Leaks

I like what Larry Lessig wrote here about leaks, particularly this part:

Neera has only ever served in the public (and public interest) sector. Her work has always and only been devoted to advancing her vision of the public good. It is not right that she should bear the burden of this sort of breach.

If we needed to add more reasons why someone would choose to avoid public service, we now have one more – wikileaks will out your emails and embarrass the hell out of you.

There was some stuff about me in the Clinton leaks. There was some stuff about me in the Sony leaks. I’m with Larry. I don’t care to have that stuff outed. And I understand how people talk about others privately. That’s how it is. I am not upset at anyone at Sony or the Clinton team for what was leaked. That’s life.

But I do think wikileaks has gone overboard here. There is, as Larry says, a difference between leaks of substance and leaks of embarrassment. Let’s try to keep the leaks to stuff that matters and avoid the petty stuff please.

#Current Affairs

Comments (Archived):

  1. kidmercury

    WikiLeaks has releases hugely important stuff about clinton, not just embarrassing stuff. Things showing media collusion, violations of laws surrounding independence of superpacs, acceptance of funds from foreign governments, and willingness to implement policies that knowingly will result in the death of thousands of syrians. Maybe some embarrassing or irrelevant stuff got released too along the way. Alas you have to break a few eggs to make an omellette.

    1. fredwilson

      I agree with you about the importance of leaks. I don’t agree with you that the petty stuff is accidental. And the petty stuff diminishes the impact of the important stuff

      1. jason wright

        There’s a bit of the angel and a bit of the arschloch in each of us. If we acknowledge that in ourselves and in others we can look beyond the petty to appreciate the important.

      2. LE

        And the petty stuff diminishes the impact of the important stuff100% correct. JV mistake. Dilution of message. [1][1] Good in the courtroom depending on what side you are on of course.

      3. kidmercury

        my understanding is that wikileaks received the podesta emails and distributed them unedited, in entirety. is there some type of editing they did before publishing them? does anyone have any solid info on this?

        1. Timothy Meade

          So emails sent through gmail have headers called DKIM, which are a hash of the contents signed by private keys in Google’s exclusive posession and with public keys published in DNS (signed by the global DNS system)I have not reviewed the documents personally, but I have seen screenshots of parts of the messages. The documents as delivered are very badly OCRd and it was hard to read some words without guessing and using contextual clues.The headers are all lowercase hexadecimal which could probably be matched as a limited alphabet but computing the checksums would require reconstructing the contents of the entire MIME.I have seen no discussion of this anywhere, not even places like /r/DNCLeaks

    2. CJ

      I wonder why there are no Wikileaks releases about Trump…

      1. jason wright

        What is Trump’s view on Wikileaks?

      2. Jess Bachman

        I’d be surprised if he even uses email.

      3. Erin

        Is it possible Hillary is being targeted specifically because she’s so hard to read, and it’s hard to get a handle on her personality? In the personality typing field that I work in, there’s a disagreement about what type she is. Could it be that not having the appearance of a regular person with struggles and weaknesses makes people especially suspicious of her?

        1. sigmaalgebra

          People should be “especially suspicious” of Hillary.Why?Hillary is nasty. Evidence: The Byrne book. That Secret Service and State Department security staff regard her as so nasty they don’t want to be around her. The video clip of her laughing at the way she got off the 41 year old rapist of that 12 year old girl. The really nasty way she informed the Benghazi families: Next to the coffins, saying that the cause was “That awful YouTube video”. In Haiti, Bill and Hillary directed a lot of the billions of dollars in earthquake relief to their buddies and got big kickbacks. She and Bill took charity money from some of the poorest people in the world who just had a really serious earthquake. There are more examples. So, “no conscience, no empathy”, just like she described in 1994 about the “super-predators”. She has no affection, loyalty, or respect for the US and wants to dissolve it into an Americas common market with fully open borders. In college she was a big fan of Saul Alinsky — e.g., she claims to have memorized his book, wrote her senior thesis on him, and exchanged letters with him.Pattern: It appears that Hillary is aware of her serious faults and then one by one accuses others of those faults. So far I’ve accumulated a list of 8 such. Curious. Analyze that one.Hillary is a liar, a long time, pathological, flagrant, shameless, guiltless liar. She lies as easily as she breathes and lies nearly as often as she talks. She just lies. She lied to the FBI, and IIRC that’s a felony. She lied under oath to Congress, IIRC, another crime. She lied to the Benghazi families, to the public, etc. What she says in public is often in strong conflict with what she says to people in small groups for big money in private. Apparently whenever she has something to say, she just lies. Always has; always will.Hillary is crooked. Back in Arkansas, Hillary took the money, and Bill passed out the favors. In the State Department, Hillary passed out the favors, and Bill took the money. The favors were for and the money from UBS, Ericsson, and Russia, at least. Giuliani has called that Bill/Hillary behavior an example of racketeering as in RICO that Giuliani knows a lot about. It appears that soon after Hillary received a subpoena from Congress, she destroyed a lot of the relevant data. That looks like a case of obstruction of justice.Hillary is a foreign policy disaster. In simplest terms, Hillary likes to depose leaders. What is left, then, is disaster. She has been trying to depose Assad, and her efforts have been a big opening for ISIS and one of the main causes of so many deaths and so many refugees. She did help depose Gaddafi with lots of deaths and a big opening for ISIS. Apparently another really bloody example is Honduras. Also Ukraine. More details athttps://www.youtube.com/wat…Supposedly some of what she did helped Boko Haram — there is material via Google and, IIRC, one of the movies about Hillary.Hillary is a grand US national security disaster.FBI Directory Comey said that Hillary’s handling of US classified information, some higher than Top Secret, NSA Special Access Program, was “extremely careless” and apparently legally that is the same as “gross negligence” which is the sole criterion for violation of section (f) of the US Espionage Act. Her violation was massive. For that, Hillary belongs in court and jail.Since she routinely accessed her DIY, home e-mail server (supposedly Windows Server 2003 with Exchange, unpatched) via a Blackberry wireless device that did not encrypt its wireless signals on a State Department building balcony open to the world, the chances are high that foreign governments had hackers get some wireless equipment, receive the wireless signals, get the Hillary e-mail domain name, login user ID, and login password, and, then, from anywhere on the Internet login to Hillary’s DIY e-mail server as Hillary and download all of Hillary’s e-mail. She didn’t care. Like a serious psychopathic criminal, she has no conscience.As inJohn Hayward, “Secret Service Officer Gary Byrne Vindicated by FBI Documents on Hillary Clinton’s Character, But Predicts Media Will Still Ignore Him”, Breitbart, 19 Oct 2016.athttp://www.breitbart.com/ra…is in partThe real Hillary Clinton is the one I talk about in my book, Crisis of Character. She’s cold, she’s distant. According to the FBI Director a couple of months ago, she’s completely incompetent and reckless.” Hillary is a grand disaster.But Hillary is a good actress, puts on a usually convincing act of sincerity, claims that she wants to help people, especially women and children, and responds with smiles, laughter, accusations of conspiracy, sexism, racism, etc. Lots of people have fallen for her act and ignored the obvious, solid evidence of her being nasty, a liar, a crook, an incompetent, a national security disaster, etc. That’s Hillary. She’s been doing it at least back to Arkansas. It’s made her wealthy.It’s time that people caught on.For her personality, it appears that in standard clinical psychology terms she has one heck of a strong case of anxiety disease. This shows as paranoia, OCD, and psychopathic behavior. But there is more: E.g., she has what she described as a super-predator — “no conscience, no empathy” although those may be the results of an extreme case of psychopathic.Hillary is so sick that as POTUS she would be a serious threat to the US.

          1. Erin

            See my comment above. I wouldn’t be surprised if our suspicions are validated.

        2. LE

          In the personality typing field that I work in, there’s a disagreement about what type she is.Fascinating. Please say more about this. If Hillary doesn’t appear to be like any other person that’s probably because she has spent a life in public service being guarded and calculating.More importantly, (and I feel strongly about this) a person who is almost certainly spending more time running her thoughts by others and getting their input than formulating on her own the game plan for a particular situation. So in a sense she looks like a camel (which is a horse made up by committee). Look, since she was a college coed Bill has been around and then after that a raft of political advisors and friends. As such she has never developed on her own the ability to think w/o that input or be in any way impulsive and make mistakes.

          1. Erin

            In the Enneagram system that we use, she’s traditionally been typed as a One (Perfectionist), but I think we may be seeing that she’s actually a Three (Achiever) https://www.enneagraminstit…. Someone who sees their value solely in how they’re perceived by others. They are the chameleons of the personality world, doing whatever seems laudable by desirable people to shore up self-worth. The fact that she’s also a Scorpio means she’s especially hard to type. Scorpios are private by nature. Incidentally, Threes are also the best at maintaining a smooth and squeaky clean exterior while operating at lowest levels of human behavior. Not a fan either, but she will protect the minorities…

          2. LE

            The fact that she’s also a Scorpio means she’s especially hard to type. Scorpios are private by nature.Erin, do you really want to mix that (imo) nonsense with science? Any studies to validate at all that those signs mean anything at all?Even if you could make an argument that someone born on a particular month (because of the way the fetus developed) had one tendency over another it would be fuzzy and subject to all sorts of caveats. To me it’s hocus pocus.

          3. Erin

            “Erin, do you really want to mix that (imo) nonsense with science?” Yes I do. I’m late to the Astrology party, so I’m not used to tip-toeing around. It’s as real as the nose on your face. 🙂 (Not to mention practical and wise).

          4. sigmaalgebra

            I was getting impressed until you got to Scorpio! Astrology? Gads.See my post below: There I say anxiety disease leading to OCD. Perfectionism is essentially a mild version of OCD, and I see Hillary as well into OCD and far from mere perfectionism.Her severe case of your achiever stuff is commonly called a case of over-achiever.On her pleasing others, good: Chalk that up as a case of social phobia, that is, a fear of being rejected by others. So, in public, put on an act. She doesn’t like to appear in public because she has to act, which is a lot of work, and might have some of what is true about her discovered. E.g., in public, as part of her acting, she says stuff, just stuff, whatever sounds good at the moment, essentially all lies. For her, anything in public is a lot like a stage performance where she plays a role in a script that has nothing to do with reality. But with all her lies, she understands that she can be caught.But, she is bright and has ready responses for a lot of situations. E.g., if ask her if she has contradicted herself on whatever, ObamaCare, HillaryCare, the TPP, Assad, ISIS, etc., then she will just say that all her life she has been fully consistent, always trying to help people, especially women, children, and poor people. Clever. Total BS but clever. And cute. And a lot of people buy it.But the worst of her is her psychopathy, i.e., no conscience, empathy, guilt, or shame, willingness to lie, flagrantly, without fear, violate laws with no concern, have contempt for others, etc.But she is not really an achiever in any meaningful sense. What seems like an effort to achieve is just part of the act. E.g., as from Trump, “all talk, no action”. At least no effective action. Actually, due to the psychopathy, out of the public view, she doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself. E.g., in no ordinary sense is she married at all. Net, for achieving real things, she is grotesquely incompetent, a disaster.Mostly we’re talking consequences, broadly what used to be called neurotic behavior, of classic anxiety disease.A woman with anxiety disease? Across continents, cultures, etc., anxiety disease is 4 times more common in women than men — I do have a credible reference.She is a serious mental case. She is similar to a lot of con artists who are really convincing without shame, conscience, empathy, etc. She presents a serious challenge to the US voters in their understanding of some really serious psychological problems.

          5. Erin

            Astrology and the Enneagram are two fascinating fields- one may have more clout in the business world than the other, but they have similar origins. No need to disparage something if it works, right? I hear you with respect to Clinton’s needing to please and putting on an act. She isn’t a threat to people of color, though, which is my main concern, and after she’s in office and Trump is behind bars, I fully expect America to do their investigations on her.

        3. Rob Larson

          Erin, I completely agree with that assessment – her guardedness makes people suspicious of her. Mitt Romney had the same issues. Mitt’s guardedness is understandable when you consider his family history:Recall Mitt’s dad was at one point the leading candidate for the presidency but was done in by an unfortunate word choice – in an off-the-cuff, end-of-day conversation explaining why he’d once been in favor of the vietnam war he used the word “brainwashing” in describing the way pro-war military officials had worked at convincing him of their arguments. That word became a meme that he couldn’t shake, took on a life of it’s own and made him look like a doofus. Many believe it cost him the presidency, though who’s to know for sure.But watching Mitt campaign, it seemed as if his #1 goal was to watch his word choice carefully to not repeat his dad’s mistake. In retrospect, what he did was far worse: he became a candidate that no one felt they knew – he seemed devoid of personality and likeability.Hillary seems to face the same problem – everything she does and says seems carefully crafted. Just like Mitt.

          1. sigmaalgebra

            > everything she does and says seems carefully crafted.Yes, but what Hillary is doing and why is much, much deeper, and more serious, than that. See some of my other posts here today.

          2. Erin

            Yes, we’re in agreement. Very carefully crafted indeed.

          3. David C. Baker

            In DiSC lingo, I feel fairly certain that she has a D:C conflict, one of the fifteen subtypes called “creative” because she must find a creative way to synchronize her desire to be in control and her desire to be correct. Those are her two primary drivers. She is an introvert (tends toward “matter of fact” speech) and she’s quit open to change, but she is cautious about it and is a control freak. All signs of a D:C conflict.BTW, this one sub-type is the most confusing one, too, and the most widely misread, which also explains why she’s difficult to type.

          4. Erin

            Oh interesting. I like this intersection between finding a creative way to stay in control and to be correct. Could finding a way to be liked be in there too?

      4. LE

        Trump is old school. If I remember correctly he doesn’t use email or rarely. Hence the likely targets are those around him and/or business partners that do use email. In that light it is surprising that people around him haven’t been hacked. [1][1] And this is clearly wrong by the way. I am not in any way advocating this behavior (I think it’s deplorable on many levels even if someone thinks it’s justified).

  2. Conrad Leonard

    Under Assange’s direction wikileaks transformed long ago from a tool for the public good into a weapon to be wielded in the cause of Julian’s righteous infowars, and latterly even as a kind of personal defence doomsday device. He’s a typical narcissistic, hypocritical ideologue who never did anything in the public interest that didn’t serve his own interests first, more than willing to leave a trail of bodies (not his own) in his wake, in the name of principle. Screw that guy. What Snowden did on the other hand, is the real deal. Dare I say American hero, and should be pardoned.

    1. fredwilson

      I agree about Snowden

  3. jason wright

    Perhaps SMTP needs a blockmail rebuild, with personal side chain (‘for your eyes only’) mail and keys.

    1. Rob Underwood

      yes, or simply use PGP which has been around for, what, 25 years?

      1. jason wright

        PGP has not been compromised?

        1. Rob Underwood

          Yes, it has. Not perfect. I should say “PGP or something similar.” Point is, it doesn’t appear there were much if any protection but on these emails?

          1. jason wright

            SMTP is an insecure protocol. Build a better one.

          2. Rob Underwood

            Agree

          3. Girish Mehta

            Yes. These protocols were created for a different age. For instance, even back in the 90’s there was a common joke that “SNMP” stood for “Security Not My Problem”. SMTP for mail transfer was created even a few years before SNMP…in the early-mid 80s.Version revisions and updates happened, but these protocols were created for a different (more innocent /naive ?) era altogether.

          4. jason wright

            Google and Facebook exploited the limitations of the HTP/IP protocol, and perhaps the intelligence agencies have done the same with email. Perhaps blocktech is the New Testament.

          5. LE

            Not going to happen. The best and brightest are doing things that we don’t need and trying to sell more advertising or go to Mars.WSJ article from yesterday “Manufacturers Struggle to Woo Software Developers”This is exactly as I have been saying. All this brainpower, to much brainpower doing stupid shit.“The whole Facebook, social media thing is a big suck on talent,” Chetan Kapoor, an Austin, Texas-based executive at the Japanese industrial robot maker.http://www.wsj.com/articles

          6. Fernando Gutierrez

            I use PGP, but I agree that most people will not care about it. Even Snowden had to go through Laura Poitras to get Greenwald to use it!Lately I’m pointing many people towards Protonmail. Not perfect either, but way more secure than standard email and almost as easy as gmail.

    2. Matt Zagaja

      I doubt they hacked the e-mail using SMTP.

      1. sigmaalgebra

        Right. SMTP and POP3 are just dirt simple, really, are easy to emulate with just command line Telnet. All the data sent/received, even music, video, images, is just simple printable characters. So, there is no binary data. The data schema is header lines, a blank line, and the body. If one of the header lines indicates that there are MIME (multi-media internet mail extensions) parts, then the body consists of parts delimited by a special string given in the relevant header line. So, each attachment is such a MIME part. If there are no MIME parts, then the body is just the text of the e-mail message. It’s all just dirt simple. To program it, just need the workhorse of the internet and the Internet, TCP/IP sockets. Early in the Internet I quickly wrote my own e-mail client software — it worked great for years.If there is no wiretapping from the computer’s Ethernet port, connection to the ISP, …, to the destination, then SMTP is secure.

      2. LE

        The media using “hacking” anytime there is some breach. To most people Zuckerbergs accounts got “hacked” when many of these cases (don’t remember his in particular) it was just a password guess or some other thing easy that was not hacking.In the case of SMTP you could grab it in transit.http://security.stackexchan

  4. faresg

    I don’t agree with Lessig here. Glen Greenwald made a good point that I agree with: when you get into public service, and the more high profile you, you should not expect the same level of privacy as the rest of us. PPL need to and re entitled to know why these powerful people are up to because it might affect our lives at the end of the day.https://theintercept.com/20

    1. Conrad Leonard

      “Should not expect” does not mean “do not have the right to”. There’s an obvious distinction between disclosure of specific private communications that serve the public interest, and wholesale dumping of inboxes. It’s the informational equivalent of carpet bombing “hostile areas”. As for the point about public service – I think that’s a terrible disincentive to be involved at all, the idea that the entirety of your communications are up for grabs simply because you serve your state. What about powerful people in corporate world? The decisions they make affect us as much if not more than politicians’ decisions. The idea that corporate communications should be as transparent as those of government officials would be anathema to most Americans. A weird double-standard.

      1. faresg

        So then who’s to decide what is leaked and what is not? The leaker does not have the moral authority to decide what to leak and what not to leak.Any powerful figure who has lives at stake should not expect to live in privacy the way an average citizen does. Be they corporate or public sector employees.Its important to know who Hillary is as a person, and even if some of the emails don’t point to any particular cases of concern legally, some point to Hillary as a person and highlight certain traits she has that the public have the right to see if they want to decide if they should vote for her or not.

        1. jason wright

          It all goes to motive.

          1. faresg

            Why? What does that have to do with it? If I had the motive of leaking the emails to empower trump or I had the motive to leak the emails to seek personal revenge on Hillary, what difference will that make?

          2. jason wright

            Whomsoever has primary access and leaks has, I assume, a subjective motive for leaking. Leaking is a motive.

          3. faresg

            so?

          4. jason wright

            Moral authority resides in each of us, and laws written by powerful people attempts to limit our authority to enhance their power.

        2. Conrad Leonard

          So then who’s to decide what is leaked and what is not? The leaker does not have the moral authority to decide what to leak and what not to leak.Yes. Exactly my point.

    2. LE

      Exactly. Lessig is a guy with a mouthpiece as well as a prominent position that people listen to and talk about. His behavior is similar to the way that celebrities whine when a tabloid runs around and snaps pictures of them and their kids and they want privacy. What even slightly well known people say and do is interesting to normals. What the rest of us is typically not, unless it clears a certain bar in terms of compound circumstances or some important association. [1][1] “Kennedy cousin” test.

  5. bfeld

    It’s becoming clear that the different between the Snowden situation and Wikileaks is there isn’t a credible / thoughtful media filter between the raw data and the reporting to filter this out. I’ve been thinking about this every since I watched Snowden and then Citizen Four in the same evening last month. The WSJ now reporting on “leaked” emails (which are clearly stolen / hacked) is part of the same problem – we are in a cycle of gossip and innuendo vs. substantive news / reporting.

    1. Fernando Gutierrez

      Those two views have merits and demerits:1. Wikileaks and Julian Assange have always defended the massive and unedited release of information. This causes many problems to many people. On a positive note, anyone can analyze the full data dump and make his own conclusions. The releaser doesn’t take positions, other than the fact of the release.2. Others, like Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, defend that information should be edited to minimize unnecessary damage. That sounds great, but then the editor becomes judge gains a lot of power. In their case there was a double filter. According to Greenwald, the information passed by Snowden was already carefully chosen. Then Greewald, and the other journalists, worked with that and further edited. Even with credible editors, there will always be doubts about the process.

      1. fredwilson

        In theory that is the role the media should be playing

        1. jason wright

          Media filters for its own profits and not public interest or good. In some countries media regulation mitigates against this, with ownership rules, % market share hard ceilings, and diversity baked in to the ecosystem.

        2. Fernando Gutierrez

          Yes, but media is in a permanent change process and can’t always fulfill that role. Today’s media doesn’t look anything like the media 10 years ago. And in 10 years I’m sure it will be something completely different. The Fourth Estate/Power” is a really nice concept, but it doesn’t always work right.To be clear, I very much prefer Snowden’s approach to Wikileak’s, but it is way more difficult to do right because fewer and fewer editors have the credibility and guts to perform that role. In ‘No Place to Hide’ Greenwald goes over what they did and it is amazing that they managed to really pull it through. (btw, great book!).

          1. Joe Cardillo

            Media as filter I think will always be a useful tool – it just looks different than it used to. Of course there’s a major shift in power (largely, the replacement of editors and editorial judgement with algorithims and design) and now even giant institutions like NYT are critiqued constantly online (which isn’t a bad thing, even if it is frustrating for them).But, I don’t see signal v. noise problem going away anytime soon. Someone will always have to parse that, and when it comes to leaks and big data drops that can be done by one institution, crowdsourced (a more organic process than it used to be), or via machine learning etc.

          2. Sam

            “The role the media should be playing” per Fred. But the media is really just a reflection of us. We click. And the media adapts to the new inputs.

          3. Joe Cardillo

            I don’t agree – having worked in journalism I can tell you that people click on things for all sorts of reasons. Including that they will click on some link bait thing 9 times because they hate it or simply want to see a train wreck, and the 10th time they’ll decide to never come back.Of course I don’t have some magic solution to fix that (though there are plenty of people experimenting), but replacing a good, smart, and fairly compensated editorial layer with “we’ll do more of whatever people click on” is not a viable option. It’s a great way to build a pyramid of clicks that will collapse.

          4. Sam

            I actually agree with you and Fred on what the world *should* look like, but market forces (clicks) have hollowed out the editorial layer. Neither one of us apparently have a solution for how we put the genie back in the bottle. And in the absence of that solution, I think we need to recognize as consumers of media that our clicks do have editorial power. The finger pointing shouldn’t be at “the media” or its editors. The finger pointing should be at ourselves.We click on a Kardashian article, and we become the reason the next one will be written. Why has Trump gotten away with so many outright lies this election cycle? We click more on the lies than we do on their subsequent debunking, and the media machine optimizes itself for the next round.I don’t like it at all, but I see that reality and my role in it very clearly.

          5. Joe Cardillo

            I see what you’re saying – yeah, absolutely that is a fair assessment. I’ve wracked my brains for an answer to that one. One thing it may mean is that journalism won’t survive as a for-profit, or at least not as a high-margin for-profit industry.The other thing that contributes to what you’re describing, is that both the architecture and design for the web and mobile devices is still only a fraction of what the real world offers in terms of experience.I bang on that drum a lot, but one reason we get such binary views of politics online, for example, is that we don’t have a deeply creative infrastructure online. Click? Yes/no isn’t much related to the way we experience things in the actual world. That’s why I’m cautious about looking at something like Facebook as a representation of how we actually interact. It’s getting there but we’ve still got a long way to go.

        3. Twain Twain

          Let’s play Devil’s Advocate. A prototype of a chat client built on top of Ethereum was demoed by Gavin Wood last Nov.With more work, it could become the “Twitter of Blockchain”.Twitter positioning itself as a mediaco is clear, as is their stated “We are the free speech wing of the free speech party” which has won fans but also caused issues wrt trolls and extremists posting hateful content.In the Blockchain scenario, would it be right to assume that there is no handful of vested interest parties (Editorial team) controlling the message but everyone would own the content and the distribution channels?So, if the crowd decides they can delete or bury hateful content, they could do it on the “Twitter of Blockchain” rather than submit a complaint to some Abuse Reporting Council and then wait months and years of inaction?AND the crowd gets a micropayment for each bit of useful content they post as well as a micropayment for each bit of hateful content they delete.—-@fernandogutierrez:disqus — Maybe in 10 years that’s what the media model will be.

          1. Fernando Gutierrez

            I’m not sure I love an scenario in which the crowd decides what is acceptable. It usually leads to group thinking and punishes minorities. But you are right, that could be how it looks in 10 years… I’m not sure how the micropayments would work, but I’m sure someone will figure it out (I don’t believe Steem has really made it work yet). Btw, another Twitter of the blockchain worth a test: http://twister.net.co/

          2. Twain Twain

            Thanks for sharing link!So does this mean we’re stuck between two hard choices:(1.) Monopoly / cartel control by media owners who completely influence and are the “final arbiters” of what their editorial teams report on.(2.) Distributed “wisdom of the crowds” that leads to group think (fat part of the bell curve) that ignores outlier / fringe / long tail views?

          3. Adam Sher

            Doesn’t Reddit operate similarly with its karma system (and karma has some cash conversion component)?

          4. Twain Twain

            Yes, and also interesting was Reddit considering giving away 10% of its equity to users after it raised $50 million.* http://www.theverge.com/201…There have been recent threads about user ownership of the Blockchain so I’m wondering where and how this convergence would work — whereby content generators are also equity owners in the Blockchain.

        4. Salt Shaker

          Journalistic standards, ethics and integrity have evolved, unfortunately not necessarily in the right direction. Nothing is sacred nowadays, certainly not privacy. The media has become a horrible filter.

          1. pointsnfigures

            If you think of the media as operatives not reporters, you are closer to the truth.

          2. Salt Shaker

            Yes, but there’s a fundamental diff between investigative journalism and general reporting, where the latter has become skewed towards sensationalism and infotainment w/ bias (and sometimes malice, too).

          3. pointsnfigures

            We agree. The lion’s share of the media is an operative for one political party. The minority of media, for the other. It’s how it’s reported, and what’s not reported as well.

          4. LE

            And some day, they will all be as bad as the Rolling Stone rape story case at UVA.

          5. Salt Shaker

            Investigative journalism is both time consuming and expensive. With so much competition today’s media orgs perhaps are less wed to stringent due diligence policies than years ago, perhaps due to financial pressures, a desire to stake claim (ego driven) and/or the fear of being scooped by a competitor. The RS piece is a travesty. Watergate was researched methodically and ad nausea by Woodward and Bernstein. The standards for publication that applied back then no longer exist. It’s easy to couche a POV w/ “according to informed sources” or suggest an outcome from a mere comment, sometimes innocuous, sometimes not, rather than rely on definitive facts and corroborated sources. Fundamental ethics in journalism are continually breached today.

          6. LE

            Not to mention that the media is driven by “P&A” profits and awards They talk about things that in the end get them a) profits b) Pulitzer prizes.

        5. LE

          You say that as if there is some certification and credentialing of “the media”. Especially in this day and age that is not the case.There is no check and balance on the media. Why not let the media decide all of our important issues? Who needs law, courts, the supreme court and so on? We can just leave it up to “the media” to decide what is right and what should be done. It’s bad enough as it is now with bias and how they shape public opinion to their liking.

        6. The Editorial Board

          With the media far from on the same page, the Kremlin knows that a decent number of outlets will publish whatever they send them.

        7. LE

          And besides all media is not equal. Some are more equal than others. Most take the lead from a higher prominent source.For example the NYT essentially controlled by one family. I mean even Harvard has competition. Even politicians need to get elected. Even Supreme court goes through a vetting process, even if partisan. But yet society has decided to trust this one paper essentially which has no oversight at all. And each year they get voted in again.The New York Times brought a new generation of the Sulzberger family into its top ranks on Wednesday, naming Arthur Gregg Sulzberger the deputy publisher. The appointment positions him to succeed his father as publisher and chairman of The New York Times Company. Should he ascend to that position, Mr. Sulzberger, 36, would represent the fifth generation of his family to serve as publisher since the family patriarch, Adolph S. Ochs, purchased the newspaper in 1896.Perhaps the second best purchase in Manhattan, after the island was sold by the Indians?The New York Times Company, with a market capitalization of less than $2 billion, is not a large public company, and the Sulzberger family controls its voting shares. Still, as one of the few national newspapers, it has outsize importance in shaping public discourse.They are so fucking proud of themselves. I know people who write for the NY Times. They are so high with the title and being attached to it they will live in poverty thinking that people outside the media business even give a shit that they work there.http://www.nytimes.com/2016

          1. jason wright

            Speaking of which…the NYT is today making the case via the ADL’s analysis of Twitter data that Trump attracts the anti-Semitic supporter. I sense the ADL and the NYT have an agenda, but are ‘reaching’ further than they can grasp here.

          2. LE

            Honestly who cares? I don’t. His daughter converted to Judaism, his son is Orthodox Jewish, he deals on a regular basis with Jewish people and actually admires them. I wouldn’t care at all what he even says in private about jews. Not one bit. Even if he didn’t have the connections that I just mentioned.Here is the surprising thing. Someone can make and use inappropriate words but still act in the best interest of people that they malign. I don’t get this idea where just because someone makes off color remarks they are going to automatically act in a way that disadvantages particular people. That is way to simplistic.And as far as who supports you that makes next to zero difference in my mind. Who can control why and for what reason someone supports you? My guess is plenty of bad people support Hillary, we just don’t hear about them. Stupid argument on a news organizations part, meant to influence and of course sell advertising.

          3. jason wright

            Certainly pleaading to an economic constituency. Yet another tell that we passed peak media way back there somewhere on the right.

        8. Pete Griffiths

          The media in the US are given enormous power. I for one don’t think they have exercised it wisely in far too many critical cases over the last 15 years (say).2 key problems:a) media as a business…so all news is good news if it gets eyeballs and that can lead to the exacerbation of situations to continue feeding stories that in themselves often don’t warrant it. Coverage continues fermenting discord long after any ‘news’ content has been exhausted.b) spurious symmetryPerhaps best illustrated by example. Two public figures on TV debate the composition of the moon. The one states the moon is made of rock and that we have returned from the moon with the rock to prove it. The other that the moon is made of green cheese and that this came to him in a dream sent by god and that there never were any moon landings, they were a hoax perpetrated by a corrupt government. The problem is that all too often this is reported along the lines of “Debate breaks out over composition of Moon’ with an even handed elaboration of the positions of the two protagonists. This is encouraged by a professional distinction between reporting and editorializing. Reporting is supposed to be the facts. Editorializing permits opinions. But this style of ‘even handed’ reporting treats both sides as equal. My preferred headline in cases of this kind would be ‘Nutcase thinks Moon is made of green cheese.””Even handed” reporting provides a spurious symmetry between the two positions and lends legitimacy to nonsense. It does benefit media as a business however because rather than cut short nonsense so we an all move on, it permits continued ‘discussion’ and ‘controversy’ where there should be none.

          1. jason wright

            We should abandon the mass media on mass.

          2. Pete Griffiths

            🙂

      2. SubstrateUndertow

        Julian Assange has outed himself thus undermining his credibility.He has in fact edited his”pouring sunshine on public data always improves the public interest”to read”pouring sunshine on public data only improves the public interest when that sunshined data facilitates Julian Assange’s ideological bias” other wise he would not be targeting only Democrat data for the sunshine release treatment !#iconoclastic_ hypocrisy

    2. Alex Murphy

      RE: “we are in a cycle of gossip and innuendo vs. substantive news / reporting.”Spot on. Add to that this weird situation where people from the fringe ask a question, no matter how outlandish, and the end result of asking the question raises speculation which quickly converts to a belief in some form of wrongdoing without any basis in reality.I can’t wait for November 9th.

    3. sigmaalgebra

      >… there isn’t a credible / thoughtful media filter between the raw data and the reportingwe are in a cycle of gossip and innuendo vs. substantive news / reporting. Yup. Now we have far too little of such good “reporting”.For some of the “trivia” we get instead, recently from the NYT, there isMegan Twohey, Michael Barbaro, “Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Inappropriately”, NYT, OCT. 12, 2016athttp://www.nytimes.com/2016…with the story of Jessica Leeds and some other women.Leeds says that she was on an airline flight, in first class, sitting next to Donald Trump and that Trump raised the arm rest between the two of them and touched her inappropriately.Then there is three days later a debunking of the Leeds claims in the NYT piece inJim Hoft, “HERE IT IS=> List of Debunked Groper Allegations by Corrupt Media Against Donald Trump,” Gateway Pundit, Oct 15th, 2016 9:41 am.athttp://www.thegatewaypundit…Hoft discovered some details about the plane and its first class seats. The details show several errors in the Leeds claims. In particular, on that plane, in first class, the arm rests did not move.So, it appears that the NYT published junk. So, maybe Hoft did some good reporting or at least good investigating.They NYT just threw away their credibility.Since I don’t need the NYT for kitty litter, wrapping dead fish heads, or starting fires in the fireplace, I no long need the NYT at all.More such examples from the NYT and nearly all of the mainstream media (MSM) are readily available via Google searches.Net, for now, nearly all of MSM journalism has no credibility and, for me, is gone.Apparently journalism died when the Internet was used to take too much of the revenue of old journalism.Now on the Internet there are some alternatives that try to do reporting and that maybe have some credibility.Really, on the Internet, can get actual written statements and/or video clips from politicians, subject matter specialists, etc. and, thereby, get the basic, quite credible information on what was written/said and dis-intermediate the MSM.Mostly we no longer need journalists to tell us their version of what the politicians, experts, etc. actually wrote/said.When looking at the MSM, for many months now, my rule is nearly always to toss in the trash anything from a journalist except URL links to the actual, primary sources. Then I follow the links and commonly keep copies as for the two links above.With me, with just some exceptions, a journalist and a dime won’t cover a 10 cent cup of coffee.Yes, the fall of the MSM stands to create some new business opportunities.

    4. Pete Griffiths

      “substantive news / reporting.”I think I remember that…

    5. Donna Brewington White

      Journalism RIP(And yes I know there are still true journalists out there.)

  6. Hu Man

    I’m worried about extortion becoming the next big business model. All you need is to threaten to publish browsing data associated with home addresses, whether done by hackers or the ISP’s themselves. $20 / month to keep my browsing history private. Gladly.

    1. Alex Murphy

      Isn’t that basically what is happening with reputation defense companies? The distance between those doing the extorting and those protecting others from it is not very far.

    2. Adam Sher

      Extortion has always been a profitable business. Now it is easier to scale that as a business model.

      1. Hu Man

        Score one for the FCC!https://www.yahoo.com/tech/…—Although the new rules “don’t impose an outright ban on harmful pay-for-privacy schemes,” they “allow the agency to keep a watchful eye on plans that would force users to make an impossible choice — whether to surrender all of their privacy just to get an Internet connection,” Free Press Policy Counsel Gaurav Laroia said.—Of course, Comcast doesn’t like having potential earnings snuffed:—This “could have been a moment for the Commission to come together and make sensible bipartisan policy,” Comcast Senior EVP David Cohen said. “But once again a divided FCC chose a path that unfortunately will likely do more harm than good for consumers, competition and innovation in the all-important Internet ecosystem.”—Internet consumers have much more of a choice when it comes to avoiding Google’s, Facebook’s, or Netflix’s product(s) than Comcast or whoever the DSL provider is for an Internet connection.

        1. Adam Sher

          Thanks for the update!

  7. Rob Underwood

    A couple things…1. I support the HRC campaign and its staff. But for the life of me I don’t understand why they are not using something like PGP to encrypt their emails. It just seems so sloppy. How much of this could have been avoided if these emails were encrypted?2. It’s obvious, as I believe our host has said before, that one must assume that every email you write could and will become public. Every. single. one. always. Unless folks like Neera were ok with this stuff going public, why ever write stuff like this in email in the first place? At some point I’d expect people – especially really fucking smart people like Neera – to adjust and realize that email is not a safe place, ever, through which to say things like this.3. I think a re-read of Dave Egger’s The Circle is going to be required re-reading after this election.4. I know Albert is making the case that privacy in “World After Capital” is something we’re going to have to sacrifice in our shift to a world “in which the only scarcity is our attention.” But boy is that going to be a painful ride. Folks have not lived their last 30, 40, 50 years assuming every detail of their life, every single thing they’ve every said, is going to be made public. Still fewer smart, talented people are going to want to go into public life.5. The whole outrage machine about stuff like this seems very Puritanical. Good on Larry for taking it in stride. People talk like Neera did and say stuff like Neera did. They should never, ever say it in email (unless they want the whole world to read it), but folks need to get over themselves with their faux outrage. Glass houses…6. The whole faux outrage online machine is one of several issues that could be at least in part addressed with doing away with anonymity on social media. If you can’t put your name behind your conspiracy theory that your re-tweeting, than many you’ll think twice about it. No, sorry “bongsinabasement69”, you are not Deep Throat when you RT Drudge Report with the tweet “Check your privilege sheeple!” There are models (Park Slope Parents is one, a local parent Yahoo group) to allow people do post anonymously at the moderator’s discretion about sensitive issues. But if Albert’s right that we’re all going to lose our privacy, than the internet anonymity of trolls and conspiracy theorists has to go too.7. I’m thinking even more today about a good friend of mine – a loving dad and husband and caring friend – who said some incredibly stupid, inexcusable things thinking he was in private and had his career ruined for it. I wonder if we’re not all going to start living life in constant fear that everything we say or do anytime could become public. Again, I feel like a re-read of The Circle is in order.

    1. fredwilson

      nice list. rules to live by

    2. Matt Zagaja

      PGP requires cooperation on both the side of the sender and recipient. Campaigns deal with too many external parties for it to be anywhere near feasible to receive and send only PGP encrypted e-mails. And honestly if a hacker owns your e-mail account they probably aren’t that far away from owning your PGP key as well (my understanding is many of these are not exploits of Google but rather they end up phishing and exploiting user machines and obtaining credentials).

      1. Rob Underwood

        Yes but many of these Podesta emails, such as the one with Neera, were internal.

        1. Matt Zagaja

          That may be true, but most users, and many sophisticated users cannot remember their password to iTunes and login without significant effort, the idea that non-techies are going to use PGP is absurd. And it certainly does not negate the likelihood that the PGP key is also breached when the computers were breached anyways.

          1. Rob Underwood

            A couple things:1. I actually don’t think using PGP is that hard, and if the alternative is what happened to Neera, people might find the incentive to learn how to use it. Moreover, Neera is an incredibly intelligent person. I am very confident she could hack the learning curve of PGP. Looks like they were both using gmail — using PGP with gmail is not hard.2. I took care to write “something like PGP” not “use PGP”. Along those lines, I do agree that if privacy is something we value/need we need to make it easier. It’s interesting to think about the level of encryption applied to iMessage vs. email. Had Neera and Podesta had this exactly same convo on iMessage, it’s likely it would never have been found (or decrypted). Email needs the same level of implicit privacy that iMessage has.3. People need to stop putting their internal monologue (e.g., “I’d like to kick the shit out him on Twitter …but I know that is dumb”) in email unless they are ok with everyone in the world reading it. Everyone needs to assume that every email they write, have written, or will ever write, will be available to everyone in the world.

    3. Hu Man

      Let’s not walk willingly down the path of a world without privacy. Let’s incorporate privacy, somehow, into our technological tools.

    4. pointsnfigures

      Yes on point 7. Emphatic yes.

    5. sigmaalgebra

      Anonymity can be desirable and even valuable. Nearly everyone is born with a lot of anonymity and can keep a lot of it unless they willingly give it away. So, keep the anonymity unless have a good reason to give away some of it,

      1. Rob Underwood

        As I said in my comment there are models such as the one I’ve seen om the Park Slope Parents group where people can post anonymously when something is sensitive. The moderator is empowered to approve (or deny) requests to post anonymously. That’s not a perfect model but it’s better I think than what we have.And I don’t think posting anonymously when something is very sensitive or the post in of itself could endanger the poster is the same as hiding behind a screen name (e.g., “bongsinabasement69”) on social media. Discussions are asymmetric when one person is fully identified – where it’s conceivably possible and probably quite easy to figure out where the person lives and work – and another person is hiding behind a screen name. If you want to spend your day trolling and RT-ing bullshit, fine, but put your real name behind it and be accountable for spreading crap.The asymmetry is also a larger problem with this move away from privacy. I would assert that we now know much much much much more about Hillary Clinton – her past work, her personal life, her husband and family, her taxes, her health, and her campaign – than we do Donald Trump. Some of that was voluntary; some wasn’t. But through asymmetry we’ve effectively weaponized disclosures. I don’t have a solution, but this current model seems untenable.

        1. sigmaalgebra

          You are deeper into this issue than I am.Disqus permits selecting any user ID. So I selected one. So, first-cut, roughly, I’m anonymous at Disqus.But I post a lot at Disqus so in a sense have an identity.But with just my user name, people get to throw words, facts, arguments, lies, insults, etc. at my posts but not so easily rocks at my house or car.

          1. Rob Underwood

            Hence the asymmetry. If someone did in fact want to throw rocks at my or, say, Fred’s, house they could. Fred is a public person, but not a public official. I on the other hand am not a public/well-known person but am, technically, a (very very very low level) public official. So maybe that’s why we’ve chosen to not be anonymous. But the asymmetry in regards to discussion and dialogue seems a problem. It’s like having a forum in person in which have the people are behind a black screen with their voices distorted. It’s corrosive to discourse. People use anonymity to try on and play with ideas to see if they fit – that’s what hanging out with your family and friends in private is for.

          2. sigmaalgebra

            I don’t “try out” ideas. Maybe I practice writing and “test” that.

  8. BillMcNeely

    It’s becoming clear even back channel confirmation of classified information is off the table GEN Cartwright was convicted yesterday of lying to the FBI about leaks http://www.military.com/dai

  9. andyswan

    I’ll avoid the topic of whether or not these leaks are fair game. Having the “leaker” decide what is important and what isn’t doesn’t sit well with me.I will say this blog post is you handling the situation very well.

    1. Mark Essel

      Right on, leak shouldn’t filter (isn’t that the point of a leak, transparency)

    2. jason wright

      Do you abdicate to a ‘higher’ authority to take away the burden of deciding what is important?

  10. James Ferguson @kWIQly

    The “I would not be embarassed[1] to say the same to their face publicly”rule seems to be pretty reliable acid test to me.[Disclosure : many many personal fails in the past, working on it , – but would never stand for office 🙂 ][1] embarassed is different from self-interest – if negotiating you may not wish to disclose views or positions x,y,z – but the fact of views or positions x,y,z should not be something you would not want others to think of you.If they are you are ashamed of yourself !

  11. sigmaalgebra

    > Let’s try to keep the leaks to stuff that matters and avoid the petty stuff please.Yup. Same for stuff that wasn’t “leaked”.

  12. pointsnfigures

    I think the leaks built a window into the true soul of Hillary and her team. It’s not pretty. I recall Democrats liking Wikileaks before, and I suspect if this was 2003-04, they’d be happy to read the Bush team emails. Fred wrote a long time ago that anything you put in email should be assumed to be a part of the public domain. He is correct, and that’s sad for a lot of reasons.What scared the crap out of me is the deliberateness of Democratic operatives paying mentally ill people to show up at Trump rallies and cause violence. They also described how they engage in voter fraud. That’s wrong. That’s anarchy and it’s a place I don’t want to go in America.Yesterday, Supreme Court justice Sotomayer said she wanted to hit Scalia with a baseball bat. Personally, I can understand this sort of discourse in private. If managed correctly, it could even be healthy. Apparently, SCOTUS justices have pretty intense debates all the time-and that’s awesome. They should. But, it seemed to me that people like Ginsburg and Scalia were always tolerant and respectful.America needs to rediscover competition. Get rid of gerrymandering and voter fraud (we have tons where I live in Chicago). That causes people to think the system is rigged. Let’s end the revolving door of govt-where serving in govt leads to incredible personal economic opportunities simply because of access. Let’s fight it out in the court of public opinion.If you are confident in your opinion, you ought to be able to persuade others it’s the right one.

    1. Salt Shaker

      I thought Trump’s plan on ethics reform has merit. He’s not wrong on many fronts but he has an inability to package his thoughts and ideas in ways that aren’t divisive and prone to hyperbole. He fails to understand diplomacy matters in basic communication. He’s a PG with many assists but too many TO’s. A bad ratio gets you benched.

      1. pointsnfigures

        The method of communication is certainly wrong!! I like term limits. I like small government and ending crony capitalism. I like flat taxes and redoing corporate tax policy. I disagree with him on trade, and disagree in more than one thing on immigration. Yes, we need to make sure terrorists don’t come here-and we need to stop illegal immigrants from crossing borders. But, we need immigrants. I do like his willingness to fight back-but wish he would calibrate it. When Candy Crowley of CNN was President Obama’s errand boy in the 2012 second debate, he needed to show that sort of fight and grit. He didn’t and lost. If he would have, he would have won. He clearly was correct about Russia, and terror. Obama was wrong.

        1. JLM

          .You do not correctly articulate Trump’s position on immigration.He is opposed to ILLEGAL immigration but he is in favor of LEGAL immigration with a backhand to the H-1B abuses.As it turns out, that is the current freakin’ law of the United States.He is in favor of enforcing that law — an incredibly radical position, indeed.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    2. LE

      Yesterday, Supreme Court justice Sotomayer said she wanted to hit Scalia with a baseball bat.Shows her low class upbringing. I wasn’t raised “high class” but that is not something that goes with my thinking. At all. In any way. Words, not bullying and violence to achieve an objective. Hard to understand a scotus getting so frustrated (like some ordinary everday joe who drinks beer and watches the game and has no other way to express themselves).

    3. PhilipSugar

      Hate of Trump does not equal love of Hillary. They both are bad I’ll leave it to people to decide who is worse.You and I are on the same page. “serving in got leads to incredible personal economic opportunities because of access.

      1. pointsnfigures

        yes, and used the power of her office, and the vehicle of charity as a cash machine to increase power and influence.

        1. PhilipSugar

          Here is what bothers me about this election the most. Any discussion of the heinous behavior of a candidate can only be countered with yeah but look what the other one did. Sad. Deeply saddening. If that is the best that the two parties can do we need another.Last night I had to turn the TV off. The exchange where Hilary blamed Putin on releasing her emails, and Trump couldn’t stay on message just typified the debates.Did Putin write those emails that you say are so bad they could affect the election? Mmmmmm. NODo you know who are how those emails were hacked??? Mmmmm. NO or else they wouldn’t have gotten hacked.Might there be much worse emails that you deleted from your illegal server??? Mmmmm YESNow if somebody reads this that is a HRC supporter they will immediately retort Donald is a sexual assaulter/abuser.To which I say yes, and I cannot vote for him. But what has that to do with the points we were making?I’ll add he also can’t stay on point for 30 seconds which also precludes him from office.

  13. Lawrence Brass

    Amazes me how people still think anything flowing through the internet is private.

    1. jason wright

      Me also.

  14. jason wright

    Perhaps blocktech can be the 3 in future 3 factor authentication for email and everything else.

  15. William Mougayar

    There is nothing to disagree with this post and Lessig’s. Of course, this has gone over-board.

  16. Salt Shaker

    Who becomes the arbiter of what truly is in the public’s interest? It’s easy to rationalize that Snowden was doing good, or that the end justified the means, but I have a fundamental prob when info is sourced to the public via illicit means or behavior, whether it’s Snowden or Wikileaks. Privacy matters on all fronts, and, yes, the NSA breached ours, but that doesn’t absolve Snowden of his crime (certainly not the way he did it). I still believe Snowden had an opportunity to handle this differently w/ perhaps a better outcome for him. He’s currently boxed in and has become a propaganda tool. He will never be FULLY exonerated, even while acknowledging the public service he provided, and perhaps that’s rightfully so.

    1. pointsnfigures

      A slightly different take on this, with a different view on Greenwald’s opinion. http://www.ronpaullibertyre

    2. LE

      Big thumbs up on this one.In this case Lessig is playing the role of “a conservative is a liberal that hasn’t been mugged…yet”.In the example presented he doesn’t think what Snowden did is a big deal (even with the obvious danger and national security implications, as well as obviously the slippery slope of encouraging future law breaking behavior) [1] yet, get this, he thinks what happened to him personally (or Tanden) shouldn’t have happened. Why? Because it impacts him directly in some way.Meanwhile from his secure ivory tower tenured position (at a young age) he ignores the impact of the Snowden leaks (a bit worse?) on anyone else that was and will be impacted. What the f. He has a job that allows him to “fly to Iceland” at a moments notice and not worry about what the boss says later.[1] I could go on and on about this. Add “with a judge and jury of one worse than a star chamber (great Michael Douglas film..)”

    3. Pete Griffiths

      I don’t know if he had an effective alternative. Clearly he didn’t think so.I strongly suspect that he knew perfectly well his life would be destroyed forever.

    4. Prokofy

      Snowden is not “boxed in” as he was never “stranged”. Finally the NYT corrected the long-standing disinformation that Snowden was “forced” to go to Moscow because the State Department pulled his passport “in midair.” It is now established absolutely (as it always was but there was a propaganda storm around it) that his passport was pulled BEFORE he left and that WikiLeaks in fact advised him to go to Moscow, which he chose to do. Neither Assange or Snowden are elected or are even in NGOs that present activity and financial reports to the public and the government, so their methods indeed are wrong and only lead to anarchy and violence. Snowden is an ardent crypto ideologue and isn’t going to take opportunities to “be moderate” anyway, and has happily turned over documents unrelated to domestic privacy that concern security of the US and allies.

  17. someone

    let me bet $10,000 that LL wouldn’t’ve written a post like this if it were the Trump campaign’s emails that were leaked by WL. and there would have been a different post on avc this morning.

    1. Rob Underwood

      And I could bet that if had been the DNC office bombed in North Carolina that the Republican party and their leader and standard bearer, Donald Trump, might have responded with dog whistles of “Well done” and “More please” rather than raise money to have it rebuilt (http://www.usatoday.com/sto….It’s easy to speculate on things that did not happen.

      1. someone

        I would take that bet for $100,000. However, you would probably not bet $100 against me that if this had happened to the DNC office there would have been 10x the coverage by CNN and the major networks.

      2. Dennis Mykytyn

        There is a lot of violent rhetoric on both sides, but so far only the Democrats have bombed the Republicans.

        1. Rob Underwood

          Has there been any evidence presented the Democrats (i.e., the DNC, the HRC campaign, and/or the NC state democratic party) were behind this?And are you familiar with the Reichstag fire?

          1. pointsnfigures

            Did you see what Robert Creamer was doing? Did you see the rocks that were thrown through the Danville Indiana Republican office? Are you okay with it because the means support the end? Or are you okay with it because you think that Trump is Hitler reincarnated and must be stopped at any cost? Bear in mind, Bush, McCain, and Romney were all painted as racists and equivalent to Hitler.

          2. LE

            And that story was “below the fold”. NBC News broadcast (with Lester Holt at night) ran it about 10 minutes in after doing the typical lead with things that Trump was doing or saying. No news crew was scrambled to interview people, take video or what not. Wasn’t deemed important. As such the public will not view it as important.My wife, (who started out as an Obama supporter when I met her circa 2008) slowly is seeing the two sides to this picture. She would not normally have been alert enough to spot the soft touch on the incident. Mention it, but don’t make a big deal of it. That way the people won’t think it’s a big deal either.

          3. Dennis Mykytyn

            OK, sure, Trump followers must have done the bombing. We all know there has been zero violent rhetoric from the Democratic side. And the hacked emails showing the DNC hiring agitators to try to start violence at Trump rallies were Russian forgeries. Thanks for clearing that up.Hillary has trained you well. Deny anything you did by saying “there is no evidence”. When eventually there is evidence, say it is “old news”.

          4. Rob Underwood

            If I had to “bet” I’d bet someone who is left leaning did it, though probably not anyone affiliated with Democratic party.My point is that it’s easy to speculate about what might have happened (but did not) just as it’s easy to speculate about who did something and what their motives are before the evidence is presented (in this case evidence from the FBI, who is investigating the bombing).You’ve also inferred a lot that I never said/wrote as well.In terms of what’s been said and communicated by the Hillary campaign and the DNC it would certainly be interesting to see what’s in the RNC and Trump campaign email. Alas, like Trump’s tax returns, we can only speculate. Back to a theme of the original post, disclosures, privacy, transparency, and asymmetry of information (e.g., disclosures themselves) are going to be topic we’re going to have to think through in our politics as we move forward. I think Dave Egger’s book “The Circle” presaged a lot of what’s now happening (see http://avc.com/2014/01/a-co… )

          5. Dennis Mykytyn

            Occam’s Razor applies. Could it have been anyone? Sure. But what is the simplest answer? Hillary voters who have been worked up by the anti-Trump hysteria. I agree they were probably not DNC employees, but they most likely were “affiliated”, voting Democratic.Again, show me where are the DNC offices that have been firebombed by the rabid crazy violent Trump supporters?

          6. Rob Underwood

            Like I said, I agree it was probably someone left leaning. Probably.Occam’s Razor would also suggest that Donald Trump is guilty of sexual assault – that’s it not some huge conspiracy of women organized by the Hillary campaign.

          7. Dennis Mykytyn

            Donald Trump is certainly an old-school womanizer. Not sure what he is “guilty” of though in the legal sense. Attempting to kiss someone on the lips while saying hello is now a crime? Talking dirty to other guys? Walking into a dressing room? (aren’t there female reporters in men’s football locker rooms now?)Bill Clinton had actual sex with numerous women (some of the women called it rape). If Trump is guilty of sexual assault, would you agree Clinton would be also? If you do, again, I’d be more willing to go along with your criticism of Trump. Otherwise you are just arguing for your side.I haven’t been following all the claims, any Republican women making sexual harassment accusations? I’d be more likely to agree with you if that was the case.Trump is a blowhard sleazebag, but that is not necessarily a crime in our legal system.

          8. cavepainting

            Several of the women are registered Republican voters or independent including Summer the Apprentice contestant, and the girl who alleged inappropriate advance at a night club.And what he did does fall in the category of sexual assault misdemeanor and punishable up to 1 year in prison.As some one said, Occam’s razor suggests that he used his position of power and influence to take advantage. Whether that matters at the ballot box is an open question. I believe it will but we shall see.

          9. LE

            If Trump were like Clinton here is what he would have done when those women came out of the woodwork against him.a) Find other women to make false claims, maybe 5 of them and fabricate false claims (yes I did say that).b) Have the media report those claimsc) Debunk those claims, throwing doubt on the others who have not been vetted.Would not be hard to do at all. You simply have to convince the conspirators that the democrats are behind this.

      3. JLM

        .Not to get too real on y’all — the real estate in question was a rented facility in a shopping center and was fully covered by insurance.As happens in such situations, the tenant is not obligated to pay rent while the facility is being rebuilt and the owner cannot use the insurance proceeds for anything other than rebuilding it.The owner has “lost rents” insurance (he gets paid his rent even though the tenant is not in the space, this is usually six months rent as a max) and will have to reimburse the tenant for any incremental costs during the period of rebuilding (also covered by the same insurance policy). Incremental costs would include renting temporary quarters and furniture.This is a perfectly standard insurance policy and if there is a loan on the property, the bank would have required, perhaps, even a bit more.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  18. kirklove

    Scratching my head a bit on this… cause I feel like you’ve advocated for transparency a ton. This feels like playing both sides when it suits you. It’s not a direct apples to apples and I know you don’t care all that much, though you do.Transparency is great (I agree), until one is on the receiving end (also agree).

    1. LE

      As I’ve said this is a classic case of someone not having any particular issue with a practice since they are focusing on what appears to be only the upside and not recognizing the downside because either a) The impact is far off or not obvious or b) It doesn’t impact them personally or they don’t think it does.This feels like playing both sides when it suits you.The typical reply to this by someone taking Fred’s position is “no it’s different here in this situation here’s the reason..”. This is essentially what I am calling Lessig out on. Take a super significant situation (Snowden breach) and say it’s justified. Take a situation with practically no consequences (except to him personally) and say “shouldn’t have been done…not the same”.

      1. kirklove

        Seems to read that way, though we lack details (ahh pesky details). Also does seem Lessig’s ego certainly embraces any attention that involves him.

      2. MickSavant

        not a lot of complaints about the Trump video leak

    2. JamesHRH

      I tend to agree.Plus, a classic mistake to highlight the slight. I had no idea there was Clinton / Wilson Wikileaks content but it is hard to resist the urge to Google up that one.And, of course, a quick Googling shows that Fred offered to help and they quickly turned it into a circle of cynical political ‘how can we use him to help ourselves’.Is there a walk of life where people think of everyone and everything as a tool for their interests more than politics?

    3. rick gregory

      Viewing this as all or nothing is naive. Wikileaks tends to simply publish everything without regard to whether it matters or not. The Snowden leaks were combed through by experienced journalists (as were the Panama leaks) and what we got was the more valuable stuff, not the dross about how someone thinks another person sucks.If you’re advocating for full transparency… can we see yours? All of it? Including the purchases on your credit cards, the emails, etc?

      1. kirklove

        Where did I say full transparency? And all things are subjective. Who’s making the rules as to what is good and what is bad transparency?

      2. Rob Underwood

        Not sure Kirk advocated for full transparency, but generally I think asking this question (“can we see yours?”) is a good one to ask of those who do advocate for more/full transparency and/or a decline in privacy.Compare this article, https://www.theguardian.com…, with this one http://time.com/money/43467… … you almost can’t help but ask “Which is it?” (Another question implicit here with Zuckerberg – what is the line between privacy and security?)Again, as I’ve said in other comments, I feel like a reread of the “The Circle” is in order. We really need to think hard if we as a society want “full transparency”, especially if that means privacy is going to be a luxury and privilege of the elites.

  19. Adam Sher

    Why are there wikileaks, anonymous, et. al? One reason is that whistleblowing is too costly for the whistleblower (small groups or individuals in the US). Whistleblowing has the advantage of exposing malbehavior at a local maximum (e.g. a Wells Fargo employee going to the SEC). Harry Markopolos’s “No One Would Listen,” is a first hand account of the failures of the whistleblowing system. Many first hand accounts written by female workers in Silicon Valley about them being forced out of their companies (read on Medium) highlight the significant personal and financial risks to whistleblowers. If these whistleblowing efforts were successful, then even if personal conversations were revealed, the extent would be limited to a local maximum (a company’s HR, or regional network). The failure of the whistleblower system leaves a vacuum for wikileaks et. al. to fill. Wikileaks lacks the personal experience or first hand knowledge to appropriately assess whether some information should be shared or not. By contrast those individuals who would be whistleblowers are in the best position to make the appropriate judgement call about what information to share. This knowledge is the differentiator between what Snowden did and what wikileaks does.

  20. JLM

    .Edward Snowden compromised — bretrayed — humint (human intelligence) and sigint (signals intelligence) of incredible value. Intel that was routinely creating “actionable intel” on a daily basis.I am not talking just “content.” I am talking means and methods.He claims his beef was with what the NSA was currently doing but failed to followed the agreed upon IG complaint procedure and did not follow similar “whistleblower” protections. He did not work for the NSA (though he did previously) a the time of his treachery.Interestingly enough, when he went to work for the NSA previously, he hacked into their test and stole the answers thereby ensuring he made a good grade on the test.The vast majority of the docs he stole had nothing to do with the NSA — remember he was a sys admin in a subcontracted Booz Allen Hamilton CIA facility in Hawaii. He had nothing to do with intel gathering or analysis. He was a computer guy and not a spy. He did not have the training to even remotely understand the docs he was stealing.He stole documents so highly classified that even the names of the classifications themselves are classified. In many instances, he did not even know what he was stealing as there was no elapsed time between accessing the document and printing (copying) it.There was no focus to what he stole — as he wants the world to believe. He stole random docs whose attraction was their subject lines. This single fact is illuminating as to his “noble” intentions.[The NSA compartmentalizes its info on Levels 1-4. Levels 1-2 are primarily analyzed product and basic info. Levels 3-4 are where means and methods are exposed. The NSA says Snowden was deep into Level 3 but never penetrated Level 4 — who really knows?]People are dead today because of Snowden. The idea that he is a patriot is an absurd notion.Let me give you a small example — the US is way ahead of the rest of the world in the ability to “hear” and interpret vibrations. This came from decades of listening to Russian subs make the transit between Iceland and Ireland until the US had built a database of “sound prints” which were able to identify a sub before it left port and track it worldwide as it moved about. It started out with screw/propeller noises and then exploded.What was unknown was how good this tech really was. We were using it on vehicles, airplanes, voiceprints with such an effective level that we could routinely pinpoint the physical location of every significant Russian or Chinese leader in real time.Think that might be useful info in the event of a war or leading up to a war?The tech became so good the NSA could interpret the load of a ship, again, useful info.Snowden stole a doc that dealt with the current status and projected it over the horizon to what it could and would become. All the underlying humint providers were rolled up and one must believe executed.Harmless? Patriot?I forgot to mention — recently the Russians put a “boomer” — nuke armed nuke sub — undetected in the Gulf of Mexico right off Galveston. They had masked its signature effectively, so effectively, it got to the Texas coast undetected. That sub had 18 nuke missiles on it.There would be a very long line of folks volunteering to put a bullet in this POS’s head if it ever came to that.Don’t believe me. Believe the former head of the NSA and the DNI.http://www.wsj.com/articles…JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    1. sigmaalgebra

      Terrific. Great for the Internet and freedom of speech! Snowden can look like a hero until get some actual, serious information as you have just provided.Of course, our mainstream media was not interested in reporting that stuff, modulo I have yet to follow your link to the WSJ article.Since I started my career in applied math and computing around DC, with among several other topics some concentration on the fast Fourier transform for analysis of acoustic signals and some work on the security of the US SSBN fleet, I can understand a lot that you explained although you went into more detail than I saw at the time.Since the movie The Hunt for Red October hinted at acoustic signature recognition, did mention the Sosus nets, that is, sea floor acoustic receivers, and the importance of the “Greenland, Iceland, UK gap” that the NW part of the Russian navy must pass through to get to the Atlantic, maybe it’s okay for me to mention Sosus and acoustic signatures here. Yup, I worked on some of that stuff, at least in elementary parts of what you outlined.Once I made a suggestion for some analysis of some data collected in a sea trial experiment from one US sub to another. My suggestion was accepted, and the resulting data was significantly like I anticipated.This was before my Ph.D.: Some of my Ph.D.work would have let me do MUCH better with my suggestion. Sensing that is much of why I got the Ph.D.In the best course I took, I was also the homework grader, and one of the 6 or so students was a guy from the NSA. He was awful — from the first day of the course, never had a clue. Soon we didn’t see him anymore. As he left, he raised the average quality level of the class by a lot!Sure, in the course, one of the best, early exercises was to show that there are no countably infinite sigma algebras. I was the only student who got it!A sigma algebra? In a crucial sense, it contains the information in some quite general situations of a lot of random behavior, e.g., stochastic processes. So, much of whatever you can derive about what happens with a few random variables, if work instead with their corresponding sigma algebra (right, Virginia, it exists but is not easy to see), then presto, bingo get to generalize to many much more general situations. Then, when from the information in the sigma algebra want to extract some of it, what you extract will be a sub-sigma algebra or maybe one or some random variables adapted to the sigma algebra.E.g., in conditional probability, can write the conditional probability P(A|B), right, the conditional probability of event A given that event B has occurred. Right, even computer scientists know thatP(A|B) = P(A and B)/P(B)Okay, can also have P(A|X) where X is a random variable. So, get the conditional probability of event A given the random variable X. Then P(A|X) depends on the value of X observed. So P(A|X) is actually another random variable, and there is some function f so that f(X) = P(A|X). That all this makes good sense is partly from the famous Radon-Nikodym theorem with a famous proof by von Neumann.Then given some collection of random variables, maybe uncountably infinite, let S be the sigma algebra they generate. Then can have P(A|S), that is the conditional probability of event A given the values of the uncountably infinite collection of random variables that generated S.That collection might be everything about the Atlantic Ocean for the last month. NICE stuff. So, event A might be there is a Russian submarine right below our airplane right now. So, what we want our computers to do is to find P(A|S) for us — that is at least what the heck we want to approximate. And, that’s also the very best we can do for any manipulations of that data. Quite fundamentally can’t do any better than that (that’s a theorem). NICE.For a little more, the standard assumption has long been that the main protection of an SSBN (sub-surface ballistic missile firing) submarine has been no one knowing where it is. That is, if there is a nuke war and know where a submarine is, then sinking it is trivial.So, e.g., there was some applied math saying what the stochastic process for the movements of the boat should be best to “age”, make useless, any detection quickly. So, right, maybe go on a leg for a random exponential time and then turn randomly in a direction uniform on 0-360 degrees (IIRC, from A. Washburn, a weak approximation to Brownian motion).Well, with enough in real-time acoustic signature tracking, will always know where all the Red (US adversary where the US was the Blue side) SSBNs are and, thus, could sink all of them at once before they could fire. Turns the Red SSBN fleet into worthless radioactive scrap iron. Amazing. Uh, yup, at times the US DoD took some applied math quite seriously. Yup.Well, Russian mathematicians are really good with stochastic processes — Dynkin (student of Kolmogorov and Gel’fand), Shiryaev, IIRC, now both long in the US, etc. — and are fully capable of understanding phased arrays, the fast Fourier transform, digital filtering, non-linear filtering, acoustic signatures, etc. The Russians, French, and Japanese mathematicians long took stochastic processes much more seriously than US pure mathematicians. So, maybe that expertise is some of why the US wants the new, supposedly much quieter, Ohio class of SSBNs.Off to read the WSJ piece.

  21. JLM

    .The legal framework for privacy revolves around the notion of a “reasonable expectation of privacy” as the legal hurdle which must be cleared to protest that one’s privacy has been penetrated.The Internet, in general, and the use of email, in particular, seems to provide an insurmountable obstacle to clearing that hurdle — meaning nobody has a reasonable expectation of privacy when using that means of communication.If someone came to your house and stole a document — a piece of physical doo dah — it would be considered “fruit of the poisoned tree” and “stolen property” and thereby jeopardize anyone who used it, knowingly or unknowingly.Inasmuch as email is digital, its physical theft is a bit more tenuous.My law and order self comes down on the side of treating any stolen communication as fruit of the poisoned tree — obtained illegally, it is illegal to use or dispense further.I doubt that would ever stand up to rigorous legal scrutiny given the unreasonable expectation of privacy.Having said all of the above, I suspect that ship has sailed and sunk and will never return to port.This is who we have become and who we are. There is NO privacy and journalism has ceased to exist.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    1. LE

      The Internet, in general, and the use of email, in particular, seems to provide an insurmountable obstacle to clearing that hurdle — meaning nobody has a reasonable expectation of privacy when using that means of communication.Why do you say this? (I don’t agree). This is not trash left at the curb which anyone can rummage through. There is an expectation of privacy and that is why providers do the following:a) Passwordsb) Security updatesc) Encryption (for passwords in transit)d) Trying not to have anyone look over your shouldere) Take reasonable steps to ensure privacy on one’s part.I have used email since 1985 (on a closed system) and also operated and setup email systems (since 1996) and issued passwords and so on. Back when it was harder to do than now. In our particular case we say upfront that in order to troubleshoot the service we have full access to the account at anytime for any reason [1] to see what is going on if we want. It’s in the contract.However this does not mean that we can enter, use and share that info with anyone and we would never do so either. That is a violation of privacy that’s obvious. Plus we would never do anything that would result in a large legal bill to win internet fans and attaboys. Don’t care about that shit at all. (Not large enough to).[1] Same thing I tell real estate tenants in the lease. I can enter at any time, for any reason however I will try but I am not obligated to tell you upfront (to much hassle). If they don’t like it, don’t sign the lease. Likewise if you don’t like our email terms don’t use our service. But you do have privacy, just not from the management company.

      1. JLM

        .I would be tempted to agree with you but your statement ignores the fact that email is transmitted through a series of nodes on the Internet which are not similarly secured and arrives at the InBox of people who may have no such security.I am addressing it solely from the perspective of a legal standard.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. LE

          Your point appears to be that once you share information with someone else you have no expectation of privacy?But that surely isn’t the case.And I think you are talking about perhaps more technically what can happen vs. what is the reasonable expectation of what would typically happen.And yes you were talking legally and yes I am talking in actual practice.For example you do consulting and I don’t know if you sign NDA’s. (I don’t did only once and only because it was a large amount of money). However the clear expectation is I am not going to share something you say with someone else. It’s actually rare that I even get asked to sign an NDA or the subject comes up. It’s implied that I am not going to talk about things.I just found the following out about catholic confessionals. I was curious after Jason @jasonpwright:disqus statement. I did not know this. But even then it’s not absolute and you could argue there is no privacy since in theory the priest could still share the info. They are the sole guardian.https://www.quora.com/If-yo

          1. JLM

            .I sign NDAs all the time as I believe they are actually a simple recitation of the existing common law and I always insist on an expiration date which to me is the ultimate safe harbor.I was raised a Catholic and was an observant Catholic until I married an Episcopal girl then I became Catholic Lite.Confession is a funny thing. You confess, make an act of contrition, get your penance, receive absolution, perform your penance, and then you are as squeeky clean as the day you were born. Then, you go back to sinning.In the Army overseas, I used to go to Confession face to face with a chaplain sitting on a rock — no confessional. That is a tough road to hoe particularly when you had come back from some place where there was a sale on sinning. In those days, I was a robust sinner.One of my men used to watch me and pretended he could read lips and used to tease me about my sins. It was genuinely funny. He used to say, “Don’t fuck with the Lieutenant, he’s been to Confession and he’s in a state of grace.”It is funny the things we remember, sometimes. The same Catholic chaplain used to conduct Mass out in the open with the men all spread out and pass a bottle of wine around which some of the men used to take enormous draughts until finally he would tell them to pass the bottle.I have always thought the Catholics had the best deal ever with Confession. The Pope needs to advertise that a bit more.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  22. jason wright

    Was the catholic confessional the original spy machine?

  23. charlieok

    It’s shameful that Lessig was not invited to the democratic party’s debates. His chief issue was and is arguably a root cause of the issues Bernie Sanders got such a large following for championing, and it was something Lessig had a track record of pursuing long before the 2016 presidential race.So many are complaining about the choices in front of them for the general election in a couple weeks. Well, here is a guy who many of those people of both political stripes would likely find to be an attractive candidate right now. He entered way back when the race was starting, raised about a million dollars, and then the DNC _changed the rules_ to shut him out of the debates.I admire his classy we-go-high response. It’s one more bit of evidence that points to what should now be obvious to everyone: he was a good candidate who was denied a fair chance.

    1. Lawrence Brass

      I believe he is an exceptional person, ahead of his time. His voice at the democrats’ debates would have been an asset. However, I think he was not a good candidate as his campaign was based on an impossible plan. As it is said, politics is the art of the possible.

      1. charlieok

        curious if your above statement would change at all, were you making it today

        1. Lawrence Brass

          I still think the same, he could have been a great candidate but this crazy idea of fixing the system then yielding to the VP was impossible to sell. I recall him mentioning Hillary as a possible VP for his plan. And also common people didn’t know who he was.With a viable plan and a little backup from the Democrats he would have been an excellent candidate, perfectlly clean.Trump copied part of his rigged system theory I wonder if he will do something about it. Who knows at this point.

          1. charlieok

            well he did throw out that plan when people called him on it but yeah, perhaps too late.Thanks for the update 🙂

  24. LukeG

    The top comment on Lessig’s post is a good one:******I would not be surprised if Lessig published this classy response, then went to dinner with his wife and said “Fuck Tanden, Podesta, and that crew. Scumbags.”And that would be fine, and is still classy. Because we should be allowed to make different statements privately, and publicly. And we should accept that this is not always duplicity. It is just having a working filter. People without filters are sociopaths and Trump.As humans, we need and deserve separate outlets for our raw anger, and for our rational, thought-out, and public expressions.- http://lessig.tumblr.com/po…******

  25. Jay Janney

    I assume everything I write will be read. Whether I want it to or not. It limits my embarrassment when I inadvertently hit “reply all”.I enjoy snark, but have found it reveals a more cruel side to my nature than I care to admit. So I try to frame things better.It challenges me when I have to be honest and give negative feedback or deliver bad news, but it forces me to focus on getting it right.

  26. Prokofy

    Funny how we never heard Lessig complain about WikiLeaks when it outed State Department cables and harmed US sources, including some who lost jobs or were forced to flee their homelands, which I know for a fact. Worse, he implies that certain people he blesses as do-gooders should be exempt from breaches but not others he hates. Funny Lessig never had a thing to say about WikiLeaks and Snowden until now, his friend is hacked by them. These people always and everywhere exemplify the notion of “Privacy for Me and Not for Thee,” and only use exposure selectively, never exposing Russia or other dictatorships and only using it selectively as a political tool on their enemies even slightly more toward the center than they are. WikiLeaks hasn’t just “gone overboard.” WikiLeaks is a criminal operation and always has been, and has been in the tank with Russia all along, as was amply visible long before the recent hacks of the US political organizations. The people who have been celebrating exposure of government forget that this is a democratically-elected government actually of and for and by the people, and that means exposing individual people who in fact have done good or at least have done no wrong.Assange’s theory of exposure isn’t about righting wrongs anyway. His theory is a Leninist “the worse, the better.” His goal, like Putin’s, is to force America to behave unlike itself and not true to its ideals and become more closed so that it can be denounced as hypocritical — and even more important, on par with criminal Russia. WikiLeaks doesn’t want people to join public service because that implies an open society. They prefer the closed and conspiratorial society of anarcho-hackers and revolutionary violence in the end. WikiLeaks does not “open governments” as anything that won’t open itself can’t do that legitimately. It is a criminal and sinister outfit with definitely a bad set of friends in Russia.

  27. Drew Meyers

    “leaks of substance and leaks of embarrassment”Yup, very different things. Unfortunately, the media is far too much embarrassment and not near enough substance. The amount of irrelevant “gossip” in the media is ridiculous to me, and I despise media outlets/individuals who prey on exposing personal matters of people, which can/do ruin lives, just to make a few cents via ads.Related rant: I think paparazzi has to be just about the worst profession in the world…I don’t know how they live with themselves knowing they are adding no real value to society.

  28. andyswan

    I just want to make sure you are not suggesting we have government take charge of overseeing leaks.Also, you do not know the source of the emails. They could very well be leaked by an inside player driven by conscience.

  29. kidmercury

    this isn’t necessarily a breach rather than a leak. seth rich (RIP) is alleged to be the source of the leak.

  30. kidmercury

    credible is subjective, especially this day in age. nonetheless, take your pick….. https://www.google.com/webh

  31. kidmercury

    i do find you credible, and if you made such a statement with sincerity, i would find it worth considering. i say the same for julian assange, who has avoided saying seth rich was killed for leaking info to him, but has strongly implied it should be investigated.

  32. kidmercury

    and he’s implying the DNC had him killed because…..

  33. Conrad Leonard

    No. If you believe Rich was murdered by anyone other than a mugger then the only logical conclusion is that it was the Russians. They have motive, form (e.g Nemtsov or Litvinenko for an overseas op) or literally dozens of other suspected cases and means, including the trivial ability to hack the account of a mid-level dem staffer. Feed the material to Assange, who is apparently as credulous as a lovesick teenager when it comes to anything from Russian hands: job done. The Russians are past masters at false flags and assassinations, and yet you prefer to believe that the otherwise apparently incredibly leaky and incompetent DNC somehow had the idea let alone the skills to neatly bump off one of their own. Hilarious.

  34. kidmercury

    i would disagree with your assertion that the DNC is incompetent, and that all crimes must be attributed to russia. for the murderous capabilities of hillary, please research the term arkancide. your thesis that it must be russia is supported only by russia’s history of assassinations; this is not disputed, though as hillary has a comparable history, it is not enough sufficient evidence in and of itself.

  35. JLM

    .Yes, there are specific Russian sources (Russians who were recruited by American spies) who were killed by the FSB (successor to the KGB) who were publicized by the Russians themselves.There were a handful of highly placed Russians who defected to the US — meaning they were fearful they’d been outed by Snowden and came to the US or we retrieved them.The Russians have a great interest in making it very dangerous for their people to contemplate cooperating with the Americans and will routinely leak such deadly resolutions.Their American Moscow spymasters were returned to the US because they were compromised and fearful of being kidnapped. In the last few years, the game in Moscow has ratcheted up considerably with even diplomatic covers being violated. This is a return to an earlier time but then Putin is a former KGB guy who is trying to rebuild the Soviet Empire.When dealing with names, it is irrelevant as we use code names for even their “real names.”The Dir CIA and the DNI both admitted to this in Congressional testimony. One has to place some credence in an utterance by a former NSA head who says things like, “worst penetration in forty years.”On the wall at the CIA is a star for every American who has been killed in the course of his/her duty. There are quite a few new stars there.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  36. Conrad Leonard

    as hillary has a comparable history Oh, please. Larry Nichols is as credible a source as Matvei Golovinski. If there was even a shred of real evidence in support of any of those allegations I’d have to say that in every jurisdiction for the past 20 years conservative prosecutors, who’d presumably be wetting themselves over the chance to even lay charges let alone secure a conviction, have been doing really a very bad job indeed. The Clintons are no cleanskins but comparing them to Russia on the basis of their assassination record? You have got to be kidding. Actually, my point was not to insist that Russia did anything (let alone “all crimes” – where did that come from?) – but that if you’re going to entertain conspiracy theories, at least follow the logic and not your partisan instincts.

  37. kidmercury

    It is a lot more than Larry Nichols who have accused clinton of murderous crimes. You may find it acceptable to dismiss those allegations without consideration, though obviously I disagree.