So far it's less interesting than that. I get the idea of stretching the release out to maintain interest and let, perhaps, a topic be a focus for a week at a time.
But this is getting tiresome. The talk about this has been going on for months now. And now it's October and the only thing we've got is that something's going to be released.
They're going to lose any interest very quickly because of this unless it's truly damning material.
That could be part of it, but I figure most of the people who are interested in WL already have a problem with HRC. While all those who love her won't change there opinions.
Those who hate Trump also won't change their opinions, regardless of what they think about Clinton. It's a choice between "at worst, try again in four years for real improvement" and "this is the end".
Hmm... depending on your point of view, I guess either of those options could apply to either candidate. We've become way too polarised.
Funnily enough, so many people are so polarised that anyone who can prevent themselves from being polarised is more powerful; they're the vote that politicians are battling each other for!
Yeah, but turns out some of us are in unexpected swing states. Georgia, of all places, was leaning Clinton for a bit. And Trump's lead isn't insurmountable, polling 4.3% above Clinton right now [0]. She probably won't win here, but it's unusual that she even held the lead at all. His drop, and her rise, on those trend charts corresponds with the first debate and its aftermath. It could be enough to pull things in her favor if she keeps bad press limited and the focus on him and wins the next two debates. A very unusual election year here.
Plus WikiLeaks' own reputation took a pretty nasty hit with the Turkish email release; it didn't contain any kind of deep state secrets, but did open up a treasure trove of information that could be used to persecute already-disadvantaged people:
Journalists and anti-censorship activists who I am in touch with in Turkey have been combing through the leaked documents, and I am not aware of anything “newsworthy” being uncovered. According to the collective searching capacity of long-term activists and journalists in Turkey, none of the “Erdogan emails” appear to be emails actually from Erdogan or his inner circle. Nobody seems to be able to find a smoking gun exposing people in positions of power and responsibility. This doesn’t rule out something eventually emerging, but there have been several days of extensive searching.
However, WikiLeaks also posted links on social media to its millions of followers via multiple channels to a set of leaked massive databases containing sensitive and private information of millions of ordinary people, including a special database of almost all adult women in Turkey.
Yes — this “leak” actually contains spreadsheets of private, sensitive information of what appears to be every female voter in 79 out of 81 provinces in Turkey, including their home addresses and other private information, sometimes including their cellphone numbers.
Plus the DNC leak created a strong impression in many peoples' minds that it was a deliberate attempt by a foreign power (guess who...) to try to tip the US election to the candidate they favored (hint: name rhymes with "Ronald Rump"). So there's some irony if WikiLeaks is now going to publish allegations of someone else influencing the election.
WikiLeaks also posted links on social media to its millions of followers via multiple channels to a set of leaked massive databases containing sensitive and private information of millions of ordinary people, including a special database of almost all adult women in Turkey.
The remarkable thing about this is that, almost universally, the media organisations who claim this condemns Wikileaks support the person who actually uploaded all that personal information and gave everyone the link, claiming it was something else. Some of them, like Wired, have even argued he did absolutely nothing wrong. It's almost like no-one actually cares about that sensitive information being exposed to the world, just attacking Wikileaks.
The guy who uploaded it (IIRC) also later took down the original upload and said he regretted what he'd done.
WL... not so much with the regrets. That can make a big difference in how people react; "I realize I did a bad thing and now feel bad about it" gets sympathy while doubling down doesn't.
Assange says he plans to release amazing, controversial, perception shattering documents, yes? Well, I plan to make a fortune in screenwriting and music, buy a white Lamborghini Countach, a house on Maui next door to Willie Nelson, and get a pet Wallaby. In this context I'm pretty certain the odds are about equal. Please pardon my tongue-in-cheek cynicism regarding the significance of Wikileaks releases vs. the seeming pathological need for attention by its founder.
He may be in need of attention but his organisation performs a task that is - sadly - critical to our democracy. They have leaked information that mass media would otherwise not have been anywhere close to exposing.
I too doubt that they have anything that significant for the election but I will give them the benefit of the doubt based on their prior important work. I also understand that they release information bit by bit. If it was released all at once, mass media would not have a chance to report on all of it.
> They have leaked information that mass media would otherwise not have been anywhere close to exposing.
Is there a specific case you're thinking of? For instance, with the DNC leaks, or with Chelsea Manning's leaks, I believe that the information relevant to the public interest would have been disclosed by any reputable major news outlet (NYT, WashPo, ...) that received it, so long as its authenticity could be verified.
I prefer that leakers go to traditional journalists (à la Snowden) rather than WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has a track record of creating collateral damage with its disclosures; for example, exposing SSNs and credit card numbers of people who happened to be donors to the DNC and who were otherwise uninvolved with the shenanigans going on. A responsible, ethical journalist would take care to exclude personal information that is tangential to the actual public interest.
To be fair, Assange doesn't seem to release personally identifying information because of malice, but rather his stated fear of the leaks being thrown out in court due to WikiLeaks tampering. He purposefully releases documents in full to prevent evidence-related loopholes closed in court.
Perhaps, but it is also tainted with, to me, inexplicable craving for attention using methods that aren't aligned with the espoused higher calling of Wikileaks - as in the Sony hack content. That, to me, significantly damaged the remaining credibility of the organization. It may not resonate the same way for everyone, that's fine, I just sincerely disliked that situation.
> That, to me, significantly damaged the remaining credibility of the organization.
WikiLeaks is a media organisation so it will crave for attention as all media does. But please name one single case in which data released by WikiLeaks was bogus.
On the other hand I could bring up hundreds of cases where main stream media has released fake information.
So how exactly do you decide who has credibility and who does not?
When the DNC leaked happened, no news paper talked about it. It was just politics and that is not news. The odds that political intrigues is talked about is about equal to the odds that a movie of a cat will be watched online. Such content is neither earth shattering or interesting, and public opinion on the two US candidates is already so low that it can't possible go down more. Even if they released video recording of one of the candidates ordering an assassination, the odds is fairly low that even a single vote will change.
The DNC Leaks made wikileaks a huge part of the counter culture. I was in Phildelphia when the DNC protests happened. I couldn't believe how many Bernie supports said "wikileaks" at least once.
It always blows my mind how much people like Assange and Snowden and Musk get attacked for trying to make the world better while the countless number of corrupt cowards that are in power come off relatively unscathed by these types of criticisms, at least on Hacker News. Why? Why would you attack someone who is trying to democratize power and uncover corruption? Even if the person in question has character flaws, that is by far low on the priority list for reasons to go after someone.
Can you really look at the circus Assange is creating, and the way he plans to dribble out documents starting a month before an election, and conclude he is acting ethically and altruistically? No.
Yes wikileaks has done very good things for the world. No, Assange is not the moral actor he claims to be.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. IMO, while Wikileaks is certainly not on some untouchable moral high ground, they do good things and that's worth it for the bs Assange etc pull from time to time.
Why would the timing indicate him not acting ethically? He might just realize that information leaks are time sensitive, that when you release them is almost as important as what they contain.
If your objective is to inform the public, you get the information out with time to spare so it can be investigated and objectively assessed. If your objective is to sway the public, you release at a time of greatest impact where people's reaction to the accusations and implications will drive their actions, instead of the complete facts of the matter, which it would be silly to assume Wikileaks could provide (there's always context that can be added).
I'm not convinced one way or the other on whether Assange & Wikileaks are making the world better, but there's no denying that they've released some pretty surprising and/or significant things in the past. I find it strange to question whether someone can do something they've already done several times over.
Arguably, we would not have known about the mass trampling of our 4th Amendment rights were it not for Snowden. How could you deny the inherent merit in that?
Well, I know it's an unpopular view, but I think the US government doing that was okay. I don't pretend that's grounded in principle; I don't think that other governments should be able to do it, or that there was no potential for abuse. I think the national security rationale for the programme was valid. (perhaps not in law, I acknowledge)
I agree completely that the leak was very significant, but my preference (I think; not 100%) would be that Snowden hadn't leaked.
> It always blows my mind how much people like Assange and Snowden and Musk get attacked for trying to make the world better
Lots of evil is done in the name of "trying to make the world better". Its not unreasonable for people to be more interested in what they see your actions as likely to produce (and what they see that you reasonably should have known that they were likely to produce) than what you intended them to produce.
(And that's even before getting into the fact that "better" is subjective and one person's better can easily be another person's dystopian nightmare.)
We've got this basically figured out. The differentiator is whether their actions engender voluntary cooperation (leaving themselves open to competition) or whether their actions underwrite a quest for singular control over others.
Musk is worrisome because after the innovation honeymoon is over, he could easily end up functioning as a closed-world promulgating autarch - just as Gates and Jobs did.
But Assange and Snowden? Their very popularity is founded on forcing open centralized amalgamations of power. They have localized power and surely an assortment of groupies etc, but these structures simply cannot scale to dominate a medium city, never mind the world.
So even if they are run-of-the-mill psychopaths playing their roles solely for self-advancement, the possible damage they can do is quite limited compared to say any unnamed multinational executive.
Capitalism created a Schelling point for getting useful public goods from self-interested parties. Compared to the prior most-lucrative path of government (likely via revolution), it raised the average amount of control for everyone while constraining the maximum control a winner could obtain. The general belief in free exchange of information advances this cooperation point to even smaller power structures, leaving the supernodes with even less privileged leverage over the rest of us.
Not saying they've not changed the world, but I find it an awful tall order comparing Snowden and Assange with Musk. Two of them fought the system by breaking the laws. One of them is likely the greatest entrepreneur in the history of business and wants to do world changing things for us as a species.
Again, not against the former two, but I don't think that is an apt comparison whatsoever.
The quickest example comes to mind is how much of a douchey move this is from Assange:
And how Snowden was a patriot for uncovering the omniscient warrantless wiretapping, but he also released the means and methods for how the NSA does literally their job in hacking foreign intelligence targets.
The reason Assange publishes documents which may contain personally identifying information is a philosophical one. Unlike Snowden, who advocates censoring documents before release, Assange maintains that censorship can discredit documents in the court of law (tampering with evidence) and therefore abstains from doing so.
"Douchey" or not is for you to decide, but you're right that Assange's philosophy to release untampered documents causes collateral damage. It's a tough call, honestly: would you have your leaked documents' contents nullified in court due to censorship or risk collateral damage (identity theft) and maintain your leaked documents' impact as evidence in a court of law (which could potentially lead to the prosecution of a criminal)?
If leaked-but-redacted documents were of interest for a prosecution, couldn’t the originals be obtained by subpoena, either to WikiLeaks or (preferably) their original source?
The idea that releasing documents uncensored has anything to do with courts is nonsense. Assange claims to be doing journalism. You know what a court can do when a real journalist publishes redacted materials? Ask for unredacted copies.
Publishing unredacted documents does help sell their authenticity to the general public but I think too often the harm is too great, especially to innocent parties.
It's like a receipt for a vote. It seems reasonable in the beginning...
But what if Wikileaks waited to be asked... Who do they give the docs to? Just courts, or interested civilians? If the former, how does that help citizens know what's going on, and if the later, what's the difference between just releasing it and selectively releasing it? This also requires people risk their freedom to request the full version.
And more critically, that means to prevent the publishing of full documents you simply need to kill the messenger.
Running Wikileaks the other way wouldn't be useful and still wouldn't appease the wrong-doers.
The uncensored documents could be provided to courts and legal agents (civilian and government) if requested, while leaving the censored ones available to the public and media. Censorship is not, itself, a destructive act with respect to the original material.
> Assange says he plans to release amazing, controversial, perception shattering documents, yes? ... the seeming pathological need for attention by its founder.
Didn't he already do this? And not just once, but many times. In fact his releases have been so controversial that he has the "privilege" to live in an embassy while hearing via media politicians (mostly Democrats) calling for his death or even "droning" him. (Hillary suggested that)
Could it be that you are just a Hillary supporter that is afraid he could release something damaging about her?
> In fact his releases have been so controversial that he has the "privilege" to live in an embassy
That seems to have more to do with his refusal to face the music on rape charges than his releases.
> while hearing via media politicians (mostly Democrats) calling for his death
For most of the time since WikiLeaks involvement in the publishing the Manning docs, the calls for his punishment, including by the most drastic means, have been bipartisan but stronger on the Republican side. The Republicans changed their tune after Assange participated in the release of the DNC hack recently, but its somewhat revisionist to pretend that history started just a few weeks ago.
> That seems to have more to do with his refusal to face the music on rape charges than his releases.
Assange surely is a conspiracy theorist to hide in the embassy when politicians publicly call for his death and his main informant Manning was placed into 24/7 solitary confinement which could only be described as torture.
> the calls for his punishment, including by the most drastic means, have been bipartisan but stronger on the Republican side
Okay, then please name a Republican that has called for killing Assange.
Mike Huckabee called for Assange's execution, and said that execution was "too kind a penalty" for Manning for actually leaking the information published by WikiLeaks.
Sara Palin called Assange an "anti-American operative with blood on his hands" who should "pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders".
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) called for Assange to be tried for espionage and for WikiLeaks to be designated, treated, and combatted as a terrorist organization.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) described Assange as a "high-tech terrorist"
Newt Gingrich declared that "Julian Assange is engaged in warfare. [...] And Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism." and that "He should be treated as an enemy combatant and WikiLeaks should be closed down permanently and decisively."
I have a lot of problems with Assange but his concern is plausible. The U.S. and Sweden have an extradition treaty and the U.S. likely wants to prosecute him for his collaboration with Manning on her exfiltration of classified materials. Their chat logs are pretty good evidence that Assange went way beyond what a journalist's 1st Amendment rights would protect.
Politicians calling for his death is just grandstanding. In fact, the possibility of the death penalty is probably the only thing that would keep Sweden from extraditing him.
> I have a lot of problems with Assange but his concern is plausible. The U.S. and Sweden have an extradition treaty and the U.S. likely wants to prosecute him for his collaboration with Manning on her exfiltration of classified materials.
The U.S. and the U.K. also have an extradition treaty, so the existence of a U.S.-Sweden extradition treaty doesn't really do much to enhance the plausibility of a double-extradition plot where Sweden extradites him from the U.K. on rape charges only as a ruse to get him into Sweden where he can be extradited to the U.S. on some other charges. (If the U.K. was a country that had no extradition treaty with the U.S. and was particularly resistant to U.S. extradition, then a double-extradition plot might be plausible.)
Assange is not in the U.K., he's in Ecuador. Specifically, the Ecuadoran embassy in London.
Now the U.S. and Ecuador also have a treaty but I don't read lawyer well enough, especially not old-timey lawyer, to know whether it would apply to anything Assange might be charged with. It does say it "shall not be applicable to crimes or offences of a political character" and I'm sure that's how Assange would characterize it (and I think that's at least partially why Ecuador has been housing him).
But the U.S. hasn't charged him with anything so there's nothing for Ecuador to extradite him for yet. In any case, the claim is a nice excuse to avoid jail in Sweden.
Even if all of that were true, Assange is NOT a US citizen. He cannot go beyond a journalist's 1st Amendment right and he also cannot be a traitor to the US. He is an Australian that operates from outside the US by publishing (often secret) material that his sent to him by whistleblowers without any coercion or payment.
I never said anything about treason. I assume "espionage" would be the jist of whatever he'd be charged with. In a U.S. court, the 1st Amendment would apply to him as much as a citizen. Are you suggesting the U.S. hasn't charged him with anything because there is nothing they can charge him with?
I don't know about his other leaks but there's evidence that he communicated with, arguably collaborated with and advised, Manning before Manning copied the classified material. If Manning just sent the material to Wikileaks, Assange would be in the clear (e.g. the Pentagon Papers, Trump's 1995 tax return info this week). Maybe it's not a solid enough case to be sure of a conviction, I doubt the U.S. would want to take a chance on it, but it's not like there's nothing there.
> Even if all of that were true, Assange is NOT a US citizen. He cannot go beyond a journalist's 1st Amendment right and he also cannot be a traitor to the US.
No one has suggested charging him with treason. He certainly can be guilty of espionage against the US without being a citizen.
(And his citizenship is irrelevant to whether he can exceed the protection of the 1st Amendment, since that applies whether or not he is a citizen with regard to government action such as prosecution for espionage.)
Entirely off-topic, but I find it interesting and amusing that we can fairly squarely date ourselves with references like this. I grew up with a Lamborghini Countach picture on the wall by my bed. I suspect later generations of children (mostly boys, to be sure) had Diablos, Gallardos, Aventadors, etc, or some representative equivalent (Lamborghinis just make it easier with defined names for model types).
Yep. While I liked the Ferraris, I wasn't particular to them. The Lamborghini caught my attention (asI'm sure it did so many others') because of its unique appearance. I was also a large fan of Mustangs, and my first car was a classic Mustang (if in horrible condition). A lot of this was influenced by my older brother, and his taste in cars, and the large coffee book about the history of the Mustang we had around the house. Tastes are so malleable at that age.
I dunno. I suspect that the classic 70s muscle cars are objectively beautiful, or at least as close to objectively as is possible in something like this. Just look at a 69 GTO, or a 70s Charger or Challenger or Camaro.
Oh, I won't object to them being beautiful, I'm just noting that as vehicles, adult me is less than enamored with them. While I like how classic Mustangs look, I have zero desire to ever own one again. I still own a 240z though, and while it's been mothballed for a decade, I still dream of getting that back on the road. That's a wonderfully fun car to drive.
Ha great points, and I suppose that's why I appreciate the Resto-Mod movement of taking gorgeous hardware (69 Camaro in my case) and re-working it with modern tech. Engines, suspension, brakes, tires...ahh! I hope you get a chance to re-visit that 240z and if you ever want to kick around some new life ideas I'm game. Shouldn't be too hard to find me and connect, cheers.
Yup, and I suppose that's why they went up from something like $100k to pushing $500k now that the market demand went up. No accident picking that car out specifically, just to mention it. I know it's a loaded concept.
If you're curious, the dynamic you mention was already used in the movie "22 Jump Street" where the undercover, older guy has a Countach poster and the investigation target, the college age guy, had a Murcialago poster.
I agree that Hillary needs to be held accountable for her actions and should not be president. However, this sort of thing leaves me worried. If this leak were to put an end to her eligibility (in his words "@HillaryClinton is done.") would another democrat step into her place and/or would that make it easier for Trump to win?
Not OP, and not sure I'd say 'held accountable', but I'll take a shot. I think there needs to be an honest investigation into the Clinton Foundation and whether or not there is a pay for play situation going on there. It could be nothing, but it also could be one of the deepest corruption scandals in the history of the country. The fact that most news organizations have shit the bed in their effort to stop Trump means that it's been almost completely ignored. That's my top pick.
*edit: removed redundant redundancy, also corrected word typo.
Of all of the Clinton "scandals", that seems like an odd one to pick. I can't think of one LESS compelling, frankly.
People making charitable donations before and after she has any actual political influence, with a tiny fraction of them having any contact with her whatsoever? All so that the Clintons can.. help poor people?
All I needed to know to tune out was that the anti- crowd fanned the flames by saying that 95% (IIRC) of the funds were not spent on charities. Because... they are a charity themselves, and spend the money directly on causes?
Then I suppose we disagree about what qualifies as compelling. If you're one of the people concerned about how cozy politicians are with moneyed interests, than I have a hard time seeing how the Clinton's relationship with such people isn't troubling. [0] [1] [2] [3]
I don't think your characterization of their expenditures is necessarily accurate (or wrong!). It's hard to tell, because the whole thing is so opaque[4]. This is a common criticism of the Clintons, even from supporters. They are so opaque about everything that things that would be innocuous end up seeming far worse because of their inclination to hide things.
>It could be nothing, but it also could be one of the deepest corruption scandals in the history of the country.
That seems to be the theme of Hillary scandals. It's always some superlative outcome. Either she is going to be exposed as a mastermind or "oh nevermind I guess that's not a big deal after all." It's absurd. An opponent of Clinton making a more modest critique than "she is the antichrist" would be very refreshing.
Conservatives and Bernie supporters spent months fuming over how email servers showed exactly how evil Clinton was and the most that came out of it was apparently "extreme carelessness." Years of Benghazi and nothing to show for it but words to be poorly scrawled on protest signs for at least another year or so.
I am definitely not informed enough to determine whether or not there is or isn't merit to any given controversy or scandal. There are probably a handful of people who could possibly know for sure. She is definitely one of the most powerful people in the world. She is certainly capable of conspiracy. But I know there are also powerful people who are would benefit a lot from harming her career and her image.
Honestly, it's at least worth considering that innuendo, accusations, and connecting dots that aren't there, or are there in a much less dramatic form, are all much cheaper than actually pulling off conspiracies.
Agreed. I did my best to come across as measured and non-accusatory in my post. I'm very specifically not saying there's anything wrong, but there's evidence that there's some pretty deep corruption here. The trouble is, she seems to be untouchable. People don't seem interested in seriously pursuing investigations into her and her husband, and so you're stuck with apocalypse scenarios and people hand-waving it all away as fine. I don't think either are true.
I remember when I got my first degree, in journalism (kinda), it was generally considered that the Watergate scandal would never get published in the modern age. I think the Clintons are pretty much the proof of that.
Why would you possibly expect me to have evidence of actual crimes? Even were a crime committed?
As I understand it, prosecutors typically look for patterns of behavior in cases like this since there's rarely a nice hand-written letter explaining how they are going to exchange favors. I'm not a prosecutor or a whistleblower. So yes, I think there's enough there to warrant someone with the proper expertise looking into it. Why would we not want to make sure our politicians are upholding ethical standards? I'm sure there are a lot of other people in D.C., some of whom are innocent, that would at least warrant an ethics investigation. I was asked about Clinton, so I focused on her.
Criminal mishandling of classified material seems like it ought to be a big deal. Considering that you or I would be facing a lengthy term in Leavenworth if we did what Clinton or her staffers that haven't taken immunity bids have done.
Bribery seems very likely.
There are a number of suspicious bodies that have piled up over the years related to the Clintons.
Her husband was probably involved in more sketchy sexual situations than any other president since JFK. At the least, that should cast a Cosby-esque pall over the whole situation.
> Criminal mishandling of classified material seems like it ought to be a big deal.
Was it criminal mishandling? The information I've seen on it is that there were very few (as in less than 5) items that were classified that made it to that address, and they were incorrectly flagged when they were sent to her[1].
> Bribery seems very likely. ... There are a number of suspicious bodies that have piled up over the years related to the Clintons.
Those aren't actions, those are, until shown otherwise, coincidences. To my knowledge, almost every Clinton scandal has been investigated thoroughly, so what, specifically, would you see her held accountable for?
> Her husband was probably involved in more sketchy sexual situations than any other president since JFK. At the least, that should cast a Cosby-esque pall over the whole situation.
Possibly, if you believe she's responsible for her husband's sexual proclivities. That's not a stance I support.
I wasn't trying to spin it my way, I was trying to get clarification from you on why you viewed the same events differently than me. Presumably it's either because we believe differently in the magnitude of the offence, or we have different information on the offense, or we attribute the likelihood of truthfulness differently to different portions of the story, or some combination thereof. I'm interested in where differences like that come about, and so my message wasn't meant entirely to refute your stance, but also to stake my own lightly in the hope that you might engage where you thought I was incorrect and explain why you thought so.
> I've already made up my mind as to which is the less disastrous option
That's an interesting way to put it, because to me that sounds like a vote for Hillary, unless you think the status quo is disastrous, and I'm not sure what justification would be used for that. I don't think you meant it that way though, so presumably you have a reason to think a Clinton presidency would be disastrous at this point?
How bad would Clinton's actions have to be before you would prefer Trump? If you are willing to forgive any action by Clinton, you are condoning her behaviour.
If we're judging only on criminal behavior then I would have to stack up Trump's crimes against Clinton's. But since both of them seem to be criminals, both their characters are questionable, it makes more sense to go by which actual policies I prefer.
First: Hillary would have to step down. To the best of my knowledge, once nominated, a candidate cannot be "fired." For instance, Bob Dole had a rough start to his 1996 presidential campaign, and the republican party decided to cut their losses and pull support. They couldn't remove Dole, and he wouldn't step down. That meant that they just refused to fund him or promote his candidacy, and focused their efforts on congressional races.
The strategy worked well for the republican party, but Dole seems (understandably) bitter about being left high and dry by his own party. Note that no living US president has endorsed Trump, and George H.W. Bush has said that he plans to vote for Hillary. Bob Dole is the closest thing Trump has to a presidential endorsement. Remember when there was talk of the republican party cutting support for Trump and focusing on congressional races? I won't pretend to know what Bob Dole thinks, but I suspect that his own history factors into why he supports Trump.
Second: Yes, it would make it easier for Trump to win.
The ballots have already been printed in most states, and early voting has begun in some areas. Some number of people have already voted for Hillary. If Hillary is removed from the ticket and another Democrat is selected, Hillary's votes probably wouldn't be transferred. I can't imagine it's legal to switch someone's vote after-the-fact. Needless to say, you don't get to vote a second time just because your candidate stepped down.
Meanwhile, in some areas they wouldn't be able to (for either time or budgetary constraints) print new ballots. That means Hillary would still be on the ballot in some areas, and it would be up to voters to write in the name of the new democratic nominee.
Why not just release it? Maybe because you're massaging it to match your agenda? Assange and Wikileaks have failed in transparency and in being impartial bearers of facts. They seem to be in the same league as tabloids now. What a shame.
Massaging what? Which agenda? Don't they just usually release a dump of whatever information they have which is as close to transparent and impartial facts as you can get, but it's also exactly what most people criticize about them.
Generally, people prefer the leaker-journalist relationship, where the journalist is careful not to release info that would be damaging to individuals, or not relevant to whatever story they're trying to cover.
Your particular criticism doesn't apply here and it seems like you just don't like Wikileaks for one reason or another so you wanted to write a disparaging sentence about them.
Assange has explicitly stated a goal for the organization is to harm Hillary Clinton, out of revenge for her coming after him during her time as Secretary of State. And obviously here, they are trying to plan their info dump to maximize the damage it does to her political campaign.
They do not just blindly dump information to the ether, they sit and wait and dump information that is the most damaging at the most opportune time.
Whether or not you think they're doing public good probably depends on your perception of Hillary Clinton and how much you care about the collateral damage they cause but don't pretend they don't have an agenda.
> Whether or not you think they're doing public good probably depends on your perception of Hillary Clinton
This implies that one builds a perception, then evaluates information in that context. Many people do this and it is sad.
We should be using information to evaluate, and not our preconceived notions.
The only way Assange has "damaging" information for either candidate is if those candidate did something wrong and covered it up. Shouldn't we the information (once vetted) to evaluate our next president?
All humans have perceptions of the way things are -- based on facts, anecdotes, culture, emotions, personal experience, intellectual discussion, reading. When a human being hears something, of course it's colored by their pre-prepared understanding. To a human without a pre-built perception and context with which to evaluate it, their evaluation of information about Clinton would be "Who is Clinton? What is information? How am I speaking even though I don't understand language?"
And yes information is usually damning because of bad things that were done (ignoring the frequent instances where this is not the case, like someone who votes against the "stop child porn [and also eradicate half the bill of rights] act") but Wikileaks has an opportunity to leak this information when there is time to research, discuss, fully understand the data (months ago) or at the last possible second where it will have the most sensational impact with the sole purpose of turning the election instead of informing anyone, with minimal time to vet, discuss, understand, make sense of the results. That is now.
Google and the US election? My bet is on someone leaked internal files of Eric Schmidt-backed startup The Groundwork [1]. Although it's now working under the name of Timshel [2], my previous link redirects to that website now. They were hiring here with that link here a year ago. [3]
I find that user name (loomin-arty) rather amusing in the context of the replies discussing the role of the company in elections and collecting voter (and other) information. Just needs an "i" in front of it.
As I recall, the search engine was using data about search behaviour to inform the campaign of one of the candidates. Such data would be useful for deciding on policy stances as well as measuring campaign effectiveness.
This community's #1 member by karma holds a conspiracy theory that Assange works for Vladimir Putin. Most HN members uncritically accept this member's opinion on everything.
> This community's #1 member by karma holds a conspiracy theory that Assange works for Vladimir Putin.
I assume you are referring to this[1] comment by tptacek. I hardly think think trying to rationally assess motivation and call into question a narrative he sees as unsupported, and presenting what he used to deride as "funny to me before, in the sense that it's fun to smirk at the way infosec nerds want to believe they're living in a spy novel" as something that gives him pause counts as "holds a conspiracy theory". The only thing definitive you can say about his stance from that comment is that he has more questions about that possible relationship, when he used to think it was ridiculous. Characterizing it as you have is uncalled for.
> Most HN members uncritically accept this member's opinion on everything.
You seriously think that? More often than not, when I see a comment from tptacek, I'm expecting two things at the same time, a competent discussion and argument from multiple people on the specifics of what he's presented, and a shit-show of people assuming too much from his comments and extrapolating positions beyond what he has stated and responding to those. The latter of those generally get downvoted after he explains, in his somewhat acerbic way, that they are not really responding to what he said. This looks to be a case of the latter, if time-shifted almost two months.
I've both agreed and disagreed with tptacek on many different points, and argued a few of them with him. If you have a problem with his views, address that with him specifically. Don't mischaracterize his statements and use them as a way to smear the community as a whole by proxy.
Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News, and creating throwaway accounts to break the site guidelines with can lead to your main account getting banned as well. So please don't.
HN may be an echo chamber. It is not an echo chamber around tptacek's opinions. A simple counterexample would be almost any law or proposed law (CISPA for instance) that the community gets all "omg this is the worst thing ever" about and tptacek actually bothers to read the thing and usually futilely argues about how it's not actually the worst thing ever.
Lots of otherwise smart people hold dumb opinions all over the map.
Karma on here is really not a great badge of achievement. If I had started ten years ago, based on my current karma gain rate of talking out of my ass and posting anything interesting from my newsletter and RSS subscriptions, I could be a top 10 karma user here. It's really less a measure of performance than longevity.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 271 ms ] threadBut this is getting tiresome. The talk about this has been going on for months now. And now it's October and the only thing we've got is that something's going to be released.
They're going to lose any interest very quickly because of this unless it's truly damning material.
Hmm... depending on your point of view, I guess either of those options could apply to either candidate. We've become way too polarised.
Adjusting your values and convictions is seen as a flaw, so in a sense we have disincentives evolving of thoughts.
[0] http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/g...
Journalists and anti-censorship activists who I am in touch with in Turkey have been combing through the leaked documents, and I am not aware of anything “newsworthy” being uncovered. According to the collective searching capacity of long-term activists and journalists in Turkey, none of the “Erdogan emails” appear to be emails actually from Erdogan or his inner circle. Nobody seems to be able to find a smoking gun exposing people in positions of power and responsibility. This doesn’t rule out something eventually emerging, but there have been several days of extensive searching.
However, WikiLeaks also posted links on social media to its millions of followers via multiple channels to a set of leaked massive databases containing sensitive and private information of millions of ordinary people, including a special database of almost all adult women in Turkey.
Yes — this “leak” actually contains spreadsheets of private, sensitive information of what appears to be every female voter in 79 out of 81 provinces in Turkey, including their home addresses and other private information, sometimes including their cellphone numbers.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zeynep-tufekci/wikileaks-erdog...
Plus the DNC leak created a strong impression in many peoples' minds that it was a deliberate attempt by a foreign power (guess who...) to try to tip the US election to the candidate they favored (hint: name rhymes with "Ronald Rump"). So there's some irony if WikiLeaks is now going to publish allegations of someone else influencing the election.
The remarkable thing about this is that, almost universally, the media organisations who claim this condemns Wikileaks support the person who actually uploaded all that personal information and gave everyone the link, claiming it was something else. Some of them, like Wired, have even argued he did absolutely nothing wrong. It's almost like no-one actually cares about that sensitive information being exposed to the world, just attacking Wikileaks.
WL... not so much with the regrets. That can make a big difference in how people react; "I realize I did a bad thing and now feel bad about it" gets sympathy while doubling down doesn't.
I too doubt that they have anything that significant for the election but I will give them the benefit of the doubt based on their prior important work. I also understand that they release information bit by bit. If it was released all at once, mass media would not have a chance to report on all of it.
Is there a specific case you're thinking of? For instance, with the DNC leaks, or with Chelsea Manning's leaks, I believe that the information relevant to the public interest would have been disclosed by any reputable major news outlet (NYT, WashPo, ...) that received it, so long as its authenticity could be verified.
I prefer that leakers go to traditional journalists (à la Snowden) rather than WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has a track record of creating collateral damage with its disclosures; for example, exposing SSNs and credit card numbers of people who happened to be donors to the DNC and who were otherwise uninvolved with the shenanigans going on. A responsible, ethical journalist would take care to exclude personal information that is tangential to the actual public interest.
What was the actual, observable impact of unabridged Wikileaks documents in court cases?
WikiLeaks is a media organisation so it will crave for attention as all media does. But please name one single case in which data released by WikiLeaks was bogus.
On the other hand I could bring up hundreds of cases where main stream media has released fake information.
So how exactly do you decide who has credibility and who does not?
Yes wikileaks has done very good things for the world. No, Assange is not the moral actor he claims to be.
I agree completely that the leak was very significant, but my preference (I think; not 100%) would be that Snowden hadn't leaked.
How does that work?
Lots of evil is done in the name of "trying to make the world better". Its not unreasonable for people to be more interested in what they see your actions as likely to produce (and what they see that you reasonably should have known that they were likely to produce) than what you intended them to produce.
(And that's even before getting into the fact that "better" is subjective and one person's better can easily be another person's dystopian nightmare.)
Musk is worrisome because after the innovation honeymoon is over, he could easily end up functioning as a closed-world promulgating autarch - just as Gates and Jobs did.
But Assange and Snowden? Their very popularity is founded on forcing open centralized amalgamations of power. They have localized power and surely an assortment of groupies etc, but these structures simply cannot scale to dominate a medium city, never mind the world.
So even if they are run-of-the-mill psychopaths playing their roles solely for self-advancement, the possible damage they can do is quite limited compared to say any unnamed multinational executive.
Capitalism created a Schelling point for getting useful public goods from self-interested parties. Compared to the prior most-lucrative path of government (likely via revolution), it raised the average amount of control for everyone while constraining the maximum control a winner could obtain. The general belief in free exchange of information advances this cooperation point to even smaller power structures, leaving the supernodes with even less privileged leverage over the rest of us.
Again, not against the former two, but I don't think that is an apt comparison whatsoever.
The quickest example comes to mind is how much of a douchey move this is from Assange:
http://gizmodo.com/wikileaks-just-published-tons-of-personal...
And how Snowden was a patriot for uncovering the omniscient warrantless wiretapping, but he also released the means and methods for how the NSA does literally their job in hacking foreign intelligence targets.
Publishing unredacted documents does help sell their authenticity to the general public but I think too often the harm is too great, especially to innocent parties.
But what if Wikileaks waited to be asked... Who do they give the docs to? Just courts, or interested civilians? If the former, how does that help citizens know what's going on, and if the later, what's the difference between just releasing it and selectively releasing it? This also requires people risk their freedom to request the full version.
And more critically, that means to prevent the publishing of full documents you simply need to kill the messenger.
Running Wikileaks the other way wouldn't be useful and still wouldn't appease the wrong-doers.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/9/12864328/wikileaks-threat-r...
Didn't he already do this? And not just once, but many times. In fact his releases have been so controversial that he has the "privilege" to live in an embassy while hearing via media politicians (mostly Democrats) calling for his death or even "droning" him. (Hillary suggested that)
Could it be that you are just a Hillary supporter that is afraid he could release something damaging about her?
That seems to have more to do with his refusal to face the music on rape charges than his releases.
> while hearing via media politicians (mostly Democrats) calling for his death
For most of the time since WikiLeaks involvement in the publishing the Manning docs, the calls for his punishment, including by the most drastic means, have been bipartisan but stronger on the Republican side. The Republicans changed their tune after Assange participated in the release of the DNC hack recently, but its somewhat revisionist to pretend that history started just a few weeks ago.
Assange surely is a conspiracy theorist to hide in the embassy when politicians publicly call for his death and his main informant Manning was placed into 24/7 solitary confinement which could only be described as torture.
> the calls for his punishment, including by the most drastic means, have been bipartisan but stronger on the Republican side
Okay, then please name a Republican that has called for killing Assange.
Sara Palin called Assange an "anti-American operative with blood on his hands" who should "pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders".
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) called for Assange to be tried for espionage and for WikiLeaks to be designated, treated, and combatted as a terrorist organization.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) described Assange as a "high-tech terrorist"
Newt Gingrich declared that "Julian Assange is engaged in warfare. [...] And Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism." and that "He should be treated as an enemy combatant and WikiLeaks should be closed down permanently and decisively."
Politicians calling for his death is just grandstanding. In fact, the possibility of the death penalty is probably the only thing that would keep Sweden from extraditing him.
The U.S. and the U.K. also have an extradition treaty, so the existence of a U.S.-Sweden extradition treaty doesn't really do much to enhance the plausibility of a double-extradition plot where Sweden extradites him from the U.K. on rape charges only as a ruse to get him into Sweden where he can be extradited to the U.S. on some other charges. (If the U.K. was a country that had no extradition treaty with the U.S. and was particularly resistant to U.S. extradition, then a double-extradition plot might be plausible.)
Now the U.S. and Ecuador also have a treaty but I don't read lawyer well enough, especially not old-timey lawyer, to know whether it would apply to anything Assange might be charged with. It does say it "shall not be applicable to crimes or offences of a political character" and I'm sure that's how Assange would characterize it (and I think that's at least partially why Ecuador has been housing him).
But the U.S. hasn't charged him with anything so there's nothing for Ecuador to extradite him for yet. In any case, the claim is a nice excuse to avoid jail in Sweden.
No, he isn't. Contrary to the ever-lasting myth, embassies have no extraterritorial status whatsoever. They are in and are a part of the host country.
But they have special protections under the Vienna Convention.
I don't know about his other leaks but there's evidence that he communicated with, arguably collaborated with and advised, Manning before Manning copied the classified material. If Manning just sent the material to Wikileaks, Assange would be in the clear (e.g. the Pentagon Papers, Trump's 1995 tax return info this week). Maybe it's not a solid enough case to be sure of a conviction, I doubt the U.S. would want to take a chance on it, but it's not like there's nothing there.
No one has suggested charging him with treason. He certainly can be guilty of espionage against the US without being a citizen.
(And his citizenship is irrelevant to whether he can exceed the protection of the 1st Amendment, since that applies whether or not he is a citizen with regard to government action such as prosecution for espionage.)
She declined to do it anywhere but Sweden if my memory serves.
Entirely off-topic, but I find it interesting and amusing that we can fairly squarely date ourselves with references like this. I grew up with a Lamborghini Countach picture on the wall by my bed. I suspect later generations of children (mostly boys, to be sure) had Diablos, Gallardos, Aventadors, etc, or some representative equivalent (Lamborghinis just make it easier with defined names for model types).
If you're curious, the dynamic you mention was already used in the movie "22 Jump Street" where the undercover, older guy has a Countach poster and the investigation target, the college age guy, had a Murcialago poster.
*edit: removed redundant redundancy, also corrected word typo.
People making charitable donations before and after she has any actual political influence, with a tiny fraction of them having any contact with her whatsoever? All so that the Clintons can.. help poor people?
All I needed to know to tune out was that the anti- crowd fanned the flames by saying that 95% (IIRC) of the funds were not spent on charities. Because... they are a charity themselves, and spend the money directly on causes?
I don't think your characterization of their expenditures is necessarily accurate (or wrong!). It's hard to tell, because the whole thing is so opaque[4]. This is a common criticism of the Clintons, even from supporters. They are so opaque about everything that things that would be innocuous end up seeming far worse because of their inclination to hide things.
[0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-...
[1]: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/82df550e1ec646098b434f7d5771f...
[2]: http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clintons-complex-corpora...
[3]: http://nypost.com/2016/08/11/hillary-played-favorites-with-h...
[4]: https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Clinton-Foundation-...
That seems to be the theme of Hillary scandals. It's always some superlative outcome. Either she is going to be exposed as a mastermind or "oh nevermind I guess that's not a big deal after all." It's absurd. An opponent of Clinton making a more modest critique than "she is the antichrist" would be very refreshing.
Conservatives and Bernie supporters spent months fuming over how email servers showed exactly how evil Clinton was and the most that came out of it was apparently "extreme carelessness." Years of Benghazi and nothing to show for it but words to be poorly scrawled on protest signs for at least another year or so.
I am definitely not informed enough to determine whether or not there is or isn't merit to any given controversy or scandal. There are probably a handful of people who could possibly know for sure. She is definitely one of the most powerful people in the world. She is certainly capable of conspiracy. But I know there are also powerful people who are would benefit a lot from harming her career and her image.
Honestly, it's at least worth considering that innuendo, accusations, and connecting dots that aren't there, or are there in a much less dramatic form, are all much cheaper than actually pulling off conspiracies.
I remember when I got my first degree, in journalism (kinda), it was generally considered that the Watergate scandal would never get published in the modern age. I think the Clintons are pretty much the proof of that.
In other words - you have no evidence of actual crimes. You just want an investigation.
As I understand it, prosecutors typically look for patterns of behavior in cases like this since there's rarely a nice hand-written letter explaining how they are going to exchange favors. I'm not a prosecutor or a whistleblower. So yes, I think there's enough there to warrant someone with the proper expertise looking into it. Why would we not want to make sure our politicians are upholding ethical standards? I'm sure there are a lot of other people in D.C., some of whom are innocent, that would at least warrant an ethics investigation. I was asked about Clinton, so I focused on her.
Bribery seems very likely.
There are a number of suspicious bodies that have piled up over the years related to the Clintons.
Her husband was probably involved in more sketchy sexual situations than any other president since JFK. At the least, that should cast a Cosby-esque pall over the whole situation.
Was it criminal mishandling? The information I've seen on it is that there were very few (as in less than 5) items that were classified that made it to that address, and they were incorrectly flagged when they were sent to her[1].
> Bribery seems very likely. ... There are a number of suspicious bodies that have piled up over the years related to the Clintons.
Those aren't actions, those are, until shown otherwise, coincidences. To my knowledge, almost every Clinton scandal has been investigated thoroughly, so what, specifically, would you see her held accountable for?
> Her husband was probably involved in more sketchy sexual situations than any other president since JFK. At the least, that should cast a Cosby-esque pall over the whole situation.
Possibly, if you believe she's responsible for her husband's sexual proclivities. That's not a stance I support.
1: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/08/how-many-class...
That's too bad.
I wasn't trying to spin it my way, I was trying to get clarification from you on why you viewed the same events differently than me. Presumably it's either because we believe differently in the magnitude of the offence, or we have different information on the offense, or we attribute the likelihood of truthfulness differently to different portions of the story, or some combination thereof. I'm interested in where differences like that come about, and so my message wasn't meant entirely to refute your stance, but also to stake my own lightly in the hope that you might engage where you thought I was incorrect and explain why you thought so.
> I've already made up my mind as to which is the less disastrous option
That's an interesting way to put it, because to me that sounds like a vote for Hillary, unless you think the status quo is disastrous, and I'm not sure what justification would be used for that. I don't think you meant it that way though, so presumably you have a reason to think a Clinton presidency would be disastrous at this point?
The strategy worked well for the republican party, but Dole seems (understandably) bitter about being left high and dry by his own party. Note that no living US president has endorsed Trump, and George H.W. Bush has said that he plans to vote for Hillary. Bob Dole is the closest thing Trump has to a presidential endorsement. Remember when there was talk of the republican party cutting support for Trump and focusing on congressional races? I won't pretend to know what Bob Dole thinks, but I suspect that his own history factors into why he supports Trump.
Second: Yes, it would make it easier for Trump to win.
The ballots have already been printed in most states, and early voting has begun in some areas. Some number of people have already voted for Hillary. If Hillary is removed from the ticket and another Democrat is selected, Hillary's votes probably wouldn't be transferred. I can't imagine it's legal to switch someone's vote after-the-fact. Needless to say, you don't get to vote a second time just because your candidate stepped down.
Meanwhile, in some areas they wouldn't be able to (for either time or budgetary constraints) print new ballots. That means Hillary would still be on the ballot in some areas, and it would be up to voters to write in the name of the new democratic nominee.
Well, that's underwhelming.
Generally, people prefer the leaker-journalist relationship, where the journalist is careful not to release info that would be damaging to individuals, or not relevant to whatever story they're trying to cover.
Your particular criticism doesn't apply here and it seems like you just don't like Wikileaks for one reason or another so you wanted to write a disparaging sentence about them.
That's what I'm suggesting they do now, but they aren't.
Your particular criticism doesn't apply here
That's your opinion.
and it seems like you just don't like Wikileaks for one reason or another
I listed my reasons.
They do not just blindly dump information to the ether, they sit and wait and dump information that is the most damaging at the most opportune time.
Whether or not you think they're doing public good probably depends on your perception of Hillary Clinton and how much you care about the collateral damage they cause but don't pretend they don't have an agenda.
This implies that one builds a perception, then evaluates information in that context. Many people do this and it is sad.
We should be using information to evaluate, and not our preconceived notions.
The only way Assange has "damaging" information for either candidate is if those candidate did something wrong and covered it up. Shouldn't we the information (once vetted) to evaluate our next president?
Ridiculous.
And yes information is usually damning because of bad things that were done (ignoring the frequent instances where this is not the case, like someone who votes against the "stop child porn [and also eradicate half the bill of rights] act") but Wikileaks has an opportunity to leak this information when there is time to research, discuss, fully understand the data (months ago) or at the last possible second where it will have the most sensational impact with the sole purpose of turning the election instead of informing anyone, with minimal time to vet, discuss, understand, make sense of the results. That is now.
[1] http://thegroundwork.com/jobs/ [2] https://timshel.com/ [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=loomin-arty
This community's #1 member by karma holds a conspiracy theory that Assange works for Vladimir Putin. Most HN members uncritically accept this member's opinion on everything.
I assume you are referring to this[1] comment by tptacek. I hardly think think trying to rationally assess motivation and call into question a narrative he sees as unsupported, and presenting what he used to deride as "funny to me before, in the sense that it's fun to smirk at the way infosec nerds want to believe they're living in a spy novel" as something that gives him pause counts as "holds a conspiracy theory". The only thing definitive you can say about his stance from that comment is that he has more questions about that possible relationship, when he used to think it was ridiculous. Characterizing it as you have is uncalled for.
> Most HN members uncritically accept this member's opinion on everything.
You seriously think that? More often than not, when I see a comment from tptacek, I'm expecting two things at the same time, a competent discussion and argument from multiple people on the specifics of what he's presented, and a shit-show of people assuming too much from his comments and extrapolating positions beyond what he has stated and responding to those. The latter of those generally get downvoted after he explains, in his somewhat acerbic way, that they are not really responding to what he said. This looks to be a case of the latter, if time-shifted almost two months.
I've both agreed and disagreed with tptacek on many different points, and argued a few of them with him. If you have a problem with his views, address that with him specifically. Don't mischaracterize his statements and use them as a way to smear the community as a whole by proxy.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12279092
Karma on here is really not a great badge of achievement. If I had started ten years ago, based on my current karma gain rate of talking out of my ass and posting anything interesting from my newsletter and RSS subscriptions, I could be a top 10 karma user here. It's really less a measure of performance than longevity.