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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.
that Wikileaks just wanted to hurt Hilary & the DNC. The timing coupled with their unwillingness to clean out credit card numbers and individual donor names pretty much proves that. The question is why? Is Assange just bitter? I suppose he's got good reason to be (the trumped up rape charges). But if that's his reason he's not after justice, he just wants to see America burn.
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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.
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.
Morpheus is fighting Neo.
It's *how* they help... or hurt that matters, though. Exposing corruption is a benefit to everyone. Polonium tea, not so much.
One of the interesting leaks that hasn't gotten a lot of press was in the DNC email leak and showed that the Washington Post was having some kind of secret fundraiser with the DNC that their own lawyers said they shouldn't be doing. So it's not like we even have the media to rely upon to do proper investigations any more and, weird as it may seem, we appear to have found a 5th estate. Bet it won't last any longer than the 4th did, though.
Worth mentioning that Chelsea is being moved to solitary confinement.
But don't worry, the government has recognized national whistleblower's day!!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
Long term a full release helps historians, authors, bloggers and any interested people fill in the redacted material after 30 years of official gov releases in some nations. .
A limited, self censored release over years by a subset of the press seems useful in the short term to sell content but long term its all the information in its full context that helps.
A full release also prevents any questions surrounding members of the press who claim to be experts in certain areas and then only publish fragments on what they feel they understand or want write about for domestic consumption. That can be very limiting for any future historians and can result in a very small sub set of diverse material been covered many times.
Eg a group of journalists only feel comfortable about releasing material about corruption in a few nations... and hold back all the other interesting material as they see it as outside the help they can request from their own gov and mil contacts.
Members of the press then publish the same story with a few local twists or focus on a name in decades old material on advice of their legal departments.
A searchable full release is also good for details like format, dates. Names that did not hold a position that year, fonts, jargon that could point to alterations, self censorship, missing material, a limited hang out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"