The sad part is how few people even know what he published, especially juxtaposed with his sacrifice. If I go talk to the average person about Snowden or Assange they know little to nothing about what they revealed.
RIP Assange, he sacrificed himself to reveal what everyone knew. I'm not sure that this was good, lately I think politicians just kind of stopped pretending and I liked it better when they at least put their human faces on for the public ...
I honestly care more about Julian Assange. His own government turned their back on him.
Snowden has been quite the show, enough so that I'm seriously wondering if he's actually a spook. His entire story is weird. He holds a six figure salary as an NSA contractor, suddenly has a moral compass, somehow downloads a bunch of top secret stuff while working remotely from Hawaii, leaks documents that are mostly redacted and missing critical information about compromised hardware, and is believed by the world wide media unilaterally without question. Then his smoking hot girlfriend says she wants to go join him. No one has found him yet while he does video conferencing using Google Hangouts.
By contrast, Julian Assange was trapped in an Ecuadorian embassy for years. He's been though hell and his origination has leaked much more crucial information.
Don't conflate Assange and Snowden. Snowden was a patriot who did a really poor job of whistle blowing. Assange is a self aggrandizing asshole and a waste of oxygen.
Assange is a creep and a megalomaniac who was working closely with Russian intelligence, and with other creeps like Israel Shamir and Roger Stone.
Whether he should be in prison or not, and whether the sexual abuse claims against him are accurate, is a separate matter which I'm not commenting on.
But I object to anyone framing him as a hero.
Snowden is a coward who fled to Russia at Assange's behest, and while I cannot necessarily blame him for that, it is clear that he is now a citizen of a much less freedom-loving country, and he wouldn't dare do anything such as criticize their invasion of Ukraine. Very human, but not very heroic.
A lot of Americans know about Assange, what he has done, how much he has risked to help Americans know the truth about our government.
Yet in spite of this nobody really cares, and most are content to let Assange be extradited and punished. Other than for partisan reasons, few care a whole lot about any of the information Wikileaks published that revealed significant misdeeds and corruption by government officials, none of whom have been brought to justice.
I'm surprised, how Assange is at all relevant. Frankly, I have a growing suspicion, that he's a sham.
Does whistleblowing really need a gatekeeper?
Most of the leaks, the really ground breaking stuff, was done by other people more worthy of praise: Maning and Snowden. Assange is basically in the business of running a website and promoting himself, whilst antagonising people who actually support and believe him.
What bothers me the most, is how biased Wikileaks are. Sure, the U.S. does a lot of f'ed up stuff, but they are by far not the only players in the game.
It reminds me of the difference between Snowden and Assange. Snowden gave his material to a select group of journalists who carefully wrote articles and curated the information to be released whereas Assange would just publish the raw material.
I'd be interested to see how Assange responds to this. It's going to determine my opinion about him, and put a lot of doubts to rest for better or worse. I'm sure other people feel the same.
It’s very interesting how different parts of the web are reacting to this news. HN seems to overwhelmingly be on his side since he leaked some seriously damning stuff about the US government in the past. Reddit’s view overwhelmingly is that WL was a force for transparency and accountability that later devolved into a right wing propaganda machine. I guess a lot of people are pissed as Assange for WikiLeaks’ role in the 2016 election.
This might be true is some echo chamber, but it doesn't seem like almost anybody cares. Is there some kind of survey that says otherwise? Unless you are a huge fan of Assange prior to all this I cannot think of anybody (person, media, or otherwise) that is even following this.
Everyone loved Assange until he [entered politics, played favorites with information disclosure, and demonstrated that he is more mercenary than martyr]. I wonder why.
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