Twitter removed #DNCLeaks right while it was the top trending topic today. Reddit paid staff has been suspending people who talk about Correct The Record or the DNC leaks. Facebook admitted to filtering certain topics due to political bias. Google just took down Wikileaks links. And while all of this is happening, there's not a single mention of the DNC leaks on CNN, MSNBC, Politico, etc.

You're right, this probably was just a mistake... but is it wrong to question it? Everything I've learned from the NSA leaks and the DNC leaks shows that the media, politicians, the intelligence community, banks, large tech companies, etc are all working together against the public.

I have no idea about Reddit. The first search result I got for "Correct the Record Reddit" was a Reddit post about some paid social media campaign by a Clinton Super PAC.

The explanation for Wikileaks is pretty clearly correct, and Google no longer is marking it as dangerous.

Not saying that's happening here

Well then what on earth are you saying? Vaguely insinuating bad behaviour is pretty easy, especially if you then say that isn't what you are doing.

Like I said - it is easy to accept conspiracy theories. They are easy explanations, but usually the truth is complex and involves multiple subtle explanations which are much harder to think about.

Are you saying that politicians and political parties do not wield power and influence and do nothing to influence the media? The main purpose of politics is to wield power and influence, and the media is core to this. Are you saying that media is unbiased despite the fact that they are on record contributing to particular candidates' campaigns, e.g. Time Warner (CNN) being one of Clinton's top contributors?

You are either burying your head in the sand, or you are part of the misinformation campaign yourself.

DNC Leaked emails are not interesting, but a plagiarized paragraph by Trump's wife is interesting?

Hu? The DNC email leaks are much more interesting than the plagiarized paragraph in Melania Trump. Neither are particularly interesting in the scheme of things though.

The plagiarized paragraph shows that the Trump campaign isn't very well organized. I think most knew that.

The DNC emails show that the DNC favored Hillary as a candidate. We knew that too - they did in 2008 when Obama beat her.

Are you saying that politicians and political parties do not wield power and influence and do nothing to influence the media? The main purpose of politics is to wield power and influence, and the media is core to this. Are you saying that media is unbiased despite the fact that they are on record contributing to particular candidates' campaigns, e.g. Time Warner (CNN) being one of Clinton's top contributors?

No I'm not(!!)

I'm saying that reading the malware listing of Wikileaks by Google as some kind of Democratic party conspiracy is wrong.

I'm saying I don't know much about Reddit.

I'm saying that in my professional opinion (I work in area) there are multiple possible explanations for the Twitter hashtag thing.

I'm also (now) saying that the three things are unrelated. It is extremely temping to conflate multiple independent things and see things that aren't there.

This is in direct violation of the DNC charter:

In the conduct and management of the affairs and procedures of the Democratic National Committee, particularly as they apply to the preparation and conduct of the Presidential nomination process, the Chairperson shall exercise impartiality and evenhandedness as between the Presidential candidates and campaigns. The Chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and evenhandedness during the Democratic Party Presidential nominating process.

This is far more interesting than Munich or Tim Kaine.

So, the DNC was caught politicking. It's perhaps not very nice, but is it surprising? Is it illegal? Is it particularly egregious? Frankly, if the worst they did was prefer clinton over sanders, they've got surprisingly little dirty laundry (or, more plausibly: they don't email about particularly questionable ideas).

None of this sounds like a conspiracy; it sounds like business as usual, and rather boring at that - at least to most people. If you're in a position to affect the composition of the DNC, perhaps it's little more relevant. And if you support(ed) Sanders, you might feel justifiably angry (although planting audience members to ask questions that are bound to come up in the election proper anyhow doesn't really strike me as high up the scale of nastiness). And of course, perhaps there's something else in those mails that is newsworthy.

I think it is worth noting that the Clintons have been deeply involved in the Democratic party for a long, long time, so it isn't awfully surprising there are personal relationships there.

The other thing I'd note that all this was also true when Obama ran against Clinton.

(I've noted elsewhere I'm not a Hillary supporter and that I'd have liked more candidates in the race)

Compared to who? Hillary's #stealthebern campaign or the 2007/8 plagiarism scandals with Obama? Joe Biden has some serious scandals as well.

If the media weren't pushing a certain angle, all these scandals would have been kept in context. Instead one line from a politician's wife's speechwriter now means he's running a "campaign that isn't very well organized."

I think it is pretty widely recognized that his staff isn't experienced, and there are very few of them compared to a usual campaign. If you don't agree, I understand that we are talking partisan politics, so I'm unlikely to convince you.

Perhaps consider listening to some political wonk podcasts and you hear how amazed they are at how the convention was run. Things like calling Fox during one of his speaker's speeches, not knowing what multiple speakers were saying, and the whole thing with the VP rollout: http://www.vox.com/2016/7/15/12199676/trump-vp-pence-rollout

Mitt Romney's convention was nothing like this, nor was any other convention from either side of politics.

It isn't really surprising - he isn't exactly from the core of the Republican party, so he hasn't been able to rely on people just doing what they always do. That's a quite reasonable explanation, but it doesn't deny the facts of his disorganized campaign.

Now it may well work out fine - a lot of things that people thought were important are tuning out not to be.

What does this really says about Trump's efficiency compare to Hillary?

The e-mails contain details of strategic political planning on the part of the DNC, and although there doesn't seem to be much in the way of nefarious behavior described within, there is frank discussion of political strategy in dry terms that will damage the DNC's (and thus Hillary's) image even though this is how all political organizations operate. Unfortunately for Hillary, there is no RNC e-mail leak, so "this is how all political organizations work" won't be a sufficient defense in the wake of this leak and you can be assured that the conservative media is going to frame the content within these e-mails as cynically as possible. There is also the possibility that there is something legitimately damning yet to be uncovered.

I'm not sure if that means that it should or shouldn't be a trending hashtag on Twitter.

I do know that I'm a somewhat wonkish follower of politics and didn't really find them that interesting. I would imagine that "interesting" should be something that trending hashtags should optimize for? I complete concede this is a personal opinion though.

I'm just saying that it's completely reasonable to be suspicious and ask questions, however, given that we have definitive proof that Google is known to work with the government.

The NSA leaks proved that the NSA hacked Google's network infrastructure. That isn't exactly "working with the government".

There are other things where Google does work with the US and other governments. I believe they pass Flu Trends data to the CDC for example....

And which government branch do you think that Google is working with here?

The #DNCLeaks thing is a anti-Hillary story, promoted mostly by bitter Bernie Sanders promoters. There are some Trump supporters jumping on too, but they seem a minority. It's inside-baseball for DNC wonks.

I could see an argument that someone at Google is a Hillary Clinton supporter and therefore took it on themselves to take it down. That would be a dumb thing to do, but at least would make sense.

But which government branch would try to get Google to do it? The White House wouldn't be so stupid - it would leak in an instant. Some secret three-letter agency? Why would they care? Some other department?

Hillary and her supporters won't talk about it because it favors them, the DNC won't because they violated bylaws requiring impartiality, and the media won't report because the leak shows they've been taking orders from the DNC.

I think we mostly agree here? By the "#DNCLeak story" I mean the analysis of the emails as well as the leak itself - that's what is happening under that hashtag.

the media won't report because the leak shows they've been taking orders from the DNC.

The only thing I've seen on this is the "Chuck, this must stop" email. It's pretty clear that was a wish, not an order (otherwise why the follow up call). Anyone who's watched any political drama on TV has seen how often politicians offices call journalists to complain - I don't see much different here?

Also, the media is reporting the leaks, pretty heavily. The NY Times[1] and CNN[2] amongst plenty of others both have major stories.

I think I agree with everything else you say.

(If it matters, I don't think Hillary is a great candidate, and wouldn't class myself as a supporter. I would have liked to see a much broader set of candidates in the Democratic race.)

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/politics/dnc-emails-san...

[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/22/politics/dnc-wikileaks-ema...

A Guardian article from September 2013, two-or-so-months after the Snowden leaks: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-cost...

> The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian.

> While the ruling did not concern the Prism program directly, documents passed to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden describe the problems the decision created for the agency and the efforts required to bring operations into compliance. The material provides the first evidence of a financial relationship between the tech companies and the NSA.

> An NSA newsletter entry, marked top secret and dated December 2012, discloses the huge costs this entailed. "Last year's problems resulted in multiple extensions to the certifications' expiration dates which cost millions of dollars for Prism providers to implement each successive extension – costs covered by Special Source Operations," it says.

> An earlier newsletter, which is undated, states that the Prism providers were all given new certifications within days of the Fisa court ruling. "All Prism providers, except Yahoo and Google, were successfully transitioned to the new certifications. We expect Yahoo and Google to complete transitioning by Friday 6 October."

Google only gave a bla-bla answer when asked about it:

> Google did not answer any of the specific questions put to it, and provided only a general statement denying it had joined Prism or any other surveillance program. It added: "We await the US government's response to our petition to publish more national security request data, which will show that our compliance with American national security laws falls far short of the wild claims still being made in the press today."

I'd say that you should revisit your believes when it comes to the relationship between the NSA and big SV companies.

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Total misinformation. They WORKED with the NSA. Do you not remember the PRISM program?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

You really should stop spreading ignorance and misinformation. You should also disclose that you work in the National Security industry, at a Palantir equivalent in Australia.

Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

Here is some details about the hack the NSA did on Google's infrastructure: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-i...

You should also disclose that you work in the National Security industry, at a Palantir equivalent in Australia.

Wow! This made me laugh. We fund (and sometimes work on ourselves!) research on things like contagious disease prediction, and things like trying to understand mass social actions like elections. Yes, it is national security related, but not exactly that kind of national security! Sometimes the same agencies are involved though - for example, the same agency provides disease alert advice to government as provides political instability advice. So I guess maybe that makes me untrustworthy or something?

I can talk to you at great depth about Dengue Fever modelling and possible ways to try to derive parameters for mosquito breeding models if you like - it's pretty interesting, and maybe that would help some?

Can you point me to exactly what you're reading that indicates Google worked with the NSA ?

You obviously didn't read the link: "The PRISM program collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/us-tech-giants...

As an aside, your profile says you signed up 1337 days ago and your karma is at 1358. Another 21 down-votes and your Hacker News profile page will looking pretty leet - I say go for it. Remember, it's just fake internet points, you can't spend them or do anything interesting with them.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Google engineers issue 'fuck you' to NSA over surveillance scandal http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/6/5072924/google-engineers-i...

It's been pretty clear this election that the Democratic Party has gone back to the old way. I don't personally object that much because I don't vote democrat, but it's not just "inside baseball". My guess is that you don't want to hear about it because you are rooting for the democrats.

So why are you repeating it? (It sounds like you don't even think it's true. What the use in repeating it, then?)

> I'm just saying that it's completely reasonable to be suspicious and ask questions, however, given that we have definitive proof that Google is known to work with the government.

"I'm just saying...". Well, at least it's a step up from "I'm just asking!".

Look, suspicion of government and authority (and media probably moreso) is generally speaking a good default, but if you're throwing concrete allegations about you need to have some concrete evidence of wrongdoing. Otherwise it's just scaremongering or conspiracy theory.

Here's a single mention of the DNC leaks on Politico: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/debbie-wasserman-schul...

I couldn't in a brief search find a single mention of the DNC leaks on MSNBC specifically, but there's this from NBC: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/hacked-documen...

Of course, I think that might be due to political-story related 'gravity' at work. I didn't see dang or anyone else comment, though, and they normally do if they've done any sort of moderation.

If you want more information you're welcome to ask us at [email protected].

In this case, since it's Google, it can stay.

HN mods (dang especially) frequently talk about how HN is not just for tech.

HN users flag political posts.

Why would any virus scanner not raise the alarm? How would it determine that this time the malware should get a pass because of the political nature of nearby data? The mailbox could contain the cure for cancer, the AV will still behave the same. The virus scanner isn't making a mistake. Wikileaks made the mistake by not scrubbing the irrelevant malware from the archive before posting it.

Only on default subs (which is essentially "the front page" of Reddit, a site which touts itself as "the front page of the internet") is this occurring. There is heated and lengthy discussion on Reddit but limited to pro-Trump and pro-Sanders areas.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundati...

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Yes there is, and it's not a conspiracy theory. It's fact:

http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working...

http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279...

Peter Thiel is an early investor in Facebook, and he spoke at the Trump convention. Marc Andreessen is well known as a (non-Trump!) conservative supporter.

I don't see that any of these things prove anything except that people are political.

Show me some evidence that "Google is protecting the Democrats and hates Wikileaks" - not just that people at Google are supporters of one of the two US political parties. That just means they live in the US.

The Assange thing is different. He's saying that Google acts as an unofficial representative of the US Government, not as a Democratic party entity. I don't think he makes that case very well, but even if it is true it isn't the same thing.

$0.5m - $1m by Google

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundati...

Larry Page is also a big donator ($60m+) to The Vanguard Charitable Endowment - that is Rob McKay's foundation. They, in turn, fund George Soro's Democracy Alliance [1] which fund groups such as Black Lives Matter [2].

Soros has given $6m to Clinton

Charitable foundations are a veritable rabbit warren of cross funding shenanagins, covertly political under the guise of good deeds.

[1] http://democracyalliance.org/ [2] http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/big-democratic-donors-consid...

The actual cause for concern here is Schmidt's strange willingness to effectively act as some kind of sleeper agent for the State Department (per Assange's writings and the interview transcript). Or perhaps an intelligence agency; it seems fairly plausible he was asked to speak to Assange as a way of gathering intelligence.

That's deeply concerning, and suggests Schmidt has a rather special relationship with the government. If he were no longer affiliated with Google/Alphabet, it'd still be shady yet not really violating any standards. But as CEO/chairman, it's a massive conflict of interest and suggests that the government likely was or is trying to exploit Google's leadership in some way.

Not that I blame the government here. If I were the CIA or NSA or State Department, I'd be trying to get my tentacles around massively influential companies, too. I only blame Schmidt for going along with it to such a degree.

After this knowledge is taken into account, Schmidt's involvement with the election seems a little weirder.

There are 3 factors here:

* An influential non-government civilian willing to do the State Department's dirty work, possibly at the behest of an intelligence agency

* An influential non-government civilian willing to devote a lot of time, resources, and technology to getting the State Department head elected President

* The chief executive of one of the world's largest companies

Any combination of 2 of these things isn't that odd. But the fact that someone was 1) acting covertly for a government agency, 2) working hard to get an important person in that agency elected, also attempting to be covert in the process, 3) is the executive chairman of Alphabet...

Even if the government isn't really doing anything malicious here, and Schmidt's involvement in these matters are all coincidental and his own ideas and purely due to his personal patriotism or love of the State Department and Hillary or whatever, it doesn't make it any less irresponsible to do all that while still acting as a powerful corporate executive. And even if that weren't so bad, it seems like something he is trying to really sweep under the rug as much as he can, which itself is very suspicious.

In short, regardless of the motives or conspiracies or lack thereof, all of these revelations make Schmidt seem very untrustworthy. It doesn't necessarily make Google as a whole less trustworthy, but it absolutely could if more leaks come out, and it also casts suspicion on other Google execs.

http://www.defense.gov/News-Article-View/Article/684366/pent...

edit: you should watch this as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFxFRqNmXKg

Where everyone else see upsides in public interest and greater transparency from leaks by Snowden, Manning, Drake and others at great personal cost to themselves you apparently are able to overlook all of that to see a downside.

There is no big "Google is protecting the Democrats and hates Wikileaks". Wikileaks was serving malware, and Google detected it.

And you are able to make this blanket statement with this incredible amount of confidence because? I am guessing only an official authorized response from Google can take this tone and be credible.

Given what we know wouldn't the default logical position be one of scepticism and engaging credibly with the facts at hand or a blanket dismissal of scepticism as conpiracy theorists?

As far as surveillance is concerned we are well beyond that stage and these kneejerk references to conspiracy theories and theorists seem tired, disingenious and incredibly out of touch.

Not saying your explanation is wrong but it did not take Snowden to make such theories plausible.

Because what Snowden revealed IS a plot against the citizen.

Here's the design document[1]. I think the area you are interested in is "Threat Details Collection".

[1] https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/safebro...

All Assange has is evidence (in the form of leaked documents)

Even if he were a proven state agent, I am happy to have information about how my representatives are working against my interests in a systematic way.

https://20committee.com/2015/08/31/wikileaks-is-a-front-for-...

https://20committee.com/2013/07/06/wikileaks-snowden-and-the...

As a former counteritelligence officer this guy seems to know what he's talking about. Unless of course he has his own agenda, but the facts presented are verifiable and pretty convincing.

They are still irrelevant.