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Comment by dimino | Hacker News Reader

How important is Assange, himself, to WikiLeaks? If he's critical to its operating capabilities, why?

I believe his functional importance is in keeping dead man switches from triggering, the site is his insurance policy. He also gives an interesting public face to the website, given he is permanently embroiled in scandal. Arguably Assange's keeping wikileaks in the public eye is more important than his technical or mechanical function

> I believe his functional importance is in keeping dead man switches from triggering, the site is his insurance policy.

This serves Assange more then it serves WikiLeaks.

Well, he's kind of egotistical, something even his supporters know well. He tends to be a bottleneck for the organization's operations.

AFAIK he's the figurehead that takes all the heat so that others can get work done in the background.

What's your view on the c

What criticism? There hasn't been a single case where information leaked by his organisation has been proven false. So he leaks the truth, I've got no issue with that.

You like being ruled by corrupt criminals?

Right, he leaked a bunch of random Turkish peoples email's just because they used the word "smile". That's the truth, and none of us should have any problem with it. Just like I'm sure you're fine with posting all of your emails on some site so we can all read them to see what you've been up to.

Whoa, WikiLeaks doesn't have control over the quality/veracity of the information leaked to it. If an email is added by the people who submit the leak, there's simply no way to verify that.

They're not journalists, they've never claimed to be.

That's a strange reasoning. Just because they haven't leaked any false information there can't be any criticism? Sounds like a false dichotomy to me.

Okay, so it is wrong to speak the truth?

All the critics seem to have is claiming a Russia connection without proof. But even if that was indeed true, Russia speaking the truth is bad for humanity?

Thanks, I'll stick to the narrative of the guy that provably tells the truth and actually has to risk his life for it like once people resisting the Soviet and Nazi regime had to.

There's definitely evidence that heavily implicates Russia.

But for someone like you, I don't think any evidence will update or change your opinion. For some reason you've equated WikiLeaks and Russia, and don't have a solid grasp on how WikiLeaks actually works (anonymous source dumps data to WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks releases that data without any contact from the source whatsoever).

> There's definitely evidence that heavily implicates Russia.

No one has shown any evidence. The US government just claims that Russia did this just as it claimed that Iraq had WMD's. Please show us the evidence that you have found.

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