The Hillary Email / Benghazi Catch-All

How do CEOs of large corporations fit into your privacy matrix?

Malor wrote:

The perfect defense against this kind of leakage is not to engage in the unethical bullsh*t in the first place. Wikileaks did you a favor, and will continue to do so, at least assuming you want honest politicians in office.

Just for the sake of reference: what unethical behavior have you observed from the DNC emails?

SixteenBlue wrote:

How do CEOs of large corporations fit into your privacy matrix?

I've been kind of thinking about that, and haven't really decided. My initial impulse is 'internal leaks okay, external hacks bad', but I suspect that would fall apart on careful analysis.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

Just for the sake of reference: what unethical behavior have you observed from the DNC emails?

Mostly the coordination to try to discredit Sanders as a candidate. One of the staffers, for instance, was wondering if they couldn't go after him for being an atheist, that he believed 'non-practicing Jew' was a cover story.

edit: there wasn't a lot of it, but there was certainly some, and then there are the skewed exit poll results from quite a number of states, when nothing similar happened in the Republican primaries. Exit polling is normally extremely accurate, and it was way, way off in quite a few places in the Democratic primaries.

second edit: perhaps most notably, the skewed results all happened in places without paper ballots to check.

Malor wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

How do CEOs of large corporations fit into your privacy matrix?

I've been kind of thinking about that, and haven't really decided. My initial impulse is 'internal leaks okay, external hacks bad', but I suspect that would fall apart on careful analysis.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

Just for the sake of reference: what unethical behavior have you observed from the DNC emails?

Mostly the coordination to try to discredit Sanders as a candidate. One of the staffers, for instance, was wondering if they couldn't go after him for being an atheist, that he believed 'non-practicing Jew' was a cover story.

Can you elaborate on how that is unethical? Political stategists try to discredit their opponents all the time.

Does the DNC have an ethical obligation to be completely neutral to all Democratic candidates? Even ones who refused to participate in the party for years?

Can you elaborate on how that is unethical? Political stategists try to discredit their opponents all the time.

Because Bernie Sanders should not have been the DNC's opponent.

Does the DNC have an ethical obligation to be completely neutral to all Democratic candidates? Even ones who refused to participate in the party for years?

Now you're justifying the bias.

You're proving the point, if anything.

I'm really, really strongly suspicious that Sanders would have won that election, if the Democrats hadn't colluded to prevent it.

SixteenBlue wrote:

Does the DNC have an ethical obligation to be completely neutral to all Democratic candidates? Even ones who refused to participate in the party for years?

That was there stated stance, yes.

Also, many people confuse Snowden with Wikileaks. They are totally different.

I am really upset with the DNC leadership and I am really glad to see a lot of them gone. It is absolutely mind boggling that we got to witness the effects of 8 years of cronyism with Bush only to turn around and think it is a great idea to do the same? To completely ignore the shortsightedness and self-defeating nature of that practice?

So the ends justify the means; the means in this case being a foreign state interfering in the US political process through hacking?

There is some difference between bringing up the idea of questioning Sanders faith, and actually doing it. It is one of the most disgusting of the mails though, and the party of a current president who was attacked for being Muslim should be embarrassed about even considering it.
That mail, like many others, was also from May, when it looked very likely Sanders had lost. It reads a lot like DNC being frustrated he wouldn't admit defeat, rather than actively having tried to push him to that defeat.

Tanglebones wrote:

So the ends justify the means; the means in this case being a foreign state interfering in the US political process through hacking?

Personally, I think the ends and the means aren't especially relevant, in this specific case. They both matter, and should be considered, but neither has much impact on the other.

A) The DNC is a bunch of scumbags;
B) The Russians (may have) hacked the DNC, and want to discredit them.

Those look like two separate things to me.

Now, if there were claims that the leaks were inaccurate, then they'd become relevant again. But nobody, to my knowledge, has disputed that the email dump was accurate. There are no claims that the Russians are lying, just that they're the ones responsible for releasing truthful documentation.

Malor wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

How do CEOs of large corporations fit into your privacy matrix?

I've been kind of thinking about that, and haven't really decided. My initial impulse is 'internal leaks okay, external hacks bad', but I suspect that would fall apart on careful analysis.

It's this "Morally right but legally not" attitude that disturbs me about all of this. It promotes vigilantism.

Leaks are OK because someone who had access to the information and knows it's importance then breaks rank to deliver that information into the public sphere.

Hacks are not because someone with who did not have information invades one's privacy in order to find the presence or absence of that data. Put another way: We only know about the DNC hack because they found something marginally interesting and it fit the hackers agenda to release it. We DON'T know about the myriads of other people or organizations whose privacy has been violated and whose secrets have been stolen because the hackers didn't find that stuffy juicy or interesting enough to release. Or maybe they found it more profitable to blackmail those individuals rather than release it.

I might be grateful at the end of the day that a hacker's interests lined up enough with my own to reveal information to the public, but I can't condone hacking as a general good and right journalistic practice.

RoughneckGeek wrote:
Malor wrote:

I'm really, really strongly suspicious that Sanders would have won that election, if the Democrats hadn't colluded to prevent it.

You're also the one trotting out old news about coin flips in Iowa deciding the course of the Democratic nomination when all known reports put Clinton and Sanders about 50/50 on how many they each won, so I'm not sure your suspicions are based in reality.

And Sander's shouldn't have been an opponent of the DNC, but he wasn't a good friend either. He joined the party because he didn't want to be a spoiler candidate as an independent. He didn't assist with down ticket races or fundraising. It makes perfect sense to me why the DNC would prefer the candidate that did and try to act in their own best interests. I've read through the emails and while a few of those that have been released don't put the DNC in a good light, I also don't see evidence of anything that makes me uncomfortable. What's also missing is any evidence Clinton took part in this "collusion" which makes this whole line of discussion as off topic for this thread as my previous post about Eich.

This is where I'm at. The few actual suggestions to actively work against Sanders where a) all shot down and b) all came from after he essentially already lost. His loss is on him, no one else. In a world where he's a better politician he could have taken it, but he wrote off the south and let Clinton run up the numbers in key big states. Clinton beat him with the strategy Obama used to beat Clinton in 08. The idea that the almost four million vote lead for Clinton is the result of nefarious DNC activity is... unconvincing.

Yeah there was no realistic way under the current rules Sanders would have won.. and I voted for him. The reality is that his message scared a good deal of Democratic voters.

Things to consider. If the Wikileaks DNC releases were really done in the public interest, where are the leaks from all the other parties, to inform us fairly? And bear in mind, Assange has an axe to grind with Clinton, who was in part responsible for his current situatioin.

And as I noted, the Russians make hay by stirring things up during the election run-up. When they handed this information to Wikileaks - and *just* this - in time to release during the DNC convention, do you really believe this was done to benefit the US public? ...Pull the other one next, it's got bells on.

Arguing the idealism and public service of the DNC hack are something of a fig leaf to cover up the much more likely motivations, since it's pretty obvious that *all* the US political parties have *at least* as many skeletons rattling around in dark places, and equally obvious that the leaks were not intended to provide "truth" to the public.

I'm really, really strongly suspicious that Sanders would have won that election, if the Democrats hadn't colluded to prevent it.

I'm not. In fact, I'm quite sure of exactly the opposite.

Sanders was not pulling in many voters outside of white folks. Their behavior booing a civil rights leader at the convention tells me just all I need to know why Sanders lost. While he started off rocky and tried to course correct on racial issues after BLM interrupted one of his campaign events early on, his appeal was largely, to my understanding, white democrats. Just like in the general, winning the white vote is not nearly as important as polling strongly with everyone (which Clinton did with several non-white Democrat groups).

Demosthenes wrote:
I'm really, really strongly suspicious that Sanders would have won that election, if the Democrats hadn't colluded to prevent it.

I'm not. In fact, I'm quite sure of exactly the opposite.

Sanders was not pulling in many voters outside of white folks. Their behavior booing a civil rights leader at the convention tells me just all I need to know why Sanders lost. While he started off rocky and tried to course correct on racial issues after BLM interrupted one of his campaign events early on, his appeal was largely, to my understanding, white democrats. Just like in the general, winning the white vote is not nearly as important as polling strongly with everyone (which Clinton did with several non-white Democrat groups).

There's a thin line between a Trump Bro and a Bernie Bro.

An interview with Julian Assange concerning the forthcoming Wikileaks information. It's worth a listen while being short on specifics.

EDIT: (and pseudo-PSA) if you're a sick of the 24 hour news cycle, the PBS News Hour is available daily on YouTube. It's such a refreshing thing to watch an actual journalistic program that goes out of its way to include science and the arts. Shout-out to anyone who remembers the McNeil-Lehrer days (even though I think the current hosts are just as good if not better).

attn: Yonder
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/04/politi...

Washington (CNN)Hillary Clinton is repeating her false claim that the FBI said her statements on her use of a private email were "truthful."

"As the FBI said, everything that I've said publicly has been consistent and truthful with what I've told them," Clinton said in an interview with KUSA's Brandon Rittiman on Wednesday.
Clinton made a similar claim -- which was widely debunked -- in an interview last weekend on "Fox News Sunday."

Kronen wrote:

EDIT: (and pseudo-PSA) if you're a sick of the 24 hour news cycle, the PBS News Hour is available daily on YouTube. It's such a refreshing thing to watch an actual journalistic program that goes out of its way to include science and the arts. Shout-out to anyone who remembers the McNeil-Lehrer days (even though I think the current hosts are just as good if not better).

Completely agreed, News Hour has been one of my subscribed podcasts and a daily listen for almost 3 years now.

I guess this goes best here since the picture thread was closed.

*she looks quite normal when she laughs for real.

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Right, that is just what the Chinese robot manufactures want you to believe.

Buried under 4-5 stories about how Trump is horrible

State department releases emails Democratic nominee failed to turn over, and include interactions with lobbyists and donors as secretary of state

State department releases emails Democratic nominee failed to turn over, and include interactions with lobbyists and donors as secretary of state

I find it funny and sad that this is just buried under Trump's latest antics.

It's pretty obvious that he's not just in it to "tell the truth". He's got axes and he's grinding them.

... Jesus.

Maybe it will all come crashing down on him in the future

Ecuador Will Set Date for Assange to Be Questioned Over Rape Allegations

To be fair, Assange said like two weeks ago that the primary source of the DNC leaks was someone inside the DNC itself.

NormanTheIntern wrote:

To be fair, Assange said like two weeks ago that the primary source of the DNC leaks was someone inside the DNC itself.

I don't understand "to be fair" How does where the information came from matter to the topic of Assange having a grudge against the Clintons and using this information to damage them?

Because we fall into the same trap of killing the messenger. Or we end up attacking the messenger instead of the message.

....ok I can buy that a bit. I still think his motivations are important but it shouldn't discredit what the information is.