[bootlooped]

Julian Assange does many things that seem to have the sole purpose of embarrassing the US. I don't see how he could be a candidate for any type of award from the US government. Any benefit Wikileaks has had on the US, primarily by helping spark a debate about domestic surveillance, is overshadowed by the harm they've done due to his radical anti-secrecy zealotry.

Take the Vault 7 releases for example. What was the public good done by that information being published? Those are our weapons, in my eyes it is not much different than if Wikileaks had published the blueprints for the F-35. There is a legitimate interest in the US having secrets, and there is an interest in our global adversaries not having them.

At least with the diplomatic cables and the DNC emails, there was some amount of public interest information in there, but why dump the whole set? To embarrass the US, and in the latter case, to affect the election. Are those noble goals worthy of the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

As for his personal character, recall two things: he screwed over his supporters by jumping bail in England, and he reneged on a pledged to acquiesce to extradition if Manning was released. These are not the actions of a hero to be celebrated, they're selfish and dishonorable.

[boomboomsubban]

>Take the Vault 7 releases for example. What was the public good done by that information being published? Those are our weapons,

They have gone out of their way to ensure that there aren't any unpatched exploits released with the info, even with most of the tech community being unwilling to help.

They are not "our weapons," they're a detailed rundown of what our weapons can do and how we use them. Our alleged "enemies" couldn't do any more damage with them than we do by ourselves.

[resters]

Since the US is the most powerful nation, of course it will be the target of some of the politically motivated leaks.

With respect to Vault 7, once the secrecy of the tools was compromised they already had zero value to the US arsenal. In fact, I would not be surprised if the US Government leaked Vault 7 itself, to prevent the thief from being able to use them effectively.

Consider the value of the Vault 7 tools if they were known only by a small group of hackers with a halfway decent budget. They'd be worth many billions of dollars.

But once leaked, their value decreases substantially, since the zero days can be patched and the exploits mitigated.

Any state actor who stole Vault 7 would have no interest in releasing it to Wikileaks. Even Russia would benefit more by knowing about it and leveraging that knowledge than by leaking it in its entirety.

Also don't forget about the government hoarding zero days which put American firms at risk.

Per your last point, let's not worry too much about Assange's personality or character. The important thing to focus on is the leaked information, not the messenger.

[bootlooped]

> Per your last point, let's not worry too much about Assange's personality or character. The important thing to focus on is the leaked information, not the messenger.

The post I was responding to was saying they wished Assange were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Don't you think somebody's personality and character is relevant to that?