Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacknews | Hacker News Reader

Well this is cool.

But notice on the https://panamapapers.icij.org/ page there is a "leak to us" button, so we can share information with the journalist consortium, but no "show me the leaked data" button so they can share with us.

Where do we get the actual leaked data, so we can investigate companies ourselves, instead of relying on mass-media "analysis"?

And what about the other law firms (this is only the fourth largest, apparently)? Is it just a coincidence that Putin is implicated in this, the only leak?

View on HN

They want to derive the maximum amount of exposure, page views and revenues from the leaked data in the form of web articles with ads, printed news papers with ads etc. Releasing the the actual data would be counterproductive to their own financial gains.

Somewhat ironic, I think.

(Yes, some of the 100+ news organizations are ad free, such as the mandatory tv license-paid state broadcaster/propaganda organ SVT from my country, Sweden, but they also have their own motives of wanting to control the data.)

The leak contains large amounts of personal information on people who aren't necessarily guilty of anything illegal, correct? If that's the case, releasing the full leak comes with some very real ethical concerns.

> The leak contains large amounts of personal information on people who aren't necessarily guilty of anything illegal, correct?

How do we know? That's just an assumption. It could also be that the leak contains information on some very powerful people who better not be crossed?

> "In this trove there are administrative documents that could actually be brought to public knowledge, such as records of incorporation, shareholder registers or directors or creation of bank accounts. But there is especially a lot of personal information, such as private postal and email addresses, scans of passports for internal and external correspondences Mossack Fonseca, with many private items (such as vacation rentals, electricity bills or, more sadly, the discovery of cancer)".

https://www.reddit.com/live/wp1fvdxxwb45/updates/02ec05f2-fa...

That’s not contradictory. It may well be that the leak contains that and personal information that would be literally unreasonable to publish.

That’s what ethics is all about: weighing different things against each other.

The journalists widely shared the data with other journalists and outlets to make it easier to work through the data but probably also to combat the problem of being blind in certain ways …

This is a real concern. But another one is if the media outlets are being biased on their choice of which data they choose to disclose. They haven't done a good job in showing they are being correct up to this moment, but let's give them some more time and see.

>Yes, some of the 100+ news organizations are ad free, such as the mandatory tv license-paid state broadcaster/propaganda organ SVT from my country, Sweden

Actually, at least here in Finland, the mandatory tax-paid state broadcaster is far from "ad free". They run lots and lots of ads for themselves. They also run ads for third parties (organisations, causes) that are politically suitable.

So YLE is infected by leftist activists masquerading as journalists in the same way as with SVT? That is depressing.

Yep, although it's not as bad as it was at some time. But the number (and sound volume) of these advertisements is rather irritating.

It will be released in future. They keep it that way probably to slowly leak data to increase the impact it will cause.

Where did you find that this will be released in the future? There are public persons in this batch of data and it makes sense to know this information but there must also be a lot of private information and I don't think it would be right to have them released in the while. My guess is that this is the main reason why it's not publicly released.

Edit: Le Monde has an article on the subject (French) http://www.lemonde.fr/panama-papers/article/2016/04/04/pourq..., translated: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...

Some data should be released. Not sure if all, but all data related to information published will be released, so maybe they will spare average "Joes" from it. You can find on Reddit people involved in this commenting regarding releasing data, I have seen few comments last night after release.

Some data should and will be released, but do we know how the released data was chosen?

And who decides? IMHO it's no longer legitimate to leak to "the press" if they are unwilling to properly disseminate the whole truth.

In theory the person who leaked to the press could be prosecuted for leaking information. But press has the right to protect their sources, which prevents that from happening, so you get a balance between information and privacy. That wouldn't be the case if it was leaked to the general public. You'd also leak passports, SSN etc. to the general public.

The organization responsible for investigating it. They are quite reputable for staying independent.

From Le Monde in French:

"Une partie (exploitable) de la fuite consiste en une base de données structurées des quelque 215 000 structures offshore de la firme panaméenne Mossack Fonseca avec, pour chacune, les dates de création, de dissolution, l’identité des actionnaires déclarés et leur lieu de domiciliation. Cette partie sera publiée en mai par le consortium international des journalistes d’investigation (ICIJ), qui a coordonné l’investigation."

I'm too lazy to translate it for you but basically it says that part of the leak will be released in May. They also wrote an article explaining why they don't release everything: http://www.lemonde.fr/panama-papers/article/2016/04/04/pourq...

The data isn't available because it's only for specific media outlets to report on. They would hate to incriminate anyone who isn't Putin by accident.

Scroll to the bottom: https://www.occrp.org/en/panamapapers/

Look at "Who supports our work"

It has Soros' fingerprints all over it. He's at it again: attacking nationalism (Russia, far-right parties) and promoting globalism.

The whole operation isn't exposing anything we don't know: rich people are rich and use whatever means at their disposal to keep rich. In fact, this is a media operation more than anything to villainize Putin and anyone associated with him. The truth is, pretty much every nation and its leaders are guilty of this.

Hardly. The data was originally leaked to Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). They then asked ICIJ for help because they can't deal with 11.5 million documents by themselves. Details at http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3...

Well, we all know that Russia and far-right parties are above reproach and discussion. You come across as a shill for rich people who don't like having their private tax avoidance information shared. The news articles had plenty of liberal leaders with embarrassing information leaked, such as the PM of Iceland - so your claim that this is aimed against those you are trying to protect is obviously wrong.

True, but like Snowden and the NSA, there's still a difference between cynically assuming "of course the NSA spies on everyone", and being confronted with the reality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com