So it would seem Scott Forstall (of Apple) is now an advisor to Snapchat, and owns 0.11% of the stock... I'd been wondering what he'd been up to after Apple.
I don't see how it's fundamentally any different from a pro-life group wanting to donate to a pro-life candidate and then celebrating the passage of a pro-life law. Of course you want to support candidates who look after your interests. As long as there is no quid pro quo (e.g. the $50k was a fee for passing the initiative and it wouldn't have happened otherwise). IANAL.
There are limitations on donations. They wanted to donate $50k. By law, they can't do that. So they manipulated how they donated that sum to circumvent that law.
Nonsense. They didn't "manipulate" anything. The company made a legal donation and they asked employees to make additional donations up to a certain target amount from the employee's own funds.
It's perfectly legal to email your coworkers about a political campaign and to ask them to donate. Does this kind of suck? Maybe. Is campaign finance a mess? Definitely. But would you really want a federal law that restricts what you can say about political campaigns while at work? I'm not even sure the Constitution would permit such a restriction on speech.
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. I would guess Sony executives and the Sony Corporation have closely aligned financial incentives. It's perfectly reasonable for them to want to spend personal funds on the campaigns that Sony Corp thinks are important. We can't restrict corporate employees from spending their own money any more than we restrict the general public. Nor can (or should) we restrict what you're allowed to say to coworkers about a political campaign.
See “conduit contribution”: "Here’s how a “conduit contribution” works. Person A wants to give a lot of money to Candidate X. But federal law puts a ceiling on how much one person can contribute to a candidate. To get around the law, Person A goes to Friend B or Employee C or Associate D and says, “Hey, if you give me the money for Candidate X, I’ll pass along your check and then reimburse you out of my own pocket or from corporate funds.” The friend, employee, or associate effectively becomes a “conduit” for the real contributor, thus the name."
"The law is clear: Under the Federal Election Campaign Act, making campaign contributions in the name of another person or otherwise concealing the true source of the funds is a felony if the contribution exceeds $2,000. In fact, both the person soliciting the contribution and the person who agrees to be reimbursed for it could be investigated. Even if neither is aware of the law."
Nowhere in these emails does it say that Sony is reimbursing the execs for their contributions. If anything, the reluctance of having to ask execs to contribute indicates that they are not doing that.
>>"What's the actual legal status on this? It definitely seems to circumvent the law - but is it clearly criminal?"
The email indicates that they were planning to structure their donations "by making this a focus of our individual giving from execs" ie: 'fundraising'.
>>"$50k is a heavy lift since most of it needs to come from individual contributions (only $5k can come from corp.), but I recommend we do it. Cuomo has been a strong protector of the film incentive – even amidst recent criticisms of the program. Also, given the shows we’ve got there and your relationships I think it would look a bit odd if you weren’t on the host committee."
>>"I think we can get to the 50k commitment by making this a focus of our individual giving from execs this year (versus the federal PAC)."
If you want to argue about what "fundraising" means in this context, be my guest; but, I've probably heard it before, and I'll probably think you're either naive or deliberately obtuse. Are you expecting a single email that perfectly implicates the entire board of a multinational corp. in a crime? Do you expect a contract for illegal services to be included as an attachment or something?
It's quite obvious what they're doing, but being blind to nuance and expecting powerful people to be acting in good faith in the face of contradictory evidence go hand in hand.
You're right. It's not even a quid pro quo if a contract stating the scope and purpose of the "donations" isn't attached. /s People here are just jumping on the bandwagon and assuming some very unkind things about the politicians and the executives alike; and that's just not fair.
The argument for classifying this as bribery (or some other form of inappropriate transfer of money to an elected official) is the same as the argument for the existence of the law that they are circumventing.
IE, there is a 5k limit for corporate donations. No problem, lets have $50k of private donations directed by a corporation. He laid it out pretty plainly. We need to get this guy 5k, but that's illegal so lets do it this sneaky way.
It may be illegal (probably not, but maybe). If it isn't illegal it should be. It's a practice that renders the practice ineffective.
Imagine you are a in corporate sales. IBM buyers are allowed to accept up to $500 worth goodies from any one salesman, but no more. So, you get all your buddies to chip in. If their manager found out, they would assume that this buyers is compromised, unethical and should be fired and investigated for possible prosecution. The policy needs to be updated, but there is an obvious workaround at play here.
Honestly, I don't even see how this is controversial. How can people see massive political donations (which are crucial to getting elected) in such circumstances as anything but a circumvention of democracy. This is not just, I really am shocked.
What's the big deal? Why do you care about those documents so much? They all seem really meaningless, but maybe I'm missing the point... someone enlighten me?
If you don't care about anything political you won't care about this. But, surely, you must understand that other people do care about those things and therefore would care about this.
But is this really political? In that this is information that is beneficial to a democratic society to have out in the open? Or is it something being done to embarrass a political rival which only serves the interest of a single party?
Because it really looks to me more like the later. Not that I feel sorry for Sony, but do they as a private-sector company not have a right to privacy? There's been a lot of talk lately about wanting to improve the state of privacy on the internet. Through pervasive encryption, controls on data collection, net neutrality, and limiting government surveillance. And then, because Sony happens to be unpopular, they get hacked and data stolen from them. I'm supposed to celebrate this breach of privacy? This tells me that if I value my own privacy I should be careful not to do anything that makes Julian Assange unhappy.
So no, I'm not going to join in the anti-Sony lynch mob. Privacy, like free speech, is something that if you value it for yourself you must defend it at all times, even if you disagree with who is using it.
Quote: "Sony is a member of the MPAA and a strong lobbyist on issues around internet policy, piracy, trade agreements and copyright issues. The emails show the back and forth on lobbying and political efforts, not only with the MPAA but with politicians directly. In November 2013 WikiLeaks published a secret draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) IP Chapter. The Sony Archives show SPE's internal reactions, including discussing the impact with Michael Froman, the US Trade Representative. It also references the case against Megaupload and the extradition of its founder Kim DotCom from New Zealand as part of SPE's war on piracy."
No, it doesn't. In all those cases, courts (remember?) have the power to request the emails and use them as evidence of wrongdoing. If they are not doing that, there are legal ways for all of us to chime in and pressure them to do so. Release private company emails to the world (without much discretion, giving how useless most of them are) is completely stupid. It's the opposite of what Snowden did with the NSA documents and completely disconnected from responsible disclosure.
When a super human entity such as a corporation gains such control over humans and thus politics as does a media conglomerate such as Sony, then YES, it becomes quite obviously VERY political!
I mean, which part do you not get? Do you not understand why anyone cares about politics and the machinations of corporations and high-up people in general? Or is it specifically these documents that you can't understanding caring about?
If nothing else, curiosity. But there is something more. It's very interesting to me to see how the world works at this level. And how they talk privately about things that I've only ever gotten to see publicly, in press releases and carefully crafted political statements.
In 2014 Sony's German website was hacked and a file was replaced that served malware. The site inlcuded a database of 50,000 people's names and email addresses. Sony didn't tell anyone there had been a hack. The news of it broken in December[1] because of Wikileaks. Corporations cover up things that affect their customers. That is wrong.
I don't think Sony is making this. I think this is just the production company emailing sony employees about it to try and get the word out. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2392361/
This is where I expect an attorney to step ITT and chortle about how companies and individuals have no power or influence over the government's laying of criminal charges.
Because they have not been properly educated to fully appreciate our corporate overlords.
I, for one, welcome Sony's involvement in politics, their relentless subversion of free trade agreements to impose rent-seeking behavior on intellectual property, their wise usage of public money to pursue evil pirates and the "wag the dog" campaign against North Korea to distract attention from security policies and an upcoming box office flop.
Because this stuff is incredibly important? Because, as it turns out, most things in this world are not decided on merit or logic or laws, but in social systems and a big big helping of inertia?
Frankly, we should require every company to turn over it's archives after a 20 year or so grace period. This is extremely helpful in a quest to understand how the world actually works, and not archiving and analyzing it dooms us to continue the mistakes of past generations. You ask why there are not more women studying STEM or in CEO positions? Well, answers inside, partially. Pick any other social issue, you'll learn something here.
Stuff like this and the diplomatic cables should be required reading in schools. Otherwise students could get the idea that what you read in a newspaper or hear in an interview reflects reality in any way. The best way to teach critical thinking is to show people how friendships and informal alliances and intrigue are the principal components of any decision process.
This unacceptable and outright disgusting. For me, Wikileaks lost all credibility. It is wrong to violate the privacy and confidentiality of employees and contacts of the company. It does not matter if there are clues of wrongdoing or if somebody calls the contents trivial.
Government ties, connections to the military industry and support for politicians? How is that a scandal? And how is that worth violating people's rights. Nothing is redacted. Nothing is explained in context. This is awful.
If something is worth a scandal, it's the chutzpa of Wikileaks.
Your interpretation of corruption may not be equal to its lawful meaning. If you have a problem with the donations to for example Cuomo, than you can lobby for change (e.g. by donating to a politician who shares your view).
Again, there is no reason for violating people's rights even when they can be _accused_ of wrongdoing. It is for courts to decide.
That's not the only way. You can vote for the politician who shares your views. You still have democracy in America, you can still vote. But somehow most Americans always vote for politicians who support those donations.
Getting a political message out there costs money, just as everything else - small parties can't even afford to mailshot the electorate in order to identify their beliefs.
Promoting an anti-donation message directly benefits Cuomo and the parties of big business and finance. Their backers are not going to hear that message, and their opponents' backers are more likely to act on it.
A human framed lawful meaning is not the same as a morally correct meaning. What your essentially saying is that if we want to end corruption then we need to partake in corruption ourselves (bribe a politician for change).
Compare the recent rise of public video documenting US police shootings. There's no way the alleged wrongdoing would be seriously investigated if there wasn't video widely available to the public.
This is exactly the reason this question is difficult, with a strong case on both sides.
There are laws. Those laws have intent. Then, there is the actual behavior of individuals and corporations in practice. Loopholes, perhaps intentionally left open. There is a law limiting corporate donations. There is a practice for circumventing it. Without reveals like this, it looks like lots of private individuals donated money but in reality, a corporation effectively got around the legal restriction placed on it.
Those restrictions are there to prevent auctioning off legislation and policy. This is no joke.
These are not pictures of your wife in lingerie. This is squarely in the public interest. It's in the pubic interest to have the law updated so that this will be illegal, so that courts can do something about it.
I don't have $5k of disposable income to give to a political candidate willy-nilly. Sony's execs apparently do. That puts them at an advantage in our supposedly-democratic system.
"Government ties, connections to the military industry and support for politicians? How is that a scandal?"
The archive is made public to enable us to find out exactly that.
Edit: so many angry reactions. I was answering to a post that seem to hold the point that it wouldn't be a scandal, if a multinational company buys influence from politics. With this I indeed disagree.
What your comments suggest is that I think it is ok to publish illegally hacked material. I don't and I did not write that.
On the other hand I have some trust in wikileaks that they don't publish the data just for everybody to sneak into private affairs. I expect it to contain proof of illegal action. That's now for journalists and investigators to find out.
But there is still the issue of illegally acquired data. Where I come from, this must not even be used in court and thus would be worthless.
This kind of implies that all private company correspondence is "fair game" for us to find out if they're doing anything bad if you're clever enough to obtain it. e.g. via hacking, whistleblowing, crappy security policies, etc.
Yup exactly. I'm assuming GP is anti-NSA eavesdropping (he/she posts on HN) so it makes it even more eye-opening how quickly he/she turned to "if they have nothing to hide..." when the victim is someone else.
One force having all knowledge and controlling it, even using their advantage of information asymmetry to control it, I would say, is different enough from EVERYONE KNOWING THE TRUTH, that yes, perhaps we can have this discussion.
Yeah, I don't understand. If the government hacked a private corporation and published 50,000 internal documents online, there would be a shitstorm. But some group of rogue hackers does it and suddenly it might be ok? What's the difference?
The difference is that the duties of government are clearly spelled in law, and are financed by everyone. You don't get a choice on whether to obey to your government or not, and in a democracy this is balanced by giving everyone a chance to influence such government, so that it can represent everyone's views as closely as possible (well, that's the theory at least).
With a private entity, that's not the case. If you don't like Wikileaks, you're free not to support them, or even fight them in court if you want. Wikileaks works under the umbrella of journalism/free speech laws, if there is a public interest in the matter then they should be left free to continue doing it.
Ah, so if the government had just contracted out the NSA's services and had them act as a private corporation rather than have the NSA be a government entity, then their actions would have been 100% a-ok.
No, because the money would still come from "everyone", and the government would still be "doing" something.
If the NSA was a completely privately-owned corporation without any ties to the government, yeah, the judgement would be different (likely still negative, since no private actor can legally compromise networks like they do).
I think we've already had this conversation. It would be legal, yes; it wouldn't necessarily be "ok" from a moral/ethical/philosophical/whatever point of view, in the same way as cutting a thief's hand is legal in Saudi Arabia.
It doesn't matter anyway, bringing in the NSA on this is a red herring.
All your private correspondences is already fair game to those with the power to silence you, torture you, cage you for life, and worse. Yet there is so much outrage when the general public, which holds little power in comparison, gets a glimpse to the inner workings of the elite (such as mega corporate entities).
While I agree that it's distasteful revealing people's email, and I've had no interest in looking in what was revealed, it's not clear to me what rights are being violated here. These were corporate accounts, and, anyone who is an employee of a corporation, knows that every email they write/send on a corporate mail server, absolutely can come into public purview, quite often during legal discovery. The old saying, "Do not put anything in email if you don't want it to appear on the front page of the New York Times" is absolutely correct.
(True story - while I was working for desktop support at Netscape, one of my fellow technicians ended up having one of his emails end up in the New York Times - and he had sent it to our internal lawyers. Turns out even that can't protect you).
Sony probably has strong grounds to come after whoever breached their security, and send them to prison for many, many years - but I don't know if their are specific individual "rights" being breached by wikileaks here.
anyone who is an employee of a corporation, knows that every email they write/send on a corporate mail server, absolutely can come into public purview
Is this coming from the HN crowd that registers domains with contact information anonymity enabled, loves to incorporate in Delaware and complains about privacy and NSA spy programs?
Could you please turn your emails public so we can review them in case you might be doing something wrong? No? Thought so.
It's for the courts to decide if Sony is doing something wrong. Wikileaks is a nice idea and I've supported them for a while, but they can't help but shoot themselves in the foot with dubious behavior like this.
One key difference, of course, is that the NSA is spying on everyone, and has all the powers of a government agency, and its many billions of dollars.
What both of them are doing is distasteful.
To some degree, though, I compare this behavior to that guy who walks up to people with a video camera, a couple feet away, and just points it at them. They become very uncomfortable, and upset, and yell at him.
What he's doing with this "performance art" - as annoying as it is, is making people realize that they are already under constant surveillance.
Anybody who previously didn't understand why privacy is so important to individuals, making them claim, "Oh, I have nothing to hide." - certainly is probably aware now how important it is to them after the Sony Dump.
And, while not defending WikiLeaks (much), can we at least agree that there is a difference between dumping people's personal emails/photos (which is 100% unjustifiable) and exposing corporate machinations of Sony?
Corporate != private. Companies are subject to a large number of restrictions in a tradeoff for limited liability. People acting on behalf of the company are substantially shielded from personal liability for their actions - but the business must be subject to scrutiny.
Private individuals don't have to file audited accounts, for one thing, just a tax return.
Perhaps part of the reason that people are so OK with mass publication of private emails not specifically tied to anything is because they have lost faith in the laws and the institutions tasked with maintaining them. That I can relate to, but I don't think it justifies what WikiLeaks is doing.
What exactly are in these emails that are in the greater public interest? It isn't them lobbying for their own interests, as everyone here would be doing the same scraping money together for their small startups. The whole reason these docs were leaked in the first place was because someone didn't like the premise of a movie. Not because Sony was allowing chemical spills to poison people in a small town and are covering it up.
There is no "greater interest" here other than people wanting to stick it to Sony because they won't let you download their movies for $1 the day they hit the theater.
Ah yes, bully the bully. I'm sure the NSA will remember this legal defense when its on trial for corporate espionage. We only hacked & spied on Apple because they were bullying 3rd party developers!
The NSA will never be on trial for corporate espionage, so I'm not sure what you're going on about.
The problem with the NSA is that they're a government entity doing something very dangerous from a democratic point of view and of dubious value overall. It's a totally different problem from private citizens publishing stuff they may or may not be entitled to.
This is more freedom and more transparency. What is wrong with that?
Remember, openness and transparency has many levels. You may be at different level than Wikileaks. If this level of openness is uncomfortable, so be it but there may be many who feel, this level is ok. Look at how some Govt's point at others as closed societies. Just in this case, there is some one who took more higher level of openness than traditional ones.
>> "This is freedom and complete transparency. What is wrong with that?"
It's stolen documents of a private company. Most of the information is nothing more than embarrassing.
>> "If this level of openness is uncomfortable, so be it but there may be many who feel, this level is ok."
So you publish your communications openly then? Seriously, one minute HN is complaining (rightly so) about government invasions of privacy and the next it's congratulating theft of private communications from someone it doesn't like.
Wikileaks has lost what little remaining credibility it had in my eyes. This is little more than stolen documents to satisfy the kinds of people that read gossip sites.
All societies, at some point in the past, may have started at similar level of privacy ...etc. Due to various reasons, if we see now, some societies are more open than the rest and this is due to the choices they made consciously or accidentally or made by influencing entities in those societies. Wikileaks is following the same trend but may be with more speed/velocity.
If we see history, there are no absolute boundaries of privacy and it changes with time and it may feel outrageous now but if we see multiple similar incidents, then it becomes natural,common and after few years, it becomes standard of life and I won't be surprised if future generations in these societies feel proud of that level of transparency and make fun of those who lack that level of openness.
That's fine but you can't force openness (because it aligns with your beliefs) through theft. Society has been becoming more open (as people tweet and blog publicly) but forcing the changes you want through illegal means, especially when there is no consensus that that is what society as a whole would like, is wrong.
No one is forcing openness here. You are not in "follow it or else" situation. You can just ignore as if nothing has happened. Where is force applied? It is imaginary.
In many cases, people act without consensus based on their decisions. Did you take consensus before posting above message? Just like you did what you thought as right, some one else make other decisions w.r.t wikileaks. Always, there will be initiative and later on consensus comes into picture.
I'm not arguing against your position that the legal workings of a corporation, in the context of fair laws administered by a legitimate government, should not be splashed around.
But, if you believe we don't have a legitimate government specifically because some big corporations have bought the government, there really is no barrier between those corporations and the government they bought, and there is no difference leaking government or corporate documents.
Evidently, the people at Wikileaks think the latter.
I agree, in fact the lobbying system really bothers me. If that was all that Wikileaks published I might not have a big problem. But they didn't redact, they released everything, the majority of which just satisfies voyeurism.
Lobbying, if it is clean and transparent, and there is good access from expert organizations that are not just a fig leaf for buying the government, is fine and healthy. But, in contrast, secret influence-buying to enshrine bad copyright law into a hard-to-modify treaty, is not so good.
>This is more freedom and more transparency. What is wrong with that?
People have an inherent right to privacy, and they don't (generally) forfeit that right when they decide to coordinate their actions with other people (within or without the context of a corporation) that also have a right to privacy.
"It is wrong to violate the privacy and confidentiality of employees and contacts of the company"
I don't see a problem here. It's not like private communication was leaked, it's a business communication from a mega corp that happened to reveal a lot of dirty details from inside the industry, so public should know that. If you used business email for personal communication, well then, next time you should know better.
I'm having trouble falling on either side of this whole-heartedly. On one hand privacy, rights… On the other, secrecy at the heart of how our societies function, trivialization of democracy, public interest, free press.
Take this example (pointed out by randomname2):
"NY law only allows corporations to give him $5,000 (which we’ve done)… and, with Michael’s support, we are trying to raise $50k overall. This means I need to ask individual senior execs for support… ..consider contributing $5,000 to Gov. Cuomo?"
This is at the heart of how a lot of our democratic systems work, the money-in-politics question, the corruption of our systems of government. Surely that's something that is important to bring into the light, no?
The criticism I've had with wikileaks from the start is still somewhat valid. Wikileaks are press. We have a culture of protecting, empowering & respecting the press. We have legal protections for the press. There are cultures within the press for balancing need to know against other considerations. But wikileaks (mores earlier on) never really saw or projected themselves this way, free press. To most people, including their supports they always seemed more like activists than journalists.
When Assange was originally targeted I stopped to sign a petition in Melbourne. I read it. A Caricaturized synopsis might be "Free Assange! Free Gaza. Troops Out of Iraq! Fuck America! Abortion! Gays! Aboriginal RIghts! Like I said, caricature. But I don't think these guys were a million miles away from how wikileaks saw (or at least presented) themselves. Activists more than press.
I think that's part of the problem you are sort of pointing to. Activists stealing documents sounds different to journalists with secret sources. The latter is an important part of democracy.
"WikiLeaks is an international, non-profit,[3] journalistic[6][7][8] organisation, which publishes secret information, news leaks,[9] and classified media from anonymous sources.[3][10]."
Based on the number of references for that sentence, I think we can conclude you are not the only one disputing this. What's your definition of press or what disqualifies Wikleaks?
But here my point is, the press instead dumps whole swaths of radioactive waste pretending to be "information" on public that is definitely not in the public interest.
Why have they lost your respect now and not years ago? Didn't they publish 750,000 unrelated and benign files along with the couple of files that showed government wrongdoing when they leaked Manning's stuff? Its not like Wikileaks changed recently, its more like people are just finding out what Wikileaks is.
So official government emails vs official company emails? These weren't individuals' private emails, they were emails sent on company information systems. When you send private emails on a company system, they become company emails.
There is definitely a difference between the two, but I don't think it matters much in these particular cases.
"This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation. It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain."
Yeah, right. Some of is of public interest, sure, but then find it, edit it and publish the results. Ah, I forgot, it's not how wikileaks operate. For them making everything public is good in itself (except, of course, when it's about themselves).
The armchair historian and anthropologist in me wishes we had something like this for the corporations of the 1800s. To a historian or anthropologist, the mundane, everyday interactions are every bit as important to study as the momentous occasions.
>The armchair historian and anthropologist in me wishes we had something like this for the corporations of the 1800s.
What we do have from this time though are a huge number of private journals written/kept by very powerful and influential people. We also have huge troves of their mail correspondence that, without a doubt, was intended to be kept private.
We have since made these things public, written books about them, published the letters reprinted, etc.
So perhaps the release of such correspondence is merely a function of the time since its authorship, or the time since the author (and recipient?) died. The way things operate today though, the future historians are unlikely to get such content.
You should look into Gladwell's history with big tobacco; I lost respect for him after I came across it, and don't mind at all that he lost $50k as a result of the Hachette issue.
I thought the initial concept of wikileaks was to publish documents that would reveal scandals. Instead it is becoming a pirate bay for stolen documents. I am sure the leaks of the Sony documents will reveal the nasty side of Hollywood (which are well known, Hollywood made hundreds of movies on that topic!), but how is that a matter of public interest? What scandal will come out of this? Even the diplomatic cables didn't really reveal any major wrong doing. Most documents were, at most, of interest to diplomats and historians. But no major scandal came out of these leaks.
Too often wikileaks is compared to the Snowden leaks, which triggered a rightful outrage.
I tend to agree - the documents relating to actual abuses are worth releasing, - but releasing the entire trove (and granted I haven't looked at all of it) seems arbitrary and without principal.
You will be aware of the damning evidence. They intended to donate $50k. They are subject to a $5k donation limitation. They are deliberately skirting the law.
What I don't understand is how is that different from any fund raising effort for a candidate? You look for people who have a reason to support a given candidate (race, religion, profession, etc) and invite them to give them money. How is this a proof of corruption?
Yes, the money will come with a message: we like you because you vote xxx on yyy. But I don't see how this is illegal (or even immoral). And I don't see how this is information you couldn't get from public data.
The email implies a specific intent of soliciting individual donations toward a cause (in this case, a politician) which is directly beneficial to the interests of the organization as a whole.
It would be one thing if the emails amounted to "hey, you should donate to this guy because he's a cool dude". That's not the case here, though; it's instead a case of "hey, you should donate to this guy because the company you work for wants to donate $50k but can't because of legal restrictions, and this guy's been really good to us", which - legal or not - is (in my opinion at least) morally deplorable and certainly skirting around the intent of the existing law.
Sorry, I'm not really seeing why asking people to donate for one reason is ok but another is morally deplorable.
> The email implies a specific intent of soliciting individual donations toward a cause (in this case, a politician) which is directly beneficial to the interests of the organization as a whole.
Sure, agreed. Makes sense to me. Why is this "deplorable"?
I founded a startup. Is it wrong to email my employees and ask them to support tax breaks for startups? Or to contribute directly to the politicians who implement those tax breaks?
> I founded a startup. Is it wrong to email my employees and ask them to support tax breaks for startups?
It's not wrong, per se, but since you're the founder it does skirts rather close to this statue in the California Labor Code, so be very careful how you word that email. (Many other states have similar laws if you are not in California.)
California Labor Code § 1102: No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge
or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.
Because the intent is to circumvent a limitation imposed by the organization as a whole (Sony) by soliciting from its execs with that listed as the reason to donate bypasses the limits imposed upon organizations to prevent them from subverting the democratic process.
It's one thing to convince the execs to donate out of the goodness of their hearts. It's another to ask them to donate for the sole reason of such donations benefiting the company they work for.
> Is it wrong to email my employees and ask them to support tax breaks for startups? Or to contribute directly to the politicians who implement those tax breaks?
Yes. Your intentions are certainly better, I'm sure, but it's still subverting limitations on the political influence of corporations - limitations that were imposed in order to prevent American democracy from just devolving into "who has the most money and/or shouts the loudest?".
Granted, that's already a major problem anyway, but just because factories dump billions of gallons of industrial waste into rivers doesn't make someone any less of a jerk for pouring bleach down a storm drain.
The email is asking for personal donations from the execs. I can see using Sony's email addresses for these execs as a potential issue, but honestly, the writer of the email could have just used other personal email addresses.
Personal donations implicitly on behalf of their employer. That's the nuance that's critical to consider here, since the line between "personal" and "corporate" is significantly blurred.
Publicly they were individual donations. This shows the intent of the group to donate a sum of $50k along with detailing how they were going break their donation up to skirt the law.
They deliberately structured their donations to sidestep the $5k limitation to campaigns they're subject to.
This isn't even close to being damning evidence. There's no "structuring" here to "sidestep" anything. There's no breaking up donations. This is someone asking individuals to contribute to a campaign. Contributions which, by the way, are a matter of public record for all to see, no hacking needed.
Data has qualities of the inverse of decay and what you see initially when looking at it on your own is only its half-life. This release shows very clearly to anyone but the absolute naysayer that the sony data has political and legal ramifications that deserve public attention. Now the public will have the chance to uncovering other kernels of interest and truth, which wikileaks could not possibly accomplish by sitting on the data. In light of blaring illegal activities I do not see how you could question this. Further, I don't see how one could find bringing the collusion between multinational corporations and governments to the light of day as not being worthwhile. Even if it may not always reveal illegal activity it enlightens the public. This is why regardless of what you see on the surface of a data trove erring in the direction of release is likely wise.
What of the claims that Sony orginised methods to get around the $2000 limit of donations? I'm curious if this would be illegal, and if not I feel it should be. And even if there are reasons for it to be legal, I'm grateful I at least can learn about it when it happens.
From the email I read, that relied on executives making a donation of their own money. I don't see how this different from any other appeal. And in any way political donations are publicly available, you don't need leaked emails to identify them.
Making six $3k deposits in a row isn't a crime. Doing so to avoid the reporting limits, is.
It might turn out that because of some quirk of law that intentionally getting around donation restrictions isn't illegal (which is presumably should be, just like the banking regulations...) but even if so it's still pretty clearly an end-run around the intent of the law and that's a pretty scummy thing to do.
Especially because I think it's pretty easy to see the easily coercive nature of this. After all, donations are publicly visible... I wouldn't expect to be fired for not, but I would expect not to be promoted unless I did.
> I thought the initial concept of wikileaks was to publish documents that would reveal scandals"
Well. From an early version of wikileaks website:
"Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations."
>I am sure the leaks of the Sony documents will reveal the nasty side of Hollywood (which are well known, Hollywood made hundreds of movies on that topic!), but how is that a matter of public interest?
So that Taylor Swift has a new boyfriend is somehow "a matter of public interest" judging from the tons of classic and new media that report such BS, but the "nasty side" of a huge industry that caters to billions of people is not?
The difference here is that I'm not a powerful organization that employs hundreds of thousands and has influenced international/domestic law and trade policy.
Ya I'm waiting for someone to show me some kind of explosive corruption from this data dump, perhaps I just need to wait. I suppose that is the argument for releasing everything; all the reporters and people around the world might find something that a reporter in NY or DC or London will not understand or fail to connect the dots. I just don't see why they can't send these to the top news organizations and wait for them to review them, and maybe point out a few big news items they found?
If that doesn't happen, this seems silly to me. It's basically entertainment gossip and of no real news value.
And if anything, I feel like this detracts from the story because there are so many superfluous emails in there. I'm not going to go through them and most people won't, so why don't Wikileaks review them and release the ones that are actually newsworthy?
I'm very surprised that HN moderators allowed this to stay on the front page for 10 hours. I know it would not have stayed on the front page if it was about Sony [YC S15]. I honestly don't know who they're trying to appeal to these days.
Can you imagine the conspiracy theories that Assange would be spewing on twitter if his emails were hacked and published. He would demonize the hackers, accuse the CIA, the NSA, MI5/6 etc. of colluding, and his friends at the Guardian would be writing pages of vitriol railing against the hackers/cia/nsa/mi5.
But Hollywood screwed Assange with The Fifth Estate so now they are fair game. He would have prefered to publish Disney emails, but this leaks plenty of conversations about Disney, or that reference Disney, so I guess its good enough.
I thought Wikileaks jumped the shark with "Collateral Murder", but this just about puts them in the same league as the worst elements of the NSA. If Sony broke the law, they could have selectively published those emails.
Yesterday is was the military, todays is large corporations, next I guess Wikileaks will publish the accounts of prominent individuals they don't like.
For the record, I think any mainstream media that republish these emails are just as bad as Wikileaks.
The problem is the role of press and activists as a sort of citizen's law enforcement branch. The rule of law is not strong enough that crimes committed by powerful individuals, companies, militaries, and so on will be actually investigated. So scandals must be uncovered from the outside. But the public is also quite hungry for non-illegal scandal.
WRT "Collateral Murder", what do you think is the correct way to investigate war crimes when you know the military involved will not punish them internally?
I dont have any issue with publishing the video. I have issue with them spinning it. And they did not just spin it, they edited it for effect.
Pointing at other corrupt organizations and saying they also have done wrong that went unpunished (although as far as I know the UK hacking did not go unpublished), does not justify doing wrong. The irony of course is that Assange is hiding in London precisely to avoid appearing in court.
But I also acknowledge we all have a different set of morals. For some the ends justifies the means. I personally believe the ends never justify the means.
The ends justifies the means is usually what war criminals claim to be their justification.
I wasn't pointing out the UK hacking as an unpunished wrong, I was saying that there are certain wrongs which (in practice) can only be exposed by (potentially illegal) leaks.
A better example from the UK might be the widespread allegations of uninvestigated child abuse by members of the establishment that I'm not going to name for fear of libel litigation.
I've seen multiple comments complain about the lack of a "scandal", using that same word. Why does something have to be scandalous to be worth preserving for history's sake?
Such an archival strategy will lead to us never learning from the successes and failures of the past, because they've all been exaggerated into a series of unreachable highs and lamentable lows.
The actions of the hackers who tried to blackmail Sony and stole the documents are wholly unjustifiable. But now that the damage has been done, there is incredible historic and sociological value in seeing what "normal" means inside of a major media corporation.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. WikiLeaks doesn't exist just to publish scandals. It's not a tabloid or a nightly news show. It's a website that publishes leaked documents, and this is the biggest leak of the decade. Making it searchable and accessible is the icing on the cake.
Privacy for individuals, transparency for large institutions. Like I said I don't support the hacking at all. But the data now exists, and much can be learned therefrom.
Well, if they don't have money and someone wants to unlawfully sue or even imprison them or someone wants to collect health data, sexual preferences, etc., I am sure they would.
Other than that. Sony can freely use HTTPS Everywhere, Tor, Switzerland[software], etc., which are supported by EFF. Would be great if they did.
The public didn't need to know that this woman's mother was trying to find her a new job and, probably out of ignorance about the whole Sony vs World situation, contacted someone at Sony about it. But I guess WikiLeaks doesn't care, as long as it hits Sony directly. If only they could take a lesson from Snowden.
Unrelated to Sony, but related to WikiLeaks... Andrew O'Hagen was tapped to ghostwrite Julian Assange's autobiography. It didn't work out. The story behind why, and the insights into workings Wikileaks and the personality of Assange, are incredible:
"Several years ago the studios brought siteblocking litigation in Norway to test that country’s implementation of EU Copyright Directive Article 8.3. We lost the case and as a result of lobbying, Norway implemented a specific law this past summer embodying the 8.3 siteblocking requirements."
"As a result of lobbying, Norway implemented a specific law"
There's a big difference between arguing your case in public on equal terms with your opponents and one side manipulating the politicians behind closed doors.
It's scary that a company in effect can write and pass laws, without the public being involved.
Sounds like you're against lobbying in general, which is fine, but I'm not sure this is a smoking gun of any wrongdoing. I assume the law was passed through Norway's standard (public) legislative process.
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[ 26.8 ms ] story [ 4927 ms ] threadSo it would seem Scott Forstall (of Apple) is now an advisor to Snapchat, and owns 0.11% of the stock... I'd been wondering what he'd been up to after Apple.
Nice, forcing the execs to chime in to a $50.000 bribe
It definitely seems to circumvent the law - but is it clearly criminal? Have such abuses been prosecuted successfully in the past?
I'm actually glad to see that they cared about the law at all, and there was some level of effectiveness to it!
It's perfectly legal to email your coworkers about a political campaign and to ask them to donate. Does this kind of suck? Maybe. Is campaign finance a mess? Definitely. But would you really want a federal law that restricts what you can say about political campaigns while at work? I'm not even sure the Constitution would permit such a restriction on speech.
because we need your help.
we have a great production incentive environment in NY
Because of all of this, I think it’s important to significantly support his reelection efforts and NY law only allows corporations to give him $5,000
we are trying to raise $50k overall.
Like I said, I'm not sure where this falls on the legal-side of things, but this clearly goes further than merely:
> It's perfectly legal to email your coworkers about a political campaign and to ask them to donate.
"The law is clear: Under the Federal Election Campaign Act, making campaign contributions in the name of another person or otherwise concealing the true source of the funds is a felony if the contribution exceeds $2,000. In fact, both the person soliciting the contribution and the person who agrees to be reimbursed for it could be investigated. Even if neither is aware of the law."
source: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2007/december/electfraud_121...
>>"What's the actual legal status on this? It definitely seems to circumvent the law - but is it clearly criminal?"
The email indicates that they were planning to structure their donations "by making this a focus of our individual giving from execs" ie: 'fundraising'.
>>"$50k is a heavy lift since most of it needs to come from individual contributions (only $5k can come from corp.), but I recommend we do it. Cuomo has been a strong protector of the film incentive – even amidst recent criticisms of the program. Also, given the shows we’ve got there and your relationships I think it would look a bit odd if you weren’t on the host committee."
>>"I think we can get to the 50k commitment by making this a focus of our individual giving from execs this year (versus the federal PAC)."
If you want to argue about what "fundraising" means in this context, be my guest; but, I've probably heard it before, and I'll probably think you're either naive or deliberately obtuse. Are you expecting a single email that perfectly implicates the entire board of a multinational corp. in a crime? Do you expect a contract for illegal services to be included as an attachment or something?
IE, there is a 5k limit for corporate donations. No problem, lets have $50k of private donations directed by a corporation. He laid it out pretty plainly. We need to get this guy 5k, but that's illegal so lets do it this sneaky way.
It may be illegal (probably not, but maybe). If it isn't illegal it should be. It's a practice that renders the practice ineffective.
Imagine you are a in corporate sales. IBM buyers are allowed to accept up to $500 worth goodies from any one salesman, but no more. So, you get all your buddies to chip in. If their manager found out, they would assume that this buyers is compromised, unethical and should be fired and investigated for possible prosecution. The policy needs to be updated, but there is an obvious workaround at play here.
Honestly, I don't even see how this is controversial. How can people see massive political donations (which are crucial to getting elected) in such circumstances as anything but a circumvention of democracy. This is not just, I really am shocked.
Because it really looks to me more like the later. Not that I feel sorry for Sony, but do they as a private-sector company not have a right to privacy? There's been a lot of talk lately about wanting to improve the state of privacy on the internet. Through pervasive encryption, controls on data collection, net neutrality, and limiting government surveillance. And then, because Sony happens to be unpopular, they get hacked and data stolen from them. I'm supposed to celebrate this breach of privacy? This tells me that if I value my own privacy I should be careful not to do anything that makes Julian Assange unhappy.
So no, I'm not going to join in the anti-Sony lynch mob. Privacy, like free speech, is something that if you value it for yourself you must defend it at all times, even if you disagree with who is using it.
Quote: "Sony is a member of the MPAA and a strong lobbyist on issues around internet policy, piracy, trade agreements and copyright issues. The emails show the back and forth on lobbying and political efforts, not only with the MPAA but with politicians directly. In November 2013 WikiLeaks published a secret draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) IP Chapter. The Sony Archives show SPE's internal reactions, including discussing the impact with Michael Froman, the US Trade Representative. It also references the case against Megaupload and the extradition of its founder Kim DotCom from New Zealand as part of SPE's war on piracy."
If nothing else, curiosity. But there is something more. It's very interesting to me to see how the world works at this level. And how they talk privately about things that I've only ever gotten to see publicly, in press releases and carefully crafted political statements.
In 2014 Sony's German website was hacked and a file was replaced that served malware. The site inlcuded a database of 50,000 people's names and email addresses. Sony didn't tell anyone there had been a hack. The news of it broken in December[1] because of Wikileaks. Corporations cover up things that affect their customers. That is wrong.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2014/12/15/sony-p...
Sony CEO Michael Lynton was already pitching press secretary Jay Carney on his last day at the White House
https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/?q=Valerie+and+Jarret*&mfr...
https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/?q=dotcom&mfrom=&mto=&titl...
I, for one, welcome Sony's involvement in politics, their relentless subversion of free trade agreements to impose rent-seeking behavior on intellectual property, their wise usage of public money to pursue evil pirates and the "wag the dog" campaign against North Korea to distract attention from security policies and an upcoming box office flop.
Frankly, we should require every company to turn over it's archives after a 20 year or so grace period. This is extremely helpful in a quest to understand how the world actually works, and not archiving and analyzing it dooms us to continue the mistakes of past generations. You ask why there are not more women studying STEM or in CEO positions? Well, answers inside, partially. Pick any other social issue, you'll learn something here.
Stuff like this and the diplomatic cables should be required reading in schools. Otherwise students could get the idea that what you read in a newspaper or hear in an interview reflects reality in any way. The best way to teach critical thinking is to show people how friendships and informal alliances and intrigue are the principal components of any decision process.
Government ties, connections to the military industry and support for politicians? How is that a scandal? And how is that worth violating people's rights. Nothing is redacted. Nothing is explained in context. This is awful.
If something is worth a scandal, it's the chutzpa of Wikileaks.
You mean, corruption ?
Yes, this is worth publishing. Even if this corruption has become mainstream.
Again, there is no reason for violating people's rights even when they can be _accused_ of wrongdoing. It is for courts to decide.
How do you fix a broken process, if the only way to do it is going through the same broken process?
Promoting an anti-donation message directly benefits Cuomo and the parties of big business and finance. Their backers are not going to hear that message, and their opponents' backers are more likely to act on it.
This doesn't make things better.
Compare the recent rise of public video documenting US police shootings. There's no way the alleged wrongdoing would be seriously investigated if there wasn't video widely available to the public.
There are laws. Those laws have intent. Then, there is the actual behavior of individuals and corporations in practice. Loopholes, perhaps intentionally left open. There is a law limiting corporate donations. There is a practice for circumventing it. Without reveals like this, it looks like lots of private individuals donated money but in reality, a corporation effectively got around the legal restriction placed on it.
Those restrictions are there to prevent auctioning off legislation and policy. This is no joke.
These are not pictures of your wife in lingerie. This is squarely in the public interest. It's in the pubic interest to have the law updated so that this will be illegal, so that courts can do something about it.
Corruption has been legalized thanks to... corruption.
You see the problem ? When the law is written by lobbyists, lawful does not bear anymore any meaning.
The archive is made public to enable us to find out exactly that.
Edit: so many angry reactions. I was answering to a post that seem to hold the point that it wouldn't be a scandal, if a multinational company buys influence from politics. With this I indeed disagree.
What your comments suggest is that I think it is ok to publish illegally hacked material. I don't and I did not write that.
On the other hand I have some trust in wikileaks that they don't publish the data just for everybody to sneak into private affairs. I expect it to contain proof of illegal action. That's now for journalists and investigators to find out.
But there is still the issue of illegally acquired data. Where I come from, this must not even be used in court and thus would be worthless.
With a private entity, that's not the case. If you don't like Wikileaks, you're free not to support them, or even fight them in court if you want. Wikileaks works under the umbrella of journalism/free speech laws, if there is a public interest in the matter then they should be left free to continue doing it.
But there's not. Public interest is not the same as a public being interested.
Ah, so if the government had just contracted out the NSA's services and had them act as a private corporation rather than have the NSA be a government entity, then their actions would have been 100% a-ok.
If the NSA was a completely privately-owned corporation without any ties to the government, yeah, the judgement would be different (likely still negative, since no private actor can legally compromise networks like they do).
So if the government passed a law saying it was ok for them to hack private entities and make their records public, it would be ok?
It doesn't matter anyway, bringing in the NSA on this is a red herring.
(True story - while I was working for desktop support at Netscape, one of my fellow technicians ended up having one of his emails end up in the New York Times - and he had sent it to our internal lawyers. Turns out even that can't protect you).
Sony probably has strong grounds to come after whoever breached their security, and send them to prison for many, many years - but I don't know if their are specific individual "rights" being breached by wikileaks here.
Is this coming from the HN crowd that registers domains with contact information anonymity enabled, loves to incorporate in Delaware and complains about privacy and NSA spy programs?
Could you please turn your emails public so we can review them in case you might be doing something wrong? No? Thought so.
It's for the courts to decide if Sony is doing something wrong. Wikileaks is a nice idea and I've supported them for a while, but they can't help but shoot themselves in the foot with dubious behavior like this.
What both of them are doing is distasteful.
To some degree, though, I compare this behavior to that guy who walks up to people with a video camera, a couple feet away, and just points it at them. They become very uncomfortable, and upset, and yell at him.
What he's doing with this "performance art" - as annoying as it is, is making people realize that they are already under constant surveillance.
Anybody who previously didn't understand why privacy is so important to individuals, making them claim, "Oh, I have nothing to hide." - certainly is probably aware now how important it is to them after the Sony Dump.
And, while not defending WikiLeaks (much), can we at least agree that there is a difference between dumping people's personal emails/photos (which is 100% unjustifiable) and exposing corporate machinations of Sony?
Private individuals don't have to file audited accounts, for one thing, just a tax return.
Personally, I wouldn't have a problem making my work emails public.
"Electronic discovery" is a huge process where lawyers will read all the email in a company that hit certain search terms.
It's a fucking boring job, but more than a guys are messaging their mistresses from their work account.
There is no "greater interest" here other than people wanting to stick it to Sony because they won't let you download their movies for $1 the day they hit the theater.
Turnabout is fair play? I don't know, but that's the sentiment behind this sort of action.
Look at the positive: I bet loads of corporate execs are now going to give their IT teams extra money to "not end up like those Sony guys".
The problem with the NSA is that they're a government entity doing something very dangerous from a democratic point of view and of dubious value overall. It's a totally different problem from private citizens publishing stuff they may or may not be entitled to.
Remember, openness and transparency has many levels. You may be at different level than Wikileaks. If this level of openness is uncomfortable, so be it but there may be many who feel, this level is ok. Look at how some Govt's point at others as closed societies. Just in this case, there is some one who took more higher level of openness than traditional ones.
It's stolen documents of a private company. Most of the information is nothing more than embarrassing.
>> "If this level of openness is uncomfortable, so be it but there may be many who feel, this level is ok."
So you publish your communications openly then? Seriously, one minute HN is complaining (rightly so) about government invasions of privacy and the next it's congratulating theft of private communications from someone it doesn't like.
Wikileaks has lost what little remaining credibility it had in my eyes. This is little more than stolen documents to satisfy the kinds of people that read gossip sites.
If we see history, there are no absolute boundaries of privacy and it changes with time and it may feel outrageous now but if we see multiple similar incidents, then it becomes natural,common and after few years, it becomes standard of life and I won't be surprised if future generations in these societies feel proud of that level of transparency and make fun of those who lack that level of openness.
In many cases, people act without consensus based on their decisions. Did you take consensus before posting above message? Just like you did what you thought as right, some one else make other decisions w.r.t wikileaks. Always, there will be initiative and later on consensus comes into picture.
Of course they are. Information that wasn't supposed to be public was stolen and made public against the will of the creators/owners.
But, if you believe we don't have a legitimate government specifically because some big corporations have bought the government, there really is no barrier between those corporations and the government they bought, and there is no difference leaking government or corporate documents.
Evidently, the people at Wikileaks think the latter.
People have an inherent right to privacy, and they don't (generally) forfeit that right when they decide to coordinate their actions with other people (within or without the context of a corporation) that also have a right to privacy.
I don't see a problem here. It's not like private communication was leaked, it's a business communication from a mega corp that happened to reveal a lot of dirty details from inside the industry, so public should know that. If you used business email for personal communication, well then, next time you should know better.
Besides, it's /Sony/, who put rootkits on our PCs in the name of copy protection, and who have never respected individual privacy in the past.
You raise a good point: at what point do you draw the line. I don't have an answer for you, but this example is nowhere near it.
Take this example (pointed out by randomname2):
"NY law only allows corporations to give him $5,000 (which we’ve done)… and, with Michael’s support, we are trying to raise $50k overall. This means I need to ask individual senior execs for support… ..consider contributing $5,000 to Gov. Cuomo?"
This is at the heart of how a lot of our democratic systems work, the money-in-politics question, the corruption of our systems of government. Surely that's something that is important to bring into the light, no?
The criticism I've had with wikileaks from the start is still somewhat valid. Wikileaks are press. We have a culture of protecting, empowering & respecting the press. We have legal protections for the press. There are cultures within the press for balancing need to know against other considerations. But wikileaks (mores earlier on) never really saw or projected themselves this way, free press. To most people, including their supports they always seemed more like activists than journalists.
When Assange was originally targeted I stopped to sign a petition in Melbourne. I read it. A Caricaturized synopsis might be "Free Assange! Free Gaza. Troops Out of Iraq! Fuck America! Abortion! Gays! Aboriginal RIghts! Like I said, caricature. But I don't think these guys were a million miles away from how wikileaks saw (or at least presented) themselves. Activists more than press.
I think that's part of the problem you are sort of pointing to. Activists stealing documents sounds different to journalists with secret sources. The latter is an important part of democracy.
Wikileaks are most assuredly not the press.
From wikipedia:
"WikiLeaks is an international, non-profit,[3] journalistic[6][7][8] organisation, which publishes secret information, news leaks,[9] and classified media from anonymous sources.[3][10]."
Based on the number of references for that sentence, I think we can conclude you are not the only one disputing this. What's your definition of press or what disqualifies Wikleaks?
But here my point is, the press instead dumps whole swaths of radioactive waste pretending to be "information" on public that is definitely not in the public interest.
The court of the people have subpoenaed this corporate information. Anyone knows that the corporate veil will be pierced in discovery.
There is definitely a difference between the two, but I don't think it matters much in these particular cases.
I can't understand WikiLeaks anymore. They seem now like teenage trolls with infantile attitude and manners.
Yeah, right. Some of is of public interest, sure, but then find it, edit it and publish the results. Ah, I forgot, it's not how wikileaks operate. For them making everything public is good in itself (except, of course, when it's about themselves).
What we do have from this time though are a huge number of private journals written/kept by very powerful and influential people. We also have huge troves of their mail correspondence that, without a doubt, was intended to be kept private.
We have since made these things public, written books about them, published the letters reprinted, etc.
So perhaps the release of such correspondence is merely a function of the time since its authorship, or the time since the author (and recipient?) died. The way things operate today though, the future historians are unlikely to get such content.
https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/127944
Disappointing fact: Gladwell uses a Blackberry
Too often wikileaks is compared to the Snowden leaks, which triggered a rightful outrage.
https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/135225
You will be aware of the damning evidence. They intended to donate $50k. They are subject to a $5k donation limitation. They are deliberately skirting the law.
Yes, the money will come with a message: we like you because you vote xxx on yyy. But I don't see how this is illegal (or even immoral). And I don't see how this is information you couldn't get from public data.
It would be one thing if the emails amounted to "hey, you should donate to this guy because he's a cool dude". That's not the case here, though; it's instead a case of "hey, you should donate to this guy because the company you work for wants to donate $50k but can't because of legal restrictions, and this guy's been really good to us", which - legal or not - is (in my opinion at least) morally deplorable and certainly skirting around the intent of the existing law.
> The email implies a specific intent of soliciting individual donations toward a cause (in this case, a politician) which is directly beneficial to the interests of the organization as a whole.
Sure, agreed. Makes sense to me. Why is this "deplorable"?
I founded a startup. Is it wrong to email my employees and ask them to support tax breaks for startups? Or to contribute directly to the politicians who implement those tax breaks?
It's not wrong, per se, but since you're the founder it does skirts rather close to this statue in the California Labor Code, so be very careful how you word that email. (Many other states have similar laws if you are not in California.)
California Labor Code § 1102: No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.
Because the intent is to circumvent a limitation imposed by the organization as a whole (Sony) by soliciting from its execs with that listed as the reason to donate bypasses the limits imposed upon organizations to prevent them from subverting the democratic process.
It's one thing to convince the execs to donate out of the goodness of their hearts. It's another to ask them to donate for the sole reason of such donations benefiting the company they work for.
> Is it wrong to email my employees and ask them to support tax breaks for startups? Or to contribute directly to the politicians who implement those tax breaks?
Yes. Your intentions are certainly better, I'm sure, but it's still subverting limitations on the political influence of corporations - limitations that were imposed in order to prevent American democracy from just devolving into "who has the most money and/or shouts the loudest?".
Granted, that's already a major problem anyway, but just because factories dump billions of gallons of industrial waste into rivers doesn't make someone any less of a jerk for pouring bleach down a storm drain.
The email is asking for personal donations from the execs. I can see using Sony's email addresses for these execs as a potential issue, but honestly, the writer of the email could have just used other personal email addresses.
Publicly they were individual donations. This shows the intent of the group to donate a sum of $50k along with detailing how they were going break their donation up to skirt the law.
They deliberately structured their donations to sidestep the $5k limitation to campaigns they're subject to.
It might turn out that because of some quirk of law that intentionally getting around donation restrictions isn't illegal (which is presumably should be, just like the banking regulations...) but even if so it's still pretty clearly an end-run around the intent of the law and that's a pretty scummy thing to do.
Especially because I think it's pretty easy to see the easily coercive nature of this. After all, donations are publicly visible... I wouldn't expect to be fired for not, but I would expect not to be promoted unless I did.
Well. From an early version of wikileaks website:
"Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations."
http://web.archive.org/web/20070114162346/http://www.wikilea...
> Most documents were, at most, of interest to diplomats and historians. But no major scandal came out of these leaks.
What people don't seem to get is that the cables wasn't about the US. But about what every other government where doing with or saying to the US behind their own peoples back. E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_United_States_d...
So that Taylor Swift has a new boyfriend is somehow "a matter of public interest" judging from the tons of classic and new media that report such BS, but the "nasty side" of a huge industry that caters to billions of people is not?
If that doesn't happen, this seems silly to me. It's basically entertainment gossip and of no real news value.
And if anything, I feel like this detracts from the story because there are so many superfluous emails in there. I'm not going to go through them and most people won't, so why don't Wikileaks review them and release the ones that are actually newsworthy?
But Hollywood screwed Assange with The Fifth Estate so now they are fair game. He would have prefered to publish Disney emails, but this leaks plenty of conversations about Disney, or that reference Disney, so I guess its good enough.
I thought Wikileaks jumped the shark with "Collateral Murder", but this just about puts them in the same league as the worst elements of the NSA. If Sony broke the law, they could have selectively published those emails.
Yesterday is was the military, todays is large corporations, next I guess Wikileaks will publish the accounts of prominent individuals they don't like.
For the record, I think any mainstream media that republish these emails are just as bad as Wikileaks.
The problem is the role of press and activists as a sort of citizen's law enforcement branch. The rule of law is not strong enough that crimes committed by powerful individuals, companies, militaries, and so on will be actually investigated. So scandals must be uncovered from the outside. But the public is also quite hungry for non-illegal scandal.
WRT "Collateral Murder", what do you think is the correct way to investigate war crimes when you know the military involved will not punish them internally?
Pointing at other corrupt organizations and saying they also have done wrong that went unpunished (although as far as I know the UK hacking did not go unpublished), does not justify doing wrong. The irony of course is that Assange is hiding in London precisely to avoid appearing in court.
But I also acknowledge we all have a different set of morals. For some the ends justifies the means. I personally believe the ends never justify the means.
The ends justifies the means is usually what war criminals claim to be their justification.
A better example from the UK might be the widespread allegations of uninvestigated child abuse by members of the establishment that I'm not going to name for fear of libel litigation.
LOL good luck! They're behind seven proxies. </meme>
But seriously, if someone pulled a WikiLeaks on WikiLeaks that would probably go over well. Hats off to great exploits and whatnot.
I think the point is to not be selective. Release the info, and let people do with it as they may.
Such an archival strategy will lead to us never learning from the successes and failures of the past, because they've all been exaggerated into a series of unreachable highs and lamentable lows.
The actions of the hackers who tried to blackmail Sony and stole the documents are wholly unjustifiable. But now that the damage has been done, there is incredible historic and sociological value in seeing what "normal" means inside of a major media corporation.
I find it odd that there is a large overlap in people who support "Transparency" and those who are very big into "privacy."
They are contradictory principles in my mind.
Searched of course: https://www.google.com/#q=site:wikileaks.org+download+sony+a...
Seems that Wikileaks is bearing unnecessary cost in hosting the search interface in addition to publishing.
Other than that. Sony can freely use HTTPS Everywhere, Tor, Switzerland[software], etc., which are supported by EFF. Would be great if they did.
Gotta love the "Yikes!" on the part of the guy who presumably handles Sony's relationships with governments.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting
Great long long long read.
"As a result of lobbying, Norway implemented a specific law"
https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/114787
It's scary that a company in effect can write and pass laws, without the public being involved.