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by graphe 774 days ago

Very short sighted thinking. If they beheaded Sam bankman fried there will be a clear message to not commit financial crime, and the aspiration and motivation would almost zero.

The gesture of the freeing these two brave whistleblowers is much more important than you think. Noam Chomsky calls this censorship flak of his five filters.

> If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins. When the media – journalists, whistleblowers, sources – stray away from the consensus, they get ‘flak’. This is the fourth filter. When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flak machine in action discrediting sources, trashing stories and diverting the conversation.

3 comments

almostgotcaught 774 days ago

I can only remain bemused at how some people weigh things; 300,000 people were arrested in 2020 for possession of marijuana [1]. There is nothing short-sighted about wishing the free so many people of the misery of being under the same thumb (the penal system) that you bemoan for Assange and Snowden.

1. https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/317793-people-were-a...

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ein0p 774 days ago

It’s interesting that you chose to omit the more recent stats, as well as to notice that under the proposed change those people could still be in trouble for illegally possessing a controlled substance. But even then, it’s not just “2 guys” we’re talking about here. It’s 350 million people who are being illegally spied on and lied to. Dropping the charges against Assange and Snowden and apologizing to them would be a good first step on fixing all that.

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almostgotcaught 773 days ago

> chose to omit ...

I pasted the first link I found but since you're trying to insinuate something about my motives:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/irisdorbian/2023/10/19/weed-arr...

> The exact figure was 227,108 arrests. Of that number, 92% were for possession only. This number is a slight jump from 2021 when the FBI reported a total of 219,489 arrests for marijuana.

Your point being what? That 220k arrested is a dramatic improvement over 300k?

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graphe 774 days ago

Where is the stats for 2023?

Weed offenses do not not precedent over unlawful spying, espionage and the countless more lives it would save for their actions. Unfortunately those people are overseas and you seem dismissive of the American evils such as collateral murder. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HfvFpT-iypw

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ben_w 774 days ago

SBF was willing to repeatedly take double-or-nothing bets at 50/50 odds even though the expected utility of each bet is the same as not betting at all and the combined odds of bankruptcy very quickly asymptotes to 100% with increasing rounds.

Literally beheading him won't put off the next person like him. His current punishment is probably enough to put off anyone sane.

Assange isn't a whistleblower just by founding WikiLeaks any more than Musk is a brain surgeon by founding Neuralink, he's the figurehead.

Manning and Snowden get that title, but not Assange.

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graphe 774 days ago

No he was not. You think he'd repeatedly do Russian roulette with half the bullets? He had the odds with him with his legal advisors.

Madoff's sentencing is why SBF's parents taught him to disregard the law. If you don't understand the idea of figureheads being important, what would happen if the president was shot, or if Dali lama was chosen by china? America would still keep going as would tibetan Buddhism. The leaks seems to have stopped much more since assange is gone. HN is a platform and I'm sure we'd still exist without it, assange definitely does deserve credit.

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ben_w 774 days ago

""""The whole time that we were dating, he was also my boss at work, which created some awkward situations," she testified, according to The Wall Street Journal. Describing Bankman-Fried's attitude toward risk-taking, "Ellison recalled on the witness stand how Bankman-Fried once spoke of a coin-flip scenario where if the coin landed on tails, the world would end. But if the coin landed on heads, 'the world would be twice as good.' Bankman-Fried [said] he would take the bet if there were a chance of making the world better, Ellison said."""" - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/sbfs-ex-girlfrie...

> what would happen if the president was shot

Judging by all the presidents who have been shot, at most an airport gets named after them or a statue gets built.

> or if Dali lama was chosen by china

Not much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Panchen_Lama_controversy

> The leaks seems to have stopped much more since assange is gone.

"Seems"? Plenty of new ones listed on the Wikileaks website.

> assange definitely does deserve credit

For what? Snowden went to… a newspaper. Didn't need Wikileaks. Plenty of whistleblowers did the same before Wikileaks. It's a new brand, but not a new thing.

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graphe 774 days ago

So his girlfriend said it therefore he would even though there's no evidence to show he ever did?

Have you used WikiLeaks? When was the last time it was consequencial or noteworthy?

Here's a recent article with Julian assange. https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/julian-assange-wi...

> He regrets that WikiLeaks is no longer able to expose war crimes and corruption as in the past. His imprisonment and US government surveillance and restrictions on WikiLeaks’ funding wards off potential whistleblowers. He fears that other media outlets are not filling the vacuum.

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ben_w 774 days ago

> So his girlfriend said it therefore he would even though there's no evidence to show he ever did?

That was simply the first search result. There's also the podcast interview:

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/sam-bankman-frie...

(If you're going to argue that 51% != 50%, you missed the point)

> Have you used WikiLeaks?

I've been to their website.

I've not had any reason to leak stuff.

Which do you mean?

> When was the last time it was consequencial or noteworthy?

You tell me: https://wikileaks.org/-Leaks-.html