[ExI] ExI] are we publishing?

[Dan TheBookMan]

See:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/19/daniel-ellsberg-edward-snowden-and-the-modern-whistle-blower

TL:DR: 

There are different types of leaks and leakers. Snowden and Assange are different than Ellsberg.

Regards,

Dan

On Tuesday, May 28, 2019, 10:57:23 AM PDT, <spike at rainier66.com> wrote: 
 
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of BillK
Subject: Re: [ExI] ExI] are we publishing?
 
Paradox is piled upon irony in this weird case.  Julian damn well did publish classified info, but they never really hoped to convict him on that, because… the New York Times published the highly-classified Pentagon Papers a long time ago, and they were US citizens, and they didn’t get charged.
 
Yet… what Julian’s adversaries really had the heartburn about was his publishing information that was not even classified, hell it wasn’t even properly secured (Password is not a good password.)  If one argues that the consequences were enormous, that in itself does not establish the crime, or even who is guilty.  Does the guy who set his password to Password share any guilt?  In my eyes he does.  In systems where the username is patterned (such as first initial last name at something dot org) there are software routines that go down thru guessing the few hundred most common passwords.  Password is the most common password.  OK somebody got in.  Surprise!  Sheesh.
 
So… Julian published information that was not classified and was not even properly secured, given to him by a third party.  Result: the leading POTUS candidate “joked” about murdering him with a drone.  
 
OK suppose you are Julian and you read that.  I can imagine he was not ROTFL-ing.  I vaguely imagine he had no trouble sitting right there in his chair, perhaps not even a giggle from that hilarious joke as he sat there in that de-facto maximum security prison with no way out, thinking:  Oh how funny!  The USA, with aaaaallll its agents and aaaalllll its covert this and that, and aaaaaalllll its military technology, is about to elect a Commander in Chief who jokes about killing me, jocularity how hilarious is that little gag that hundreds of millions of people read about, any one of which could come in here and kill me…
 
Looks to me like that little joke was the western equivalent of a stealth fatwa.  I wouldn’t find that a damn bit funny, and perhaps just a wee bit… disconcerting.  But hey, I am that way, heh heh, so unreasonably suspicious I am.
 
In light of that, I can vaguely imagine Julian would prefer that particular candidate would lose that election, even if he had no particular viewpoint with respect to another country’s politics.  Ja?
 
spike
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