
Want to Know Julian Assange’s Endgame? He Told You a Decade Ago - rainhacker
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/want-know-julian-assanges-endgame-told-decade-ago/
======
_nalply
This is my understanding.

Secret organisations with hidden agendas are at a disadvantage. They have to
reduce internal communication because secrets leak. However this cripples
them. In the long term they can't compete against transparent and beneficial
organisations. This leads to a better world.

This is brilliant. Mr Assange is worth a Peace Nobel prize.

~~~
davidy123
Any organization that uses organized communication methods is at a
disadvantage. The more they do so, the more they are at a disadvantage. If an
organization using digital communications produced 10000 "units" of good and
100 units of bad, and another organization that did not produced 100 units of
good and 10000 units of bad, the organization using digital communication will
be at a huge disadvantage in Assange's world. This is not a positive effect if
digital communications are valued.

It makes me think of this fascinating article [1]:

«The problem, Seetah said, was that these protests led to a situation where
butchers were afraid to let the public see how animals are killed. So they
stopped bull-baiting, but a new lack of transparency descended on the meat
industry. And that led directly to the hidden abattoir system, which
ultimately led to more abuse. So there's a kind of vicious circle, where
humanity's ethical concerns about butchery can actually backfire and drive the
practice of meat production out of public view.»

and I'm concerned that Wikileaks in its striving for stature is going to end
up subverting political system by trying to play games to force them to be
better — though of course what I would like to see is a completely transparent
form of government.

1\. [http://arstechnica.com/video/2016/04/ars-technica-
live-1-the...](http://arstechnica.com/video/2016/04/ars-technica-live-1-the-
archaeology-of-meat-and-butchery-with-guest-krish-seetah/)

------
mruniverse
I don't understand. No privacy for organizations or no privacy for everyone?
And who decides what an organization is? Two people? Three?

~~~
contingencies
This tired argument is neither logical nor relevant. The reality is that in a
pre-Wikileaks world, leaks also existed.

The new reality is not "evil persona holds dagger to your throat", rather that
motivated persons are empowered to securely spill secrets the world over. By
turning around the fallacious "nothing to hide" argument, Assange is making
some secretive groups quite literally pay and squirm against the possibility
of unknown assailants and the 'threat' of real transparency. Good job.

~~~
dogma1138
There can be another argument in this, leaks effectively only affect already
open and democratic societies, since authoritarian regimes are considerably
less vulnerable to them and even immune natural selection would actually play
against you.

Leaks may very well not lead to some liberal pseudo anarchist utopia but lead
to further consolidation of power, secrecy and more and more tougher reactions
and control of information.

And while you might think that this won't happen it will, leaks don't play
that well in the public when they start touching individuals especially when
you can spin them as an attack.

Unconditional release of information especially in large leaks leads to the
public being against the leakers.

Releasing some DNC emails/documents might be acceptable by the majority of the
public, releasing all the documents including donor information and private
information of simple low level employees, volunteers or anyone who has
registered or shown interest in a political party would not be well received
by the public even without any spins.

~~~
DominikR
Authoritarian regimes in most cases maintain power over their population by
controlling media 100%, they don't actually put shackles on their people, only
on the few ones who see through it.

If you are able to break their narrative then the dictatorship has no other
way than using massive force to maintain control, in which case everybody will
know from now on that they are being enslaved and this will have an effect in
the future. (citizens will be less cooperative in a non offending way)

~~~
dogma1138
That's only partially the case, authoritarian regiems are also very good at
indoctrinating their population which means that it's near impossible to break
through, just look at N. Korea.

They are also as you said control the media which means you control the
narrative, wikileaks would have 0 impact if the media would not have picked
their leaks up and run with them, the amount of people who access that site
and read the information directly is negligible.

Also since the regiems not only control the media but also the medium e.g. the
internet good luck at breaking through, if it's truly a walled garden state
there is very little you can actually do, and with the right amount of force
and preemptive control over the narrative even a full external media blitz
won't really help you.

There is a difference between transparency and abuse, wikileaks is walking a
very thin line, and it has passed it several times by refusing the curate
information which does not score them any points. Assange's crusade against
clinton does also not sit well with many people even if they mostly agree with
his ideology, his latest interview on Real Time with Bill Maher about a month
ago did not score him many points when he confronted Bill about his donations
to the the democratic party.

------
mcphage
Getting rid of all organizational secrecy seems like a pretty bad goal—it
makes negotiation impossible.

~~~
dmix
Bad for whom? Those benefiting from the negotiation results?

The problem is that with secrecy the latter has historically tendend not to be
the public who the negotiators are supposed to represent. See TPP or if you're
from EU/Canada see CETA for the rewards of secret negotiations:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Tra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Trade_Agreement)

Once trust erodes in the state these leaks tend to happen such as in the Iraq
war post WMD debacle with the Manning leaks, or NSA preceding Snowden leaks,
outcry over TTP negotiations, etc, etc, there is a real positive incentive in
transparency over the benefits that come from secrecy. Otherwise the
government has a habit of losing sight of whose interests they are supposed to
be representing.

~~~
smallnamespace
> Bad for whom? Those benefiting from the negotiation results?

Bad for everyone involved. Not every deal is bad, and deals often can happen
only because good gets packaged with the bad.

If every negotiation happened in public, no nations would ever be able to sign
agreements with one another. That's a recipe for paralysis and disaster.

~~~
rlucas
The Assange thesis isn't a binary option, secrets or no secrets. It's raising
the cost of pervasive and wide ranging secrecy.

A wikileaks world doesn't mean you can't keep your nuclear launch codes safe,
something for which you are presumably ready to spend major resources with
tight control in a small circle.

It just means that you now have to spend more effort keeping all your petty
graft secret at the low end, and it reduces toward zero the probability that a
large manpower intensive conspiracy can work, in the more important democidal
case.

So, the thesis holds, the powers inclined toward malfeasance will have a
little nudge at every choice point, toward the option they won't mind being
discovered. Like a surveillance camera pointed at the minimum wage cashier's
hands, except at the people who control nation-states.

~~~
smallnamespace
> It just means that you now have to spend more effort keeping all your petty
> graft secret at the low end

The problem is that secrecy doesn't purely serve 'petty graft', but also
allows politicians to actually make deals and get things done.

The thesis that 'raising the cost of secrecy' is always a good thing is
unproven. Plus, Assange et al are less a neutral information source, but
rather an active participant in politics with their own, hidden motivations.

Over the last 30 years, we've repeatedly seen the reform of politics in the US
aimed at eliminating graft and taking power away from politicians and putting
it in the hands of voters. Over the same period of time, politics here as
gotten more and more dysfunctional.

Relevant: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-
amer...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-
politics-went-insane/485570/)

I submit that voters are often unable to effectively make compromises and form
voting blocs with others. It used to fall to politicians to negotiate behind
closed doors to hash out a deal. In Assange's secret-less world, that won't be
possible.

~~~
rlucas
Agreed, of course that even relatively mundane secrecy can serve a public
interest; nuclear codes are not the only legitimate secrets.

And it's very fair to say that it's unknown if the Wikileaks cost-of-secrecy
effect is a net good one, especially when you're starting with reasonably good
institutions, civil society, and rule of law.

But it's a straw man argument to wrap up with reference to "Assange's secret-
less world". My original point holds, this isn't a binary switch that flips,
it's an incremental effect.

------
jwatte
Is there a niche for a closed information system that doesn't allow easy
dumps? Like, Lotus Notes, except run through a bitmap video stream to a secure
server?

~~~
gruez
In other words, put all the sensitive documents on a server and make everyone
access them using a thin client?

------
dmix
But if wasn't for Russia they wouldn't have been incentivized to leak the
recent dumps and hacks like that wouldn't have happened otherwise. /s

Assange may be flawed but no one can accuse him of not being ideologically
consistent here.

~~~
thesimpsons1022
what are you talking about? your first paragraph is completely unintelligible.
you realize Russia gave them the documents to leak right? no one is saying
they gave them an incentive. they are just pawns and will release anything
they get.

~~~
dmix
> they are just pawns and will release anything they get

The media can and often does publish anything they get from government
sources. Wikileaks isn't unique here.

NYT is notorious for writing articles daily with "anonymous government
sources" as the only source. Often unquestionably supporting a pro-US policy
position. Does that make NYT/WaPo/etc pawns?

Wikileaks is not immune from being manipulated by Intel agencies to push
agendas. You're fooling yourself if you think the news organizations who have
been accusing Wikileaks of doing this with moral outrage aren't also doing the
same.

There's probably a good argument in favour of the fact Wikileaks actually
releases the raw data without caring about the source. Rather than continually
taking quotes from 'anonymous' sources while feigning neutrality.

~~~
thesimpsons1022
i didn't pass any judgement in using the word "pawns" or say that other news
sources weren't. i've actually been a supporter of wikileaks for years. the
post i was responding to however highly suggested that somehow the russians
weren't involved which is silly bs promoted by trump. i also do feel that a
source like wikileaks can be dangerous in the situation were currently in
where one side of a political race has a bunch of its stuff leaked but the
other side has none.

------
sergiotapia
>The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear
and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie.

Precisely. It's funny how the media and Clinton campaign want to spin this as
"The Russians!", and completely ignore the cesspool contained within those
leaks.

------
carsongross
I suppose one potential upside to a Trump presidency would be the possibility
of a pardon for Assange and Snowden, out of sheer spite.

~~~
ajross
Assange is a refugee from Swedish law enforcement. A US pardon wouldn't help
him.

~~~
waterphone
However, his excuse for not surrendering to Swedish law enforcement is that
the U.S. could extradite/rendition him while in Swedish custody. Considering
multiple U.S. officials have declared him an enemy of the U.S. and (including,
allegedly, Hillary Clinton) even called for his assassination, it's perhaps
not necessarily excessively paranoid.

~~~
ajross
And how would a pardon protect him against assassination?

------
sverige
I've always thought Assange was a bit of a twit. This actually makes sense,
though.

I wish there were someone willing to leak the secrets of lots of other
organizations, but I won't name them because I don't want to be killed for
saying that.

~~~
Uehreka
I'm tired of seeing this kind of paranoid attitude on HN, so here it goes:

I'd love it if Wikileaks released tons of documents exposing the DEA, FBI,
CIA, NSA, DoD, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, Peter
Thiel's vampire cult and everything that happened in Bohemian Grove.

From my HN username, you can link to my Twitter handle, and then my website,
which has my real name. Do your worst, I'm here to teach the controversy.

~~~
kilroy123
Peter Thiel's vampire cult?

~~~
Uehreka
Yeah, so...

He intends to live forever by injecting himself with the blood of younger
people (along with HGH, etc.). Google "peter thiel blood", or just check out
this article, he seems pretty serious about this:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2016/08/02/peter-
thiel-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2016/08/02/peter-thiel-is-out-
for-young-peoples-blood/#3d3711dce864)

~~~
M_Grey
It's pretty amusing when you consider it's based on mouse study involving
geriatric and juvenile mice surgically joined. Pretty typically the "shared
vascular system" thing has been diluted to its "take a multivitamin" form
which appears to be, "A bit of young blood can help". It's laughable, but no
one ever said that having money freed you from the terror of your own
extinction, or made you any brighter than you were born.

------
redthrowaway
It's been pretty obvious for a number of years that his endgame is whatever
Putin dictates. This election has simply made it harder to deny that Wikileaks
operates as a front for Russian intelligence, but the evidence was there years
ago. Their deep involvement in the Snowden affair and their steering him
towards Russia and arranging for him to obtain Russian travel documents to
that end should have been a much bigger story than it was at the time.

~~~
tanderson92
And Snowden has _what_ exactly to do with Wikileaks? (apart from criticizing
their means of releasing documents: not a thing)

As for your statement that Snowden fled to Russia: false! Snowden was on his
way to latin america and the State Dept froze his passport en route, stranding
him in Moscow when his plane landed for a connection. This misinformation will
never die.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Russia)

~~~
ubernostrum
Well, on the subject of Russia and WL, today there was the allegation that RT
(that's Russia Today, guess where they're based) had information about WL's
latest "leaks" _before WL had announced them_. Some kind of information
channel must exist there.

~~~
tanderson92
What does that have to do with Snowden?

~~~
ubernostrum
The comment you replied to began by saying:

 _This election has simply made it harder to deny that Wikileaks operates as a
front for Russian intelligence, but the evidence was there years ago._

~~~
tanderson92
But my subsequent comment was solely about Snowden...

It seems strange to rebut my comment with unrelated commentary.

------
update
The author of this Wired piece:

> Trump has, of course, faced the leaks of his 1995 tax returns and a
> [1]damning video where he brags about sexual assault

The author links to an article with this headline: [1] "Trump recorded having
extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005"

!= "Trump brags about sexual assault" (implying guilt)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-
havin...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-
extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-
in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html)

I do not like the opinion/politicization going on in the article. There is no
evidence of sexual assault in the tape the author links.

Makes me question the bias of this whole article...

~~~
ubernostrum
_There is no evidence of sexual assault in the tape the author links._

The quotes from Trump state outright that he engages in sexual conduct with
women, without obtaining consent from them to do so. Engaging in sexual
conduct with someone without their consent is sexual assault.

~~~
antisthenes
It's sexual assault if they press charges and successfully convict the
offender.

The US may have a lot of unsavory parts, but rule of law and presumption of
innocence are not one of them. Perhaps the _progressives_ can stop trying to
undermine them in the name of unguided censorship (e.g. trying to censor "bro
banter" by painting it as sexual assault)

Was it even a non-private conversation?

~~~
ubernostrum
Ah, yes. The Progressive Conspiracy™ did this. It's 100% their fault that when
someone brags about doing things which fit the definition of a crime, people
who hear about it say "that sounds to me like he's guilty of that crime" and
begin to persecute the poor, helpless, defenseless billionaire who said those
things. If only we could get rid of those horrid Progressive™ attack dogs, the
world would once again be safe for people to grab unsuspecting women by the
pussy and brag about it, and then greatness would be restored to America.

