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Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

Assange is simply not an honest broker which is his one job. Even if you think the Chelsea Manning leak was valuable, what exactly was Assange's value add?

The leaker was not protected. She was caught and prosecuted. The data was not protected. WikiLeaks was hacked and leaked all the raw data. The content was not shared in an objective way. Assange editorialized the content with his own opinions (ie Collateral Murder). His only contribution was to raise money to pay for hosting.

There's a reason why Ed Snowden didn't give his leaks to Assange.

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If this sort of assessment is the case against Assange (in terms of his character as a journalist), then I think he has a very strong case.

> The leaker was not protected. She was caught and prosecuted.

You're talking as if Assange or WikiLeaks disclosed the source.

Are you suggesting that a journalist has a responsibility to protect a source unto the ends of the earth, even when that source openly and flatly confides in an (in retrospect, untrustworthy) friend that she has leaked what she knows to be classified material?

How exactly was Wikileaks supposed to respond? By somehow tracking down Adrian Lamo and ensuring that he didn't report her? I'm just astonished at this part of your indictment.

> The data was not protected. WikiLeaks was hacked and leaked all the raw data.

"Hacked?"

WikiLeaks published the entire cache of documents - and I celebrate them for it. I have personally read over 600 pages (probably a thousand at this point) and I have yet to encounter one of them that I, as a United States citizen, believe was rightly withheld from my view by my government.

WikiLeaks took care to redact some proper nouns from these documents, but provided unredacted versions to some journalists, along with painstaking, easy-to-follow instructions about preserving them. Nevertheless, a (much more ostensible respectable) journalist at The Guardian posted the passphrase and the files were leaked.

In what universe is this a failing of WikiLeaks OpsSec? "Hacked"? What can you possibly be talking about?

The only security compromise about which I'm aware on the part of WikiLeaks was a problem with their web frontend which briefly allowed a group to change it to a juvenile message. No documents were involved.

> The content was not shared in an objective way. Assange editorialized the content with his own opinions (ie Collateral Murder).

...so? What's wrong with that?

Let's keep things in perspective here: a person flying in a helicopter intentionally fired an explosive missile at a person standing on the ground. I know we're all pretty numb to this happening at this point, but I think it's still pretty shocking when you think about it.

Maybe he did think that he was firing on someone carrying an RPG. So? It's still a crazy act, carried out during an illegal war. Calling it "Collateral Murder" doesn't turn me off in the slightest.

> There's a reason why Ed Snowden didn't give his leaks to Assange.

I appreciate the way that Ed Snowden conducted himself. He took a different approach and one that is welcome.

I also think that Ed Snowden's criticisms of WikiLeaks are substantially more honest than yours. Can you explain why you've characterized these things in such a strange way?

>Nevertheless, a (much more ostensible respectable) journalist at The Guardian posted the passphrase and the files were leaked.

the guardian editor actually published the password in a book he wrote about the affair. seriously.

>Let's keep things in perspective here: a person flying in a helicopter intentionally fired an explosive missile at a person standing on the ground. I know we're all pretty numb to this happening at this point, but I think it's still pretty shocking when you think about it.

Maybe he did think that he was firing on someone carrying an RPG. So? It's still a crazy act, carried out during an illegal war. Calling it "Collateral Murder" doesn't turn me off in the slightest.

Fine, a camera can look like an RPG from a distance. But maybe they should be looking a bit closer if everything is looking like an RPG.

For me, the most shocking part was when they opened fire on the van with an(other) unarmed civilian that made the mistake of stopping to help the injured people.

Then even more shocking when they later discovered the two children who were in the now-destroyed van. Just a man and his children driving in a van. Now murdered for the crime of trying to help a fellow human being.

Just a shocking lack of regard for human life. If that's how they operate - and it seems to be - they are nothing but war criminals.

What kind of monster would want to protect that kind of behavior from public scrutiny?

Lamo gained Manning's trust by pointing to his donation to WikiLeaks that he himself leaked to WikiLeaks when WikiLeaks did an open CC on all previous donors in an email blast.

And the unredacted cables become public record because the encrypted cables intended for journalists only, ended up on bittorrent. The Guardian should not have published the key, but they did so believing that they had the only copy of the encrypted data and WikiLeaks had destroyed their copy rather than leaving it available on a public URL for an extended period.

The video of the rocket attack would have easily stood on it's own without Assange inserting his agenda.

None of that is necessarily inexcusable crimes, but they are critical mistakes related to the one thing WikiLeaks is supposed to be good for. Give Manning 99% of the credit for exposing the story.

Wasn't Manning caught by bragging about leaking? It wasn't Wikileaks' fault that Manning chose to discard any potential anonymity by being recklessly boastful.

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