
Mass Hacks of Private Email Aren’t Whistleblowing, They Are at Odds with It - hackuser
https://www.justsecurity.org/33677/mass-hacks-private-email-arent-whistleblowing-odds-it/
======
Glyptodon
Meh. While email hacks are obviously different than "whistleblowing" nobody
would be batting an eye if somebody had hacked a trove of Mafia (or other
organized crime) emails and released them publicly.

The reality is that sometimes hacking is in the public interest and sometimes
it's not, but figuring out when is not easy or black and white.

One aspect to these discussions that I find sort of befuddling is the idea
that somehow those involved in "making the news" (so to speak) shouldn't have
to think about what they're saying or how they're saying it unless they're "on
the record," that we should expect their public face to be a mask hiding any
insight into the private face behind it, and that somehow they ought to be
magically protected from the potential publicizing of recordings, hacks, or
eavesdropping.

Clearly the public at large is somewhat jaded and cynical, but there's still a
very obvious desire to have "honest" and "open" candidates who make their
goals, intentions, and ideologies clear. Of course the public theoretically
wants to know how the sausage is made.

That the candidates can't recognize this and can't or won't operate as though
the public might be watching without crying foul seems to me a bigger farce
than pretending that one's own words are a conspiracy... but what do I know?

I guess the idea that one ought to maintain some level restraint and
conviviality both publicly and privately is dated and quaint.

~~~
SamBam
> Meh. While email hacks are obviously different than "whistleblowing" nobody
> would be batting an eye if somebody had hacked a trove of Mafia (or other
> organized crime) emails and released them publicly.

...but the Mafia are a priori criminals, while politicians are not (except in
a sophomoric "all politicians are liars" kind of way).

What crime did Powell commit to have his everyday privacies exposed to the
world?

~~~
rfrank
What crime did the American people commit to have their digital lives
cataloged and analyzed by the NSA?

~~~
mazelife
I've seen variants of this argument made up and down this thread, and I don't
think it holds any water. And I say this as someone that thinks the NSA's mass
surveillance is morally wrong, unconstitutional, and probably ultimately
counterproductive.

I'm willing to stipulate there's an avenue for civil disobedience in which
leaking of private information is used as a way to apply pressure to actors
within the government and private industry who might be sanctioning the NSA's
practices. In other words I could see a course of action that includes
widespread, comprehensive attempts to hack and leak the emails of FISA court
judges, employees and appointees of US intelligence agencies, executives and
board members of companies like AOL, Palantir, and Verizon who are known to
have enthusiastically participated in this surveillance, and elected officials
in the executive or legislative branches of the government who have supported
or perpetuated this spying. The idea being that if the people who keep this
system of surveillance grinding onwards experience the personal consequence of
having their private info leaked to the public, they might reconsider their
actions.

I could see a course of action like this and even agree there's some valid
arguments for it, but it's also incredibly dangerous, and would require, I
dunno, a great deal of judgement and restraint to not cause huge collateral
damage to perfectly innocent people, or to end up ruining the lives of people
who were only tangential participants in the system. In other words, this
strategy is deeply problematic and dangerous at the best of times.

But let's not kid ourselves that that's even what's going on here. You could
try to argue that Hillary Clinton, as the likely next president, is a part of
this system, and so she should be on the list of people who are targeted for
leaking in the course of civil disobedience. But Trump also supports this
surveillance, so he should too. But the thing is, we don't have to guess at
the motives of Wikileaks here, they are quite clearly making no such civil
disobedience claims [1]. And if you look at whose information is being
leaked—Clinton campaign staffers, the DNC—and estimate where these particular
actors fall on the scale of culpability in the NSAs spying (hint: well down
the list), you start to see that trying to ascribe some higher civic purpose
to these _particular_ leaks isn't warranted.

[1] [https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/press-
release](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/press-release)

~~~
rfrank
It all depends on how you look at the overarching conflict, I suppose. To me,
the privacy debate is like a cold war that's been raging for at least a
decade, that began turning hot around the time of the collateral murder leaks
and definitely after the Snowden leaks.

Yes, civil disobedience in this context comes with consequences. It's a fight,
people get hurt in fights. Lives have already been ruined by the surveillance
state. It's important to keep in mind it's a path of action people feel forced
down by the actions of their government.

> you start to see that trying to ascribe some higher civic purpose to these
> particular leaks isn't warranted.

You sure about that?

[https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/22030#efmABAADK...](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/22030#efmABAADKADLADiAEeAExAFbAH_AJwAKXAOWAO2)

Here's a bit of one of my comments from yesterday, "For instance, the stories
about Podesta's dealings in Russia [1]. This email [2] includes an attached
legal bill regarding formation of Leonidio LLC. Is that not government and
business corruption? 1\. [http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/how-hillarys-campaign-
chief-hid-m...](http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/how-hillarys-campaign-chief-hid-
money-from-russia/) 2\. [https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/13946](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/13946)

~~~
SamBam
> You sure about that? [https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
> emails/emailid/22030#efmABAADK...](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
> emails/emailid/22030#efmABAADK..).

Ummm.... That's _two years_ after she held any kind of public office.

How is it _possibly_ "government corruption" for someone who is not a member
of government to agree to meet people in order to solicit funds for their
foundation? Bill Gates does this all the time, does he not?

------
trendia
Many, but not all, of the emails about to be released would have been subject
to:

1) subpoena

2) FOIA request

So Americans (either government officials or private citizens) should have had
access to them anyway.

Public servants in the US make a deal: if they want control or influence over
the legislative process, then they have to be willing to release their emails.

Of course -- I dislike releasing emails for purely partisan purposes or
releasing emails that don't expose any wrongdoing.

But, if we do not have some sort of punishment for people who refuse to
respond to subpoenas or FOIA requests, then we open the door for these rules
to be ignored.

~~~
unethical_ban
Is the Democratic National Committee held to FOIA requests? It is a private
organization.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
When you have an oligopoly on government, you shouldn't be counted as private
anymore. Either the major political parties become publicly-owned,
democratically accountable organizations, or we need to switch to proportional
representation. Or both.

~~~
maxerickson
When you force them to record their in person meetings, they will just have
extra in person meetings that they don't record.

I don't see where else the line of thinking that we deserve to have access to
their email ends up, and it's pretty easy to argue that Podesta picking the
brains of people he knows is not actually official party business.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
_Or_ we could just repeal all the various laws advantaging the Republican and
Democratic Parties over third-parties, open up local, state, and federal
elections to real competition, and then let the surviving parties function as
private organizations _that nobody is forced to vote for_.

My objection is that when I walk into the voting booth this November, I will
be forced to vote for a Democrat. I mean this literally: most offices on my
ballot will not be contested, not even by a Republican. The _most_ competitive
races will have a Republican versus a Democrat, but most _actual_ races will
_just_ have a Democrat. The actual decision-making for most officials who run
my life was decided in the Democratic Primaries. I voted in those too, but
most of _those_ weren't contested _either_.

This happens because if you're a Republican or Democrat, your party declares
your candidacy and boom, you're on the ballot. If you're not, you need a
signature drive to run for town dog-catcher.

I'm just saying that I want more than one choice for every election up and
down the ballot, and I want the available choices determined by public support
for the movement, party, or candidate, rather than by legal privileging of
particular private organizations.

~~~
maxerickson
_Or we could just repeal all the various laws advantaging the Republican and
Democratic Parties over third-parties, open up local, state, and federal
elections to real competition, and then let the surviving parties function as
private organizations that nobody is forced to vote for._

I say this on HN all the time.

------
zemo
this is a gorgeously written piece. The knee-jerk reactions in here that this
is propaganda without merit seem to lack reading comprehension or imagination.

The piece does not say "never leak emails ever", the piece says "only link
emails that are of civil interest", which is _exactly_ the position that
Snowden has been espousing for some time. It says "with great power comes
great responsibility", not "all hackers are bad! obey the government!"

It doubly says that if we permit all leaked emails, governments could use this
against us by leaking things anonymously. The suggestion here is that honoring
anonymously leaked troves of emails without considering their civil merit is
itself a back door around the fourth amendment. At some point the government
will anonymously leak something to wikileaks and use it against a citizen. The
danger here is that were the government to effectively coop wikileaks itself,
which you _think_ is anti-government, it would become a brutal and effective
trojan horse. If we put blind faith in wikileaks, it will eventually be co-
opted by the institutions for which it was designed to provide oversight.

This piece is a defense of your right to privacy. I'm confused as to why it's
being met with such resistance here.

~~~
jsprogrammer
The faith in WikiLeaks isn't blind. It will only take one false publication to
destroy its credibility.

All that matters is whether the facts published are accurate. Maligning the
source (particularly on speculation) is a pre-emptive ad hominem non-sequitor.

~~~
Goronmon
_The faith in WikiLeaks isn 't blind. It will only take one false publication
to destroy its credibility._

So, if WikiLeaks starting dumping private emails for random people, that would
be acceptable because none of the information is actually false?

~~~
admax88q
That's not what they said. They said a false publication would destroy its
credibility. They did not say that WikiLeaks is always in the right so long as
they publish accurate information.

~~~
__jal
Correct. And the parent was asking a different question.

------
squozzer
Were we in another era, where citizens and governments acted harmoniously in
the interests of the people, I would probably agree with the author. But we're
not.

We're in a cold war, not with Russia or China, but with our own government,
who views the citizenry as a threat pool, even when history overwhelmingly
reveals that most threats to governments come from opportunists within
governments, and not from plebian revolts or terrorists.

FWIW, the DNC leaks have been rather underwhelming, at best revealing that
nominating a candidate for POTUS is not much different than nominating a high
school class president, i.e. it's mostly an exercise in clique formation.

The author might better spend their time and energy teaching the government
how to act transparently and respect privacy than trying to convince the
proles their sense of payback is immoral.

------
zekevermillion
Let's say we want a society where civil disobedience is tolerated, but we also
want to live under rule of law. To engage in civil disobedience ethically, I
think one must be prepared to bear the personal consequences of breaking the
law. However, when the consequences for military / intelligence community
leaks are anything up to and including life in prison, or death by hanging,
this forces an extreme ethical dilemma. If we value civil disobedience as a
society, maybe we ought to give it some protection under the laws. Obviously
we can't allow disclosure of secrets based on subjective intent. But we could
offer a sort of safe harbor where, if the leaker only discloses information
that pertains to government actions or policies that he or she has a bona fide
belief are illegal or immoral, then the penalties are limited to X years in
prison. Would this tend to encourage leaks? Yes. But, it would still require a
person to make a difficult personal decision before breaking secrecy laws.

------
jsprogrammer
>As Steven Levy has observed, this sort of leak is a digital counterpart to
what had been sought by the Watergate burglars by bugging the offices of the
DNC — occasioned through hacking, rather than breaking and entering. Watergate
thus looms not only as an example of a cover-up that was revealed through
whistleblowing — the covered-up burglary was itself a roundly-denounced, and
criminal, attempt to procure a political rival’s private conversations.

I'd never heard that the Nixon team planned to release their recordings to the
public.

~~~
mcv
Is any invasion of privacy okay as long as the results are released to the
public? I think to many people that would be even worse than only having the
government snoop at their private email.

The point of whistleblowing is that you reveal actual crimes, not just sharing
private conversations.

~~~
jsprogrammer
The US has a prohibition on government snooping. There is no such prohibition
on private intelligence gathering; in fact, the publication of such
intelligence is specifically protected.

~~~
vkou
Strange - in my state, recording a conversation without notifying the other
party is a felony.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Sounds like a seriously repressive state. If the law were used, it could be
invalidated as it is in violation of a person's right to make records of their
observations and, especially, their right to publish those records.

~~~
vkou
Eleven states require the consent of every party to a phone call or
conversation - California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.

I've no doubt that there were plenty of constitutional challenges to the
statutes, none of which were successful.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Do you know of a person serving a felony sentence for violating such law?

------
zekevermillion
One problem with selective leaking is that it tends to reduce the credibility
of the leaker. If I filter the information I disclose, then inevitably it
passes through the lens of my own biases and agenda. Whereas if I dump it all
on w.l., that sort of signals that the info is not skewed. (This does not
solve any of the ethical or moral issues raised by the author, mind you, but
is a practical impediment to effectiveness of selective disclosure.)

------
anindha
Elected officials treat honesty even in Senate hearings as optional. If we
trusted them breaching their privacy wouldn't be necessary.

------
Daviey
<deleted>

~~~
wnoise
That's a thread on terms of use for Tesla autopilot.

------
gjolund
Thinly veiled propaganda.

Until our government actually starts being transparent these hacks are the
only insight into the actual thoughts and motivations of our world leaders.

~~~
trendia
The government reads Americans emails: "Deal with it."

Americans read the government's emails: "This is an outrage!"

~~~
refurb
You do realize that gov't emails are supposed to be public, right? That's the
law.

~~~
trendia
Of course -- through FOIA and recent subpoenas -- which is why the outrage
over the release of these emails is even more hypocritical

------
camperman
"But to anyone who sees civic and political participation as the most
important way to advance democracy, and to beat back any capture by special
interests, this is not medicine. It is poison."

Nonsense. The mass hacks have shone much-needed light into formerly dark
places. It's a bit late to think civic and political participation has a
chance against sentiment like this:

"And as I've mentioned, we've all been quite content to demean government,
drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant
citizenry", from [https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/3599](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3599)

~~~
mazelife
I don't believe the passage you quote from supports your assertion in any way.
Here it is in full:

"I'm certain the poll-directed insiders are sure things will default to policy
as soon as the conventions are over, but I think not. And as I've mentioned,
we've all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general
conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness
remains strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly. This problem
demands some serious, serious thinking - and not just poll driven,
demographically-inspired messaging."

To unpack that (along with context from the rest of the email), Podesta's
correspondent is bemoaning the fact that politics has begun to be covered as
entertainment and celebrity gossip. He suggests that any hope that things will
take a turn for the better after the election is misplaced, and that there's a
larger issue: "we"—and by this he clearly means media elites, people in public
office, and in general the milieu to which he belongs rather than some shadowy
cabal of which he is a member—have not upheld their duty to help keep an
informed and skeptical citizenry. He suggests that misguided attempts by the
media to keep people compliant and docile have started to wear thin, but that
in the absence of information and understanding all that anger is liable to
attach itself to a demagogue like Donald Trump.

In short, he is advocating the exact thing mentioned in the article: informed
civic and political participation! This is a perfectly anodyne line of
thinking, and I don't really see what cause is served by stealing and leaking
this person's private correspondence. And who is this dark and Machiavellian
correspondent? This guy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey)

~~~
camperman
"To unpack that, Podesta's correspondent is bemoaning the fact that politics
has begun to be covered as entertainment and celebrity gossip."

I thought he was saying they've all been quite content to demean government,
drop civics and conspire to produce a compliant and unaware citizenry. That's
what he says.

"He suggests that any hope that things will take a turn for the better after
the election is misplaced, and that there's a larger issue: "we"—and by this
he clearly means media elites, people in public office, and in general the
milieu to which he belongs rather than some shadowy cabal of which he is a
member—have not upheld their duty to help keep an informed and skeptical
citizenry."

Except he says 'we've all been quite content to ... conspire to produce an
unaware and compliant citizenry', exactly the opposite meaning.

"He suggests that misguided attempts by the media to keep people compliant and
docile have started to wear thin but that in the absence of information and
understanding all that anger is liable to attach itself to a demagogue like
Donald Trump."

Indeed.

"In short, he is advocating the exact thing mentioned in the article: informed
civic and political participation!"

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

"And who is this dark and Machiavellian correspondent? This guy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey")

So, a close confidant of the Clintons (Bill made him Chairman of the National
Endowment for the Arts) and with strong connections to the current Dems (team
leader in Arts and Humanities for the Obama transition).

~~~
jahewson
You're still dismissing the actual context of these comments and projecting
your own read-between-the-lines ambiguous alternative universe in its place.

I don't think it could be much more clear that this guy thinks that media
coverage has "been" (and I quote him saying "been" because he's talking in the
past tense) 1) sub-par, trivialised entertainment rather than thought-
provoking information 2) needs to _be_ something better in the future.

The author of this email writes books about policy and how to improve it! He's
particularly interested in improving cultural and civic life. We can see quite
clearly the context of his comments, and the broader context of who he is and
why he's engaging in this dialog.

Or we could ignore all that and whip up a bizzarely contextless fantasy
constructed around misreading the word "we" and ignoring pretty much
everything else. Oh wait, I just said "we" in the previous sentence yet I
don't mean myself - gee, how about that?

Worse still, I think you're actually guilty of the very problem he laments.
Rather than having a dialog around politics of careful debate and fair
analysis, we (again this "we" does not include me) are content to dismiss the
facts, stir up fake controversy and peddle conspiracy theories and other
attention-grabbing but ultimately misleading soundbites.

~~~
camperman
I don't know how it could be clearer: an academic and long-time confidant of
the Clintons emails the Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton Presidential
Campaign and says "we've all been quite content to demean government, drop
civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry."
It's sparkling clear from his tone, content and personal history that he's an
insider and adviser to the campaign and that this is just a run-of-the-mill
email to the Chairman with his thoughts on strategy.

I don't see anything abnormal in this exchange at all: grizzled old adviser
shares his thoughts on the entertainment-cum-revolution that is the Trump
campaign and ruefully admits that the Dems need a rethink. And I'm not the one
tying myself in angry knots trying to spin this as an innocent email
encouraging greater civic participation.

------
bakhy
this is a very good point. these e-mail leaks are really just lowering this
election even further into the mud. and nothing is really gained. it's not
hard to see how shitty both candidates are. this reeks of spite and
frustration, like a kind of revenge-porn motivated by the frustrating
situation with these candidates. while the frustration is totally legitimate,
this is just mudslinging.

