
Activist Publishes 11,000 Private DMs Between Wikileaks and Its Supporters - aaronbrethorst
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kyv9n/activist-publishes-11000-wikileaks-twitter-direct-messages-dms
======
mike-cardwell
There's a Glenn Greenwald article on the Intercept from just over a week ago
saying Assange is about to be kicked out of the embassy and handed over to the
UK:

[https://theintercept.com/2018/07/21/ecuador-will-
imminently-...](https://theintercept.com/2018/07/21/ecuador-will-imminently-
withdraw-asylum-for-julian-assange-and-hand-him-over-to-the-uk-what-comes-
next/)

Also, there's been a bunch of stuff about anti-semitism in the UK media
recently.

Interesting timing and content for this story.

~~~
e12e
See also: [https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/07/28/in-refusing-to-
defen...](https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/07/28/in-refusing-to-defend-
assange-mainstream-media-exposes-its-true-nature/)

------
lawlessone
One of the is issues here is Wikileaks taking sides and encouraging things to
happen politically, which is beyond just leaking things.

~~~
peterwwillis
That's the entire intent of the organization. To leak things to cause
political repercussions. They aren't leaking it just for the lulz. But the
original idea was that this was supposed to be politically unbiased. It seems,
though, that the history of their releases has had a bias. They also seem to
have a lengthy controversy section on Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Controversy)

It seems weird that Wikileaks exists in the form it does. I mean, couldn't
they just host a giant Pastebin-style site on Tor and let people leak whatever
they wanted?

~~~
ramblerouser
No. The point of wikileaks is that they verify the authenticity of things they
publish, and the veracity of past leaks gives credibility to future ones.

Regarding accusations of bias, I have yet to see an example of authentic non-
public information wikileaks refused to publish. Do you have one?

~~~
philipodonnell
The accusation they are biased in what they published does not require them to
have refused to release anything, merely that the original sources of
information only made biased information available to Wikileaks to publish, or
that they only solicited or acted to confirm information from biased sources.

~~~
ramblerouser
I don't think the original sources choosing what to leak counts as bias on the
part of Wikileaks. As for them only acting to confirm leaks in a biased way,
do you have any examples of leaks that were published elsewhere because
wikileaks refused due to bias?

~~~
ceejayoz
Yes:

"Wikileaks withheld a batch of emails showing a $2.2 billion transaction
between the Syrian regime and a Russian government-owned bank, according to a
Daily Dot report." [https://gizmodo.com/wikileaks-may-have-withheld-key-
russian-...](https://gizmodo.com/wikileaks-may-have-withheld-key-russian-
documents-from-1786445992)

"In the summer of 2016, as WikiLeaks was publishing documents from Democratic
operatives allegedly obtained by Kremlin-directed hackers, Julian Assange
turned down a large cache of documents related to the Russian government,
according to chat messages and a source who provided the records."
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-
down-l...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-
on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/)

Don't forget the time they came out against anti-Trump leaks:
[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/817322050297745408](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/817322050297745408)

~~~
ramblerouser
From the article in your comment: >“As far as we recall these are already
public,” WikiLeaks wrote at the time.

>In 2014, the BBC and other news outlets reported on the cache, which revealed
details about Russian military and intelligence involvement in Ukraine.
However, the information from that hack was less than half the data that later
became available in 2016, when Assange turned it down.

So the source was trying to piggyback on the well earned publicity Wikileaks
publications get to bring attention to an old leak by adding some
uninteresting documents to it. I suspect if his addition had contained
revelations, we would have heard about it, especially given the anti-Russia
bias of the corporate media lately.

On the Syrian payment, why is Russia giving money to an ally something I
should find questionable? How much money did the US give Israel that year
alone?

------
belltaco
Would be appropriate to publish these on a site named wikileaksleaks.org

~~~
iooi
It's available! Go for it.

------
dleslie
Who runs the Wikileaks twitter account these days? I don't imagine it could be
Assange as I understand that his access to the 'net is tenuous at best.

~~~
thsowers
IIRC within the past year or two it seemed like the account was being managed
by someone else. The tone of the tweets changed, and spelling errors started
to arise where there had previously been very few. This could be a result of
pressure on Assange, or another party controlling the account all together

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
_> The tone of the tweets changed, and spelling errors started to arise_

Must be a native English speaker because they can't spell for shit.

~~~
ComputerGuru
> Must be a native English speaker because they can’t spell for shit.

I’m not sure I understand your comment. Are you saying native English speakers
are more prone to misspelling than those that speak it as a second or third
language?

~~~
nicoburns
Yes, that is what they are saying. I believe it is meant somewhat tongue in
cheek. Although there is also some truth to this.

For example, it is not uncommon in the US for native english speakers to
confuse the spellings of "loose" and "lose", whereas this kind of confusion is
uncommon among say native German speakers who know English as a second
language.

There are of course also native speakers with excellent spelling.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
yes it was tongue in cheek :) I don't have hard data on it and therefore can
only speak for my own surrounding (colleagues, friends etc). Maybe I'm utterly
wrong even and my sample size to make such a claim is shit :)

------
api
This just confirms what was obvious from behavior -- namely that Wikileaks is
not neutral and has a clear political agenda.

~~~
geezerjay
> This just confirms

Is the leaked material real? Until that's asserted I don't believe it confirms
anything. It's no secret that there are plenty of persons interested in
undermining wikileaks who are very capable of fabricating smear campaigns.

~~~
ComputerGuru
It’s no less legitimate than all the recent publications out of Wikileaks
themselves, at any rate.

------
Grue3
The tendentiousness of Wikileaks "reporting" was apparent to me from the
start. Unfortunately "USA suxx" is always a popular sentiment to rally people
around so people would overlook the (obvious in retrospect) fact that it was
all a Kremlin-funded operation.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
Looking at previous HN threads on the subject, there seemed to be a strong
pro-wikileaks coalition on HN (comments similar to yours have been grayed out
in the past)

~~~
equalunique
Can confirm. It's just not worthwhile trying to convince those who are against
it, as their minds are already made up & closed.

------
arcaster
Seems wrong to assume that this dump hasn't been tampered with or has implicit
biases...

~~~
ne0n
It's right there in the article.

> “When Emma contacted me saying the source sent her the same docs too, I took
> a hash of my original HTML file and it checked out, so she has a copy of the
> same file as me,” Lee told Motherboard in a Twitter direct message. A hash
> is a cryptographic fingerprint of a file; if someone has tampered the file
> at all, those hashes won’t match.

> Lee said his source provided an HTML file of the DMs, and then Lee logged
> into the Twitter account himself and downloaded the direct messages with an
> automated tool.

> “I confirmed that they were authentic (Twitter itself would have had to
> doctor them) and that the source didn't modify the content in the copy he
> gave me,” Lee told Motherboard.

------
alliecat
I wonder how long until Wikileaks denounce this leak as "irresponsible", or
whatever?

------
mhkool
Does saying "he is jewish" make you a rascist ?

~~~
dogma1138
The use of the ((()))) brackets kinda does.

~~~
conception
More than kinda -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses)

~~~
metalliqaz
Activist and former white supremacist Christian Picciolini claims that
"globalist" was an intentional renaming of "Jewish" in order to make their
message more palatable to mainstream conservatives.

~~~
api
"Globalist" is a very old antisemitic slur -- see "The International Jew" by
Henry Ford.

~~~
cat199
sooo..

If one is anti-globalist, one is inherently anti-semitic?

What then does it mean to be a globalist?

And further, if defending being a 'globalist' automatically implies 'defending
jews' what does this implicitly imply 'all jews' actually believe
geopolitically?

the faulty logic runs deep in this line of thinking; the allegedly racist term
then becomes 'the reality', which should then be protected..

~~~
api
You can be against neoliberalism, unfair trade, or international political
entities overriding national sovereignty without being antisemitic.

Picking a dog whistle term that happens to sound like a reasonable position is
a standard political tactic. Another example: "family values" which is a
euphemism for theocracy. Who would actually oppose "the family"?

~~~
ramblerouser
How do you describe "international political entities overriding national
sovereignty" without using the word "globalist" or "internationalist"? (Both
of which are antisemitic apparently)

~~~
api
That's exactly why white supremacists picked those terms.

~~~
ramblerouser
Im asking you what term you think is appropriate. It seems like you dont think
ANY word is appropriate, and that is 1984 newspeak. If your opponent isnt
allowed to have a word to describe your position, they cant effectively argue
against it.

edit: Lol. Thank you for validating my theory.

