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Snowden Questions WikiLeaks' Methods of Releasing Leaks (pcworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld: Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, has censured WikiLeaks' release of information without proper curation. On Thursday, Snowden, who has embarrassed the U.S. government with revelations of widespread NSA surveillance, said that WikiLeaks was mistaken in not at least modestly curating the information it releases. "Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake," Snowden said in a tweet. WikiLeaks shot back at Snowden that "opportunism won't earn you a pardon from Clinton [and] curation is not censorship of ruling party cash flows." The whistleblowing site appeared to defend itself earlier on Thursday while referring to its "accuracy policy." In a Twitter message it said that it does "not tamper with the evidentiary value of important historical archives." WikiLeaks released nearly 20,000 previously unseen DNC emails last week, which suggest that committee officials had favored Clinton over her rival Senator Bernie Sanders. The most recent leak consists of 29 voicemails from DNC officials.
Stallman and Torvalds should be on the same team. Witness the bickering controversy of GNU/Linux.
The basics of journalism do help. Just dumping raw data with no concern to how it may affect third parties that are irrelevant to the main story really hurts your overall credibility. Not even showing any attempt to verify the information as valid (because it is easy to tamper with digital information) with additional sources does as well. News matters. Providing a context to a given set of information is important. Asking for comment and/or rebuttal from various parties is important, even if they refuse. Showing judgement as to what is relevant is important.. Not doing so opens them up to a ton of valid criticism. Some editorial prudence would go a long way overall.
The words Liberal, Conservative, Left, Right have pretty must lost all meaning. They've pretty much fallen into "no true scottsman" territory.
The main dividing lines now are "open borders" vs "controlled immigration", free trade" vs "fair trade" - essentially Globalist vs Nationalist.
Apparently they have been sitting on these for a couple of months waiting for the right time to cause maximum chaos. There was plenty of time to scrub credit cards, phone numbers, etc. Either Assange doesn't care about what collateral damage he causes or the Russians didn't provide the data until right before release date.
Assange made Wikileaks a one man show. One that lacks integrity.
Wikileaks is about providing raw data so that actual journalists can do there job. To criticize Julian Assange is to misplace blame. It's perfectly valid to say- yes- this might harm innocent people and it's still a good idea to release as is. There are all sorts of risks to life we take every day. Just getting in ones car is a risky proposition. The reason we do it though is because more good comes from it than if we don't.
What is the "everything" you think they should publish? Absolutely any information they can get their hands on, about anyone or anything, from any source, regardless of whether it has any importance to the public? I don't think so. Their latest dump of voicemails really went off the deep end. What is the value to the public from posting messages from random voters complaining that the DNC was favoring Sanders? If it had been a message from a DNC official, that could arguably be newsworthy. But at this point it just seems that Assange is posting anything he can get his hands on without the least consideration for whether it's newsworthy, or whether he's just violating some random person's privacy.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
No, because they have different underlying beliefs and goals.
There are basically 4 reasons that people leak information/commit espionage/etc - Money, Ideology, Conscience, and/or Ego.
Snowden (based on his statements) did not release classified information simply to release it, or because he thought 'information should be free', or because he was trying to strike a blow against the Elites/"The Man"/etc, or any of that. He believed that there was lots of activity going on that ranged from questionable to illegal/unconstitutional, that he felt the public was being kept in the dark on, and that it needed to be made public for the good society as a whole. He was very clearly motivated based on his Conscience. He's also stated that he never intended for some of the other information to get out, and he relied on the journalists he gave the files to for help with that. Perhaps it was foolish, and perhaps he's not truthful about that, but it's what he's claimed at least.
Contrast this with Assange, who has a much more specific stated intent of going after certain governments, corporations, and powerful figures. He believes that they need to be torn down, basically - pretty much an Ideology based motivation. He's stated outright that his intent with the DNC leaks was to hurt Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, based on the timing, I'd even question if his intent isn't just to go after the Democrats more generally, because he has stated he'd had it for some time, and if he'd released the information sooner, it might have helped Sanders win the primaries.
So they definitely have very different stated set of motivations for what they do, and goals they're pursuing by it - at least according to what they've said.
These leaks reveal there _are_ no more "trusted journalists."
Just like Snowden's information revealed there shouldn't be trust in government, now we know the same about journalists.
Would you assert that Snowden should have "released" his information back to the government? Because that's the logical equivalence of the assertion he should have used journalists for Assange.
He just got sued by the guy who manages those cute little girl dancers that performed at his rally's. for gods sake. Trump gets sued because he breaches contracts like they are toilet paper. He BRAGS about not paying people he is contractually obligated to pay. He does this because he knows that most people will not drag on for years in court to get paid 10K. Just check out how he handled those tenants in the 80's at one of the first buildings he bought. Get a clue.