After all, don't they believe in full transparency?

They've backed and associated with various privacy groups and suggested that individuals and groups not in the public interest deserve privacy. Assange has complicated that a little by releasing personal, unredacted emails, but it's been their stated intent at least.

Give that transcript another read: "organizations which are abusive and need to be [in] the public eye". That's not decrying privacy, its decrying use of privacy to hide abusive behaviors. I haven't seen Wikileaks accused of that; the usual accusation is that their public behaviors are politically motivated, which is very different than alleging internal corruption.

Being politically motivated can very much be a form of abuse. When you have the ability to significantly hinder or tear down public organizations through leaking, I think the public deserves to know how Wikileaks decided what to leak, how they are funded, and what interests they represent.

Simple hypothetical scenario: Wikileaks gets compromising information about a left-leaning and a right-leaning organization, but they only decide to make public one of those leaks because they're biased. Or they receive some damaging info, and use it to trade for political or personal favors in return for suppressing the leak.

Given that there are so many ways that Wikileaks could abuse the public's trust, their 'transparency' rhetoric very much should apply to themselves.

This is exactly the rationale behind why reporters frequently wish to keep their own sources private, even while they are busy publishing things that other organizations wish they wouldn't.

Corruption is still corruption, no matter if it is made public by a "good" organization or another corrupt organization. The corrupt organization does not get a free pass just because their competitors might be even more corrupt (and wikileaks might know that and hold back that information).

Wikileaks' core activity forces it to walk a very very thin moral and ethical line. I think we the public have obligation to make sure they don't cross it, especially if we benefit from the leaks.

I'll note that in another context, it was for a long time not alright for prosecutors to use illegally obtained evidence, in order to discourage prosecutors and police from breaking the law, even at the cost of potentially letting criminals go free. Why doesn't that logic apply here?

    Being politically motivated can very much be a form of abuse.
    When you have the ability to significantly hinder or tear down public organizations through leaking [...]

    it's whether we should inspect Wikileaks itself,
    given that its position gives it strong incentives to do shady things
    without any transparency.

I see the opposite, however, they got strong incentives NOT to do shady things, because if they are caught even once doing shady things, their reputation is in the gutter and nobody will ever listen to them again. That is not to say that they got no political bias and even political bias. When the emails you obtained contained Hillary asking why they cannout just "drone him" (aka Assange), you might take that a bit personally too. But political bias and personal bias is in no way evidence for "shady things" and wrongdoing.

But yes, wikileaks too should be scrutinized, and I think it is, by pretty much everybody, the government, it's agencies, the media. Still, so far, after a decade of operation, there is no proof wikileaks did anything sinister, and the best attempts so far to discredit wikileaks was coming for their leader with rape charges instead of discrediting what the organization is doing.

And yes again, we the public should not stop to be vigilant and continue to scrutinize wikileaks.

Quite the opposite happens even in this thread. Are you aware of [1] and [2] and [3]? Do you think that incident sent their reputation to the gutter?

(edit: added one more link)

[1]: http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r...

[2]: http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/9/12864328/wikileaks-threat-r...

[3]: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/26/1552616/-Russian-Hac...

I'm not so sure that's true. As the size of an organization grows, the probability that someone in it will write an e-mail that looks incredibly damning when leaked approaches 1. That's true regardless of whether there is any actual corrupt behavior, but the political damage is done regardless. IMO, the public is generally not great at teasing apart real misconduct from stupid private e-mails, because the public either lacks or chooses to ignore context.

I know in this day and age it's not very popular to say that things should be kept from the public, but I'd like to point out the example of the legal system. Judge often decide that evidence should not be shown to juries because the evidence is inflammatory and will cause bias. Sometimes showing more evidence leads to less truth, not more. Obviously, Wikileaks is not a court, but it does choose who gets to see what, and they have some idea of how the public will react to what is revealed. But we have no real idea how they internally make that decision.

> I don't see anything suggesting strong incentives to do shady things, can you elaborate please?

Sure -- this is an organization that often gets illegally obtained information from perhaps anonymous sources. Because the sources are by definition secret or inaccessible, and yet the information can be very damaging, there's always the temptation for illicit dealings. Here are some possibilities:

- Someone in Wikileaks uses the information to blackmail the target of a leak

- The target of a leak gets wind of it and tries to buy off Wikileaks

- Outside actors (e.g. the Russian government) effectively use Wikileaks as a 'neutral' channel to cloak their interference in the political affairs of another country. This may in fact be what is happening today, but we can't be sure because again -- Wikileaks is not transparent.

- A Wikileaks staffer is arrested or otherwise threatened by a government to do their bidding

Contrast this how major news organizations handle sources and leaks: journalists form a professional body with their own journalistic code of ethics and conduct. Leaks are evaluated for their newsworthiness and sources are scrutinized.

Obviously, traditional media organizations aren't perfect either, but they are far more open and transparent than Wikileaks is, because there are institutional norms developed over decades that constrain their behavior.

In a perfect world, Wikileaks would be open and transparent in their process of how they evaluate and pass on leaks, so we can be sure that they're not being unduly influenced or using it to advance a hidden agenda.

All your examples apply to traditional journalists as well, by the way.

Wikileaks has their own code of conduct and ethics. I fail to see how their self-imposed code is any less valid than the self-imposed code of traditional journalists.

wikileaks claims it evaluates and scrutinizes their sources. So far it seems they actually did that, and did not fall for any hoax. Traditional journalists also claim they evaluate their sources, and most of them did not fall for any hoax. Both don't do so transparently, in fact journalists went to jail for not being transparent and disclosing their sources, so I fail to see how traditional journalists are any better or worse than wikileaks. The lack of transparency when it comes to sources is a feature and not a failure, protecting said sources, for both wikileaks and traditional journalism.

It's a bold claim to state that traditional journalists are more open and trustworthy simply because they have been around longer (the organizations, not the individuals of course).

Regular news organizations reported the Iraq had WMDs because the government sources said so, without any actual evidence. Or published fake Hitler Diaries. Meaning it's not all that rosy and checked and ethical as you make it out to be.

I don't see the "contrast" you claim exists. If anything, wikileaks has a better track record than a lot of traditional media organizations when it comes to publishing verified information, so far.

PS: The likes of Murdoch and Bezos prove outside influence in journalism is a real thing to worry about.

> The question is not whether we should give corrupt organizations a pass (we shouldn't)

The majority of the criticism I've seen absolutely misses this step. It treats "Wikileaks is shady" or even "Assange might be a sex criminal" as a rebuttal to "this thing in this email you sent is incredibly unethical". Time and again, the discussion of Wikileaks ethics comes up only when they embarrass someone, as a defense for the person embarrassed.

I'm not sure what to do about that. Ideally, I think we'd do it the opposite way - the published emails that weren't ethical embarrassments are a way bigger violation of privacy. I'd like to see Wikileaks held to account for publishing harmless and personal messages, while seeing the leak subjects held to account where the things they did were actually bad.

That's some pretty intense equivocation from where we started. Acting in the public interest does not make you "a public interest". The details of Chelsea Manning's gender identity don't influence the ethical status of her leaks.

Assange's claim (which is not my claim) seems to be that groups with structural power and objective control over people's lives should be forced into transparency or inefficient secrecy. That's largely governments, and agencies like the DNC that shape them. It's also militaries, powerful investment banks, and other groups like utilities which can control access to credit or basic needs.

None of that is representative of Wikileaks. Their influence all happens at one remove, by doing things which the public reacts to. If their disclosures on X are accurate and the public gets mad about X, that can be a direct conversation between X and the public that need not involve them. "Abusive" here seems to mean groups that can take direct financial/legally/physical action on people.

Having said all of that, I understand how selective enforcement works. If you know that a disclosure will harm a person, and take that act to achieve your interests, it's a cop-out to blame "the public" if you're choosing what to disclose. But it's relevant that Assange has made it quite clear that he's disclosing to hurt Clinton; his political motivation is already public knowledge.

There's really no good answer here. You can explain how you make your decisions, but "not leaking a document" is inherently a secretive act. No one can be sure your choice was honest and public-spirited unless you do reveal the document, so all that's left is faith. That's part of why Snowden and other leakers have gone through respected news orgs, because if someone's judgement is the deciding factor you might as well choose well-regarded judgement.

I don't have much of that faith in Assange at this point. I think his leaks are probably selective and politically motivated. It would be interesting to know who funds them and what they say internally, but that couldn't possibly clear up the whole question. After all, if Assange reads one paper about Clinton and one about Trump, and says "the one about Clinton is worth leaking, but the one about Trump isn't in the public interest", how could you possibly evaluate that claim without both leaks?

But none of that means Wikileaks is equivalent to the groups he's demanding disclosure for. Ethical questions on our part do not amount to hypocrisy on his part, and it's still a distinction worth drawing.

At that point Wikileaks needs to be auditable to find out who decided that would be a good thing to do and why.

I was speaking the to larger claim that Wikileaks owes us transparency to avoid being hypocritical, which I still don't accept. But at this point, they might well owe some transparency not as a public establishment but as some people who screwed up badly with the power they were given.

I'm being flip, but there's real substance here. A government, bank, utility, or military has direct power over people. They can cut people off from money, property, or freedom without any offering any recourse or external accountability, and that makes them potentially abusive to the public.

A private citizen, hobby group, or business with strong competitors is generally not at risk of abusing the public. They don't have the power, or couldn't sustain it while behaving badly.

So there is a narrative where we can decline "full transparency" while demanding transparency from public actors. The role of media (and Wikileaks) here is complicated, because they lack direct power but can still have predictable influences on the world; even so, we don't have to grant privacy as a totally symmetric right.

But that's not a distinction that Assange makes in his rhetoric, and I'm doubtful it's one he will make in practice either. Would Wikileaks really hold off on publishing if it came across a damaging leak about a news organization?

I feel Assange and his supporters do a great disservice to the public debate by oversimplifying things. Sometimes secrets are necessary for the proper functioning of our governments.

How many people are going to avoid leaked material because Wikileaks are hypocrites?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So...

They don't have much of a moral hill to stand on - unless they subscribe to the morality of "The ends justify the means." (Which most people do.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism

Their claim is that technology allows governments to conspire. Not in an Alex Jones kind of way but simply that technology allow governments and people in power to exchange information effectively enough to coordinate various plans.

Some of these are good some of them are bad, but ultimately the idea that the governments can conspire is bad and so Wikileaks want to make it so impractical to use technology to communicate that they are forced to use other less effective means.

You can't only understand wiki-leaks if you only understand them as a political organization. You have to understand them as an techno-activist organization using information to destroy the way information is used by those in power.

Slow it down not hindering it completely.

How noble.

The problem is he's describing exactly the modus operandi of some bad actors on wall street. Cozy relationships, exploiting advantages (gained through unethical, or illegal means), and general obfuscation of how they're able to extract fortunes from the financial system. If you create more of this, that's not a remedy, it creates more opportunities for bad actors.

Of course I don't have any substantial evidence but just looking at it, it seems like a contrived apparatus with a James Bond like villain at the top, branding that looks like it came out of a B rated movie and 'leaks' that seem serious enough to get the media up in a frenzy and attract anyone with any real leaks.

I wouldn't be surprised to read about its conception by some mid-level CIA agent in 30-40 years.

Many of these highly eyebrow raising emails are CC'd to gmail accounts, for example. If it was fake, you could ask Google for the logs to prove at least it wasn't received.

And if there are DKIM headers, then that's certainly strong evidence that the header and body are legit.

The whole problem with this sort of thing is that there's no chain of custody.

If the people don't deny it, then it should be assumed to be true.

That big tax cheating leak that mostly leaked famous non-usa figures....particularly Russian and Chinese.

US government takes security very seriously. A real organization like wikileaks would not even see the light of day.

(It's not like this problem hasn't been solved by the intelligence agencies already.)

So will legitimate internal members of the organization.

Haven't you ever had to wade through your company's intranet wiki trying to figure out which documents were are actually useful versus the giant piles of things that are outdated, wrong, superceded, etc?

  > That won't work because you'll be adding noise to 
  > your own data.

This seems like a false dichotomy.

Wish I had more time to go in to why I think that. One counter example might be The Manhattan Project.

And I don't think necessarily the people on the project would think what they are working on as 'abusive' per say. Compared to killing civilians from a helicopter, being corrupt, dodging taxes or spying on the entire world like the gestapo, the manhattan project probably had a different feeling to it.