
Why the World Needs WikiLeaks - danielam
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/opinion/why-the-world-needs-wikileaks.html
======
rdtsc
I think out of all the "news" media so far Wikileaks is probably the most
trustworthy.

I've seen people claim they altered the emails or Russians wrote the emails, I
think they'd have to point to specific instances for me to see it. I don't
remember a single instance of them altering an email. I don't remember anyone
credible refuting and saying they didn't write it.

How do we know these emails are interesting and useful -- we listen to the CNN
of course, remember folks "...it is illegal to possess these stolen documents.
It is different from the media. So everything you learn about this, you are
learning from us." that was my first hint documents should be read very
closely.

When mass media lies about something it overcompensates, and one heuristic I
use is I just reverse the meaning of it. "don't read the documents" and I
interpret it as "that's a place to take a look", or "we are exporting
democracy to the Middle East" that means "we are installing puppet regimes
there" and so on. It is a funny exercise.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
> I don't remember anyone credible refuting and saying they didn't write it.

The criticisms were generally of a different sort: editorializing in their
selection of leaks. "selective omission", if you will.

They have information about Trump but chose not to release it. According to
Breitbart (so you know it's not from a "liberal media" source):
[http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/27/wikileaks-info-
dona...](http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/27/wikileaks-info-donald-
trump/)

> “We do have some information about the Republican campaign,” Assange said.
> “I mean, it’s from a point of view of an investigative journalist
> organization like WikiLeaks, the problem with the Trump campaign is it’s
> actually hard for us to publish much more controversial material than what
> comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every second day ..."

I don't know about you, but I feel like it would have been helpful for the
people to know what they had on Trump. Seems oddly opaque and politically
motivated.

It really doesn't help that they were selling explicitly anti-Clinton
merchandise in their store:
[http://i.imgur.com/AjsWfqg.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/AjsWfqg.jpg)

This is one example. In other cases, such as the Syria files, known-to-have-
existed emails that involved Russia mysteriously weren't leaked and many
people have speculated that stemmed from a pro-Russia bias.

If they were releasing everything they had, it would be hard to criticize. But
when you see the pattern of leaks and omissions, it's hard not to make the
argument that they are playing politics.

~~~
grandalf
> This is one example. In other cases, such as the Syria files, known-to-have-
> existed emails that involved Russia mysteriously weren't leaked and many
> people have speculated that stemmed from a pro-Russia bias.

I thought of this, but certainly there would have been someone CC'ed on one of
those emails who would have leaked it to prove WL was sitting on relevant
emails. This didn't happen.

~~~
wrongc0ntinent
Mind explaining the logic?

~~~
grandalf
All they'd need to do is leak a single email, or even a snippet of a single
email that was in the relevant date range but not released, and assert that WL
had suppressed it.

FWIW we also saw HRC and her cronies claiming that the recently released
emails were doctored. They made this claim straight-faced and it was
cryptographically proven to be completely false.

So claims about WL's motivations and actions have thus far not stood up to
scrutiny, and our officials have thus far been proven to be dishonest.

~~~
wrongc0ntinent
Their motivations are irrelevant. Proving politicians are hypocrites is easier
than finding metaphors in the bible. Their releases have undeniably been
assimilated by one candidate using WL's credibility and flavor of scandal. WL
went along with it.

"Troves" don't have signatures. Omissions and context matter. See the ICIJ
approach.

~~~
grandalf
> "Troves" don't have signatures. Omissions and context matter. See the ICIJ
> approach.

Even a single email offered by anyone claiming WL omitted emails would suggest
you might be right. None have been offered.

------
crystaln
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wikileaks released information the timing of
which was clearly meant to influence the US elections in a very particular
way. Secondly, Assange issued statements clearly indicating his intentions to
harm Clinton, not promote transparency. Why would the NYT publish this obvious
garbage without counterpoint?

~~~
alphonsegaston
We're living in strange days, and it's only gonna get weirder. NPR aired a
pull your punches interview with a white supremacist today, the New York Times
is publishing doublespeak missives from what increasingly appears to be either
the useful idiots or willing collaborators of Russian intelligence services.
It's like Trump malware has turned the mainstream media into a spam-serving
botnet for a league of fascists.

~~~
mc32
That NPR bit was to associate Trump's rise as a consequence of the alt-right
and their (racist) view of America. It's not that they pulled punches, it's
that they want to alarm non alt-rights to make it look like they are taking
over the Republican party.

If NRP were on the right, they'd get something along the lines of black-power
revolution types up there and let them go off and make it look like all Dems
are like that. It's a mechanism to show the worst group of one side and
associate it with a mainstream group so as to pollute the opinion of the
mainstream group.

~~~
alphonsegaston
I understand that this was their intent, but this in no way seemed to me be
the effect (not to mention that this strategy has already proven entirely
incapable of checking the rise of Trump). The strategy of the alt-right is to
couch Neo-Nazi ideology with just enough politeness and intellectual poise as
to entice "ordinary people" into their ranks, further normalizing their cause.
If you're well-mannered accountant is commenting on Breitbart while you gather
together your tax documents, how bad can they really be? Fascist groups know
they need white collar members, because the thugs are the first things they
have to sacrifice when they gain real political power (both to appease
military and law enforcement institutions as well as to demonstrate that
they've shed their brutish origins).

The only way to counter it is to give these guys enough rope to hang
themselves, and then openly and clearly expose their intellectual dishonesty
and historical record. This requires a far greater skill at interviewing and
rhetoric than is on display anywhere at NPR. The harshest rebuff the
interviewer gave Spencer was something along the lines of "but don't people of
all races get along on the NYC subway?" Spencer walked away from that
interview quite happy with the seeds he planted.

~~~
mc32
I dunno, I think McEvers did alright. Except for people who would already
identify with Spencer, I don't think anyone would think he was normal in
anyway. She let him hang himself well.

------
skywhopper
Wikileaks has released some important things, but they should be embarrassed
that they thought the personal emails of Hillary's campaign staff saying
sometimes silly things to each other was at all newsworthy. It was
sensational, sure, but it revealed nothing important or even interesting.
Anyone who spends a moment considering the question would expect campaign
operatives to gripe about their opponents in over the top terms, to use
unthoughtful language and spitball dumb ideas to their boss. Turns out the
Clinton campaign did these things. The DNC emails showing that they preferred
a solid Member of the Democratic Party win the nomination over someone who has
not spent decades supporting the party should surprise and upset no one. And
without the context of seeing Trump's campaign staff's emails or the RNC's
emails in a similar perspective, the release of so much pointless but
unflattering material related to Hillary and the Democrats does a major
disservice to the public.

~~~
ovibos
Regardless of how (in)significant you think the material they release is,
there's no such thing as too much transparency.

~~~
hackuser
> there's no such thing as too much transparency

Should military plans be transparent? Your private health records? Rape
victims' names? Should the President be able to receive confidential advice -
if not, they may receive much less good advice and make worse decisions.

EDIT: Reworded it to remove the hyperbole

~~~
grandalf
> Should military plans be transparent?

Yes when they contradict lies told to the people to help sell a war.

Secrecy is a privilege that officials need to earn. In the US there is
widespread abuse of power when officials make unflattering information top
secret so it won't be released to the public. That's what the Iraq and
Afghanistan war logs showed us.

Obviously some things should be kept secret, but in the US we have way too
much government secrecy and it's used as a tool to help officials abuse power.

------
throwaway7876
At times it feels that they should be called american-govmnt-leaks.org. Where
are all the juicy leaks from Russian, Chinease, French, Mexican, Brazilian,
Egyptian, or other nation states. Where are the leaks from mafia, drug
cartels, or other criminal organizations. Records from financial institutions,
law firms, drug companies. Records from catholic church and other religious
organizations. There is so much corruption in the world, that it seems
incredible that Wikileaks so much focuses on the US. Maybe leak some
information on people that stole $18B from republic of Moldova. Or how
tobacco, big oil, pharma or others are using their profits to gain even more
profits. Where is all that?

~~~
xnull2guest
I remember the WikiLeaks of Turkish emails that built and led up to the near
successful coup of the Erdogan regime.

In any case, I definitely welcome leaks from other countries.

But I don't want those exclusively. As an American it's been repeatedly proven
throughout my adult life that the US media does not perform due diligence in
its role as the "fourth estate". The most important leaks for me are the ones
providing transparency into my government. If there were leak sites for every
government I would check the American leaks by far the most often.

------
hyperion2010
Trump has been a public figure for far, far too long for there not to be
'EMAILS' equivalents. The fact that a large fraction of the time when
wikileaks is discussed there is no visible questioning about why they haven't
released about Trump tells me that something fucked up is going on. See this
for an excellent summary [0].

0\.
[https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wiki...](https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wikileaks_staff_despite_our_editor/d9utp64/?context=3&st=ivn9nf8l&sh=49a14cf1)

~~~
grandalf
That's a pretty embarrassing, angry rant. Do you really doubt that Wikileaks
would have released information about Trump if any had been leaked that was
significant?

~~~
hyperion2010
Check the 7th bullet point in the link.

~~~
grandalf
I read it, I don't see your point. One must believe that WL was actively
trying to help Trump to think it would just sit on relevant information. I
don't believe that as Assange likened both candidates to various diseases in
one of his earlier statements.

------
grandalf
I recently bought a few Wikileaks T shirts. The US has lost its adversarial,
investigative press. Wikileaks keeps that spirit alive and offers hope that
one day our press will do a far better job at holding our officials
accountable.

------
dmode
While overall I agree that an organization like Wikileaks is necessary to hold
institutions accountable, I find their actions during the last Presidential
election questionable. They simply guy played by Russia. My biggest problem
with their approach during the election is that they provided assymetric
information to the public that heavily biased people's opinion. So DNC was
working with Clinton campaign against Sanders, and I am pretty sure RNC was
working against Trump as well. If there were some media collaboration on one
side, I am confident this is a campaign norm and happened plenty on the other
side. Especially when you got the Breitbart executive running the campaign.
But by publishing one side of the story Wikileaks did a disservice to the
Democracy that it longs to protect. Ideally, they should have hold on those
emails until after the election or until there was comparable material
available from the other side

------
dimino
The world may or may not need something that serves the same function as
WikiLeaks, but it certainly does _not_ need WikiLeaks specifically, not
anymore.

I'm _sick_ of Julian Assange. I don't think he's a rapist, but based on what
I've read, he certainly is a self-aggrandizing opportunistic asshole.

------
pdimitar
As they say in The Matrix: "you might be just another -- more advanced -- form
of control".

I find it somewhat amusing how WikiLeaks releases things widely only when a
certain topic becomes relevant and gets public attention. And then it chooses
to keep silent on other topics but still vocally declares they have info on
them. Fishy as hell for me.

It seems they are aiming for popularity and relevance at this point; and not
to make any real change in the world.

I refuse to accept there is a "nuclear-level-of-unstable-and-dangerous"
information. Just release it all on several big torrent trackers and move on.
What'll happen exactly? A world war? We're past that point, several times now,
ever since the 1960s up until today. It didn't happen even in the Cuba crisis,
I don't think it'll happen over the racist slurs of a popular politician (one
random example).

I fear WikiLeaks have been compromised long ago. Did we all forget that Julian
Assange was questioned in private for a long time?

Everybody can be either bought or threatened to submission. Everybody.

------
kinghajj
Is this post being brigaded? Surprised it's fallen off the front page already.

~~~
xnull2guest
Brigaded threads are the norm for the internet now. Governments around the
world including the US and UK hire military contractors to brigade, trolls
brigade, and motivated communities brigade.

It's sad, I agree.

------
davesque
I'm totally done with Wikileaks. Just look at their Twitter feed for five
minutes and it's not hard to see that they've been heavily biased against one
side of the political spectrum in the United States. Not only this, their
tweets have at times been erratic, peddling things ranging from outrageous
conspiracy theories:

[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/794450623404113920?lang...](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/794450623404113920?lang=en)

to anti-semitism:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/25/what_wikil...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/25/what_wikileaks_might_have_meant_by_that_anti_semitic_tweet.html)

I'm all for anti-secrecy organizations that hold powerful figures accountable,
but Wikileaks appears to have lost their way. My own little conspiracy theory
is that they've been coerced somehow into doing the bidding of the Russian
government.

------
fooker
A friendly reminder that there has been no proof that Julian Assange is alive,
for quite a while.

Also their 'insurance' file hashes no longer match the files.

And the latest messages are not digitally signed. Also there was a set of
moderators added all over related subreddits to suppress this.

~~~
bigtones
LOL, he was questioned just two days ago by Swedish lawyers:
[http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/14/europe/julian-assange-
question...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/14/europe/julian-assange-questioning-
sweden/)

~~~
benbenolson
I'm inclined to believe that he's all right, but to be fair, that
"questioning" was through a third party, and Assange never faced them
directly.

------
partycoder
How do you validate a leak? What if it's 90% true except for the part that
matters?

The true strategists convince the enemy they're getting what they want, and
then profit from it.

If wikileaks was real they would be targeted by state sponsored hackers
regularly. There's a strong possibility this is a facade.

~~~
grandalf
Most of the tens of thousands of emails were cryptographically verified as
authentic by DKIM headers.

------
forrestbrazeal
"Some have accused us of being pawns of the Russian government, but this
misrepresents our principles and basic operations. ...We prefer not to know
who our sources are; we do not want to.."

So they prefer to be _unwitting_ pawns?

Transparency is great, freedom of information is great, but is there some
point at which you have to step back and acknowledge that you're being used by
a foreign power? Doesn't that undermine the good work that Wikileaks claims to
be doing?

Again from the article: "The world is connected by largely unaccountable
networks of power that span industries and countries, political parties,
corporations and institutions; WikiLeaks shines a light on these by revealing
not just individual incidents, but information about entire structures of
power."

How does Wikileaks rationalize away the fact that one part of that
'unaccountable network' seems to be using them to exploit some other part?

~~~
hackuser
I believe strongly in transparency as a way to prevent corruption, but
spreading misinformation doesn't stop corruption, it furthers it. It doesn't
'shine a light', it creates shadows where a brutal dictator can hide while he
hurts others. Look up "useful idiots" to understand the role they played.

It's too easy to cite principle such as "transparency" in order to ignore the
difficult questions of responsibility and consequences. If Wikileaks wants to
help the world and 'shine a light' \- well that sounds like what journalists
do; why shouldn't Wikileaks also verify and corroborate information before
giving it to the public?

Why would I trust any of the information if they don't? In a way, Wikileaks is
the epitome of the propaganda and fake online news that influenced the U.S.
campaign.

~~~
grandalf
> Wikileaks is the epitome of the propaganda and fake online news that
> influenced the U.S. campaign

Did you notice that Wikileaks showed via DKIM signatures that the vast
majority of the emails were cryptographically proven to be unaltered. After
that the notion that the emails were doctored vanished.

~~~
hackuser
Please see my response here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12984303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12984303)

------
ycp217
"Sarah Harrison is a journalist and editor for WikiLeaks."

------
saboot
I'm not really sure what high and mighty role wikileaks can claim. Most major
journalism outlets have ways for submitting information online anonymously.
With their editorial standards they can avoid many of the (in some cases
deadly) mistakes wikileaks has done by publishing blindly.

~~~
admax88q
> (in some cases deadly)

Prove it. I have never seen any credible claim that wikileaks has had deadly
mistakes.

------
emersonrsantos
And two months ago, for NYTimes, WikiLeaks was evil [1]. Now the world "needs"
it. This doesn't make much sense...

[1]
[http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sp2hsr](http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sp2hsr)

~~~
davmre
It's almost as though the Times publishes pieces by multiple contributors
representing a diverse range of perspectives.

------
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------
ccvannorman
It seems pretty obvious that WikiLeaks has been compromised - is anyone buying
this defense?

And more importantly, who/what will replace WikiLeaks?

~~~
ryanSrich
I feel like I'm out of the loop. When was wikileaks compromised? I've
passively followed their work over the years, but I've tried to tune out most
of the internet the past couple months.

~~~
ovibos
There hasn't been a proof-of-life from Julian himself in some time, and there
was recently insurance files released that didn't have matching hashes.

No hard evidence, but it is worrying, especially when there are so many
parties that would benefit from wikileak's infiltration/de-legitimization.

~~~
fulafel
It may be hard to prove if the employ soft ways of influence, the traditional
craft of intelligence agencies: extortion, bribery, forged threats from the
opposing side etc.

