**WARNING DARK TOPIC** A sick/dark new twist to Assange losing his internet connection.

[Shryke]

2 hours ago, BloodRider said:

I am not sure if this is true or not, but:

Donald Trump's mail-servers are running Windows 2003 

If it is true, then I can speculate if Trump hasn't been hacked because there are no interested parties willing to do illegal shit to further the campaign.  Especially when there is lots of legally available, low hanging fruit, and Clinton is in the lead.  Just a guess tho.

Nope, they've said they have stuff on Trump:

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/293453-assange-wikileaks-trump-info-no-worse-than-him
 

Quote

 

Assange, whose organization has released embarrassing Democratic National Committee emails believed to have been hacked by Russian entities, said the group doesn't have anything on Trump that is more controversial than the GOP presidential nominee's own public comments.

“We do have some information about the Republican campaign,” he said Friday, according to The Washington Post.

“I mean, it’s from a point of view of an investigative journalist organization like WikiLeaks, the problem with the Trump campaign is it’s actually hard for us to publish much more controversial material than what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every second day," Assange said.

 

But, you know, a fucking recipe for risotto is totally controversial.

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, Relic said:

It's amazing how the American public's perception of Assange has flipped in the last year. He used to be a traitor to the Neoconservatives and the Tea Parry people,  and a hero to the left of left lefties.

 

Guess the enemy of my enemy is my friend. 

No he wasn't. People on the left been shitting on him since the Collateral Murder stunt.

[Kalbear]

58 minutes ago, Ariadne23 said:

I agree with the second part. I'm not sure about the first part. How would you describe the concept of Wikileaks? What's its best purpose? I'm having some conceptualization problems there. 

There needs to be a global, independent, and trustworthy system that allows whistleblowers and hackers to report publicly relevant information that often exposes corruption and massive failures in their own governments. This system should be entirely transparent, should have no motives beyond freedom of information, and what curation happens should be simply to hide personal identifying information for the protection of fairly innocent people. 

This needs to exist until governments are heavily transparent and easily accountable. 

For the most part I think the DNC/Clinton leaks have been fairly lame. The best part was the Wall Street speeches, which were interesting, but most of the other stuff has been either irrelevant or noisy. The Snowden leaks, however, were incredibly useful. The Panama Papers were another incredibly useful thing (not published on Wikileaks, but again - hugely important). 

[mormont]

3 hours ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

No, my point still stands because there are innumerable outlets of which you could say the same- "either [outlet x] has info on Trump and isn't publishing it or the people who have that info aren't taking it to [outlet x]." That's not a mark against these innumerable outlets' ethics.

No, the point fails. People are taking Trump info to regular media outlets and those outlets are mostly doing their job, which is more broadly defined than that of Wikileaks. There are exceptions but these are nakedly partisan outlets like Fox News, which I doubt was the comparison you're aiming at. Wikileaks is not fulfilling its professed mission and one way or the other, that is the reason why it is not publishing Trump stuff, only Clinton stuff.

Now, you may disagree with all that, but I hope it's clear that if I don't respond to something it's not because I don't have an answer. If I don't have an answer I'm more than happy to admit it.

[Ariadne23]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

There needs to be a global, independent, and trustworthy system that allows whistleblowers and hackers to report publicly relevant information that often exposes corruption and massive failures in their own governments. This system should be entirely transparent, should have no motives beyond freedom of information, and what curation happens should be simply to hide personal identifying information for the protection of fairly innocent people. 

So, like, a free press? ;-) i guess I'm actually serious. What would you, or anyone else, attribute the vacuous hole that would ideally be occupied by a free press with journalistic integrity to? Corporate ownership? Something else?

Unrelated to the above, I will also add that, on the whole dating website thing, they allege that Assange used their app to contact this underage girl using her sister's account in the report they filed with the UN. It's all hard to follow; I can barely make heads or tails of it, but I don't know what to make of that either. People manufacturing allegations for nefarious purposes are usually easier to follow.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Ariadne23 said:

So, like, a free press? ;-) i guess I'm actually serious. What would you, or anyone else, attribute the vacuous hole that would ideally be occupied by a free press with journalistic integrity to? Corporate ownership? Something else?

No, this isn't just a free press. Free press can use this as a source of evidence, but so can anyone else - and that's important. It's also important that the information is not just passed to one press source, which decides if it is newsworthy or not. And it's important that it is not part of a public organization which exists in one nation, which in theory can be compelled to release information or sources based on legal issues. 

As to the hole of free press - press is run by people, who themselves have biases. The press is also requiring money, which skews heavily what they report and find newsworthy. Corporate ownership hurts things but there are enough non-corp press sources that can override this reasonably. It's not just about journalistic integrity - it's giving the whistleblowers the ability to have an outlet for data to be released. 

[Swordfish]

I could not care less what someones motivations are for whistle blowing, or whether they are 'fair and balanced', if their information is accurate and meaningful.

The problem with Assange is, he isn't really giving us anything but self aggrandizement and hype at this point.

[Ariadne23]

9 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

No, this isn't just a free press. Free press can use this as a source of evidence, but so can anyone else - and that's important. It's also important that the information is not just passed to one press source, which decides if it is newsworthy or not.

I'm with you here. Say WikiLeaks dumps some source material. A blogger combs through them and publishes some great stuff. At that point, I would argue that person has become part of the press. But they were only able to because the information was openly available. So maybe what we're saying is that in order to capitalize on the freedom of information the internet allows for, we need "open source media" (makes me think of open source software), and WikiLeaks provides that open source.

What that makes me wish for is more open sources so WikiLeaks is not the sole clearinghouse. Too much power in one organization.

ETA: Thanks for helping me figure out where I stand on this.

[Kalbear]

There's also another part to it, which is that anyone can see the original data and fact check - which means you also get glimpses into people's biases and interpretations. That's another valuable piece that allows you to defuse - or specifically point out - media bias.

I agree that Wikileaks is too centralized and controlled and (amusingly enough) opaque in their processes, and Assange is at this point a clear problem. But the actual concept is a good one, and their involvement with Snowden shows how  valuable they can be. 

[TheMightyKC]

17 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

I could not care less what someones motivations are for whistle blowing, or whether they are 'fair and balanced', if their information is accurate and meaningful.

The problem with Assange is, he isn't really giving us anything but self aggrandizement and hype at this point.

Agreed! The man is arrogant and proud beyond measure!!!  His media stunts are unceasing.  And if I can be perfectly Frank, I just don't like the cut of his jib.

[Ariadne23]

27 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

There's also another part to it, which is that anyone can see the original data and fact check - which means you also get glimpses into people's biases and interpretations. That's another valuable piece that allows you to defuse - or specifically point out - media bias.

Agree there completely as well. 

On that note, I can see why the UN supports Assange in principal. Shouldn't the US govt, the DNC, etc., be concerned about the persons actually leaking the information and not the entity publishing it?

There is no contention that WikiLeaks is, itself, involved in the hacks is there?

It's kind of weird to be alive at a time where Watergate looks like small potatoes.

[Astromech]

4 hours ago, Fez said:

I think its only that they wouldn't extradite him to any country where he might face the death penalty, not just that the country has the death penalty. The US does have an extradition treaty with Sweden, two of them actually, and they have been in force for decades. And I don't think there's any possible Federal US charge he could face that would result in the death penalty, so that's not an issue here.

The U.S. Sweden extradition treaty and the EU-US Extradition treaty provide for assurances where an offense carries the possibility of the death penalty. The US would have to assure Sweden the death penalty would not be sought in such cases. Sweden would decide whether or not to extradite based on such guarantees.

4 hours ago, Hereward said:

Badly phrased on my part. But the Espionage Act carries the possibility of the death penalty, does it not? Anyway, the Swedes have previously ruled that there can be no extradition for political offenses or acts connected with political offences, and have previously refused to extradite an escaped Soviet spy from the CIA for exactly that reason.

The political offense exception in extradition cases is interesting, especially the current debate of applying it in cases of terrorism.

[Altherion]

I am disappointed in the propaganda departments of our intelligence agencies. I mean, yes, it will probably get the job of cutting him off from the internet until the election is over done and the people who despise him or support Clinton will eat up whatever drivel is said about him anyway, but whatever happened to taking some pride in one's work? Couldn't they at least make it a little more plausible? This is approaching Soviet levels of ham-handedness.

[BloodRider]

20 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I am disappointed in the propaganda departments of our intelligence agencies. I mean, yes, it will probably get the job of cutting him off from the internet until the election is over done and the people who despise him or support Clinton will eat up whatever drivel is said about him anyway, but whatever happened to taking some pride in one's work? Couldn't they at least make it a little more plausible? This is approaching Soviet levels of ham-handedness.

I am worried that you may not realize that Jerry Sandusky and Dennis Hastert both are registered Republicans.  I mention this because these things actually did happen.

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, Ariadne23 said:

Agree there completely as well. 

On that note, I can see why the UN supports Assange in principal. Shouldn't the US govt, the DNC, etc., be concerned about the persons actually leaking the information and not the entity publishing it?

There is no contention that WikiLeaks is, itself, involved in the hacks is there?

It's kind of weird to be alive at a time where Watergate looks like small potatoes.

They are concerned about that too, if you hadn't noticed somehow. Like, the US is straight up right now saying Russia is trying to influence the US election and they are gonna retaliate over it.

But the US should also be concerned that an organisation is regurgitating Russian propaganda obtained via hacking in order to try and influence the election while many keep pretending like it's not happening. The connections between a purported clearinghouse for whistleblowing and a specific countries agenda is definitely cause for concern. 

[Shryke]

This seems like a new development in this case:

 

[Impmk2]

I guess that Ecuador is as horrified as everyone else (bar Russia) at the prospect of a Trump presidency, and got annoyed at Assange for pushing it, is not particularly surprising.

[Kalbear]

17 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

I guess that Ecuador is as horrified as everyone else (bar Russia) at the prospect of a Trump presidency, and got annoyed at Assange for pushing it, is not particularly surprising.

I think this is more about the US diplomatic corps flexing some muscle and saying 'do you really want to be aiding and abetting a person who is helping Russia perform cyberattacks against the US?'

Ecuador probably just doesn't have that much of a dog in this hunt. 

[DanteGabriel]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think this is more about the US diplomatic corps flexing some muscle and saying 'do you really want to be aiding and abetting a person who is helping Russia perform cyberattacks against the US?'

Ecuador probably just doesn't have that much of a dog in this hunt. 

Is it worth the State Department's time to do that? It's not like cutting off Assange would stop Wikileaks from doing its thing..

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, DanteGabriel said:

Is it worth the State Department's time to do that? It's not like cutting off Assange would stop Wikileaks from doing its thing..

I think Obama is pretty fucking pissed about this, yes. And I think this is likely one of the first straws you'll see.