Too bad the newspaper decided to go with the "NSA is spying on x president" headline rather than focusing on the content of the spying (involving details relevant to Italian politics and history) which is clearly the intended goal in releasing this.
The responses here on HN are sadly predictable as a result and likely will draw a similar response from the public.
Wikieaks has never really had a moral agenda like Snowden in regards to why they are releasing the information in the first place. Assange has repeatedly stated that he simply believes all secret information should be released. In the process they hope to expose corruption in the political systems. The fact they released proof the NSA was spying on a foreign leader isn't the story here, nor it that really a big noteworthy reveal considering the endless Snowden leaks, so we should stop pretending that was the real goal here and dismissing it on those grounds.
That being said, the fact Wikileaks was capable of getting access to plaintext NSA intercepts is in fact interesting. Not the usual high-level vague Snowden powerpoint slides. So if we're going to play that game this is still atypical in the greater scope of the NSA releases in the past two years.
Yes and no. In the context of Assange's goals, NSA involvement is very interesting.
To Wikileaks, the credible threat of future leaking is probably more important than the single leak of past infractions, because the threat impedes the flow of internal communications, which makes an "unjust" organization's internal "thought processes" more costly and less efficient.
Proven NSA involvement basically means there's no cheap way to keep high stakes secrets safe from leaking. The NSA has the bigger budget and better technology, so you can't defend against this path of leaking. Yet NSA leaks too, so it seems NSA can't defend themselves, either.
Taken together, this says nobody can defend against leaking: That's Wikileaks' most favored state of affairs.
Definately agree that the focus of the reporting is disappointing.
> Wikieaks has never really had a moral agenda like Snowden in regards to why they are releasing the information in the first place. Assange has repeatedly stated that he simply believes all secret information should be released. In the process they hope to expose corruption in the political systems
This isn't a fair assessment. They do have a moral agenda, though perhaps haven't been very good at explaining it to the public.
> Wikieaks has never really had a moral agenda like Snowden in regards to why they are releasing the information in the first place. Assange has repeatedly stated that he simply believes all secret information should be released. In the process they hope to expose corruption in the political systems.
You might not like it or agree with it, but that IS their moral agenda!
> The fact they released proof the NSA was spying on a foreign leader isn't the story here, nor it that really a big noteworthy reveal considering the endless Snowden leaks
even aside from Snowden leaks, this exactly what those guys are there for. if they weren't doing it, they wouldn't be doing their jobs...
and i agree, the specifics are the interesting part of this.
In news today, the SIGINT branch of the United States government collected signals intelligence on a key public official in another country; in particular, it did this at a moment of crisis, allowing the United States government to have an edge of knowledge in charting its policies.
Now, there exists a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that spying is wrong, and governmental secrecy is wrong. Thus this particular Wikileaks release, and, afaict, a lot of the Wikileaks effort has gone into promulgating that ideological goal. I would note that governmental transparency is pursued by multiple political groups across the US spectrum: police transparency, foreign policy transparency, purchasing transparency, etc. It's not a simple bijective mapping between the thought-movement Assange is with and the goal of governmental transparency; there are profound nuances and deep variances of goal within the broader 'transparency' ideal.
As for me, I am perfectly content to have the spy game played against heads of state; especially if it keeps down total system instability and human suffering.
I don't think he believes all spying is always wrong, he believes there is a "non linear effect of leaks on unjust systems of governance".
If there's nothing outrageous about the who/why of your spying, you don't have to worry as much about your staff's desire to whistleblow, or the kind of consequences if they do, so you don't have to adopt dysfunctional internal policies trying to prevent leaks. Assange's job is to make leaking in general as safe and easy as possible, so the "secrecy tax" will disproportionately damage the unjust use of secrecy:
> "The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption."
More loosely though he believes in privacy for individuals (a protection for the weak), with transparency for organizations. Spying on states doesn't violate the former, and I imagine in some cases you could argue it aids the latter.
Spying is illegal in most countries, including the United States. If an Italian spy were caught here stealing Obama's communications he would be put in jail for a lengthy term. If an American spy were caught in Italy they would also be arrested and sent to jail. This whole concept that it's OK for my country to spy on others is strange and hypocritical. It is not heroic, legal, or moral, to spy on other countries unless there has been a declaration of war.
No, the most common treatment of a spy acting under diplomatic cover (and that is the most common kind of spy) is simply to tell the purported diplomat that he may no longer stay in the host country, now being persona non grata. All countries around the world agree that they need to spy on one another and need to agree to be spied on by one another to make sure that diplomatic statements through official channels are verifiable. National leaders have to know the intentions of other national leaders--it would be irresponsible not to try to know.
AFTER EDIT: To clarify this point a bit, the world of espionage practice distinguishes "operatives" (nationals-employees of the foreign government, who first of all need a visa status even to be in the host country) from "agents" (nationals of the host country, who often have employment status in some sensitive position in the host country's government or armed forces). Yes, the United States and absolutely every country is harsh in its treatment of its own citizens who act as espionage agents directed by the intelligence operatives of foreign countries. Quite a few of the prisoners in the federal SuperMax prison in Colorado are people like John Walker or Robert Hanssen who were paid by the United States taxpayers to handle secret information with discretion and who were pledged by their terms of employment to not have contacts with foreign intelligence operatives at those operatives' direction. Men like that do hard prison time in any country where their activities are discovered. But the foreign operative usually just ends up expelled from the host country, unless there was something illegal in itself about the foreign operative's presence in the host country.
There are no rules among nation-states. Any that you believe to exist, exist only at the whim of the most powerful states in the system. The only true international law is the law of the jungle. Many argue otherwise, but the minute that the survival of their freedom or prosperity hangs in the balance, they would unleash the most barbarous terrors on their enemy for a chance of victory.
A nation that doesn't spy on others is irrational and suicidal. Your enemy will not reciprocate your naivete. They will exploit it and enslave you.
A nation that doesn't punish spies (or their masters) caught within its territories is similarly irrational. The fear of death (or imprisonment) makes your enemy cautious and less effective.
The only morality in the international system is the morality of your own victory and what you do with it. In victory, you can spread peace, freedom, and prosperity to your heart's content. In defeat, your ideals are worthless.
> The only true international law is the law of the jungle.
Probably you are thinking of the "survival of the fittest", but that doesn't mean only survival of the fittest country, it also means survival of the fittest alliance of countries. In that sense, cooperation and reciprocal help leads to increased chance of success for a country.
When applying to humans, "the law of the jungle" is just half the story. People who are in groups that cooperate well are more likely to survive, too. Humans are social animals, we cooperate to get things done. Just being the fittest one single man does not necessarily make you more successful.
A better model for survival is ecology, which puts a big emphasis on the complex interdependency of species and individuals.
Or, to make an analogy: even if a cancer cell is the most fit to reproduce in the body, it will soon lead to the demise of its own organism and, as a consequence, live shorter than a regular cooperating cell.
>Now, there exists a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that spying is wrong, and governmental secrecy is wrong.
Let me tell you how to defend against that, because there will always be some of those people. Spy as little as possible, conceal it as much as you can, don't share your spy info to catch drug dealers, in fact, don't use it to prosecute crime at all, use it to stop real terrorist violence in progress and let some other jokers take the credit, use it to fact check diplomatic shenanigans. Spying and policing have zero business together in a free society.
> [...] a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that spying is wrong [...]
Obviously he doesn't, because he does what many people would consider spying.
I suggest that he has a more nuanced view that some spying is bad, and that you might want to consider that his support for it depends on how it serves the people.
> It's not a simple bijective mapping between the thought-movement Assange is with and the goal of governmental transparency; there are profound nuances [...]
Well, actually, no there aren't. Lying to bypass limits on your mandate is a crime, if not treason.
Yes, spying to promote the interests of the people of the U.S. is legitimate in a world with other states with armies and the occasional bin Laden, etc. That's different from spying to promote the power of the executive, its fave corporations, the spies themselves, their counterparts in other nations, and who knows what else. The government is in theory our employees, and I feel more threatened by these employees who act like our masters than I do by their legitimate targets.
Assange's quote in the OP is all about alleged abuses that I as supposed employer would want to hear about: "Today we showed that UN Secretary General Ban KiMoon's private meetings over how to save the planet from climate change were bugged by a country intent on protecting its largest oil companies. We previously published Hillary Clinton orders that US diplomats were to steal the Secretary General's DNA. The US government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN--let alone its Secretary General. It will be interesting to see the UN's reaction, because if the Secretary General can be targetted without consequence then everyone from world leader to street sweeper is at risk."
Thought experiment: what would happen if you exercised any discretion in whether to continue employing them, or even how much of your income you pay them?
Interestingly, this thought experiment kinda works for company managers, too (try firing the CEO of a company where you're a minority investor.) Perhaps things converge to a state where, regardless of who's the nominal owner (citizens/stockholders/etc.), we are ruled by mostly unaccountable managers.
While I agree that the NSA acted as intended, I wish to add with a moderately tangential discussion by saying that organizations ought not be viewed under the lens of their chartered purpose, but rather their function.
An organization's function is the set of all its capabilities. We should seek to define the purpose of a state entity by limiting its function via mechanism, rather than by hoping for good people to do the right thing. There is no reliable mechanism by which moral people bubble up to the top of power.
I feel glad today that the NSA acted in promotion of American interests, but I feel that is a incidental exercise of its many capabilities, and so my feelings are fickle.
It's a useful exercise analyzing the actual function of the NSA and comparing it against its charter. Is the NSA doing its chartered job? How well? Is it being effective? Does it have too much actual power?
It certain doesn't seem as if it has effective oversight in this matter, based on comments from congresspeople as to the level of information they are given.
In this instance, it seems as if the NSA is doing their job. In other instances... doesn't seem like it.
I phrased too extremely then. Function should be added as a lens of analysis, but I still think that purpose should not be used in isolation because it leads to discussion with moral expectation, rather than functional expectation.
Well for us, European citizens, the shock is not that the NSA tries, it is that it succeeds. And that our officials are surprised to learn about the attempts.
NSA has a budget larger than the combined spying budget of the Eurozone members, and it's renowned for being very aggressive and constantly pursuing technical improvement. Why would you be surprised that NSA succeeds? How would you stop them?
The news is not that US SIGINT commit acts of spying against non-hostile nations, but that US SIGINT is no different from all those other nations which US media villainize when they are caught spying.
The day that FOX news no longer talks about russia and china when their spies are caught, those will be the day that everyone else will start ignore news about the NSA.
No. Moral relativism would be saying "everyone is equally good; we shouldn't judge them because they don't believe in democracy; all cultures are equally valid".
While it's arguable that Berlusconi was a sensible target...How does that justify spying on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan? Or from previous revelations, UNICEF - the children's agency?
FWIW, I've just started laying out one aspect of this debate and how intelligence operation blowback can affect the perception of neutrality of NGOs working on the ground. This increasingly seems to lead to a rise in deaths of aid workers and many of the people they work to help. E.g Polio in Pakistan.
> How does that justify spying on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan? Or from previous revelations, UNICEF - the children's agency?
I think spycraft is a bit like logging to ELK, or sending metrics to Graphite/InfluxDB - capture all data you can, analyze later.
Corruption. Obviously we're both speculating here, but accountability is a serious problem with NGOs, along with corruption/graft/general-wastefulness. So if the US suspected massive (tens of millions of dollars, or more) corruption, that's a plausible reason.
I'm not saying it's likely, just that there are possible reasons out there in the world.
I dunno, the US Government had billions of USD go mysteriously missing during our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan so it seems unlikely that the powers that be are too concerned about corruption for the sake of stamping out corruption.
Total non sequitur. Just because X does Y in A context does not mean it isn't concerned about Y in B context. Not to mention it's also plausible some of that money went to black budget projects.
Given the US' horrendous abuses of human rights in Guantanamo and abroad, I'd say it's far more likely that they are spying on such people and organisations because they may be negative towards some aspects of US foreign policy.
Essentially, they seem to be looking out for 'dissidents' - the same sort of behaviour that US politicians often berate when other countries, such as India or China, do it (also wrongly!).
Snowden's strategy, or at least whoever managed information for the team, was super smart about the first 12 weeks.
They kept the government mostly in yhe dark about the depth of what they knew, and executed s perfect slow burn.
The agency went reeling from one disclosure to the next hastily making up lies and then having them disproved in subsequent releases.
Obviously there was more to it, however the main point is that the opposite seems to be true now. Even for receptive people, we just know and it is an effective strategy for the govt to habituate people.
Unless the facts surrounding an event gave relavent subdata and a narrative can be brought into focus with the new insight, this isn't news it is habituating the public to accept it.
I don't want to accept it, but simultaneously it is obvious that as noted in the thread, "SIGINT, is gathering signal intrlligience". So it ends up being a reminder that we have given up s lot, but not bad enough(on the per story basis) to ignite support.
Also, I am concerned about the risk we tale decentralizing our data. We may give up the opportunity to have amazing trend analytics and information that may never resurface in the inevitable balkanized system that is to be developed
Nevertheless, specific instances of spying on allied governments is often irritating to the ally involved, and their citizenry.
US citizens are probably less upset about foreign surveillance by the NSA (even if it is directed at allies), OTOH, US citizens aren't the entire audience for news.
I guess I could be a little more sympathetic if I thought our allies weren't spying on us as well. After all the noise the Germans made about US intelligence services bugging Merkel's phone, it came out that the Germans were doing the same thing to Hillary Clinton when she visited as Secretary of State.
Conversely it's quite the opposite. Most of the world would be okay with an American agency spying on Americans. It's the spying on all others part that's controversial.
For me it will be interesting to see if any details come out about what pressure he was put under during the euro crisis behind closed doors. Not too bothered about the NSA spying part in this case. As others have said this is what they're supposed to be doing.
"One thing is certain: what happened in those difficult times was intercepted and transcribed by .. the National Security Agency (NSA), as this interception and other top-secret documents published today by WikiLeaks and our newspaper reveal. "
Well it ain't no secret anymore and I wonder at the timing, who at the NSA leaked the documents and what their motivation is.
Julian Assange has some "big balls." Either he really likes pushing his luck, or his end game is way bigger than anyone realizes.
He was just starting to curry the favor of the general public. He was the subject of a prominent biopic, he received a positive resolution from the UN. He has a lot of supporters, but they're not all fully sold on his philosophy.
Many of his supporters might consider this leak not in the same spirit as the others. The NSA is doing its job, just like the SIGINT agency of any world power. Game theory, tit-for-tat, and mutually assured destruction all make intelligence gathering necessary. As long as one country has SIGINT capabilities, its competitors must match them, even if only for the purpose of defending their sovereignty.
As others have said, the NSA spying on foreign public officials is hardly newsworthy or unexpected. If you believe all SIGINT should cease to exist, then this should also not be news to you, because you already believe these SIGINT capabilities exist, by definition of you opposing their existence. So in no case should this news shock you.
Therefore one has to wonder what Assange's motivation is behind this leak. Based on its timing, it seems far more likely that his motives are personal more than philosophical. It furthers no agenda but his own.
(Or perhaps the NSA is behind the whole thing. This is a pretty nice puff piece for them, and they've gotta be on the offensive finding job applicants these days.)
Considering they recently chose to completely ignore the UN opinion on his "arbitrary detention," on top of everything else in the past - false rape accusations, ignoring his asylum status - I don't see what more he really has to lose. What are the odds he possibly gets out of this without torture, assassination, or life in prison?
They've done everything possible to turn him into an actual enemy, rather than the editor of a site facilitating responsible disclosure by whistleblowers. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if that affects the manner in which future leaks are released as well.
Exactly. He has nothing to lose, so he is doing this now. For himself. The timing is obviously coordinated around his personal motives, not those of wikileaks the organization. In fact it's unclear how much of an "organization" really even exists outside of Assange. So perhaps his personal strategy remains inextricably linked to the wikileaks strategy, precisely because Julian Assange and wikileaks are effectively a single entity.
I don't know what they are. But do you think it's a coincidence that after a dull two years of leaks, this leak occurred in the same month the UK ignored the UN ruling in his favor?
He's playing his next card. I have no idea what his motives are, do you?
Great, you know they're false accusations! I'm assuming you weren't there, so you must have some good evidence. I hope you've handed it over to the defence team.
Go read the actual timeline of the allegations against him. The entire thing is so one-sided in favor of Assange that it's effectively government propaganda to even pretend he's anything other than a political prisoner. The prosecutor originally in charge of the case actually stated that "the conduct alleged ... disclosed no crime at all and that file would be closed." The woman he's accused of raping said, quote, she was "railroaded by police and others around her" and that "it was the police who made up the charges." Among loads of other evidence in his favor.
It's disingenuous to pretend like we're all just in the dark about what really happened, that he might have actually committed rape and that's what any of this is about.
The Supreme Court says otherwise, and ruled that the accusations would be considered a crime in the UK. I am not a lawyer. You may be, I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that you're less qualified to rule on what is a crime than the UK Supreme Court.
> Therefore one has to wonder what Assange's motivation is behind this leak. Based on its timing, it seems far more likely that his motives are personal more than philosophical. It furthers no agenda but his own.
Or his motives are following the philosophy of the freedom of information, as it had in the past. The or is not exclusive: it's possible that his motivations are both personal and philosophical. But to say that this leak furthers "no agenda but his own" is oddly dismissive of the mission / philosophy behind wikileaks.
It's not there to circlejerk people who are already exposed to this kind of information. The philosophy is that more people should have the option to know. If it weren't for projects like wikileaks, it would not be a choice for you to make.
There is flaw in your logic. Assange as public person is known because of WikiLeaks, but WikiLeaks it's not just Assange. And timing can be simply explained by fact that they always stated only few percent of materials they have are published since verification is extremely hard.
> Game theory, tit-for-tat, and mutually assured destruction all make intelligence gathering necessary
Are you sure you meant "mutually assured destruction" there? That generally refers to annihilating one's opponent -- that's out of scope for intelligence, right?
Yes. As this article shows, signals intercepts are enough material to "annihilate" your opponent in negotiation. In diplomacy, information is a weapon. Information known only to you, is a nuke.
Forgive everyone if they fail to believe that. The NSA has been shown to be lying with everything else it has said so likely this is somehow a lie as well.
No, it's far better to keep an eye peeled on everything they do now that they've been shown to be trying to slip their mandate.
> Therefore one has to wonder what Assange's motivation is behind this leak [...]
No, not really. His motives are really clear. Force the liars out into the light of day. The US Army was actively collaborating to frame innocent Iraqis with terrorism charges - something which directly contributed to ISIS, and they hid evidence and lied to the press and US investigators about it.
Honestly, your motives are more in question. Assange pointed out that our government was lying to us and you heap blame on him.
This is literally my first time engaging in an Internet flame war. It's kind of fun.
To address your comment, Mr. Hominem, I never called Assange's motives into question. I'm providing a valuable service of an alternative perspective. The fact that I instigated a flame war is evidence of the hacker news echo chamber. I suspect once my comment crosses into -1 territory my opinions will be disregarded by the same people who would consider them when my comment was at the top of the discussion.
Propaganda is alive and well on hacker news. Luckily so is free speech, the right I assume you hold most dearly. If you want to avoid hypocrisy, it would be best to approach discussion with an open mind rather than a vindictive agenda.
I have no agenda, except that I like to keep my writing sharp and piss some people off in the process.
I'm Italian and I was embarrassed for the whole duration of those terms he served whilst I was an adult: not because his buffoonery (every country has people like that) but because collectively the voters of the country had had no better judgement than to elect this guy. This is why I would deeply sympathise with any American whom, come 2017, would find him- or herself represented on the international stage by Trump.
Is it unreasonable to specifically collect information on non-citizens? Perhaps. Is it unexpected? I don't think so. Most current threats are currently perceived to originate from non-military, non-governmental entities if the media is to be believed. I would expect all countries for which I am not a citizen to compile an in-depth dossier of me at any opportunity they have, assuming their intentions and incentives align with any other country conducting the same activity.
If you want a serious answer based on how things actually work, it's this: the US Government doesn't expect you to be ok with it. They're not asking your permission. They do not care if you dislike it. The goal is to have the upper-hand on specific types of information globally.
I know. But you can't expect countries and people to be ok with it, just because the USA wants it. In an ideal world there would be no boundaries or wars and we would live in peace. But fact is that I don't like being spied by NSA. And while this may be expected by a government, what pisses really off is the way HN, eff.org and USA-oriented blogs speak about non USA citizens. From their point of view we are either terrorists, non-humans or some kind of evil, deprived of all kind of rights.
From the point of view of democracy the USA is the worse.
The responses here on HN are sadly predictable as a result and likely will draw a similar response from the public.
Wikieaks has never really had a moral agenda like Snowden in regards to why they are releasing the information in the first place. Assange has repeatedly stated that he simply believes all secret information should be released. In the process they hope to expose corruption in the political systems. The fact they released proof the NSA was spying on a foreign leader isn't the story here, nor it that really a big noteworthy reveal considering the endless Snowden leaks, so we should stop pretending that was the real goal here and dismissing it on those grounds.
That being said, the fact Wikileaks was capable of getting access to plaintext NSA intercepts is in fact interesting. Not the usual high-level vague Snowden powerpoint slides. So if we're going to play that game this is still atypical in the greater scope of the NSA releases in the past two years.