> In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack. With respect to one target, Assange asked the LulzSec leader to look for (and provide to WikiLeaks) mail and documents, databases and pdfs. In another communication, Assange told the LulzSec leader that the most impactful release of hacked materials would be from the CIA, NSA, or the New York Times. WikiLeaks obtained and published emails from a data breach committed against an American intelligence consulting company by an “Anonymous” and LulzSec-affiliated hacker. According to that hacker, Assange indirectly asked him to spam that victim company again.
This is almost certainly sabu/Hector Monsegur. [1]
This guy put Jeremy Hammond [2] behind bars, and now he's being used to bring down Julian Freaking Assange. More lives ruined than you can count on one hand.
I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never published anything that has been proven false. Not once. Julian Assange is in solitary confinement in a prison on bullshit charges, and this is just another one.
I'm generally on Assange's side in all of this. I agree he shouldn't be charged and this is all a disgrace.
Having said that, I once went to wikileaks and found a PDF of Steve Job's supposed STD test which claimed he was HIV positive. That was a surprise to me as my understanding was that he died of cancer. I looked into it and no one could corroborate the story and the general consensus seemed to be that it was faked.
Even if it was real, I struggle to see why it's important to leak the private medical records of someone with a deadly STD, although I'm sure there are multiple perspectives on this.
No reasonable person can believe that leaking this kind of information (regardless of [in]accuracy) is appropriate.
HIPAA (1994) enshrined legally what is one of the few moral absolutes in healthcare - your health issues are nobody else's business with few caveats. HIV is reported to the government. Knowingly infecting someone with HIV is a crime. The reasonable safeguards are there and dumping someone's records does nothing to make anyone safer.
I had not heard of that and I am surprised that they would publish something so tabloidish. For what it's worth, I found this page [1] where they state:
> Due to the contradictory dates, possible evidence of forgery, strong motivations for fabrication, and few motivations for a legitimate revelation, the images should not be taken at face value.
And I found this reddit thread/comment from 11 years ago (when Wikileaks released it) that contains the same text, so it's not as though they released the document and then corrected themselves after the fact -- they published it alongside a warning that it's probably bogus. [2]
Reading this almost instantly modified my opinion of wiki leaks. I can’t believe they published something so sensitive without justification. Is there a wider context that the leak occurred in, maybe via some oversight? I know they used to publish large dumps of email exchanges from large corporations - did this get mixed up in one of those?
I’m honestly upset that this sort of information was released
HIV can cause Kaposi’s sarcoma, so that could have caused his cancer. It’s actually not that far outside the realm of possibility. Condom use was not very common in the 70s and one can live with HIV dormant for many years.
I'm generally against Assange on all of this. Hacking is an illegal activity that results in the disclosure of information that the hacker does not own. This is theft of information and a federal offense. Anyone engaging is nefarious hacking should be jailed, if caught, and never allowed to use technology again. We have very lax laws when it comes to hacking - they need to be stronger.
Thanks for chiming in. I would also add that he put aid workers and activists at risk [1] and caused potential harm, torture, and death to dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq [2].
Indiscriminate doxing to accomplish a radical agenda is not journalism. My view-- which I admit is broader than the point you made-- is that he is a criminal and should be tried and convicted. It makes me sick to my stomach that he cloaks his actions in the hard work and bravery of our free press.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37165230 "Human rights groups have asked Wikileaks many times to do more to censor information found in documents. They fear reprisals against aid workers, activists and civilians named in the leaked data."
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51616077 "Mr Lewis said the dissemination of specific classified documents unredacted put dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq at 'risk of serious harm, torture or even death". The US identified hundreds of "at risk and potentially at risk people' around the world, he said, and made efforts to warn them."
FWIW Zeynep isn’t concerned with accuracy either, WL did not dump private info of almost every woman in Turkey. This is simply a strange misattribution, the dump came via Emma Best of DDoSecrets, http://web.archive.org/web/20160727193612/https://twitter.co...
False. Emma Best (then Michael Best) published the information about turkish women, not WikiLeaks, and was explained by Best here https://archive.is/0VsQR
Not sure I understand your point, he is not being indicted for publishing false information. Assuming he never did, why would that make the charges bullshit?
I'm not saying his record means the charges are bullshit, but I'm saying if the charges are bullshit and his record is infallible then the implication is that we live under a government without freedom of the press, where truthful hard-hitting journalism gets you put in prison.
If you don't believe that Assange has done truthful hard-hitting journalism, or you believe that he isn't a journalist at all, then you can maintain the belief that we don't put journalists in prison while sitting idle as he rots in prison, because he is not a True Journalist. "We wouldn't do that to True Journalists. Assange is different."
Thanks for this, I hadn't seen the news that he had been moved out of solitary confinement. I'm happy to be wrong, that's good news. I'll edit the parent comment.
> Jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is no longer being kept in solitary confinement and his health is improving, his spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson told reporters on Tuesday.
Real journalists don't just publish anything they can get their hands on with no regards for where the data came from, for what purposes it was given to them and whom their publication might harm.
True. They first ask their editor what the agenda is that week and then selectively and out of context craft the narrative. Case in point NYT in the past decade. Or WaPo. Or Fox in ages past.
> I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never published anything that has been proven false.
That is a very odd misdirection given the context. He's not accused of lying, he's accused of computer crimes.
I mean, your medical records and browsing history may be 100% true and verifiably copied from original sources, but if I steal and distribute them I'm still going to jail.
If this knowledge was disclosed sooner (Because, lets face it, they've loved to spurt out claims about bad things Assange has done,) I would expect a non-negligible number of Wikileaks supporters to stop.
It's one thing to have leaks fed to you, it's another to actively encourage people to do so and name targets.
Wait. Are you taking these accusations at face value and saying that is okay here? Or are you contending that the accusations are false? I think it is a pretty big deal if you ask a hacking group to hack for you.
> I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never published anything that has been proven false.
This talking point is frankly irrelevant. Actually it itself illustrates how only cherry picking info to reveal is as deceptive as out right lies, but even more difficult to combat.
Want a clear example of how showing only true information is deceptive? Google Mormon bubbling. Yes the example is distasteful but it’s a very clear illustration of how easy it is to use selective information to deceive perception and make people appear to be doing something they are not, potentially hurting them.
>> I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never published anything that has been proven false.
Not really relevant. Assange was acting directly against the interests of the United States. He was indiscriminately dumping large quantities of classified (or otherwise secret) information on the internet for the world to see.
Are you trying to claim Assange is a journalist? How many credible journalists do you know that provide lists of targets with the intent to illegally hack?
A one-off tweet from a wikileaks twitter account about some other organization publishing something questionable is not at all the same as the document dumps that wikileaks publishes and puts their name behind. I'm obviously talking about the latter.
I think it says something that this is the best you can come up with.
Despite the Pentagon and Navy’s recent actions, Julian was right — all of this is a sophisticated operation that uses bad actors to perpetuate disinformation. It is probably illegal but concerns national security with China.
The whole Russian story was a scam. We have documents saying that is was told to abuse FISA powers. Not that I like the persons it was employed against, but it is far larger than watergate if we had honest discussion about it.
If you still talk about Russia, you have been fooled immensely and for me it is beyond comprehension how anyone could earnestly believe that story arc.
Assange is not a journalist of any sort, real or otherwise.
Journalists don’t actively participate in espionage, they don’t cozy up to ratfucking crooks like Roger Stone. They don’t withhold potentially damaging information because it might harm that align with most closely with their views. And if you believe nothing Wikileaks has ever published has been proven false, then I have a great opportunity for you to buy some waterfront property in Florida.
Whatever your opinion of Assange is, make no mistake that actual criminals he released info on are still walking free, including war criminals killing civilians and reporters, because the U.S. government does not want them prosecuted.
I am happy to know the existence such a lot of great American minds, mathematicians, scientists, visionaries, because, else, with only the kind of ugly news such as above, my image of US would have been tainted for good.
(*) I'm not American. I'm neutral about not being American, thanks to the existence of both plus and minus items. By the way of course you can say the same about pretty much any country.
As someone not from the USA as well I have always chuckled at the "Land of the free" sentiment that is there (how Americans really believe it when it is the complete opposite).
Fortunately there are places like Germany where things like CCC.de can exist and the Chaos Communication Congress can happen.
From my time living in UK, Germany, Mexico (where I am from) and travelling every 3 months to the USA, my [subjective] appreciation is that Germany is "freer" that the USA can ever aspire to be.
While I’ve met some people who truly assert that statement (land of the free,’ I don’t think too many people are fully convinced (or, indeed, even want to be ‘free’)
Oh, sorry if it was not very clear, I was saying that US treatment of the Assange case was disgusting me.
By "American great minds", I was thinking about all the American mathematicians and scientists whose books I passionately devour, and the splendid futuristic projects of some tech corps, which bring sci-fi dreams to reality.
> "Since the early days of WikiLeaks, Assange has spoken at hacking conferences to tout his own history as a “famous teenage hacker in Australia” and to encourage others to hack to obtain information for WikiLeaks. In 2009, for instance, Assange told the Hacking At Random conference that WikiLeaks had obtained nonpublic documents from the Congressional Research Service by exploiting “a small vulnerability” inside the document distribution system of the United States Congress, and then asserted that “[t]his is what any one of you would find if you were actually looking.”"
I don't remember that detail at all, but I did see him at HAR 2009, at a panel discussion about censorship and how to fight it. Afterward we set up a mailinglist for sharing information about censorship-related issues, especially laws and protests against them. It was never terribly active, unfortunately.
I remember him very carefully offering a distinction of what hacking meant in terms of him. He describes the old school term, meaning hacking programs together to make something, not the one meaning to break into/steal.
In the earlier days he very clearly stated he was a hacker “in the Australian scene” and name dropped various IRC channels etc. I have no idea if it was true or not, but I recognised some of the channels mentioned hence it stuck with me.
Feels like the last decade has shown Leaking to the General Public is not very productive. As in outcomes are poor.
There is always something else lined up every 2 minutes to pull attention away from the leak.
I am not sure if anyone studies "leaking effectiveness" but I am guessing in info tsunami conditions larger the leak less impact it has. Cause no one knows whose network of power is going to get impacted so everyone does nothing.
So now more and more mainstream OS have storage encryption easily enabled, everyone in tech seems to need to communicate about how much their product is privacy friendly and you would still say that the last decade of tech leaks hasn't been very productive? I'm not saying that it changed everything and that we're now safe, far from that. But at least that topic is now unavoidable.
Is this a joke? We have an innocent man in prison and war criminals beyond reproach. I am for setting realistic goals, but letting this fly will have severe long term repercussions.
Maybe? It's true that the outcomes have not been what I'd have hoped for, but I'm not sure we can say that leaking has had no impact. It's hard to A/B test what the outcome would be if the leaks hadn't occurred. Things might be worse. Hard to imagine how, exactly, but it's possible the leaks had enough positive impact to be worthwhile...
The fact that the media is largely refusing to give proper attention to the few primary sources we have on government affairs, preferring to print statements and tweets is the real problem here. If journalism looked the way it is often pictured in movies, this would go vastly differently.
So Americans love nothing more than to see the world as a collection of slippery slopes so there'll be the Assange defenders who argue this is an attack on press freedom but... I urge you to look a little deeper.
There are two major issues here:
1. Assange actively participated in the acquisition of classified material. This came up in the Chelsea Manning. Pointing to tools that can be useful. Prompting action. That sort of thing; and
2. Assange was playing politics. This should've been clear from Assange's actions with respect to the DNC emails.
Think about (1) for a second. Imagine the Attorney General had committed a crime. Proof of that was in a safe in his house. Which of the following is acceptable conduct in obtaining that information?
- Breaking into his house to get it;
- Destroying the safe to get at the contents;
- Holding him at gunpoint to open the safe;
- Holding his family hostage until he provides the information;
- Hiring someone to do any of the above;
- Someone offers the information to you without you knowing how it came to be in their possession;
- Someone notifies you of the information's existence and location. You pay them to acquire it. Or give them a gun. Or threaten them if they don't.
The point of these examples is to show that:
1. There is no absolute defense here and certainly not "journalism". The alternative is robbing banks as an expression of journalistic freedom; and
2. If you commit a crime, you commit a crime and the authorities can prosecute you for that.
The other side of this is recent administrations seem to have adopted a disproportionate response approach to dealing with leaks and whistleblowers, likely as a deterrent (they hope).
Imagine for a second, someone telling you there is proof in safe, you telling them to acquire this proof from this safe (which has access), then this person is caught and later pardoned by potus.
Later they come after you.
I am not from US, but this kinda doesnt look right.
Hang on, did they just accuse Chelsea Manning of attempting to hack computer systems? Is that a new allegation? To the best of my knowledge she only ever used access she already had, not attempted privilege escalation.
That was my understanding, as well. I was under the impression that Manning already had pretty carte blanche access to a lot of stuff, and that was how she was able to get it in the first place.
Maybe one of the items she provided to Assange was encrypted, and he worked to break the encryption, without consulting Manning.
Via instant messenger, Manning asked Assange whether Wikileaks could crack NTLM hashes. Assange said (paraphrasing), "Yeah, we can probably do that." Manning sent the hashes. Assange said he'd work on cracking them. A few days later, Manning asked if the hashes had been cracked. Assange replied that there hadn't been any progress.
End of story. That's a federal crime. No hashes were cracked, let alone sent back to Manning. No additional access was gained. He simply agreed to accept the hashes from Manning, which were freely offered.
Maybe he agreed because he didn't want to spook his source. Maybe he never even started hashcat. We'll never know.
Readit News
This is almost certainly sabu/Hector Monsegur. [1]
This guy put Jeremy Hammond [2] behind bars, and now he's being used to bring down Julian Freaking Assange. More lives ruined than you can count on one hand.
I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never published anything that has been proven false. Not once. Julian Assange is in solitary confinement in a prison on bullshit charges, and this is just another one.
Stand up for journalists. Real journalists.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Monsegur
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond
edit: as pointed out below, Assange was moved from solitary confinement in February.
Having said that, I once went to wikileaks and found a PDF of Steve Job's supposed STD test which claimed he was HIV positive. That was a surprise to me as my understanding was that he died of cancer. I looked into it and no one could corroborate the story and the general consensus seemed to be that it was faked.
Even if it was real, I struggle to see why it's important to leak the private medical records of someone with a deadly STD, although I'm sure there are multiple perspectives on this.
HIPAA (1994) enshrined legally what is one of the few moral absolutes in healthcare - your health issues are nobody else's business with few caveats. HIV is reported to the government. Knowingly infecting someone with HIV is a crime. The reasonable safeguards are there and dumping someone's records does nothing to make anyone safer.
> Due to the contradictory dates, possible evidence of forgery, strong motivations for fabrication, and few motivations for a legitimate revelation, the images should not be taken at face value.
And I found this reddit thread/comment from 11 years ago (when Wikileaks released it) that contains the same text, so it's not as though they released the document and then corrected themselves after the fact -- they published it alongside a warning that it's probably bogus. [2]
[1]: https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_purported_HIV_medical_...
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7qo8n/steve_job...
I’m honestly upset that this sort of information was released
EDIT: It seems any effort to seek clarification is discouraged here. My apologies.
Dead Comment
https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/757599082928082944?lang=en
Also: why would I care that Hammond was prosecuted? Hammond was caught dead to rights.
Indiscriminate doxing to accomplish a radical agenda is not journalism. My view-- which I admit is broader than the point you made-- is that he is a criminal and should be tried and convicted. It makes me sick to my stomach that he cloaks his actions in the hard work and bravery of our free press.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37165230 "Human rights groups have asked Wikileaks many times to do more to censor information found in documents. They fear reprisals against aid workers, activists and civilians named in the leaked data."
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51616077 "Mr Lewis said the dissemination of specific classified documents unredacted put dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq at 'risk of serious harm, torture or even death". The US identified hundreds of "at risk and potentially at risk people' around the world, he said, and made efforts to warn them."
In fact following the huffpost link it appears as if wikileaks pointed to private (and not of public interest) information published by a third party:
> WikiLeaks has not taken down its social media links to the now dead link.
If that is all you got, then I have to believe gp that wikileaks doesn’t spread false information.
As you note, it’s irrelevant but also, if true, illustrates how selectively showing true info is deceptive.
If you don't believe that Assange has done truthful hard-hitting journalism, or you believe that he isn't a journalist at all, then you can maintain the belief that we don't put journalists in prison while sitting idle as he rots in prison, because he is not a True Journalist. "We wouldn't do that to True Journalists. Assange is different."
> Jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is no longer being kept in solitary confinement and his health is improving, his spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson told reporters on Tuesday.
- Feb. 2020 [1]
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-assange/wikileaks...
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2016/9/9/12864328/wiki...
That is a very odd misdirection given the context. He's not accused of lying, he's accused of computer crimes.
I mean, your medical records and browsing history may be 100% true and verifiably copied from original sources, but if I steal and distribute them I'm still going to jail.
Are you trying to imply that assange is a journalist?
If this knowledge was disclosed sooner (Because, lets face it, they've loved to spurt out claims about bad things Assange has done,) I would expect a non-negligible number of Wikileaks supporters to stop.
It's one thing to have leaks fed to you, it's another to actively encourage people to do so and name targets.
So... Why are we only hearing about this -now-?
Of which Assange isn't
He was more than happy to support the current administration in the electoral process, with heavy editorializing and biases
So, I guess sorry they renegued on their promises? Oh but he should have guessed it.
This talking point is frankly irrelevant. Actually it itself illustrates how only cherry picking info to reveal is as deceptive as out right lies, but even more difficult to combat.
Want a clear example of how showing only true information is deceptive? Google Mormon bubbling. Yes the example is distasteful but it’s a very clear illustration of how easy it is to use selective information to deceive perception and make people appear to be doing something they are not, potentially hurting them.
Not really relevant. Assange was acting directly against the interests of the United States. He was indiscriminately dumping large quantities of classified (or otherwise secret) information on the internet for the world to see.
You need an edit for that incorrect statement as well, as many comments have already pointed out.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
Are you trying to claim Assange is a journalist? How many credible journalists do you know that provide lists of targets with the intent to illegally hack?
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760
He has helped launder edited material from Russian state sponsored hackers in the past. That is one instance, should I find more?
I think it says something that this is the best you can come up with.
https://imgur.com/gallery/XubrM3g
Despite the Pentagon and Navy’s recent actions, Julian was right — all of this is a sophisticated operation that uses bad actors to perpetuate disinformation. It is probably illegal but concerns national security with China.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Did you create that throwaway account in anticipation of yesterday's release of this story, or do you keep a stack to pick from?
If you still talk about Russia, you have been fooled immensely and for me it is beyond comprehension how anyone could earnestly believe that story arc.
You are spreading lies.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/25/assa-j25.html
Dead Comment
Assuming what you said is true, don't you think that some things should be secret, at least for a while?
Deleted Comment
This and the new anti-encryption bills...
I am happy to know the existence such a lot of great American minds, mathematicians, scientists, visionaries, because, else, with only the kind of ugly news such as above, my image of US would have been tainted for good.
(*) I'm not American. I'm neutral about not being American, thanks to the existence of both plus and minus items. By the way of course you can say the same about pretty much any country.
Fortunately there are places like Germany where things like CCC.de can exist and the Chaos Communication Congress can happen.
From my time living in UK, Germany, Mexico (where I am from) and travelling every 3 months to the USA, my [subjective] appreciation is that Germany is "freer" that the USA can ever aspire to be.
By "American great minds", I was thinking about all the American mathematicians and scientists whose books I passionately devour, and the splendid futuristic projects of some tech corps, which bring sci-fi dreams to reality.
“Julian Assange Charged...”
or the original
“Wikileaks Founder Charged...”
The current half-and-half is a little strange (who founded Julian Assange?).
I don't remember that detail at all, but I did see him at HAR 2009, at a panel discussion about censorship and how to fight it. Afterward we set up a mailinglist for sharing information about censorship-related issues, especially laws and protests against them. It was never terribly active, unfortunately.
There is always something else lined up every 2 minutes to pull attention away from the leak.
I am not sure if anyone studies "leaking effectiveness" but I am guessing in info tsunami conditions larger the leak less impact it has. Cause no one knows whose network of power is going to get impacted so everyone does nothing.
Who cares about "productivity" or outcomes? I am in for the truth. And WikiLeaks really helped.
There are two major issues here:
1. Assange actively participated in the acquisition of classified material. This came up in the Chelsea Manning. Pointing to tools that can be useful. Prompting action. That sort of thing; and
2. Assange was playing politics. This should've been clear from Assange's actions with respect to the DNC emails.
Think about (1) for a second. Imagine the Attorney General had committed a crime. Proof of that was in a safe in his house. Which of the following is acceptable conduct in obtaining that information?
- Breaking into his house to get it;
- Destroying the safe to get at the contents;
- Holding him at gunpoint to open the safe;
- Holding his family hostage until he provides the information;
- Hiring someone to do any of the above;
- Someone offers the information to you without you knowing how it came to be in their possession;
- Someone notifies you of the information's existence and location. You pay them to acquire it. Or give them a gun. Or threaten them if they don't.
The point of these examples is to show that:
1. There is no absolute defense here and certainly not "journalism". The alternative is robbing banks as an expression of journalistic freedom; and
2. If you commit a crime, you commit a crime and the authorities can prosecute you for that.
The other side of this is recent administrations seem to have adopted a disproportionate response approach to dealing with leaks and whistleblowers, likely as a deterrent (they hope).
Later they come after you.
I am not from US, but this kinda doesnt look right.
Correct me if I'm wrong here.
e.g. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrew...
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Maybe one of the items she provided to Assange was encrypted, and he worked to break the encryption, without consulting Manning.
Via instant messenger, Manning asked Assange whether Wikileaks could crack NTLM hashes. Assange said (paraphrasing), "Yeah, we can probably do that." Manning sent the hashes. Assange said he'd work on cracking them. A few days later, Manning asked if the hashes had been cracked. Assange replied that there hadn't been any progress.
End of story. That's a federal crime. No hashes were cracked, let alone sent back to Manning. No additional access was gained. He simply agreed to accept the hashes from Manning, which were freely offered.
Maybe he agreed because he didn't want to spook his source. Maybe he never even started hashcat. We'll never know.
edit:
source: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/886185-pe-123.html (middle of page 6)
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