/cyb/ - cyberpunk and cybersecurity

i think julian already kinda tainted the project. He obviously has an agenda fueled with the want for revenge against hillary clinton and continues to support the degradation of american democracy by only leaking things that benefit trump. I think he's always been self serving and he royally fucked up by putting his face on everything giving his enemies a person to target. He should've stayed Anon and ran wikileaks from the shadows.

>>736

>the want for revenge against hillary clinton
"Can't we just drone this guy?"

>the degradation of american democracy
via informed electorate

>by only leaking things that benefit trump
since 2008

>he royally fucked up by putting his face on everything giving his enemies a person to target
that might be true, though it makes him less assassinatable, unlike his lawyers

>>733
>Julian Assange might end up tainting the project, considering the rape allegations
Sweden dropped the charges, now he's only there because the UK wants to help Sweden do what they no longer want to do.

>>737
You and I both know that even if the rape allegations do get dropped, it will still harm Wikileaks in the future.
I can see it now, 2020 election:

"But Mr. Politician, how will you respond with the Wikileaks attacks on x,y,z?"

"Wikileaks is full of rapists."

cue ~60% of the populace ignoring the leak

>>738
Well he is also running for the Australian Senate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc_hbX2DxJQ

>>737

>Sweden dropped the charges,

Technically there were never any charges in the first place, just a kind of preliminary investigation into the possibility of laying charges.

>now he's only there because the UK wants to help Sweden do what they no longer want to do.

Officially, yes. Of course given how buddy-buddy the US and UK are, given the current UK government's hostility to those who speak truth to power, and given that the US government is frothing at the mouth to prosecute him, it's not unreasonable to assume that the UK's depseration to avoid Assange arriving safely in Ecuador is all about the UK's plans to ship him straight to the US ASAP.

One really interesting thing about the whole mess is how it's shown how extremely seriously governments in general, and the UK government in particular, considers embassies as inviolabe territory. It's not as if Ecuador is hiding some massive military force in their embassy. They could storm that place at zero physical risk any time they wanted, grab Assange, and be out in two minutes. But they haven't. That's an encouraging sign that some people in the UK government have retained their sanity.

>>733
I believe wikileaks has a unique bias that Assange ignores frequently and even asserts doesnt exist. The issue of wikileaks is that if an entity specifically wants to harm another group, they merely perform a bit of espionage to find some dirt on said group and release it to wikileaks. It does not matter how dirty the group leaking is or how much the leak benefits the group leaking, as wikileaks will release anything given to them in the name of freedom of information. This is a difficult bias to prevent but it is a bias nonetheless.

I find it curious that Assange is so deep in denial about this fact that I have lost faith that this is the only bias wikileaks has.

The other issue is wikileaks tends not to consider the repercussions of such releases. The DNC hacks were certainly a grey area but I recall a time where wikileaks doxxed a good number of US spies, to the point of revealing their real names. Afterwards, not only were all of those operatives lives at risk (which they understood was always a possibility im sure) but their families lives and their friends lives were now at risk. This is foolish behavior to me and shows the true nature of websites like wikileaks.

That all said, there are many cases in which I fully support leaking. I think if you are going to leak something you should go through a more trustworthy organization. To some this means MSM news outlets, but they tend to be strong on journalistic bias (tho they still release the entire thing in mst cases). I would reccomend supporting groups like The Intercept if you want responsible leaking. They to have journalistic bias, but far from the levels of MSM and they are focused on the integrity of their leaks. They had a really interesting podcast where they interviewed Assange that really show their differences, and imo prove they are a more honest source than wikileaks.

Podcast: https://theintercept.com/2017/04/19/intercepted-podcast-julian-assange-speaks-out-as-trumps-cia-director-threatens-to-end-wikileaks/

>>745
> I recall a time where wikileaks doxxed a good number of US spies, to the point of revealing their real names. Afterwards, not only were all of those operatives lives at risk (which they understood was always a possibility im sure) but their families lives and their friends lives were now at risk. This is foolish behavior to me and shows the true nature of websites like wikileaks.

But a person could counter that by saying the spies took the risks and it would be there fault if they suffer
any consequences due to spying it would be there fault , especially if consider spying is very shady activity.

> It does not matter how dirty the group leaking is or how much the leak benefits the group leaking, as wikileaks will release anything given to them in the name of freedom of information. This is a difficult bias to prevent but it is a bias nonetheless.

Anyone defending wikileaks would say that wikileaks doesn't owe any group anything so it should not be it's concern whether it's releasing
information helps or harms any group.

>>746
>a person could counter that by saying the spies took the risks and it would be there fault
Its true that they took the risk, however it is not their enemy who revealed them, they were doxxed by wikileaks. In the world of geopolitics, spying absolutely is necessary to some degree. If you dont spy, your enemies will know what you're doing from their own spies, and you will not know what they are doing. They are about as necessary as any military nowadays and they arent even tasked with killing (generally of course). Whatever their motives, doxxing them only helps those who would want them dead in the first place. A responsible leak publisher would omit the irrelevant data as not doing so endangers their lives. Wikileaks made the decision to endanger them as much as they did. Unprofessional imo.

>Anyone defending wikileaks would say that wikileaks doesn't owe any group anything so it should not be it's concern whether it's releasing
information helps or harms any group.
This is absolutely true. There will always be something like wikileaks and governments really should just learn to be more transparent in the first place. That said, without applying a moral philosophy when it comes with deciding whether it is a good or bad idea to leak this information (perhaps it seems like a timed leak, so maybe postpone it a month or two) then you sort of invalidate the whole idea of 'making the world a better place'. Wikileaks should take the stance of a website that does nothing more than publish stolen information. Without demonstrating restraint or integrity they simply cannot operate under the flag of anything but anarchy.


They can be used as a tool for the malicious or the good and they do not distinguish. That puts them in a grey area. There are alternatives, but that will not stop the malicious or questionable from using wikileaks, therefore the motives of all leaks to wikileaks (and all leaks, to be honest) must be heavily questioned,but the more people use trustworthy alternatives, the more likely any one wikileaks leak is to have concerning motive.

>>745
The Intercept was started by Glenn Greenwald, the guy behind the Snowden releases right?

He's been accused a lot of not handling sensitive information properly, I think I read somewhere that he was very obstinate about opsec when Snowden was trying to leak information to him.

Correct me if I'm wrong, since I can't seem to find a source sigh

>>749
I figure no matter what, if you publish leaks your gonna get criticized on your handling of sensitive information.

They still have their biases and there is no perfect answer but they have been the most respectable leak publisher I know of. For example just recently some greenie contractor grabbed the first files she could get her hands on and released them to the intercept. The intercept communicated with the NSA (i think, off of memory atm, it was some branch involved) to confirm it. It was clear that the info did not do a whole lot for anyone but the intercept said they planned on releasing it anyway. Since there was no stopping them, said branch worked with the intercept to at the very least censor irrelevant sensitive portions of the data which I respect as it is clear the censored bits were unimportant and just risks.

That was the story about Russian hacking on actual voter machines and their software companies that broke recently. The leaker has since been caught because she was a dumbass and printed the leaks.

>>749

I don't know about Greenwald. But another reporter for The Intercept named Matthew Cole has now twice been involved in blatantly ignoring best practices in handling leaked info. The first was John Kiriakou, and now there's Reality Winner. It makes one wonder about Cole's own agenda.

Mixed feelings, assuming everything they release is true and not just plausible, on one hand every information of that kind given to the public is good in a democracy but on the other people can't do much with so many infos, we're still reliant on journalists to sort it out. It also looks pretty easy for intelligence agencies to wilfully leak something in order to avoid drawing attention on another subject more critical to them.

Then concerning Wikileaks' agenda well complete objectivity is only a theoretical concept anyway, one can't possibly reach it so yes wherever they stand it would be better to have alternatives to compensate for that.

I don't have any mixed feelings about Wikileaks at all. What they're doing is top-notch journalism. They're publishing what the corporate media are too cowardly or too complicit to publish.

I don't give a damn about the personal politics of anyone involved in Wikileaks, so long as what they publish are independently verifiable facts. And so far, that's exactly what they've published.

>>968
>I don't give a damn about the personal politics of anyone involved in Wikileaks, so long as what they publish are independently verifiable facts. And so far, that's exactly what they've published.

Do you personally have a way to verify this? My issue is that I inherently can't trust WikiLeaks when they're operatives and public face are so blatantly political, to the point of near outright support of the American president.

WikiLeaks is open about not releasing everything given to them, they hold back and release specific info as needed. Doesn't that sound like narrative building? It just feels so icky to me, that they claim to be impartial and nonpartisan but then explicitly deal with political opinions on their Twitter page and in public announcements. It does not paint a picture of an honest orginization.



I wish we had a real wikileaks, an almost automated service. Something that acted totally autonomously and decentralized and simply existed to provide whistleblowers a layer of protection and anonymity.

>>971
There was almost openleaks, but it collapsed due to infighting and lack of interest :(

https://www.wired.com/2012/09/this-machine-kills-secrets/all/

After reading their AMA on reddit I have lost all faith in them. I threw out my WikiLeaks hoodie.

>>971

>Do you personally have a way to verify this? My issue is that I inherently can't trust WikiLeaks when they're operatives and public face are so blatantly political, to the point of near outright support of the American president.

I verify what Wikileaks publishes the same way I verify any journalist's work.

Do the claims correspond with claims made by independent journalists, historians, researchers with disparate agendas? (e.g., are journalists who actively dislike Wikileaks reporting the same information?)

Do the claims correspond with the reality that I personally observe?

Are the claims logical and self-consistent?

Are people and organizations publicly acting on those claims in such a way that is only logical if the claims are factual? (For example, Microsoft rushing security patches that would specifically fix flaws exploited by CIA tools revealed by the Vault7 leaks. If the flaws weren't there, there wouldn't be a need for those patches.)

I don't blindly trust Wikileaks or use them as my only source of information. But I do consider them to be reputable.

>>745

> It does not matter how dirty the group leaking is or how much the leak benefits the group leaking, as wikileaks will release anything given to them in the name of freedom of information.

>>747
>Without demonstrating restraint or integrity they simply cannot operate under the flag of anything but anarchy.

Jesus Christ you guys are silly, they are literally a neo-anarchist site. I highly suspect that they follow a certain form of Nick-Land-like accelerationism, in which they would probably argue that the higher degree of information about the world that is released for the public, the higher the degree to which they will be inclined to revolt against the dominate order.

If you didn't realize this by now, you simply haven't been reading any of their documents/interviews.

I like them, and they do a lot of leaks on companies and such, but this is usually overplayed because people only care about the political ones and recently "muh Russia"

Regarding ASSange, maybe it's just that I started to learn more about him, but he comes off as ever more edgy. Him being cooped up for half a decade in there probably helped.
His stepdad was a cult member, and according to Wikipedia he used psychological pressure on them. He later run away.

He hates authority (at least what he perceives are unwarranted) with passion, and maybe that's where it comes from.

His anti-Hillary bias is so strong it hurts a little the cause when it comes to gaining new adepts, thought it's perfectly understandable as they made his life miserable and want him dead.


pic related is true too, I can't believe how many people turned their back on him

>>2304
>Hillary
>left
what the fuck am i reading lmao

>>2310
Too many self-described conservatives (especially American ones, and especially especially American religious conservatives) are under the delusion that liberal = left, simply because both camps oppose them.

Clinton's publicly-professed policies may be fairly described as a classical liberal (with a heavy emphasis on laissez-faire economics, almost to the point of social-darwinistic neo-classical liberalism), but they are certainly not leftist. (I personally think it's a front on her part and that she's really a pro-corporate fascist in the style of Benito Mussolini, but that's pure unobjective opinion on my part.)

About the only things that liberals and leftist have in common is a tendency not to use traditional organized religion as a tool of social control, and that they both at least pay lip service to the idea of innate civil rights that constrain how governments can act. (Of course in practice it's more complex, but hey, that's economics/politics/sociology for you.)