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Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

I'm still processing this information, and holding out to form a full opinion until more details become available/confirmed.

In the meantime, I'm curious, for people who are angry about this: suppose it is actually true that Assange is working together with Russian hackers in an attempt to influence a US election. Do you believe there is any point at which governments should intervene to protect national sovereignty and integrity of the political process?

If WikiLeaks was releasing dirt on both candidates I would feel much differently.

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There is no evidence Russia is involved. Given what was apparently Podesta's password coupled with a lack of two factor authentication, these leaks wouldn't have exactly required a team of elite hackers. But even if it was Russia. No, you cannot justify a hot war as a result of cyber crime. That is absolutely insane and Clinton is flat out dangerously wrong on that point.

The releases expose corruption, it isn't necessarily partisan. Wikileaks used to release documents about George W Bush, and Putin as well.

>There is no evidence Russia is involved.

That's not what the FBI investigation is saying:

> Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Friday that they are confident that senior-level Russian officials were involved in the hacks.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/john-podesta-wikileaks...

Because we haven't seen any collusion between the DNC and the FBI this year...

We haven't, unless you've got some proof I don't know about. That's actually a pretty absurd claim.

Are you implying that the DNC intentionally leaked the emails to wikileaks and are colluding with the FBI to blame Russia?

>Are you implying that the DNC intentionally leaked the emails to wikileaks and are colluding with the FBI to blame Russia?

Nope. He's just implying that FBI and DNC are working together.

What is more likely though is: DNC was hacked, Wikileaks is doing what it has done for 10 years i.e. releasing information so that it makes maximum impact and Clintons are trying to damage-control by implying that Russia is involved... all while telling their Russian friends to pretend as if they support Trump (who has never worked with anything Russian ever... unlike the Clintons).

Except the FBI cyber crime division, independent of the Clintons or the DNC, is the one accusing the Russians of making the hack. The FBI, whose sole purpose is to protect the U.S. against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats.

> Trump (who has never worked with anything Russian ever... unlike the Clintons)

I can't tell if this is satire. Trump's campaign manager was responsible for installing 2 Pro-Putin dictators [1]. Also considering that Assange works for RT [2] (Russia's international Propos machine [3] which is all pro-Trump ATM), I think it's more likely that the FBI isn't fabricating facts here when they say the hack was related to Russia.

[1] http://www.politifact.com/global-news/article/2016/may/02/pa...

[2] https://www.rt.com/tags/the-julian-assange-show/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Propaganda_and...

Kellyanne Conway hasn't installed russian dictators, that's really out there.

Which is why it was Paul Manafort. Read the link if you really don't know.

Acting against wikileaks would not be protecting the democratic process.

The democratic process is about open and free exchange of ideas and transparency.

Keeping information secret by attacking journalists does NOT support democracy.

Why would anyone bother releasing dirt on Trump? The man is a walking dumpster of filth. Every other word out of his mouth offends one demographic or another. Doesn't seem to have much effect on his supporters. And anyone who isn't pro-Trump already has plenty of reasons to be against him.

agreed. politics isn't a clean sport and it's lopsided to just see one team's dirt laundry.

>If WikiLeaks was releasing dirt on both candidates I would feel much differently.

Ever wondered if there is no dirt, there is nothing to release? Unlike the mainstream media which takes command from the Clintons, Wikileaks doesn't fabricate their releases... so it is not possible to release dirt on Trump.

Well, clearly there is a lot of dirt on Trump because it has been released. Just not by wikileaks.

>Unlike the mainstream media which takes command from the Clintons

Seriously?

>clearly there is a lot of dirt on Trump

Yep, like calling fat people fat and saying "pussy" in a private conversation.

>Seriously?

Don't take my word for it. Read the emails by media broker of the DNC: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/7216

This is what he says:

>This is who I will meet with in NYC. At each meeting, I’ll discuss hits we’ve executed (if relevant) and future hits. Anything I should add?

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