[HN Gopher] Reality Winner, NSA contractor in leak case, out of ...
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Reality Winner, NSA contractor in leak case, out of prison
Author : SmkyMt
Score : 150 points
Date : 2021-06-14 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| openthc wrote:
| Important part, not in the headline:
|
| > moved to home confinement and remains in the custody of the
| federal Bureau of Prisons
| alksjdalkj wrote:
| There's a play "Is This A Room" based on the transcript of her
| arrest - I haven't seen it but This American Life has an excerpt:
| https://www.thisamericanlife.org/696/low-hum-of-menace/act-t....
| For some reason I found it really unsettling.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Audio media:
| https://stream.thisamericanlife.org/696/9LoIvHi0DhLVUFeleKD_...
|
| Segment begins at 37:33
|
| Related: "Don't talk to the police"
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/mvkgnp/law-professor-police-...
| Dylovell wrote:
| Thanks for posting the related video. I learned a lot
| staunch wrote:
| It doesn't seem like this was a proper whistle blower case. She
| did not use good judgement here, in my opinion.
|
| But her punishment was overly harsh. Especially if you consider
| how much the federal government leaks, and how few people are
| prosecuted for it, and how little harm it does in most cases.
|
| She was made an example of precisely because she was a low-level
| employee with no power or connections. Which is obviously wrong
| on a very deep level. And that's the big story here.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Well said.
| rurp wrote:
| My thoughts as well. She obviously did something wrong and
| should be punished, but man, so many more powerful people have
| gotten away with way less punishment for much worse
| transgressions.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think "good judgment" is somewhat relative. She was in her
| early 20s at the time. I think it's hard to grasp the reality
| of potential legal consequences and the full weight of the
| American government at that age.
| [deleted]
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I disagree, she had previously Served in the Military and was
| working at a D.o.D (NSA JOINT) facility. She was also working
| within those walls during the Snowden leaks. It was probably
| the opposite, she was likely constantly inundated with the
| legal consequences of leaks and disclosures.
|
| I would argue many people don't fully process the
| consequences of their actions regardless of age. That's a
| separate issue we have to solve for.
|
| In this instance (right or wrong) she was found guilty, she
| admitted to the action, and she did the time. Hopefully she's
| able to find gainful employment moving forward.
| watwatinthewat wrote:
| She was in the Air Force a full term before she was a
| contractor, and the UCMJ is beat into you in the military.
| Also, being in an intelligence squadron stationed at Ft Meade
| no less, she would have had tons of annual training on
| security requirements and their consequences. It's possible
| being younger meant she thought she was more likely to get
| away with it, but she certainly had enough briefings on the
| legal consequences to know what could happen if caught.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Compare to the Valerie Plame leak by the Bush administration:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair
| leephillips wrote:
| Why do you say that the sentence was overly harsh? Chelsea
| Manning got a 35 year sentence, and would still be in prison
| had Obama not granted a pardon. Do you know of comparable cases
| where significantly lighter sentences were imposed?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| *commuted her sentence, specifically because he claimed her
| sentence was disproportionate for what he still saw as a
| crime.
| leephillips wrote:
| Thank you, commuted, not pardoned. But whether he was right
| or not in thinking that sentence was disproportionate, it
| does not inform us about whether Winner's sentence was
| appropriate. Note that revealing classified information can
| expose you to a charge of aiding the enemy, which carries a
| death sentence.
| comodore_ wrote:
| As of today, the intercept still has not provided any public
| accounting of their screw up.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Micah Lee has AFAIR commented generally. He claims he was not
| consulted on activities by the Intercept.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Micah Lee's comments on _The Intercept_ 's handling of
| Reality Winner's case can be found in "Working Securely", see
| pp. 2--3:
|
| _Sadly in both the Terry Albury and Reality Winner cases, I
| think there was little we could have done to prevent them
| from getting caught. In Reality's case there's a lot we
| should have done better, but even if we did it all perfectly,
| she almost certainly would still have gotten caught because
| of how things happened on her end that were outside of our
| control. In fact the affidavit against her doesn't mention
| printer dots or anything like that._
|
| I believe the lack of mention of specific identity tagging in
| affadavits is something of a red herring. Winner admitted in
| her interview with the FBI during the initial search to
| smuggling out the documents, as noted in the TAL re-enactment
| above. There's no need to go beyond the sufficient in
| establishing cause or belief.
|
| https://greenletters.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/working-
| sec... [PDF]
|
| NYT on _The Intercept_ 's handing of Winner's documents:
|
| _The startling carelessness about protecting Ms. Winner was
| particularly mystifying at an organization that had been
| founded on security. The Intercept had hired leaders in
| digital security, Ms. Clark and Micah Lee, for just such
| situations._ [Intercept _journalist] Mr. [Matthew] Cole did
| not involve them at all._
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/business/media/the-
| interc...
|
| And more on the _Intercept_ 's own internal investigation
| (I'm not aware that this has been published or substantially
| disclosed):
|
| https://www.mic.com/articles/179880/the-intercept-is-
| investi...
| Cullinet wrote:
| is this the intercept magazine, the one at least formerly
| edited by a apparently entirely uninformed self appointed
| security expert, who nevertheless successfully duped Snowden
| into sending files in the clear literally by wearing him down
| with obstinate indigence and ignorance of the most elementary
| encryption concepts in a simultaneously suspicious display of
| incapacity to comprehend the most clear and simple instructions
| and theory of operation provided to him repeatedly over the
| course of months?
| newacct583 wrote:
| Wow, that's a mouthful.
|
| FWIW: Greenwald, as odd as his recent flip to Q-adjacency has
| been, doesn't seem to have been involved with the Winner
| episode.
|
| It seems like Winner got burned as a source by a plain old
| journalist who fucked up badly while making a good faith
| attempt to validate a story. They got a bunch of scanned
| documents purporting to be from the NSA, so they called up
| the NSA to see if these documents were real. And in the
| process they provided the _original scans_ , which identified
| the source printer and user.
|
| But no, Glen Greenwald didn't have anything to do with this.
| varjag wrote:
| It's all speculation. Given that he was already shifting
| pro-Trump (and been pro-Putin long before that), Ockham
| razor can really point either way.
|
| Reality really chose the correspondent for her leak
| unwisely.
| comodore_ wrote:
| this is a very long and weird sentence and I don't really
| understand what you're getting at
| ______- wrote:
| > this is a very long and weird sentence
|
| Looks programmatically generated. The whole account is the
| same style of incoherent nonsense. Probably powered by
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3
|
| There's a few other accounts I've seen here on HN that just
| spout random incoherent nonsense text, presumably to
| accumulate karma so they can power their sockpuppet ring
| and upvote any story they wish to the frontpage of HN.
| mike_d wrote:
| Never attribute to GPT-3 that which can be easily
| explained by mental illness.
|
| Seriously though, that sentence contains a lot of
| relevant context and understanding that would rival
| LaMDA. :)
| stuntkite wrote:
| Mental illness, intense boredom, weird autistic sense of
| humor, or being absolutely serious at being a network
| fuzzing troll farm. It's not fair to put such a fine
| point on it really.
| wyldfire wrote:
| I think they're referring to Greenwald. I'm guessing this
| describes the interaction [1].
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
| switch/wp/2014/05/14...
| comodore_ wrote:
| thanks, I think the headline can be misleading, he
| ignored his mails that contained a guide to set
| encryption and not ignored setting up encryption out of
| carelessness and exchanged sensitive stuff.
| Cullinet wrote:
| if $rando_journo did the same, I'm pretty sure that under
| the UK Official Secrets Act failure of a inescapable duty
| of care that takes effect from the minute you believe
| that you are handling classified material, makes the
| deriliction of protective measures a serious crime. The
| UK used to be blanket overkill, however some things must
| have loosened up because Johnson wed in a Catholic Church
| and I have no doubt that any affiliations to any religion
| not Anglican / Church of England, was treason even in
| Tony Blair's day, and possibly the reason why his
| ministers seem to concur in memoirs Tony wasn't running
| the show. I upset who they said was.
|
| But looking at this as a human being, if I'm still
| capable, I am just not capable of understanding anyone
| who wants to deal in state secrets with so little care. I
| have been pounded into a unrecognisable life by nonsense
| not incomparable and the only result has been a hardening
| of my views on the punishment for genuine traitors and
| wastrels with the security of others.
| waterhouse wrote:
| Greenwald says[1]: "The most egregious, but by no means
| only, example of exploiting my name to evade
| responsibility was the Reality Winner debacle. As The New
| York Times recently reported[2], that was a story in
| which I had no involvement whatsoever. While based in
| Brazil, I was never asked to work on the documents which
| Winner sent to our New York newsroom with no request that
| any specific journalist work on them. I did not even
| learn of the existence of that document until very
| shortly prior to its publication. The person who oversaw,
| edited and controlled that story was Betsy Reed, which
| was how it should be given the magnitude and complexity
| of that reporting and her position as editor-in-chief."
|
| [1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-
| the-int...
|
| [2]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/business/media/the-
| interc...
| varjag wrote:
| Take credit for success, blame underlings for failure...
| it's Greenwald alright.
| waterhouse wrote:
| If you don't believe Greenwald, try the NYT article.
|
| _Ms. Winner may have thought she was mailing the
| documents to Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Poitras, who went to
| great lengths to protect Mr. Snowden. But Mr. Greenwald
| was in Brazil and when he heard about the document, he
| was not interested. ...
|
| Ms. Reed and her deputy, Roger Hodge, gave the story to a
| pair of established television journalists: Matthew Cole
| and Richard Esposito. ...
|
| Mr. Cole put the document in his bag and got on a train
| to New York. ... Later, he called a source in the
| intelligence community in an attempt to verify the
| document, and casually revealed its postmark. ...
|
| Mr. Cole and Mr. Esposito said they'd been pushed to rush
| the story to publication, but Mr. Cole also acknowledged
| that failing to consult with the security team was a
| "face plant." ...
|
| And so a key question was who to blame for this
| catastrophe and what consequences they should suffer. Ms.
| Dombek, who helped conduct the internal investigation,
| concluded that the editors -- Ms. Reed and Mr. Hodge --
| needed to take responsibility. Others, including Mr.
| Greenwald, were demanding that Mr. Cole and Ms. Reed be
| fired, and The Intercept provide a public reckoning. (Mr.
| Greenwald later relented, and said he understood the
| desire not to "scapegoat" for an institutional failure.)_
| d1str0 wrote:
| Greenwald left the intercept though quite a while ago so
| this is all very confusing.
| comodore_ wrote:
| he had no part in the reality winner debacle, as did
| laura poitras who eventually did get fired of it
| varjag wrote:
| No, he _stated_ he had no part in her debacle. How
| plausible is that he wasn 't involved in handling a major
| leak from NSA at his rag is left as an exercise.
| entelechy0 wrote:
| literally what
| cwkoss wrote:
| As someone who has been a big fan of Wikileaks, something about
| this story has always felt off to me - like this is some sort of
| state disinfo op rather than a 'real' leak.
|
| The revelations from Winner's leak didn't seem subversive -
| rather they seemed to bolster arguments for RussiaGate and the
| new digital cold war - both of which were growing DNC talking
| points.
|
| Does anyone else feel the same way? Or do I just have too much
| tinfoil on my head?
| meroes wrote:
| The leaks were subversive...to the camp that thinks Wikileaks
| didn't also spread state sponsored Russian disinfo (unwittingly
| or not).
| cwkoss wrote:
| Do you have a source on any instance where Wikileaks spread
| "disinfo"?
|
| Wikileaks likely did spread information which was provided by
| and served the interests of Russia, but I've never seen a
| credible argument that false information was published.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| A carefully chosen+edited truth can be worth fifty lies...
| And as a result, disinformation is commonly meant to
| include lies of omission, etc.
|
| The wikileaks approach of 'publish all the things' was just
| begging to be used by a state propaganda machine.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Using the term "disinfo" for "accurate but incomplete
| info" seems like an Orwellian misuse of the term.
|
| Are there any credible sources indicating that Wikileaks
| selectively edited or chose what to publish based on
| political goals? I think they have some sort of process
| to validate legitimacy of leaks before they publish them,
| but I've never heard claims that they intentionally
| edited or chose not to leak information for Wikileaks own
| political goals.
|
| Certainly possible that Russia leaked true-but-incomplete
| information to Wikileaks, but isn't, like, all discussion
| of reality true-but-incomplete?
|
| Edit: Sibling thread found a claim of selective editing I
| was not previously aware of.
| https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-
| syria-r...
| meroes wrote:
| I view the GRU stealing private data and using Wikileaks
| to coordinate releasing for the purpose of sowing discord
| and possibly to help Trump win the election as disinfo.
|
| > After the Soviet term became widely known in the 1980s,
| native speakers of English broadened the term as "any
| government communication (either overt or covert)
| containing intentionally false and misleading material,
| often combined selectively with true information, which
| seeks to mislead and manipulate either elites or a mass
| audience."[3]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation
|
| - March 16: Internal WikiLeaks messages indicate the
| purpose of the archive is to annoy Clinton and establish
| WikiLeaks as a "resource/player" in the
| election.[29]:44-45
|
| - June 14: The GRU uses its @dcleaks_ persona to reach
| out to WikiLeaks and offer to coordinate the release of
| sensitive information about Clinton, including financial
| documents.[353][29]:45
|
| - June 22: WikiLeaks reaches out to "Guccifer 2.0" via
| Twitter. They ask "Guccifer 2.0" to send them material
| because it will have a bigger impact if they publish it.
| They also specifically ask for material on Clinton they
| can publish before the convention.[256]
|
| I'm _not_ saying Assange is guilty of any crimes, or
| doctored evidence. But Wikileaks had an agenda beyond
| "the facts".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interfe
| ren...
| cwkoss wrote:
| Even if selection of information released is determined
| 100% by bias, I still think it's dangerous and bad for
| society to label accurate information releases as
| "disinfo"
|
| I think the
|
| >containing intentionally false and misleading material
|
| portion of the definition is crucial.
|
| By all means, call it foreign election interference or a
| foreign propaganda campaign. But in my opinion, accurate
| information can never be 'disinfo'. I think this is a
| slippery slope towards discrediting all information that
| embarrasses or threatens the state: whistleblowers,
| investigative reporting on war crimes and corruption,
| etc.
| splithalf wrote:
| Is Hillary Clinton and CNN a credible source?
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/15/politics/assange-embassy-
| excl...
| sdenton4 wrote:
| This is like saying the definition of malevolent hacking
| does not include social engineering or phishing. You can
| try to define away the problem, but you're going to have
| some wide-open holes in your defenses as a result.
|
| [on edit:] And the second point is that Wikileaks, as
| free-speech ideologues, didn't actually NEED to be
| explicitly complicit to act as a vector for psyops. If
| you know your opponent is going to throw rock every time,
| you can win by throwing paper every time. If you're a
| Fancy Bear and know that Wikileaks will publish whatever
| you give them, then you can selectively choose what to
| hand them.
| meroes wrote:
| I view the GRU stealing private data and using Wikileaks to
| coordinate releasing it as disinfo.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think classifying 'stolen' data that is accurate being
| released as "disinfo" is a horrifying and dangerous
| precedent.
|
| Where do you draw the line between what wikileaks did and
| other investigative reporting that uses information from
| whistleblowers? Were the pentagon papers disinfo?
|
| It seems like your position taken to its extreme would
| disregard all information except info willingly
| broadcasted by the state, and make us blind to stories of
| war crimes, corruption, anything else that embarrasses or
| threatens the state.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| The issue isn't the content of the data. It's the context
| of the release.
|
| You're trying to threaten a slippery slope wherein all
| information needs to be state sanctioned, but the
| definition of disinformation makes it clear that the only
| time information gains that moniker is when it's actively
| being spread to mislead for malicious purposes.
|
| Quite the contrary to your 'extreme' extrapolation, the
| term disinformation allows us to identify the use of
| malicious state-sponsored information warfare. It FIGHTS
| state sponsored narratives. It doesn't support it.
| slg wrote:
| The whole Seth Rich debacle is the most obvious example in
| which they strongly implied that he was the source of
| leaked DNC docs. We later found out that Wikileaks was
| still in contact with the source after Seth Rich was
| already dead.
|
| There are plenty of source links in the Wikipedia
| article[1].
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#Wik
| iLeaks_...
| cwkoss wrote:
| Ah, that's fair. Wikileaks' twitter account played much
| faster and looser than what they published on their
| website.
|
| I'm curious if we'll ever get an accounting of the
| internal organizational power struggles that occurred
| during the 2016 election. It felt like Assange and his
| proxies were seeking vengeance through Twitter (to be
| fair, its claimed Hillary Clinton joked "Can't we just
| drone this guy" about Assange - no lack of bad blood
| between them), but that somehow never seemed to bleed
| onto the Wikileaks website itself.
| pydry wrote:
| Strongly implied by saying "we don't comment on who our
| sources are"?
|
| It's not clear that Wikileaks even knew who their source
| was.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| While you might not know who your source was, if you're
| in contact with them after the proposed contact point's
| death you clearly are aware it is not that person. They
| played coy when they knew overtly he was not the contact
| point.
| pydry wrote:
| Is a good journalist supposed to hint revealingly with a
| nod and a wink and compromise their source?
|
| Isn't the whole point that they supposed to play coy?
| slg wrote:
| There is a difference between "playing coy" and defaming
| a dead person by implying they committed a crime. Denying
| Seth Rich as the source wouldn't have revealed the actual
| source.
|
| Plus it was more than "playing coy". For example, they
| promised a reward for people who came forward with info
| on Rich's death. Why do that if they had no relation to
| him?
| pydry wrote:
| Again, I really did miss the part where saying "we don't
| reveal who our sources are" is the same thing as calling
| a dead man a criminal.
|
| >For example, they promised a reward for people who came
| forward with info on Rich's death. Why do that if they
| had no relation to him?
|
| To try and uncover suspected corruption and leak it if
| there was more to his murder than met the eye. It was
| reasonable to suspect _something_ was up.
|
| Honestly the fact that this didn't occur to you is a
| little strange.
| slg wrote:
| >Again, I really did miss the part where saying "we don't
| reveal who our sources are" is the same thing as calling
| a dead man a criminal.
|
| Who said they are the same thing? I repeatedly used
| "implied". You are framing it as if they were asked a
| direct question about Seth Rich and their only response
| was "no comment." They said stuff like this[1]:
|
| >"Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us
| material and often very significant risks. There is a
| 27-year-old, works for the DNC, who was shot in the back.
| Murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he
| was walking down the street in Washington," said Julian
| Assange appearing on a Dutch television program called
| Nieuwsuur.
|
| >Assange added, "We have to understand how high the
| stakes are in the United States and that our sources are,
| you know, our sources face serious risks that is why they
| come to us so we can protect their anonymity."
|
| He is directly implying that Rich was killed for
| political reasons, that he was a whisleblower, and then
| in the next sentence he says "our sources". Do you not
| see the implication in talking like that?
|
| >To try and uncover suspected corruption and leak it if
| there was more to his murder than met the eye. It was
| reasonable to suspect something was up.
|
| The problem, like elsewhere with Wikileaks, is the
| selective search to uncover corruption. I would have no
| complaint if Wikileaks made it standard to always offer a
| reward for information on the death of any political
| staffer. The problem is that they only offered the reward
| for this specific staffer already knowing that there was
| a conspiracy theory that he was their source. That gives
| them plausible deniability that they are "just seeking
| truth" while also reinforcing the perceived connection
| between Seth Rich and Wikileaks.
|
| [1] - https://www.cbs19news.com/story/41466407/wikileaks-
| offers-20...
| pydry wrote:
| >Wikileaks likely did spread information which was provided
| by and served the interests of Russia
|
| There was a strange schizophrenia about those email leaks
| from DNC media outlets.
|
| They routinely said that it held nothing of any interest
| (e.g. the story about the recipes -
| https://www.vox.com/2016/10/12/13253852/wikileaks-john-
| podes... ) but that it was also done to serve the interests
| of Russia and derailed the election -
| https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17569030/mueller-
| indictments-r...
|
| The idea that truthfully informing voters about the views
| and actions of a candidate was reprehensible if it affected
| the outcome of the election was never actually justified,
| it was simply assumed.
| slg wrote:
| >They routinely said that it held nothing of any interest
| (e.g. the story about the recipes -
| https://www.vox.com/2016/10/12/13253852/wikileaks-john-
| podes... ) but that it was also done to serve the
| interests of Russia and derailed the election -
| https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17569030/mueller-
| indictments-r...
|
| Those two are not contradictory because the first one is
| based off the substance of the documents and the second
| one is based off the perception of the documents. Nothing
| too substantial was revealed but the existence of the
| emails was enough to feed into the existing narrative
| that Clinton couldn't be trusted and it therefore harmed
| her chances of winning.
|
| >The idea that truthfully informing voters about the
| views and actions of a candidate was reprehensible if it
| affected the outcome of the election was never actually
| justified, it was simply assumed.
|
| Because partial truthfulness isn't that different than
| lying. Imagine two scenarios:
|
| 1. Clinton gets the debate questions ahead of time.
|
| 2. Both candidates get the debate questions ahead of
| time. (Just a hypothetical and not a real accusation)
|
| Story 1 would lead you to believe the Clinton is corrupt
| and will abuse the system for her advantage. Those two
| traits were already two of the biggest criticisms of her.
|
| Story 2 would lead you to believe that it is the debate
| system that is corrupt and no specific candidate was at
| fault.
|
| Story 2 being true automatically means story 1 is also
| true. However if you knew that story 2 was true and
| reported it as story 1, are you still "truthfully
| informing voters about the views and actions of a
| candidate"? You are reporting facts but in such a way as
| to bias the story. I think that is certainly
| reprehensible from a journalistic standpoint.
|
| Many journalists believed that almost everything in the
| substance of these docs would be true for other
| candidates, they just didn't have the documents from
| other candidates as proof.
| pydry wrote:
| >Nothing too substantial was revealed
|
| There was the email, if I remember, about expressing a
| heartfelt desire to see a FTA stretching across the whole
| continent.
|
| This was right after Hillary decided to rally against the
| TPP. This undermined that move and made it ring hollow.
|
| >the existence of the emails was enough to feed into the
| existing narrative that Clinton couldn't be trusted
|
| As opposed to diffing her public moves with what she said
| in the emails? You seriously think that the mere
| _existence_ of leaked emails was enough to sway voters
| regardless of what was actually said in them?
|
| Bizarre.
| slg wrote:
| I don't think it is unusual for a politician to be in
| support of a general policy while objecting to a specific
| implementation and/or expansion of that policy.
|
| And yes, the existence of the emails played a role in how
| people voted or whether they voted regardless of the
| content. I mean there was the whole pizzagate thing that
| was obviously independent of the actual substance of the
| emails.
| pydry wrote:
| You're saying that you think swing voters were probably
| more influenced by harebrained conspiracy theories pushed
| by meth addled Trump supporters than... the truth?
|
| That's some hubris.
| slg wrote:
| I don't know what "truth" you are remarking on here and
| pizzagate was just the most obvious and extreme example.
|
| Clearly there were people who were turned off by the
| leaks without actually reading the entire collection or
| even any of documents. These people were more reacting to
| the perception of the leaks in the zeitgeist than the
| actual substance of the documents they didn't read. I
| don't know what to say to you if we can't agree on that.
| nemo wrote:
| While the content in the Podesta emails was not of any
| interest in itself, the existence of the dump suggested
| there was something being revealed and Wikileaks hype and
| misleading editorializing around the leaks is how
| Pizzagate became a thing.
|
| It's not schizophrenic - the reality is that false
| editorializing about a leak can deeply mislead people
| even if the real content of the leak is completely
| innocuous (e.g. someone ordering a pizza).
| pydry wrote:
| You seriously think pizzagate is what swung the election?
| That it was a conspiracy theory that you think resonated
| with multidinous swing voters as opposed to a core of
| rabid Trump supporters?
|
| And that they couldn't have come up with something
| equally harebrained _without_ the emails?
| nemo wrote:
| I don't think Pizzagate swung the election, but it shows
| how Wikileaks approach to disinformation works, and
| illustrates that despite the fact of there being nothing
| of any real note in the leaked emails, the mere fact of
| Wikileaks posting them and posting dishonest
| editorializing about them did have a real impact on
| public opinion with Pizzagatge being evidence of that.
| kadoban wrote:
| Those aren't contradictory, and both are supported by the
| evidence.
|
| Which do you actually disagree with, or do you simply not
| see how both can be true?
|
| Affecting the outcome of an election is not inherently
| wrong. Foreign countries affecting the outcome of our
| elections is dangerous, and has historically been very
| frowned upon. There's reasons that only Americans are
| allowed to donate to election campaigns. Our elections
| are supposed to be for _us_. If whatever countries want a
| particular outcome start having an outsized voice, our
| elections will be even less connected to what's best for
| Americans than they already were.
| pydry wrote:
| I disagreed that there was nothing in the emails and
| explained below.
|
| I also disagree with the notion that a foreign power
| revealing truths about a candidate is wrong. If you
| reject a foreign truth over a domestic lie you reject the
| very heart of democracy itself.
|
| It's all the more ironic given the amount of meddling the
| US has done in foreign elections, including Russia's.
| kadoban wrote:
| You didn't really say what was in them that you found
| valuable, unless I missed it? What important truths did
| they reveal?
|
| Okay, but then you're welcoming well-funded nations to
| spend outsized money and effort on attacking whatever
| candidate they will get the least from. How does that not
| devolve into our elections just being playthings of our
| enemies?
|
| What is ironic about this? I also do not think that the
| US should meddle in foreign elections, but that doesn't
| really have anything to do with this.
| cwkoss wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27508549
| nemo wrote:
| Wikileaks disinfo has almost always been in deeply
| misleading and sometimes explicitly false editorializing
| and framing of leaks rather than the content.
|
| They also post a lot of misinformation to their Twitter
| account - falsely claiming Bob Beckel was a Clinton
| staffer, boosting the false Seth Rich story, boosting bogus
| Clinton health claims, and much more besides.
|
| They also posted selectively edited leaks to hide
| information that made Russia look bad:
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/09/09/wikileaks-
| hi...
|
| Their selective choice of leaks which they did and did not
| choose to accept also suggests a lot of bias:
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-
| down-l...
|
| Their internal leaked chats from 2016 showed they were
| consciously and deliberately skewing their coverage to help
| the GOP and harm Dems:
| https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-
| wikileaks...
|
| They're very biased, and their biases come out in what they
| choose to publish, what they refuse to publish, and how
| they choose to editorialize, and in one known case in
| selective editing of a leak, but in general the leaks
| themselves aren't "false information" but are documents
| which they're spreading to create a specific narrative, and
| in several cases like the Syria, Podesta, DCCC, and DNC
| leaks it's clear they're serving as a front for Russian
| intelligence agencies to spread a specific narrative to aid
| Russian goals rather than further the truth. Since they
| serve as a front for foreign intelligence agencies, it's
| totally possible they're getting drops from other
| intelligence agencies with similar agendas.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Interesting, that's the first I've read of the selective
| editing claim. It seems like there is some room for
| ambiguity (What if RevoluSec intentionally withheld these
| emails to discredit wikileaks? Is RevoluSec CIA/NSA?) but
| certainly shifts my bayesian priors a bit. Thanks for
| sharing.
|
| Short of evidence that they published falsehoolds, I'd
| still argue that "disinfo" is a misnomer. But your above
| points certainly demonstrate biased reporting, as is
| found in any other journalistic organization.
| pydry wrote:
| What's off? RussiaGate was a Democrat talking point which Trump
| hated. She was put away while Trump was president and released
| now that Biden is in power.
| elp wrote:
| I've always thought that the real NSA ruthlessly prosecutes
| anyone who leaks to the press and the "anonymous intelligence
| sources" quoted in the press are always fake.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I've always thought that the real NSA ruthlessly prosecutes
|
| The NSA might do many things, but it absolutely does not
| prosecute anyone (though it same-head military command might
| prosecute service members within its command.)
| zardo wrote:
| Well not necessarily fake. They're officials in the press
| office doing the "leaking".
| dylan604 wrote:
| I was going to comment similar as well. Anonymous leaks are
| typically "offical" sources releasing info as a trial
| balloon to test which way the political winds are blowing.
| This provides plausible deniablility if the winds blow in
| unfriendly directions.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Wikileaks is a broken org, started by a narcissist and was only
| "made" by a criminal act committed by another narcissist. If
| anyone really cared about building a service that held nation
| states accountable, they would have built it to be
| decentralized and secure against discovery of the operators.
| Instead we got Manning on marketing and Assange and his cat
| running operations.
| sennight wrote:
| I've got some additional tinfoil for you: both Bush and Obama
| worked to rollback safeguards, in place since the 70s, that
| protected citizens from US military counter-intel operations. I
| personally saw more than one operation ruined when domestic
| news picked up and began repeating one of our controlled
| opposition assets, and we had to immediately pull the plug - it
| was a frustrating but necessary constraint. Well, that isn't
| the way it is done anymore. Oh, and on a totally unrelated
| note: aliens! Look over here, so many aliens and UFOs! Wow -
| all these authorized interviews with personnel complemented by
| fancy video evidence!
| pasabagi wrote:
| What is a 'controlled opposition asset'?
| sennight wrote:
| A useful idiot. Somebody or something that is, unbeknownst
| to them or their allies, so strongly under adversarial
| influence that they can be controlled. Imagine the
| potential chaos made possible by a double agent - without
| the natural suspicion that accompanies a self admitted
| traitor.
| [deleted]
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| It's almost like Russiagate and a new digital Cold War
| happened...nah, that's too simple an explanation.
| adenozine wrote:
| Is "pleaded guilty" correct, grammatically?
|
| Would it not instead be written as "pled guilty" in that article?
| chitowneats wrote:
| A cursory googling suggests that both are grammatically
| correct. I had the same intuition.
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Both "pleaded" and "pled" are correctish, but "pleaded" more
| so:
|
| https://www.grammarly.com/blog/pleaded-pled/
| ithkuil wrote:
| Is correctish correct or just correctish?
| aerophilic wrote:
| I realize this is off topic, but I just have to say... that is a
| pretty awesome name.
|
| One joke we had in grad school is great roboticists had
| interesting names... one of my favorite examples was Howie Choset
| (How he choose it). One of the many interesting/colorful folk I
| have met on my journey.
|
| I sometimes wonder that by having an "unusual name", by making
| you "stand out", further promotes you to deliberately stand out.
| thamer wrote:
| You mean like the Austin urologist named Dick Chopp, who
| specializes in vasectomies? He even offers a t-shirt to his
| patients that reads "I was 'chopped' at the Urology Team."
|
| (all of this is true)
| elp wrote:
| There is a urologist at my local hospital by the name of Dr
| Hardon
| chiph wrote:
| He retired last November. I had a coworker who used his
| services (but never wore the t-shirt to work)
| skunkworker wrote:
| I've also had a doctor and surgeon with the last name
| Slaughter, but that's a much more common surname.
| gnat wrote:
| My urologist in Colorado was Dr Peter Standard.
| https://www.md.com/doctor/peter-standard-md
| astrange wrote:
| I still think Ransom Love is the strangest name in tech, but
| this one's a close second.
| bingidingi wrote:
| Doug Bowser is the president of Nintendo of America. Surname
| usually isn't exercised as a choice... but he probably got
| slightly more attention for it at Nintendo. Maybe that was
| enough!
|
| I think there's something to the name theory, though it's
| probably ~1% of the equation. Someone with a colorful name
| probably has colorful parents, which would be the other ~99%.
|
| Somewhat related, check out Nominative Determinism:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I was convinced for the longest time that her name was just an
| alias investigators used, but I agree, great name.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| I legally changed my name to Peacefully Revoking Consent To Be
| Governed/ For You/ And For/ All (/'s indicate name breaks). It
| definitely encourages me to deliberately stand out.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| I randomly encountered one of the works of Kelly Kosmo O'Neil,
| an astrophysicist: https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-
| contributions/Kelly-... :)
| anonydsfsfs wrote:
| Sounds like an instance of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The Philadelphia police commissioner's name is Danielle
| Outlaw.
| antognini wrote:
| When I was in astronomy one of the authors on a seminal paper
| in my subfield was named Aristotle Socrates.
|
| I think he left astronomy, but he had a number of well cited
| papers: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/fq=%7B!type%3Daq
| p%20v%3...
| Simulacra wrote:
| Where is the line, and more importantly who decides, between laws
| to protect secret documents, and the right of the public to know
| of wrongdoing?
| [deleted]
| patorjk wrote:
| > Her lawyer, Alison Grinter Allen, said in a statement that
| Winner and her family are working to "heal the trauma of
| incarceration and build back the years lost."
|
| She looks tough in the photo from the article, but I remember
| back when she was arrested she looked so young and innocent [1].
| I wonder how prison has changed/traumatized her. Her sentence
| always seemed a little excessive to me.
|
| [1] https://www.chron.com/national/slideshow/10-things-to-
| know-a...
| Cullinet wrote:
| Excessive sentencing, as I think happened here, I believe goes
| hand in hand with political verdicts because the judges are
| required to ignore any mitigating factors out of hand entirely
| in justification of their decision.
|
| I've just seen the same steeling of physical appearance happen
| to friends, sadly. My attorney for one. I got accidentally
| caught up in something that has led to situations such as the
| rewriting of articles on globally highly trusted news sites.
| Without trying to mitigate anything, any man or woman who is
| confronted with the true disparity of actual power, push comes
| to shove, reacts like this. A more cynical view that I could
| imagine my father coming up with would be this is merely proof
| of how easy life is today. My father was born into no question
| about it poverty in 1907? The experience of the great
| depression turned him into a notable community banker on his
| uncanny ability to correctly determine the credit worthiness of
| mortgage borrowers with virtually zero statistical data. Left
| school at 14, night school, ended up getting roasted on TV for
| his political views of keeping profit motive out of housing
| finance. This is my prime example of comparative social
| mobility, rather than just a family anecdote. Victor
| Neiderhoffer in his book The Education of A Speculator,
| published in time to describe the precise way he went bust
| during the Thailand currency collapse, is excellent description
| of what early century Brighton Beach and environs poverty and
| opportunities looked and felt like. Neiderhoffer sold
| everything he owned to scrape back to make his investors whole,
| took him twenty years while appearing to do a crackpot number
| as a very difficult to understand journalist complete with cult
| following, but I never believed that, some people are forever
| shaped by experiences of poverty, even if indirectly, and abhor
| to the point of physical intolerance, any idea of going down as
| a historical destroyer of capital. Just as the modern economy
| has created a incredible new complexity in between anyone less
| than fortunate, and a liveable (ie not life curtailing) middle
| class (the American definition of economic lifestyle, European
| class ideas are too "nuanced" to put it politely), there has
| created a incredible burden of legal complexity bearing down
| indiscriminately on simple citizens and more than ever those
| among us naively convinced of the acceptance and value of civic
| virtues.
| piyh wrote:
| I wonder how much of that toughness is context of instagram
| shots vs a candid of someone in an orange jumpsuit. She
| probably also had a lot more time to work out.
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