
We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point - Yhippa
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/789574436219449345?s=08
======
jacquesm
Wikileaks is apparently on a mission to destroy whatever credibility they had
left. They seem to be taking a leaf out of the IS playbook here, any random
attack that is moderately successful gets claimed as one of theirs.

It isn't a week since they were extremely economical with the truth regarding
Assange's internet access ('state actor cut off their internet' -> 'Ecuador
has pulled the plug on Assange's laptop').

The best way to deal with this would have been to distance themselves from
anybody doing this, the very worst is to suggest they have the ability to
issue orders to those perpetrating these attacks.

With supporters like these they wouldn't need enemies to begin with, it's a
very negative association and they're purposefully aligning themselves with
these so called hackers.

What will replace wikileaks?

~~~
dandare
I absolutely agree. What Wikileaks did for peace and democracy cannot be
disputed but I could not say I am their supporter any more. I wonder how much
of it is Assange's personality and questionable political views and how much
is of it is campaign orchestrated by almost all-powerful secret services but
it probably doesn't even matter at this point.

~~~
Gargoyle
So you'd be fine with Wikileaks being shut down at this point?

~~~
solipsism
How important are they really? If they aren't trustworthy -- and I think
there's a great case to be made for the fact that Assange is not -- what can
wikileaks do that some other website can't?

~~~
anondon
> what can wikileaks do that some other website can't?

No fear of going against the establishment. How many websites that you know of
reveal such classified information and get wide press coverage for the same?

I don't fully understand Assange's political motivations, but the world is
definitely better off with Wikileaks than without.

~~~
idlewords
Think about a world where every country has an embassy with an Assange in it,
and document dumps like we've seen are a routine weapon in information
warfare.

It's not a very nice world to imagine. The people who get hurt are ordinary
citizens whose info winds up in these giant data drops.

~~~
koolba
> Think about a world where every country has an embassy with an Assange in
> it, and document dumps like we've seen are a routine weapon in information
> warfare.

Most countries have this already. It's called the CIA or whatever the local
equivalent is. The only difference is that rather than publishing directly,
they leak information to media outlets for dissemination.

> It's not a very nice world to imagine. The people who get hurt are ordinary
> citizens whose info winds up in these giant data drops.

Bah, it can't be worse. The ordinary citizens that can get hurt by stuff like
this are in countries that can (and will) already hurt them for less or even
nothing. The common citizens of western democracies have nothing to fear.

~~~
tptacek
If one really believes this, I have a very hard time understanding how they
can believe dragnet surveillance is an important issue. After all, nobody is
really getting hurt, except in the places where they can already get hurt just
for chewing gum in public. So why not let the government search everyone's
email for signs of terrorism?

Why is privacy super important, one of our most fundamental rights, until some
dude with white hair who wrote a bad port scanner decides it doesn't matter?

~~~
koolba
> If one really believes this, I have a very hard time understanding how they
> can believe dragnet surveillance is an important issue. After all, nobody is
> really getting hurt, except in the places where they can already get hurt
> just for chewing gum in public.

Why is that so hard to reconcile? You don't draw a line between individual
privacy rights and those of government officials?

> So why not let the government search everyone's email for signs of
> terrorism?

If you're going to go that route, take it one step further and ask: Why not
have a camera in everybody's house to prevent battery?

~~~
tptacek
What "government officials" are you talking about? Wikileaks leaked,
wholesale, the personal information of millions of Turkish citizens. For that
matter, in its attempt to sway the US elections, Wikileaks dumped personal
emails from random staffers --- not the John Podestas of the world, but the
one-step-above-intern people making $40,000 to do public service work. Not
just their work-related emails. Their personal emails.

What part of taking $40,000 a year in salary from the government entitles
Wikileaks to the contents of your personal emails?

[http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/151983995587/on-the-
wikileak-e...](http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/151983995587/on-the-wikileak-ed-
emails-between-tanden-and)

~~~
koolba
> What "government officials" are you talking about? Wikileaks leaked,
> wholesale, the personal information of millions of Turkish citizens. For
> that matter, in its attempt to sway the US elections, Wikileaks dumped
> personal emails from random staffers --- not the John Podestas of the world,
> but the one-step-above-intern people making $40,000 to do public service
> work. Not just their work-related emails. Their personal emails.

They didn't get the personal emails of Turkish citizens, they got the emails
of Turkish citizens that were on the AKP email server. That would be like
complaining that a company has access to my personal emails because I use my
work email to communicate with my non-work friends. The AKP _is_ the
government in Turkey so drawing a distinction between them as a private party
and them as the government is weak.

> What part of taking $40,000 a year in salary from the government entitles
> Wikileaks to the contents of your personal emails?

None and if you don't mix personal and work, it makes it much easier to have
that separation. If it's all one soup then you can't complain that the part
gets released with the whole.

> [http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/151983995587/on-the-
> wikileak-e...](http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/151983995587/on-the-wikileak-
> ed-emails-between-tanden-and)

Ditto for the DNC and RNC. I don't give a rats ass which side has their
documents leaked. If it happens, I say it's fair game because, even though
they're technically "private organizations", for all practical purposes they
are the government.

If people want to avoid having "personal" comments and communications being
impacted by this they need to maintain that separation and the poster child
for what _NOT_ to do is Hillary Clinton.

~~~
tptacek
So, you disagree with Lessig. You feel, if someone gets involved in any way
with politics, all bets are off. They should have Grugq-grade OPSEC or expect
to read about their breakups on Pastebin.

~~~
koolba
> So, you disagree with Lessig. You feel, if someone gets involved in any way
> with politics, all bets are off. They should have Grugq-grade OPSEC or
> expect to read about their breakups on Pastebin.

Or just keep their political and personal lives separate.

~~~
jacquesm
Private individuals can be members of political parties and this is _not_
something that should end up in the public domain. Really, this is about as
easy to understand as it gets, in fact in many countries such party
memberships _and_ who you vote for is kept extremely secret to make sure that
votes can be bought and/or to make sure that there is a place for 'unpopular'
parties and candidates.

It's a cornerstone of democracy. Some countries take a much less serious
approach to voter registration but especially in Turkey such lists are social
dynamite and the release of those lists was absolutely uncalled for and
irresponsible.

~~~
jacquesm
Too late to edit: substitute 'can't' for 'can' in the second sentence.

~~~
koolba
> Private individuals can be members of political parties and this is not
> something that should end up in the public domain. Really, this is about as
> easy to understand as it gets, in fact in many countries such party
> memberships and who you vote for is kept extremely secret to make sure that
> votes _can 't_ be bought and/or to make sure that there is a place for
> 'unpopular' parties and candidates.

> It's a cornerstone of democracy. Some countries take a much less serious
> approach to voter registration but especially in Turkey such lists are
> social dynamite and the release of those lists was absolutely uncalled for
> and irresponsible.

When there's a single ruling party, or two major parties in a system like the
USA, the distinction between political parties and the government itself is
blurred to point of being meaningless. For an even more extreme example of
this see the CPC in China. They _are_ the government, party business is
government business, and vice versa. Hiding behind them being a private
organization doesn't work.

~~~
jacquesm
> When there's a single ruling party, or two major parties in a system like
> the USA, the distinction between political parties and the government itself
> is blurred to point of being meaningless.

That's simply nonsense. The reason you might have two major parties forever is
if you start making things like registered voters public. After all, who would
dare to affiliate themselves with a third openly if that would lead to an
immediate risk of being labeled in all kinds of nasty ways.

If Peter Thiel isn't immune to such pressure you can bet that ordinary
citizens would be a lot easier to target.

The government and the citizens of a country are two disjoint entities, _even_
in a 'one' party (that really means 'none') state.

Party membership does not equate to being a part of the government (though the
one does not rule out the other).

------
orthoganol
Fyi at this point there is speculation that something has happened with
WikiLeaks, including Assange, who has not been seen for a week now since the
early morning events at the Embassy (when his Internet was cut). Their
subreddit has had their share of panic threads. Take this with a grain a salt,
and I won't link to 4chan where this was first pointed out, but the last two
days of tweets have also included typos/ missing letters that come close to
spelling out "help him," overall to a small p-value.

------
TAForObvReasons
Is there any real reason to believe the attacks were connected to wikileaks in
any way, or is this an attempt to stay politically relevant?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's an excellent way to make sure several US TLAs are looking at WikiLeaks
supporters closely.

------
g8oz
As far as I'm concerned Assange is a delusional megalomaniac and has attracted
similar types it seems. The organisation could have been something special
instead of a support structure for this self-important, posturing bloviating.
Snowden has advanced the cause far more with his considered advocacy.

------
warcher
Man, watching wikileaks circle the drain sure has been fun, but it's starting
to get sad. Can we wrap this thing up now?

------
idlewords
Well, you're where you should be all the time

And when you're not, you're with some underworld spy

Or the wife of a close friend,

Wife of a close friend...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZmCJUSC6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZmCJUSC6g)

~~~
anondon
Your point?

~~~
idlewords
He's so vain that he thinks these hacks are about him.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
That's terrible. More people should be like me, the humblest guy in the world.

------
Theodores
I do find that there is something surreal about Twitter and the U.S. election,
it has become a primary communication channel. We used to have 'I have a
dream' speeches, nowadays it is lol txt tweets. Donald Trump's contribution to
this tweet-thread is an example:

"Wow! @wikileaks admits its supporters are engaged in anti-American cyber-
terrorism. No wonder Wikileakes loves me so much! #ImWithPutin"

Is that really from a presidential candidate? With a misspelling and a hashtag
that is not what you would think would chime with the electorate. Plus some
narcissism thrown in, just to make you cringe.

As for the tweet itself, I am amazed that Wikileaks thinks Assange is that
much of a hero that they think that some anonymous fan would take down the
internets in response to Assange's internets being taken down. There is some
conspiracy minded thinking going on there, warranted or not, it is not the
sort of mindset that Wikileaks need to be in if they are to function as an
organisation. For instance, if some real conspiracy was going on, e.g. the
U.S. military were running a 'cyberstorm exercise', then Wikileaks would have
taken the bait. In so doing this takes discussion away from what Wikileaks
seek to publish and towards the ethics of hacking.

~~~
speedplane
Don't be too nostalgic. How much of the "I have a dream" speech can you
directly recall beyond the first 140 characters? How much of our politics has
been sound bites, misinformation, and trumped up ideology for the past few
decades. There are villains in this age, but communication in 140 characters
is not it.

~~~
TheRealEdAbbey
Perhaps, then, twitter is not a malady but a symptom. The idea that we can
whittle all of our ideas down to 140 characters has been building for decades,
as you say, and only now manifests itself explicitly.

I don't think it's too nostalgic to pine for longer, epic exhortation of
ideas. People still give memorable speeches (cf. Obama's "More Perfect
Union"), and people still memorize the speeches of old. They give context to
the soundbites and give depth when we want to go beyond the misquotes. But
yes, blaming twitter goes too far, because it certainly has its place, too.
It's just another tool of communication that has its benefits and pitfalls.

