WikiLeaks fights The Man by, er, publishing ordinary people's personal information WikiLeaks prides itself on taking on The Man by finding and publishing information that the world's most powerful organizations want to keep hidden. Unfortunately, on Friday, WikiLeaks took a swing at The Man by standing on the heads of thousands of innocent citizens whose personal details it has published, including their …
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"Perhaps in the world of WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange, anyone who contributes to a political party is by definition a part of the vast global conspiracy and deserves to be exposed to the kind of risks to their financial well-being that those unlucky souls will now almost certainly experience."
Er, isn't Wikileaks a political movement that also solicits contributions thus making itself a part of the 'global conspiracy'?
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"Er, isn't Wikileaks a political movement that also solicits contributions thus making itself a part of the 'global conspiracy'?"
Reminds me of how once I signed a NO2ID petition where I had to give my address for my signature to be counted .... then a few months later I got a mailshot in the post for NO2ID asking for donations, selliung "NO2ID merchandise" etc. Just one of the reasons why I've subsequently changed my view on their campaign!
Is that entirely true?
Are you sure it was a petition? Which petition? On paper at a stand or online? Just the one single mailshot? Did you read the small print? Was the small print even small? Did you make a proper complaint?
One single mailshot sounds like you got what you signed up for.
It was definitely a petition (or that was how it was presented to me and, from what I recall, appeared to be from the text above the space for names) being collected outside Shepherd's Bush tube station. Maybe there was small print saying I had agreed to have my name collected and used in future but somehow given the cause I didn't expect that. Was tempted to send them a Data Protection request but couldn't really be bothered.
As a sometime Dem contributor in the past so grateful that DWS lady (had to delete first message because used too colorful language here) took over and made me close up my wallet in a big hurry well before this year. She was finally useful for something besides coronating Hillary. Oh and Assange is quite stupidly burning the last people that had any sympathy for him in this country by doing this. He is simply the other side of the sociopath coin of a Wall St bank CEO. A pig who can't wait to walk and talk like a man.
"...coronating Hilary..."
Coronating? Is that a US-ism for 'crowning'? Sounds vaguely like a rather unpleasant invasive medical procedure.
Dear AC, if you're going to use the English language on El Reg, please use it correctly. Next you'll be telling me that 'math' is a word.
</rant>
Yes, actually "math" is a word. There's this thing... This thing called American English. In American English "math" is a word. Another word we have is "Americanism," which we use instead of that silly thing you used (US-ism? wtf is that?). Because "American" is the correct demonym for citizens of the USA.
We also spell it aluminum (If we followed your silly-assed "rule", there'd be platinium, molybdenium, and tantalium.) And we like like our dates backwards (mm-dd-yy). All things you lot actually know, but that some of you idjits just can't ever let go by without trying to prove – in some sort of asinine, counter-intuitive way – how superior you are.
FYI, every time you do it, it just makes you look like the sorry twat you are. But hey, don't let me stop you. Carry on being an utter prat. It's probably your good side.
Too be fair, you Brits ARE superior to us Usans in some ways.
For instance, British politics seems insanely complicated. We have nothing like this. Then there's that funny kicking game with the round ball. As a nation, we're hopeless. Finally there's that lunatic streak running so often thru your comedy. We are far too pretentious to 'let go' to that extent, mores the pity.
But nit-picking about words is really petty. Besides, linguists tell us that English spoken in the US is a good approximation of how it was spoken in England in colonial times. It's you guys who changed the most, not us. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
"For instance, British politics seems insanely complicated. We have nothing like this."
What makes you say that? There's a similar shortage in different parties, and none of the madness with delegates, super-delegates, meta-delegates and whatnot.
Check out John Oliver's rant, and see if you still feel the UK is the complicated way to do it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/23/john-oliver-explains-why-the-u-s-primary-process-is-an-irredeemable-mess/
The word aluminum has been around since 1807 when Sir Humphrey Davy proposed it as a replacement for his previous attempt of alumium.
Both aluminium and aluminum were used in the US but I'm was preferred from 1820 when Websters dictionary used it as the acceptable American spelling. By the time aluminium became a common material, um was already the fashion in America.
"The word aluminum has been around since 1807 when Sir Humphrey Davy proposed it as a replacement for his previous attempt of alumium.
Both aluminium and aluminum were used in the US but [um] was preferred from 1820 when Websters dictionary used it as the acceptable American spelling. By the time aluminium became a common material, um was already the fashion in America."
It appears to be slightly more complicated than this. Here's a write-up from World Wide Words:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm
By the way, as a compromise, the correct name for aluminium is 'aluminium', and the correct name for sulphur is 'sulfur', as decided by IUPAC. Americans can carry on calling it 'aluminum' though, because there is no way in hell I'm calling it 'sulfur'.
"We also spell it aluminum (If we followed your silly-assed "rule", there'd be platinium, molybdenium, and tantalium.)"
True, however if we followed your silly-assed "rule", there's be uranum and plutonum.
On a serious note, is there an accepted guideline for where in the periodic table the num/nium spit begins?
AC "Carry on being an utter prat."
I've noticed an unspoken assumption:..
"The UK didn't illegally invade Iraq; Tony Blair did."
Exposed to the light, it's clearly a bit of 'American-Exceptionalism' style thinking applied in the UK.
Of course, bringing that style of thinking to the UK is clearly Tony Blair's fault.
So it's at least self-consistent.
Dear AC:
"Because "American" is the correct demonym for citizens of the USA."
That's strange, because my atlas has North America and South America. These are continents, and as far as I know, the only country that occupies all of a continent is Australia. I was not aware that the United States of America included Canada and Mexico.
Does your version of 'American' explicitly exclude the good citizens to the north and south of you? I presume you don't recognise (note the 's' not 'z') Canadians or Mexicans as 'Americans'? It's akin to having 'Europeans' only live in France or 'Asians' only live in China.
"US-ism? wtf is that?" Your reduction of an argument to four-lettered words (or abbreviations denoting same) is duly noted.
Next you'll be telling me that 'math' is a word.
A good dictionary will tell you that "math" is indeed a word. Paraphrasing slightly the Shorter Oxford gives:
Math. Noun (1). (Obsolete and dialect, and in "aftermath", etc.) (Old English from Middle High German) A mowing. The amount mowed.
Math. Noun (2). (19th Century, from a Hindu word for a hut). In the Indian subcontinent, a Hindu convent of celibate mendicants.
Math. Noun (3). (North American colloquial). Abbreviation for "mathemetics".
Clearly definition 3 is not relevant on a .co.uk site and is in any case only a colloquial usage, but methinks the first two should count.
it's a goldmine.
desperately trying to remember how truthful I've been on various web forms. not wholly truthful, but certainly too truthful.
wikileaks has also spewed a load of stuff from turkey i believe, which could be, er, career limiting for those involved.
overall an object lesson in the wisdom of using paper as oppposed to the internet.
After reading further maybe there is some public interest in releasing some of these emails (even if illegal) but not the ones with small potatoes donor information. And WTF where they storing such data plaintext? I guess that's what people get for being part of the political process.
What a blunder. Are we sure that it really was WikiLeaks, not some malefactor hacking their site? Wheels within ironies, y'know. We need a new word for this, and I'd like to suggest ASSMANGE, a combination of Assange, manage, mange, mismanage, and Letterman's old favourite, Assman. Others may meekly massage their data, we proudly assmange it.
It was irresponsible of me to invent a word and then not say how to pronounce it. I'm going full-French for Assmange: ɛs-mɑ̃ʒ (in the International Phonetic Alphabet, not to be confused with a hoppy beery liquid). Stress the second syllable, if you like. This makes the correct way to say it as far as possible from the way most of the victims will say it.
I watched some of the movies, approved by the wikileaks people and the take-home message was that no sensitive info would get through, no soldier would be injured as a result of their leaks. Yet apparently that level of care has gone all to hell. Is it possible that rather than redacting, blacking out the offending data, the Wikileaks people substituted false data, as a kind of social experiment? Having seen some docus about identity theft, it seems likely to me that occasionally an identity may be stolen even if all the information is wrong. That credit agencies assmange the data so that some punter rather than their business client, is left on the hook.
If you did commit a crime I hope you registered with El Reg with a throw away email using tor because otherwise you logged in plaintext (El Reg still doesn't use https for logins). Using AC doesn't buy you a lot of protection from warrants (lol seen authors/mods on here in fact dox ACs, usernames anyway, for being obnoxious).
Let's postulate an alternate world where Gore won in 2000. The 9/11 attacks would almost certainly still have happened, but with democrats in office for nine straight years at that point the party would have been crucified in the 2002 and 2004 elections as weak on national security. So maybe the Iraq war doesn't happen in 2003, but it might still happen just a few years later. And who knows what wars Gore might have started, hoping to look stronger and in charge for re-election. Even if you're a democrat, it isn't an open and shut case that things would be better if Bush had not won the election in 2000.
Just look at this year's campaign as an example. I think the party that wins the election this fall is a long term loser. If Trump wins, he will make a mess of things and be out on his ass after one term. The democrats will win the presidency in a landslide and likely take both the house & senate in the election four years from now if Trump wins this fall unless he's a lot better president than he is a businessman.
Likewise, if Hillary wins this fall, by 2020 it will have been 12 years of a democrat in the white house, and the republican house will have been opening investigations into everything she does to insure her popularity stays as low as today. All but registered democrats will be thinking it is time for a change, so as long as the republicans don't nominate a nutjob like Cruz they'll win in a landslide and hold both houses of congress in 2020.
>Let's postulate an alternate world where Gore won in 2000. The 9/11 attacks would almost certainly still have happened
The whole bedrock to your argument is very debatable. The Clinton administration at the end was absolutely paranoid about a major terrorist attack. What happened was the worst administration transition in our history. Famously the Clinton folks hated W (for example removed all W keys from keyboards) and were not helpful at all. In addition W's administration didn't find worrying about a terrorist attack to be much of priority at first. Maybe it still happens with a Gore presidency but the transition would have been much smoother so its not a given. There were lots of lessons learned but one of the main ones is improved turnover between administrations. W's to Obama for example was much smoother (think W inviting McCain and Obama to come look first hand at how bad he fscked up the economy) and really the only hiccup (other than us losing a million jobs in W's last month) was Israel taking the opportunity to commit war crimes (whole nother topic sorry). Your argument about 2016 and beyond sounds pretty valid however.
Uh, the W's thing was a prank, a joke son, as Foghorn Leghorn would put it. Fewer keyboards than initially claimed, and a better joke than invading a country looking for WMD keys you know don't exist. Even Blair was in on that prank, which was even worse than Boris Johnson's recent skit (well, we shall see - if it leads to the EU breaking up and European wars again, the new Foreign Secretary may have the last laugh). Well done, lads.
"The sad truth is that the emails are fantastically free of useful or interesting information..."
The author is rich suggesting that proof of deep collusion between one candidate and the DNC is not worthy of note. I beg to differ. The emails serve to reveal the Democrat Party as the rotten edifice it is. A LOT of people find it very interesting, and a lot of those are Democrats (or were).
The fact is, Mrs. Clinton insists she did NOT collude with the DNC against anyone, certainly not Bernie! But now we know for sure she benefited from such collusion by journalists and supporters with DWS. This is at the least very embarrassing (and suspicious) and for the author to pass it off because 'everyone knows it's happening' is a weak attempt to protect the current Democrat candidate from criticism.
I would imagine if the RNC had been hacked you'd see even worse stuff regarding Trump, and perhaps with Cruz as well had there still been a credible non-Trump alternative. The parties have their favorites, those who are seen as having "paid their dues" and are "owed" a shot at the White House.
The number of times that an outsider who isn't favored by the party wins the nomination (like Carter in '76 and Reagan in '80) is greatly outweighed by the times when the party gets what they want despite the 10% or so of the electorate in the middle who determines the eventual winner being less than enthused (Mondale in '84, Dole in '96)
Agree. Of course it was obvious that the DNC insiders colluded to sabotage the Sanders campaign. Yet there will still be deniers who need to bull forward and thus paint accusers as members of some tin-foil hat brigade. This is some hard evidence that was lacking.
Is it an earth-shattering revelation? No. Is it significant and important? Absolutely.
Was Wikileaks sloppy with regard to redaction? Yes, but eh... We've seen far worse by several orders of magnitude.
There are campaign laws that prevent non-citizens from contributing to US election campaigns. They might have some people that produced proof of citizenship in some form to verify their contributions were legal.
As for credit information, I really don't know the details of what was included in the leaked emails, but I imagine that a lot of organizations that receive donations would run a credit check on contributors to get an idea of how much they have available for future giving.
“Just you, and your schoolboy politics, and your idiotically conceited faith in your own importance.” — Sir Nigel Irvine in The Fourth Progocol (1987).
He could have been talking about the whole WikiLeaks thing. It doesn’t matter what noble thoughts they had in mind, it doesn’t justify acting like a bunch of children who either don’t know or don’t care about the consequences of their behavior.
You missed the third option: That they actively WANTED to weaken an insufficiently progressive Democratic party in order to increase the chances of ushering in a totally disastrous Trump administration out of a "burn the place down and rebuild from scratch" mentality.
I liked Sanders and think this whole episode will become exceedingly bad for HRC. Bernie may just have to grin and bear it, as he has already endorsed HRC.
But his supporters may not.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-22/nearly-half-of-sanders-supporters-won-t-support-clinton
All in all, an exceedingly well timed delivery, just two days before the convention. St. Julian is surely enjoying a delicious cold helping of revenge beans, as we speak.
If enough Sanders supporters hold their noses as they pull the lever, the whole thing could tip over to Trump.
"....If enough Sanders supporters hold their noses as they pull the lever, the whole thing could tip over to Trump." We had a pool party the other week and some of the younger kids were playing this game called "would you rather", where you offered two obnoxious choices and had to say which you would rather suffer. Typical offerings were "would you rather eat a poo sandwich or swim for a day in sewage?" - bit like the Trumpet vs HRC choice, TBH.
In the last two Presidential campaigns there have been charges that the donkeys deliberately set up the online donations to allow anyone including foreigners (out of country even) to donate. If true, this is a serious violation of feral campaign financing laws. So it is possible the Wikileaks crew was looking for evidence of this.
Again this was rumored at the time. But given the some of the endemic political corruption over here with campaign financing (on both sides) it is likely someone would try to find evidence of these rumors.
This does not mean that Wikileaks and donkeys should be let of the hook for their respective crimes and stupidities.
I signed a petition once and despite checking the opt-out, I was added to a mailing list that included releasing my info to "partner companies" (that was NEVER in the privacy disclaimer) and they refused to remove me after a year of demands. I had to get a court C&D. The MP who was involved blamed it on a "rogue campaign volunteer". B.S. - one of his proteges a few years down the road admitted her boss was "....full of [dirty] tricks...." and that was one of them he turned a blind eye to (so he told a half-truth).
Pisses me off I was the ONLY Canadian out of the thosands she said he did that too, that complained!
Probably because there wouldn't be many small donors outed but only the personal information of a dozen or so billionaires and a few dozen energy, tobacco, gun maker, and defense corporations.
You'd be surprised. The greatest success* of the RNC in recent years has been to convince a large part of the poor and lower-middle class to consistently vote against their own best interests, to the point of even helping finance the bastards who regularly shaft them.
* Success as defined by the RNC's terms, that is.
"If the shoe was on the other foot.
And this was the RNC database you just KNOW the left leaning prick of an author wouldn't be fucked one bit."
It might come as a shock to you, but some people have opinions that aren't solely formed through the prism of which political party they support.
But for everyone else, it looks as though WikiLeaks has been grossly irresponsible and, frankly, idiotic, not to screen, review or filter this information before publishing
.. and therein lies my second biggest issue with Wikileaks, the utter lack of diligence or paying attention to possible consequences. The first main issue is that it's mainly a creation mistakenly assumed to glorify someone currently getting very, very fed up with Ferrero Rocher jokes..
The DNC (that should be the SDNC -Socialist Democratic National Committee) is, one, not supposed to side with any one candidate during the silly.. Err, primary season and, two, not be so bloody blatant when they do it. The emails revealed that, as we put it, the "fix was in". Now if Mrs. HRC was expecting the left of her party to vote for her, she will likely be disappointed the night of 8 November, 2016, when ballots are counted with thousands, possibly a couple of million, write in votes for Senator Sanders for president. That number could cost her the election. Now, of course I'm encouraging all my Democratic friend (yes, I meant "friend") to do that, since I'm a Republican and we tend to vote a straight party ticket even if we have to hold our noses when marking the ballot for "The Donald".
As for correcting someone's use of English, we on the Western side of the Atlantic Puddle (I live next to the Pacific OCEAN), kicked the English out of the Colonies some 200+ years ago, and we stopped speaking or writing your language in favor of American, where we have a "sense of humor" (not "humour"), we watch programs on our televisions (not "programmes on our telly"), and we only have 2 major political parties, not the dozen or so you have to contend with. "Math" is an acceptable contraction for "mathematics" according to "The Webster's New World Dictionary". But, of course, our friends to the north in Canada, have messed up your language beyond repair (and everything has to be in both English and... Ahh, French). Have a word with Ms. Windsor, she's still the Head of State for Canada. No, we don't bow to royalty, only the current inhabitant of the White House, the Big Zero.
However, I do have one English title behind my name, BOFH and proud of it!
Sorry, my friend, but this article is just too self-serving for words. You didn't give a damn - indeed encouraged activists to sneer at, target, and harass ordinary people - when BNP membership details were published. But now it's a lefty organisation... oh dear oh dear!!!
He who lives by the leak, dies by it.
FWIW, I don't give a fig for either group. But enough hypocrisy please/
Old Englishman, you just made that up, didn't you. Did ever read our BNP Wikileaks coverage, easy enough to find. Also none of which were by Kieren McCarthy,
The leak in itself , it's timing raises questions.
Who has interest in doing such a job to the Democrats just days ahead of the nomination ?
2 theories are looked into seriously A) the Russians , Trump has talked favorably of Putin and Russia and they favor him s next President B) Trump's team which has all interrest in undermining Clinton's legetimacy. ( Reuters etc carry details )
Either way .. the reason for the leaks speaks louder than the content, which is totally inflammatory and , should the American public that are of Democratic allegiance take time to read ( which they won't ) would certainly make Clinton's ascencion to nominee impossible and throw the whole process in the bin. The proofs of rigging and favoritism towards a candidate by party leadership being there , the leaks imho are a very good job and positive for democracy. No kidding
The resulting privacy issues are secondary , collateral damage and trivial compared to the real issue.
What's at stake really is the democratic process itself. Rigging like this and favoritism from management of a party is totally out of line and undermines the will of the People which it is there to SERVE and not DICTATE or MANIPULATE. Any way we look at it .. American politics nowadays are to vomit
Amusing that you have to give your SS number and passport details, so they can ensure they're scrupulously honest in how they manage the obscene sums required to buy your way into a run for office. I imagine people of all political persuasions agreed with Bernie that campaign funding needed some serious reform.
Seems Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear , two Russian hacker groups that have ties to the Russian government are the ones who hacked the servers and forwarded the lot to Wiki Leaks.
There are infuriating letters in there ,One by Luis Miranda the communications director , suggests to use Bernie Sanders faith ( he's Jewish ) to torpedo his campaign .. i mean Congratulations to all for uncovering one of the worst scandals ever ./. Shame on the democratic party executive branch .. for the sake of democracy , they should all resign or get fired to the last one of them . Collateral damage therer might be .. but this is the price of saving true democracy . Takes a Russian to open the eyes of the Americans and see how their system is rigged . Who know the best ally of Democracy was the Russians ?
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