
Snowden and WikiLeaks clash over leaked Democratic Party emails - tooba
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/07/28/a-twitter-spat-breaks-out-between-snowden-and-wikileaks/
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zitterbewegung
This is really illustrative of the motivations of Snowden VS Wikileaks.
Wikileaks was founded under the idea that you could disrupt governments by
leaking their private data so that they become so paranoid that they can't
function. Thats why they don't do any curation.

Snowden's motivation is to reform the Intelligence Organizations in the United
States. Thats why he supports curation and attempted to make the information
that he leaked only have the information to reform.

[http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf](http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-
conspiracies.pdf)

~~~
raverbashing
Except Wikileaks is hurting people that have nothing to do with the leaked
documents, like Democratic campaign donors (even those who donated $5)

~~~
MichaelGG
It's not nice, but if those people get harassed, then that'll put more
pressure on the parties. So it still helps the goal of making it hard for
government orgs to operate.

~~~
raverbashing
> making it hard for government orgs to operate

Sure, that will be lovely

Just remember what might happen if firefighters, police, CDC, FAA, FDA have
trouble operating

~~~
MichaelGG
Not agreeing just saying it clearly adds pressure to the org.

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zackya89
Even though I think, Snowden is on the right here, lets not kid ourselves,
they using Snowden right now to trash Wikileaks, anyone remember when Snowden
leaks came out, he was a russian spy, who apparently went to Russia by himself
and dumped American intelligence documents to them.

now according to most mainstream publications Wikileaks are shill for Putin,
cold war era rhetoric in 2016.

~~~
placeybordeaux
Who is 'they'?

~~~
MichaelGG
Big media outlets and the DNC? CNN even had their frontpage with Trump and
Putin pictures side by side saying "Russia Helping Trump?" The actual story
was more clear that it was just someone in a campaign accusing Russia. But the
headline and setup was obviously intended to convey a different idea.

[http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-
trai...](http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-
updates-hillary-clinton-campaign-raises-1469368571-htmlstory.html)

[http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/24/politics/robby-mook-
russia...](http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/24/politics/robby-mook-russia-dnc-
emails-trump/)

------
jccc
It's illuminating that this isn't framed as Snowden vs. Assange. Certainly if
they could frame it that way for their juicy story, they would.

We don't know (at least here on HN) who personally posted that reply on the
WikiLeaks Twitter feed. It seems reasonable to assume that there are internal
differences today just as there were a few years ago when Assange publicly
battled a top ex-WikiLeaker, among other conflicts.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Defections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Defections)

So what is "WikiLeaks" to us aside from the material they produce?

Aside from that, as has been pointed out, different legitimate tactics can
serve different legitimate goals, and in different strategic contexts.

------
revelation
Hilarious what you can turn into an article these days. The basis of this
"clash" seems to be two single tweets.

~~~
d1str0
My thoughts exactly. This article basically just showed two different very
small stories and the two tweets. Very short, pointless article.

------
beshrkayali
Kind of getting tired of internal intelligence agencies wars getting all this
attention...

------
venomsnake
>The group's recent release of emails from the Democratic National Committee
exposed things such as the credit card numbers, social security numbers and
passport numbers of some donors -- putting them at risk of identity theft.

It is not like any of the people that wrote the information in the emails has
any fault, right? It is not Wikileaks' job to save DNC's collective ass.

You put your donor's info in jeopardy - you are to blame. If there was common
sense in the DNC - the leak would not have been possible.

~~~
LA_Banker
It's not Wikileaks' job to save the DNC, but they could claim more moral
authority if they didn't so brazenly _also_ play a role in disseminating donor
financial information.

That's essentially what Snowden is saying. Go ahead and expose things worthy
of exposure (by all means!), but doing so in a way that puts others at risk is
irresponsible.

If your home gets broken into because the door was left unlocked, is the thief
innocent because "you are to blame"? No. Sure, you bear _some_ responsibility
for not being more responsible and exercising better judgment; but you're not
the one who committed the theft.

~~~
fit2rule
The problem is, the word 'theft'. There is no theft possible in an open
protocol such as email. There is only interception and observation - which
occurs inherently as a part of the way email is handled.

If the original author of the leaked emails had used encryption, none of this
would matter. The fact that they chose not to encrypt the contents of the
email, instead stupidly thinking that email was secure by nature (it most
definitely is NOT), is the real issue here.

If I hear you shouting your social security number at the top of your voice to
your friend across the room, its not my responsibility that your information
is no longer secure or protected. Its yours, and yours alone.

The technological incompetence of the authors of DNC emails is the issue here,
people. Do you really want someone running the country who can't even fathom
the most basic, basic aspects of the technology that runs the world?

~~~
csydas
No, this is wrong from a legal standpoint, at least with US law and many EU
laws as well. Ownership laws are fairly clear and have lots of precedent in
regards to email, and there are also clearly defined cases of theft and
violations of the CFAA.

Your analogy breaks down in that the leaks are are a result of a breach, most
certainly a violation of CFAA. No current understanding of law shares your
opinion that because it's an open protocol that you no longer have agency over
the content. Security measures were put in place, though certainly not enough
to prevent a major leak. Though I hate bringing in analogies, you're not more
culpable for your house being broken into just because you don't have 6 cm
steel shutters for all openings; it's certainly more secure, but illegal
access is illegal access.

I say this next part not to be demeaning but to state an assumption of mine,
but I'm going to assume you probably dislike the CFAA; I do as well, but to
say there's no theft possible is a naive notion in the face of labyrinthine
laws. The world has been dealing with email breaches since your average hacker
got a home connection fast enough to move a few megabytes of data without
timing out. The law's opinion on theft of email is incredibly different from
your own.

~~~
fit2rule
>The law's opinion on theft of email is incredibly different from your own.

Fair enough. But since when was the DNC officially a part of the US Federal
Government? Also, since when was Hillarys' personal email server covered by
the same facet?

As an outsider looking in, it doesn't appear to me that CFAA applies: are the
DNC computers exclusively for the use of the US Gov't? Was Hillarys' email
server?

I think these are very interesting questions .. and I ask them in earnest,
since I'm clearly naive about the CFAA (and thank you for making this point
clear..)

~~~
detaro
CFAA applies to basically all computers in the US (technically it doesn't if
no network traffic crosses state borders, but that seems hard to argue in the
days of the internet), not just those under government control. The
requirement is _either_ government use _or_ interstate communication, not
both.

~~~
fit2rule
That is indeed a broad and over-reaching law. Fascinating, thanks for the
education.

