Julian Assange A Russian Front Man?

Oh, they have been fairly active.

WikiLeaks' global crusade to expose government secrets is causing collateral damage to the privacy of hundreds of innocent people, including survivors of sexual abuse, sick children and the mentally ill, The Associated Press has found.

In the past year alone, the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web. In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, an extraordinary move given that homosexuality is punishable by death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom.

[...]

Attempts to reach WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were unsuccessful; a set of questions left with his site wasn't immediately answered Tuesday. WikiLeaks' stated mission is to bring censored or restricted material "involving war, spying and corruption" into the public eye, describing the trove amassed thus far as a "giant library of the world's most persecuted documents."

The library is growing quickly, with half a million files from the U.S. Democratic National Committee, Turkey's governing party and the Saudi Foreign Ministry added in the last year or so. But the library is also filling with rogue data, including computer viruses, spam, and a compendium of personal records.

The Saudi diplomatic cables alone hold at least 124 medical files, according to a sample analyzed by AP. Some described patients with psychiatric conditions, seriously ill children or refugees.

"This has nothing to do with politics or corruption," said Dr. Nayef al-Fayez, a consultant in the Jordanian capital of Amman who confirmed that a brain cancer patient of his was among those whose details were published to the web. Dr. Adnan Salhab, a retired practitioner in Jordan who also had a patient named in the files, expressed anger when shown the document.

"This is illegal what has happened," he said in a telephone interview. "It is illegal!"

[...]

Medical records are widely counted among a person's most private information. But the AP found that WikiLeaks also routinely publishes identity records, phone numbers and other information easily exploited by criminals.

The DNC files published last month carried more than two dozen Social Security and credit card numbers, according to an AP analysis assisted by New Hampshire-based compliance firm DataGravity. Two of the people named in the files told AP they were targeted by identity thieves following the leak, including a retired U.S. diplomat who said he also had to change his number after being bombarded by threatening messages.

The number of people affected easily reaches into the hundreds. Paul Dietrich, a transparency activist, said a partial scan of the Saudi cables alone turned up more than 500 passport, identity, academic or employment files.

The AP independently found three dozen records pertaining to family issues in the cables — including messages about marriages, divorces, missing children, elopements and custody battles. Many are very personal, like the marital certificates which reveal whether the bride was a virgin. Others deal with Saudis who are deeply in debt, including one man who says his wife stole his money. One divorce document details a male partner's infertility. Others identify the partners of women suffering from sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and Hepatitis C.

Lisa Lynch, who teaches media and communications at Drew University and has followed WikiLeaks for years, said Assange may not have had the staff or the resources to properly vet what he published. Or maybe he felt that the urgency of his mission trumped privacy concerns.

"For him the ends justify the means," she said.​

While Assange and Wikileaks have not just targeted the US and primarily the Democrats, what they have dumped onto their site also contains exceptionally private and personal details about people which yes, is harmful to those individuals. These are not Government or State employees, but private citizens. I doubt anyone can make a case for publishing the banking details and private contact details of private citizens who happened to donate to or email the Democratic Party in the US either. But Wikileaks has also done this.

Except in this case, Assange has openly stated that his intent is to harm Clinton to prevent her from becoming President. In other words, he is attempting to meddle in the Presidential elections of the US.

The timing of the document dump, his words prior to and after said document dump (which saw personal information of donors and ordinary citizens remain unredacted) was clearly political. While I doubt he is a Russian front man, there can be no denying what his true intent was with the DNC document dump.

While I feel for Assange and what he has endured, I cannot excuse or condone his present behaviour. The man has lost his way. This is no longer about exposing State secrets or damaging information. There is a maliciousness about him now, this complete and utter lack of empathy which is absolutely dangerous. The Saudi files shows that. His timing and comments with the DNC document dumps also show that.

 

I do not think releasing private details of people not involved in politics, details like their banking and financial details, their private and personal contact details, their medical history and medical problems, constitutes outing Government corruption.

But wikileaks did not just do that. In the past, they used to redact personal details like that. It was vetted to make sure that people's privacy were protected. Not it is not.

Wellwisher, your constant whining against the Democrats is well known. Your support from Trump is also well known. I find it astonishing that you do not question the one-sidedness of Wikileaks involvement in the US elections. Are you suggesting that similar behaviour was not to be had against Trump in the primaries? The RNC never hid the fact that they did not want Trump and actively campaigned against him in the primaries. Hell, he is still to release his tax returns. Then of course comes the fact that he is jacking donors and the RNC out of money after he increased the rent in his own building for his campaign headquarters once donor money was used to pay for the rent for that space. The increase to the rent he is charging the RNC and donors for his own campaign in his own building was not small either. He raised it by a ridiculous amount. How about the fact that his so called self funded campaign is actually a loan from the RNC? Or how about how Trump spoke to NBC about continuing a version of The Apprentice show from the White House... Not to mention you conveniently leaving out the fact that Trump's former campaign manager was being given millions of dollars from Russians as he worked for Russia's proxy leader of the Ukraine, before he was ousted?

How about Trump openly mixing campaign and business and profiting financially from both? Illegally? Or the fact that he is using his political campaign to further his own business dealings and using his political platform to benefit his business?

And you want to complain about DNC corruption? Are we meant to take you seriously?