Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by LyndsySimon 3398 days ago
> I'm not sure how Trump's election is going to change that; if anything it might produce the opposite effect since these agencies seem to be feuding with Trump on some level

A big part of Trump's appeal is that he's seen as anti-establishment. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that he may make significant changes at those agencies as a result of their "feuding" with him.

> wikieaks is a pro-Trump organization

I don't believe that for a moment. WikiLeaks helped Trump's campaign, certainly - but their reason for doing so was orthogonal to Trump himself.

If WikiLeak's behavior during the 2016 election was driven by anything personal or partisan, I would say it was Assange's own personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton.

1 comments

> I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that he may make significant changes at those agencies as a result of their "feuding" with him.

And? What does that have to do with the tech community being critical of three letter agencies?

> but their reason for doing so was orthogonal to Trump himself.

I don't care what the reasoning is, Assange explicitly stated that he wasn't going to release info on Trump because he felt the media was sufficiently critical of him and he has kept up with that promise and maintained a mostly positive disposition regarding Trump, that's Trump support. Don't misunderstand, I don't think supporting Trump invalidates any of the info that wikileaks has released, my point is precisely the opposite, that this info was released despite their support for Trump so if Trump hadn't have won the election, it makes sense that they would have been just as critical if not more so.

Can you source Assange stating this? As far as I remember, his explanation was that since there was already a bevy of mainstream media ready to publish any dirt on Trump, leakers did not have to go to Wikileaks to publish their stories, therefore it was unlikely anyone would send their leaks there.
“I mean, it’s from a point of view of an investigative journalist organization like WikiLeaks, the problem with the Trump campaign is it’s actually hard for us to publish much more controversial material than what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every second day," Assange said.

So this seems like a clear admission that they are in possession of controversial material regarding Trump, but Assange figures, why bother publishing it, it's not much more controversial than what comes out of Trump's own mouth, so we won't bother publishing it, nothing to see here.