a
| lie_
|
| While true, this is a non-sequitur. "The government" is
| not a monolith. Some in "the government" insist that
| Russia hacked the DNC, usually Democrats, while others in
| "the government" insist that it's nonsense
| philjohn wrote:
| The bar for extradition doesn't require the US to prove it
| - the only place they need to prove it is in court when
| he's in the US.
|
| And "Russiagate" is a bit more nuanced than that -
| Wikileaks claimed to have GOP emails as well but for some
| reason never released them.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _Wikileaks claimed to have GOP emails as well but for
| some reason never released them._
|
| [citation needed]
| extra88 wrote:
| I haven't heard that claim before either.
|
| The Wikipedia sources for the DNC hack article [0] say
| the RNC wasn't successfully hacked. "GOP" refers to the
| entire Republican Party so I suppose there could be
| emails from a different Republican origin than the RNC.
|
| > intelligence organizations additionally concluded
| Russia attempted to hack the Republican National
| Committee (RNC) as well as the DNC but were prevented by
| security defenses on the RNC network.
|
| Searching for a source for the GOP claim did remind me of
| internal WikiLeaks messages from 2015 showing at least
| Assange's preference for the GOP over Hilary Clinton.
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_Nationa
| l_Committee_email_leak#United_States_intelligence_conclus
| ions [1]
| https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-
| wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/
| slg wrote:
| Emails specifically? I'm not sure if that has ever been
| confirmed, but this is directly from Assange[1]:
|
| >"We do have some information about the Republican
| campaign," he said Friday, according to The Washington
| Post.
|
| >"I mean, it's from a point of view of an investigative
| journalist organization like WikiLeaks, the problem with
| the Trump campaign is it's actually hard for us to
| publish much more controversial material than what comes
| out of Donald Trump's mouth every second day," Assange
| said.
|
| When it comes to leaks about Democrats, everything is
| worth publishing. When it comes to leaks about
| Republicans, it needs to "controversial" to be worth
| publishing.
|
| [1] - https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-
| races/2934...
| [deleted]
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| >The charges stem from the allegation that Assange attempted
| and failed to crack a password hash so that Chelsea Manning
| could use a different username to download classified documents
| and avoid detection.[41] This allegation had been known since
| 2011 and was a factor in Manning's trial; the indictment did
| not reveal any new information about Assange.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Julia...
|
| I don't believe it counts as journalism if you help someone
| commit a crime- that's the crux of the issue. Notice that real
| journalists who are passive receivers of information do not get
| criminally charged.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >what is the general accusation of his crimes?
|
| Realistically, he simply pissed off members of the ruling class
| of the US. Their presence has become significantly more obvious
| in recent years.
|
| Other than that, I'd say it's mostly a 'show me the man, I'll
| show you the crime' sort of thing.
| wyck wrote:
| Rats tend to be complete sociopath's and in many cases
| psychopaths, the police need to be held more accountable for
| onboarding these personalities instead of covering their own
| asses. There are several cases in Canada in which paid informants
| lied for years (decades) causing massive harm, and 2 cases which
| ended in mass murder, while still on police payroll. Yet the
| police somehow wash their hands of it all.
| tgv wrote:
| In this case, he was diagnosed as such. The article claims he
| simply did it to avoid prosecution.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I am shocked, shocked I tell you.
|
| Same with ridiculous rape charges. The spooks must have scared
| that poor woman to death. I guess that what you get for exposing
| major war crimes by the good guys.
|
| He is alive but his life is ruined and Bradley is a woman. Yay
| for justice
|
| Edit: I really don't understand the downvotes. What, exactly, do
| you find objectionable?
| hedora wrote:
| The woman never accused Assange of rape. The police did, over
| her objections. The UN special rapporteur's report goes into
| more detail, though the UN has produced so many documents
| detailing all the ways in which his detention is illegal, I
| can't find the right link.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| You don't have to dead name trans people. Chelsea Manning chose
| her name, please respect that.
| [deleted]
| beebeepka wrote:
| What I am saying is that Manning was forced to take that path
|
| I actually have had sex, multiple times, with trans people.
| Careful with your assumptions. I find your response offensive
| elif wrote:
| your sexual preferences and personal offense are irrelevant
| and the rule you are debating has about as close to
| consensus acceptance as you will find in the queer space.
|
| If you indeed think "dead naming" is something someone made
| up for an internet comment, you are missing a large portion
| of the picture.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Forgive me for saying that I find that a person would
| change their gender after being imprisoned and tortured
| rather suspicious
|
| If you take that as some kind of attack on trans people,
| that's on you
| dang wrote:
| You've been posting tons of flamewar and/or unsubstantive
| comments to HN. That's not cool here and we ban accounts
| that do it, so if you'd please stop doing it, we'd be
| grateful.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| tootie wrote:
| This article seems awfully biased. Calling him a sociopath isn't
| very objective.
| chmod775 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > According to a psychiatric assessment presented to the court
| Thordarson was diagnosed as a sociopath
| DevKoala wrote:
| Is there any way to vote against the current way the FBI/CIA
| operates? They are straight up coercing witnesses with fake
| testimonies to get a man prison, whose only crime was sharing the
| truth about the shameful inner workings of our American
| government.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Vote for the party which is most critical on them.
|
| Currently Republicans though it used to be the Democrats.
|
| Embedding undercover agitators in radical groups goes on all
| the time I'm sure. It's valuable but very easily abused, too.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| > Is there any way to vote against the current way the FBI/CIA
| operates?
|
| The SES is more equal than you, citizen.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senior_Executive_Service_(Unit...
| deadite wrote:
| This sounds like a very anti-American sentiment. You don't get
| to air the dirty laundry of a country trying to keep a lid on
| chaos because they do something you don't like now and then. I
| want to know that the intelligence agencies, and the military
| that safe guard us, are able and willing to go to any length to
| preserve our way of living, even if it means they overstep. Not
| just one country, but all Five Eyes and then some. Because if
| they don't, there are actors all over the world who will take
| advantage of any "shame" and use it as a weapon until they
| subjugate you to their rule. Look at Russia and China for great
| examples of that. If you think the things these agencies do are
| so bad that they need to be voted against, you have no idea how
| bad things really are. So no, Assange's "only crime" wasn't
| "sharing the truth about the shameful inner workings of our
| American government." There's nothing to be ashamed about. He
| should be thankful he's still alive, and you should be thankful
| you can post this kind of a sentiment without having any
| repercussionary fear. Hope for your sake that it doesn't
| change.
| cmckn wrote:
| This is insane, "even if they overstep"? No one is above the
| law. What's more American than democratic accountability?
| Telling American citizens to stop asking questions is
| appalling.
| pope_meat wrote:
| Reading this comment gave me anxiety.
|
| Liberty is unchecked authority.
|
| That's a take.
| [deleted]
| neolog wrote:
| I have so many questions about your background and
| upbringing.
| sketchyj wrote:
| That's a lot of words but you didn't answer the question. The
| CIA and FBI are not accountable to Americans. You may be a
| fan of, or even work for, these institutions. But they are
| unaccountable and authoritarian and opaque.
| eternalban wrote:
| The interesting question to ask is to whom are they
| accountable.
| slipframe wrote:
| > _This sounds like a very anti-American sentiment_
|
| Chilling words...
| Dah00n wrote:
| If that is "very anti-American sentiment" I'll bet a beer (or
| 10) that 99% of the earth share that "anti-American
| sentiment".
| sb057 wrote:
| Vote for politicians who will pass laws that dictate how they
| are to operate. Alternatively, if it is an avenue in your
| state, start a referendum to pass a state law calling for a
| Constitutional Convention (requires 34 states) to pass an
| amendment to deal with it.
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