Assange comes off as a real machiavellian style asshole with vanity and manipulation seeming to him at least as important as his cause.
Snowden and Assange often seem to get lumped together but there's a world of difference in personal character, and also in mission. Saying such varied and complex issues are all just "leaking" does both their supporters and detractors a disservice. Details matter especially with so much at stake.
If someone revealed Donald Trump's taxes, would you care if that person was a disgruntled, mentally unstable former-employee who had served time in prison for a morally abhorrent offense? Probably not.
But for some reason, when discussing Wikileaks, there is an elaborate and imaginative notion of Assange's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, etc. etc.
I think we should all realize that Assange has shown us outrageous and deeply disturbing revelations about many governments, the US Government in particular. The scale, deceitfulness, and human toll revealed by this information is many orders of magnitude larger than any minor concerns about Assange's personality or personal conduct.
That this isn't obvious to more people is deeply troubling to me. How did we become so compliant, so loyal to a government that would do this? How can we allow this to happen? Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange?
I think the unfortunate answer is that Americans do not care that brown-skinned people are being murdered all over the world due to US policies, and that hundreds of thousands of children go to bed every night hearing the buzz of drone aircraft, terrified that their home might be targeted.
Assange has given American democracy the opportunity to have some teeth and to allow the basic decency of a free society to rise up and correct for some of the wrongs that were revealed, but instead we talk about Assange's personality quirks and use the hashtag resist in support of the most establishment politician since Dick Cheney.
I don't know why people still support Assange so clearly. It was interesting to me that people on /r/The_Donald love Assange so much. Before this documentary, I posted there criticising Wikileaks and it was totally hated on. I find that weird because the idea that Assange is unreliable and fake, was the kind of somewhat-counter-main-narrative idea that I thought people of T_D would appreciate. They seem to see him as some sort of hero. I wanted to point out that he seems to me to have once been good, but then he squandered by trading whatever his mission originally was, with some bullshit idea of being a martyr to serve his ego. I can't respect someone who talks about curing the world of ignorance, and having the courage to tell the truth, but then cowers for 7 years in a embassy because he's too afraid to stand up and tell the truth, whatever it was, about what happened. I mean, I know his existence is useful to the IC and various interests, but I personally just find him disgusting. And I genuinely had some belief in what Wikileaks could have stood for. But I don't really see it as that now. To me, Wikileaks and Assange totally sold out. Sorry to offend anyone who feels very differently. This is just my opinion on it.
the release of the Macron "documents" - complete w/ all the evidence of Russian manipulation and fakery, hanging MS Word edit tags in cyrillic, etc, in the official dump, says volumes. They didn't bother to even read through the stuff before dumping it on the public.
"To be clear: our objections are not about censorship. WikiLeaks remains an unwavering advocate for freedom of expression. This is about safety. It is about protecting journalistic sources. It is about personal and professional integrity, and honoring contractual obligations.
Our second major concern about Risk is the way the focus of the film has been radically altered from a broadly sympathetic portrayal of WikiLeaks’ work and the attacks against its staff by the U.S. government to an ill-defined indictment of the "culture of sexism" online."
> Poitras has also violated her unambiguous promise to the subjects of the film that they would have an opportunity to review the film in advance and request changes, and that they could decline to appear if they or their lawyers felt that the movie put them at risk.
So I'm wondering whether Assange declined to appear, and she refused. That'd be funny, in a sad way.
Still, I've followed Assange's work for decades. Maybe he's been a sexist asshole at times. The flesh is weak, no doubt. But I don't get how that can be a criticism of Wikileaks.
Edit: In the parent article, Poitras says:
> There were individuals who requested from the beginning not to appear in the film, and those requests were respected.
I wonder what the contract actually says about the right of subjects to decline to appear.
The specific claims: “In WikiLeaks’ efforts to prevent the distribution of ‘Risk,’ they are using the very tactics often used against them – legal threats, false security claims, underhanded personal attacks, misdirection – and with the same intentions: to suppress information and silence speech"
It is funny to see Wikileaks complaining about leaks. Not even leaks, but rather material provided voluntarily. They were obviously gobsmacked by Poitras turning on them.
I must say, however, that Wikileaks overall censors leaks much less heavily than do Greenwald, Poitras and crew. I mean, does anyone know what percentage of Snowden's stuff that's been released? It's my impression that it's small.
Isn't it rational to focus on outcomes. For the average citizen who doesn't work for the government or has a vested interest there is no context in which they would not value more transparency, especially when the cost is borne almost exclusively by Assange, Snowden, Poitras and others. The constants attempts to belittle and discredit them without considering the overall outcomes seem motivated and desperate.
Shutting down conversation by smug references to conspiracy theories is not as easy to do now. On the contrary it's the people who hang on desperately to the 'safety' of fantasy narratives and demand Snowden level sacrifice or signed confessions from authorities who seem out of touch and suspect.
Illusions and delusions about fundamental principles and values lies in tatters. Its not as easy to trade in pretensions and present a holier than thou attitude while working the backroom. And for those interested its now possible to have a more informed perspective of our world. That's a huge contribution by wikileaks.
The unauthorized release of the Film has caused our clients to suffer ongoing irreparable harm, and exponentially increasing damages every time a new viewer sees the Film.
Somebody will be very rich, very fast.
Yeah, I know I'm fighting a lost battle. But that's the most ridiculous abuse I have seen in a while.
I remember seeing a documentary many years ago where they interviewed a lot of Wikileaks ex-staff and Assange came off as a power-mad megalomaniac. I don't remember the name but my view of Assange was completely changed after that.
Does anyone know what documentary I'm talking about? It was aired on Swedish television (this was before the sexual offense accusations).
I've always had mixed feelings about Assange going back to the beginning of WL. While I take my hat off to what he has claimed is the purpose of WL, I never quite trusted Assange the man. It always felt to me like the kind of power that WL has needs to be wielded by a person of great moral integrity and Assange never struck me as that kind of person.
Information is powerful and it can be used both to force transparency and it can be used as a weapon. My impression is that Assange views it more as a weapon that he can use against others.
Nobody can operate effectively in a 100% transparent environment. I was living overseas when WL released the State Department communications and most of the information released pertaining to the country I was living in revealed little of noteworthiness. It was all tabloid level stuff where some ambassador made a dismissive or insulting comment about some government official in a report back to Washington.
How would any of us like every email we've ever written to be put into the public domain? If we were doing nothing illegal what purpose would it serve to let everyone know that I hate my aunt's cooking and tried to get out of a family dinner in June of 2013? The only thing that information would do is embarrass me and strain my relationship with my aunt. No public good comes from it.
And that's where I see many of the WL releases being. Many leaks seem to stir up trouble where nothing illegal or malicious is actually occurring.
So, an organization like WL has a great responsibility. I applaud them for uncovering deceit and illegal activities, and I think we need some outside force doing it, but they also need to use that power in a way such that they don't try to prove their own importance by releasing information that is merely sensationalistic in order to heighten their brand.
I've never trusted Assange to be the kind of person who can make that distinction. WL would be much better off in the hands of someone/people who were far less concerned about elevating their own notoriety and were able to better able to separate the mission of WL from the politics.
> Nobody can operate effectively in a 100% transparent environment. > Many leaks seem to stir up trouble where nothing illegal or malicious is actually occurring.
A distinction has to be made between secrecy and privacy. While Assange built a great tool against secrecy (and that's what scares Washington and alikes), it may be something good for privacy (hypothetically, the relationship with your aunt is safe, and maybe safer than before Wikileaks).
Things work when the penalty is commensurate with the bad behaviour, if there's no penalty than you're inciting "the bad things"...
If your definition of "bad things" is "everything that's illegal", you're making a reference to the law, but what we should consider is that the law is made by humans. Wikileaks targets those who think they are exempted not only by law, but also by morality, and do this using the threat of completely exposing them ...
If you partially expose things, choosing what to publish and what's private; than not only you are implicitly expressing a priori judgment without clearly exposing it, but you’re manipulating the data and decreasing the punishment too (effectively incentivising the wrong behaviour).
I think that exposing some of the dirty little secrets of these big players is not something that the average Jane/Joe can do, and is definitely not something that you should expect from someone with a strong moral integrity, or excessive scruples of conscience.
Trust is something tricky in intelligence chess games.
Penalty is what is needed here, things won’t change until we require the governments to put the people responsible of killings, dragnets, … in jail. But Hacking Team is still happily up and running despite their actions and the same goes for the attitude of the American intelligence community.
I might also agree, but I’m sorry to say that we still need Wikileaks.
I feel the opposite way. WL seems fairly harmful, but Assange is a hacker, he's one of us, taking on state-level actors. I kinda have to root for him a bit...
Not terribly surprised, it's been well known that Assange leaks what he wants, and doesn't care much after the leak. A lot of information, like the email "dumps" didn't have valid DKIM headers for one. A lot of their stuff is questionable at best now.
Can you please provide sources? I verified a many of the DKIM headers myself and they were all fine. This was actually one of the strongest pieces of evidence in favor of the legitimacy of the emails. Also, I'm not sure why you say "it's well known"; it's not known to me, and I'm fairly interested in this area.
That form of censorship was not alleged. You are imagining things.
They're accusing him of attempting to censor the personal stuff, such as the sexual misconduct allegations. Personally I'm mixed on whether those belong in a documentary about WikiLeaks given how irrelevant they are to the organizational purpose.
[+] [-] WhitneyLand|8 years ago|reply
Assange comes off as a real machiavellian style asshole with vanity and manipulation seeming to him at least as important as his cause.
Snowden and Assange often seem to get lumped together but there's a world of difference in personal character, and also in mission. Saying such varied and complex issues are all just "leaking" does both their supporters and detractors a disservice. Details matter especially with so much at stake.
[+] [-] grandalf|8 years ago|reply
If someone revealed Donald Trump's taxes, would you care if that person was a disgruntled, mentally unstable former-employee who had served time in prison for a morally abhorrent offense? Probably not.
But for some reason, when discussing Wikileaks, there is an elaborate and imaginative notion of Assange's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, etc. etc.
I think we should all realize that Assange has shown us outrageous and deeply disturbing revelations about many governments, the US Government in particular. The scale, deceitfulness, and human toll revealed by this information is many orders of magnitude larger than any minor concerns about Assange's personality or personal conduct.
That this isn't obvious to more people is deeply troubling to me. How did we become so compliant, so loyal to a government that would do this? How can we allow this to happen? Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange?
I think the unfortunate answer is that Americans do not care that brown-skinned people are being murdered all over the world due to US policies, and that hundreds of thousands of children go to bed every night hearing the buzz of drone aircraft, terrified that their home might be targeted.
Assange has given American democracy the opportunity to have some teeth and to allow the basic decency of a free society to rise up and correct for some of the wrongs that were revealed, but instead we talk about Assange's personality quirks and use the hashtag resist in support of the most establishment politician since Dick Cheney.
[+] [-] 19eightyfour|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjornsing|8 years ago|reply
Did you get all that from the short clip of Assange talking Russia and Clinton...?
If I understand correctly the damning part (of Risk) is when he makes weird allegations against the women he is accused of rapeing...
[+] [-] macspoofing|8 years ago|reply
Is there actually?
[+] [-] caycep|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nailer|8 years ago|reply
"To be clear: our objections are not about censorship. WikiLeaks remains an unwavering advocate for freedom of expression. This is about safety. It is about protecting journalistic sources. It is about personal and professional integrity, and honoring contractual obligations.
Our second major concern about Risk is the way the focus of the film has been radically altered from a broadly sympathetic portrayal of WikiLeaks’ work and the attacks against its staff by the U.S. government to an ill-defined indictment of the "culture of sexism" online."
[+] [-] mirimir|8 years ago|reply
> Poitras has also violated her unambiguous promise to the subjects of the film that they would have an opportunity to review the film in advance and request changes, and that they could decline to appear if they or their lawyers felt that the movie put them at risk.
So I'm wondering whether Assange declined to appear, and she refused. That'd be funny, in a sad way.
Still, I've followed Assange's work for decades. Maybe he's been a sexist asshole at times. The flesh is weak, no doubt. But I don't get how that can be a criticism of Wikileaks.
Edit: In the parent article, Poitras says:
> There were individuals who requested from the beginning not to appear in the film, and those requests were respected.
I wonder what the contract actually says about the right of subjects to decline to appear.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] foldr|8 years ago|reply
Shameless hypocrisy. They had few concerns about safety when they released classified information.
[+] [-] msabalau|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirimir|8 years ago|reply
I must say, however, that Wikileaks overall censors leaks much less heavily than do Greenwald, Poitras and crew. I mean, does anyone know what percentage of Snowden's stuff that's been released? It's my impression that it's small.
Edit: typo
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw2016|8 years ago|reply
Shutting down conversation by smug references to conspiracy theories is not as easy to do now. On the contrary it's the people who hang on desperately to the 'safety' of fantasy narratives and demand Snowden level sacrifice or signed confessions from authorities who seem out of touch and suspect.
Illusions and delusions about fundamental principles and values lies in tatters. Its not as easy to trade in pretensions and present a holier than thou attitude while working the backroom. And for those interested its now possible to have a more informed perspective of our world. That's a huge contribution by wikileaks.
[+] [-] qb45|8 years ago|reply
Somebody will be very rich, very fast.
Yeah, I know I'm fighting a lost battle. But that's the most ridiculous abuse I have seen in a while.
[+] [-] Kiro|8 years ago|reply
Does anyone know what documentary I'm talking about? It was aired on Swedish television (this was before the sexual offense accusations).
[+] [-] papabrown|8 years ago|reply
Information is powerful and it can be used both to force transparency and it can be used as a weapon. My impression is that Assange views it more as a weapon that he can use against others.
Nobody can operate effectively in a 100% transparent environment. I was living overseas when WL released the State Department communications and most of the information released pertaining to the country I was living in revealed little of noteworthiness. It was all tabloid level stuff where some ambassador made a dismissive or insulting comment about some government official in a report back to Washington.
How would any of us like every email we've ever written to be put into the public domain? If we were doing nothing illegal what purpose would it serve to let everyone know that I hate my aunt's cooking and tried to get out of a family dinner in June of 2013? The only thing that information would do is embarrass me and strain my relationship with my aunt. No public good comes from it.
And that's where I see many of the WL releases being. Many leaks seem to stir up trouble where nothing illegal or malicious is actually occurring.
So, an organization like WL has a great responsibility. I applaud them for uncovering deceit and illegal activities, and I think we need some outside force doing it, but they also need to use that power in a way such that they don't try to prove their own importance by releasing information that is merely sensationalistic in order to heighten their brand.
I've never trusted Assange to be the kind of person who can make that distinction. WL would be much better off in the hands of someone/people who were far less concerned about elevating their own notoriety and were able to better able to separate the mission of WL from the politics.
[+] [-] tgragnato|8 years ago|reply
A distinction has to be made between secrecy and privacy. While Assange built a great tool against secrecy (and that's what scares Washington and alikes), it may be something good for privacy (hypothetically, the relationship with your aunt is safe, and maybe safer than before Wikileaks).
Things work when the penalty is commensurate with the bad behaviour, if there's no penalty than you're inciting "the bad things"...
If your definition of "bad things" is "everything that's illegal", you're making a reference to the law, but what we should consider is that the law is made by humans. Wikileaks targets those who think they are exempted not only by law, but also by morality, and do this using the threat of completely exposing them ...
If you partially expose things, choosing what to publish and what's private; than not only you are implicitly expressing a priori judgment without clearly exposing it, but you’re manipulating the data and decreasing the punishment too (effectively incentivising the wrong behaviour).
I think that exposing some of the dirty little secrets of these big players is not something that the average Jane/Joe can do, and is definitely not something that you should expect from someone with a strong moral integrity, or excessive scruples of conscience.
Trust is something tricky in intelligence chess games.
Penalty is what is needed here, things won’t change until we require the governments to put the people responsible of killings, dragnets, … in jail. But Hacking Team is still happily up and running despite their actions and the same goes for the attitude of the American intelligence community.
I might also agree, but I’m sorry to say that we still need Wikileaks.
[+] [-] wcummings|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GrumpyNl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Operyl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyager|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microcolonel|8 years ago|reply
They're accusing him of attempting to censor the personal stuff, such as the sexual misconduct allegations. Personally I'm mixed on whether those belong in a documentary about WikiLeaks given how irrelevant they are to the organizational purpose.
[+] [-] BanBait|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TempleOSfan|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]