Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Julian Assange is thrilled we live in such a free and open society where revealing the wrongdoings of government is protected.



Snowden would be a better example I think, as Assange just published everything classified he could get his hands on.

So there were also bits of wrongdoings here and there, but they seemed more random and the "collateral murder" as the shining example way overblown and missrepresented (as unprovoked murder of journalists, when they were in fact covering insurgents, who were engaged in combat in that area)


A much darker problem is that people disagree to extraordinary extents as to what counts as "wrongdoing".


Well yes, because what "wrongdoings" were exactly exposed with the full leaking of diplomatic cables for example?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cab...

It mostly just embarrassed the US foreign ministry. I mean as a german I can live with that, but I fail to see Assange as a hero in this instance.


I'm not sure if you read the link you posted but I would consider the following wrongdoings:

>The leaked cables revealed that diplomats of the U.S. and Britain eavesdropped on Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, in apparent violation of international treaties prohibiting spying at the UN.[27][28] The intelligence information the diplomats were ordered to gather included biometric information, passwords, and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.[28][29] It also included Internet and intranet usernames, e-mail addresses, web site URLs useful for identification, credit card numbers, frequent flier account numbers, and work schedules.[28][30][31] The targeted human intelligence was requested in a process known as the National Humint Collection Directive, and was aimed at foreign diplomats of US allies as well.[31] WikiLeaks released the cable on 28 November 2010.


That was a open secret before, and there were surely other small things like this, the question is, why was it necessary to expose everything?

I remember when it leaked and I was curious, but my question remained, where are the real dark scandals?

Confirmation that US personal think "fuck the EU"? Hardly surprising, but not the meat that was promised.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: