Hacker News Reader

Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

Intent matters.

There's a difference between a whistleblower wanting to expose things that violate the constitution because they want those things to stop, and a foreign agent exposing the same actions, but with the intent to destabilize people's trust in their government.

The end result might be the same. But to say it doesn't matter where a leak came from, is to also say that whistleblowers are no different from foreign spies.

Update to add my bias here: This is why I can respect the actions of Edward Snowden, but find Julian Assange completely untrustworthy.

View on HN

>But to say it doesn't matter where a leak came from, is to also say that whistleblowers are no different from foreign spies.

Well I guess we have to agree to disagree then. If a "foreign spy" reports that Dow Checmial is dumping pollution in the river, I'm gonna question Dow first, not the spy.

You're being either extremely naive or intentionally obtuse.

No one is saying the information is false or should be ignored. To use your example, if there were reason to believe that this spy was revealing this information on behalf of Dow's competitors to influence the market and shield/draw attention away from their own malfeasance, that's a concern. The source and the intent of the source does actually matter.

>No one is saying the information is false or should be ignored.

That was precisely the intention behind characterizing Assange as a Russian spy during the election.

No, it wasn't at all. The allegation was that Assange was selectively releasing info on Clinton and the DNC that was obtained by Russian hackers for the purpose of swaying the election in favor of Trump, or at least severely damaging Clinton. The issue was never that the information was false. Even the DNC itself confirmed that the emails were theirs.

More broadly, it's that Assange uses the guise of a seemingly-neutral Teller of Truths to dole out information for the purpose of manipulation, either for his own or other people's agendas.

>The allegation was that Assange was selectively releasing info on Clinton and the DNC that was obtained by Russian hackers

Exactly. This accusation was intended to be equal parts distraction from the contents and ad hominem.

They also mooted the idea that he was a pedophile for a while, but it didn't really take.

>either for his own or other people's agendas.

But of course. She literally expressed a desire to see him murdered because of him doling out secrets. Who would take kindly to that?

Intent doesn't matter. It's information. Judge it on evidence and truth and take it or leave it. No amount of twisted logic will make intent relevant.

Intent is how we judge the veracity of the information and whether it's slanted or not. I could tell you that Argentina sank a Chinese fishing vessel. Or I could tell you that Argentina sank a Chinese fishing vessel that was fishing in Argentine territorial waters. Both are true statements. One of them is incomplete and can lead you to judging the event differently. And unfortunately you, like most of us, aren't in a position to have personally witnessed the event. Thus you cannot objectively validate the veracity of what I have stated. So we have to rely on various heuristics, things like reputation of the speaker and what we understand about that speaker's biases and intention as well as historical context of the information presented.

Your example is perfect. You can judge the truth value of whether the boat actually went below the water line regardless of who said it. If you make further judgements on other aspects based on the source that's your own mistake and nothing to do with whether the boat actually sank or not.

Wait, so if a foreign agent discovers corruption he should keep quiet because he has a conflict of interest and that's not fair?

I don't find most sources of information trustworthy. I just want to get info from opposing sources with conflicting goals, which helps put together the whole picture.

I full support Russia Today (RT) despite being obviously backed by the Russian government because they are willing to talk about things that no US media outlet will touch. It's despicable that Google publicly and vocally denounces them and de-rates their results in search and news.

You fully support a propaganda agency?

Sure, I support BBC which has a very strong propaganda to news ratio. I also support RT and Al Jazeera. I do not support CNN, because it's ratio is so high it's offensive to me.

An unfortunate element of propaganda is that it is designed to not be detected by the majority of those receiving it, as evidenced by the down votes you are receiving. I don't understand how the HN crowd which is clearly full of very intelligent people don't see that sources like BBC and CNN are clearly propaganda outlets.

At some point an individual has to decide whether to try to fight the beliefs and behaviors of others, or to exploit that they hold/engage in such for some ends.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com