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Julian Assange: All That Malware On Wikileaks Isn't a Big Deal (vice.com)
WikiLeaks celebrates its 10th anniversary today. At a press conference, its editor Julian Assange hinted that Wikileaks could soon disclose more things about the U.S. election. Making use of the occasion, Motherboard asked Assange about the malware that Wikileaks website contains. To which, Assange responded (via Motherboard): âoeThe [Hillary] Clinton campaign has been going around saying 'don't read Wikileaks, because there's malware,'" Assange said in response to a general question about malware on the site from Motherboard. Talking specifically about malicious files that were included within a recent dump of emails from Turkey, Assange emphasised that there wasn't an issue for users who just visited the site, and that people needed to download the files themselves. "However this same risk exists for most '.exe' or '.doc' files downloaded elsewhere from the internet or received by email. As time goes by we flag documents to alert readers," a print-out given to journalists at the press conference reads. Assange even thought that the presence of malware itself was noteworthy. "There was malware sent to [the ruling Turkish party] AKP, either from criminals or from state attacks on the AKP. That's extremely interesting," he said.
Misinformation? They leaked emails containing malware targeted at the people they were originally sent to. Rather than adopt any kind of editorial oversight, wikileaks is a firehose of irrelevant (emails to/from targets family), not-newsworthy (SSNs of donors whose names are already public record), privacy invading (names of gay Saudis, where homosexuality is punishable by death), and occasionally malware-laden (because why not target malware at high-profile politicians), leaks with only a few nuggets of anything of interest delivered with transparent animus and bias
But if he's got an important leak, why didn't he make it? Instead, they were hawking books. He's turning into an infomercial.
Don't get me wrong, I think if he's got an important leak to make that would affect the election, I think we should know about it. The problem is, Trump is hiding a bunch of shit as well, and that information could affect the election, and Assange is basically giving him a free pass. (For the record, I consider both major party candidates to be terrible. But Trump is getting away with all kinds of things that would sink any other candidate because the media is in love with ratings.)
And hell, I honestly consider Trump to be the more dangerous candidate when it comes to a free and open press. Hell, he's said he wants to make it easier to sue publications if they publish something he doesn't like.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
So Wikilinks is under a malware attack when they release files and documents that were already infected? That's like saying you got beat up by your own fist punching yourself.
What the heck would we want him for? Unless he worked with Manning to extract the classified information, he's a publisher, and that's perfectly legal (that was established in the 60s). There's plenty of annoying people around the world that the US leaves alone.
The only reason Assange is babbling about what the US will do is that he doesn't want to go back to Sweden and face charges, so he's looking for excuses. He probably also doesn't want to face UK judges about his being a fugitive from justice for all these years.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes