FBI Paid Off Wikileaks Insider To Be An Informant: Imagine If It Was The NY Times
from the that's-insane dept
People like to debate whether or not Wikileaks is or is not a "media property," but I can't see any definition of a media property under which Wikileaks would not fall. Yes, it publishes leaked documents, but so do many other media properties. Yes, it has a strong ideological viewpoint, but so do many other media properties. So it's rather stunning to read about the fact that a Wikileaks insider apparently spent some time as a paid informant for the FBI, handing over a variety of internet information on things happening within Wikileaks. Imagine if this was the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal, and it came out that an employee was getting paid by the FBI to reveal what those newspapers were working on. People would be up in arms, just like they were over the DOJ's spying on AP reporters and a Fox News reporter. Except, this wasn't just spying on a reporter, this was flat out paying off an insider to share internal information. That's incredible.The entire story from Kevin Poulsen at Wired is worth reading, about how Icelandic teen Sigurdur Thordarson was taken under Julian Assange's wing and given a fair amount of autonomy within Wikileaks. The details suggest that Thordarson abused that position in many ways, including setting up a t-shirt sales site, supposedly to benefit Wikileaks, but where all the money went directly to his own bank account. But, that's really minor considering the key point: that the FBI actively worked with and continued to push Thordarson to get more info from Wikileaks, even after he'd left the organization. The DOJ is supposed to have rules about investigations of media properties for a variety of reasons, and paying off an insider seems like it goes way, way beyond what's appropriate.
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Filed Under: doj, fbi, informant, journalism, julian assange, media, paid informant, sigurdur thordarson, surveillance, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks
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Other than that it's just more rotten garbage from a completely broken and lunatic Government. Where are the Americans protesting?
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1) Have to organize people in a way that doesn't draw the ire of local law enforcement. Considering the NSA is sucking up all information regarding this, that means that private face-to-face conversations are the only way for this to happen. Which is far too difficult to do on a large scale
2) Organize the RIGHT people who the media can't slander into oblivion. Which means no minorities, no LGBT, no one wearing the wrong kind of shirt, and make sure every person who attends brings signs with proper spelling and punctuation and say the right things that can't be spun as being "Communist"
3) Find a place to do it where it is "legal". Which means literally any place that is not an "obstruction" (Not on public property) or "trespassing" (Not anywhere near private property)
4) Get the proper paperwork from city hall, who controls local law enforcement, who is under the thumb of the people you're protesting
5) If you do all this, and manage to even get this far while having more than maybe a dozen protestors total, you must then face the inevitability of plants and bad elements. Law enforcement WILL plant instigators inside of your protest movement if there are more than several dozen people in attendance, this is a proven fact of protests. They do this because the second they want to shut it down, it only takes one of those instigators throwing a water bottle to do so.
So in short, after you do all this, you:
-Have little to no impact
-Can be ignored easily
-And if you're not ignored, you will be demonized
So why do people say that Americans need to be marching in the streets again?
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Only big media corporations have rights Mike!
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I guess Julian...
... has no Thordar.
YEAAAAAAH!
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Re: I guess Julian...
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OK, it was a bad joke.
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Imagining...
Given recent events, I'm imagining that it hasn't come out. Yet.
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No, imagine if it's Assange hisself!
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Re: No, imagine if it's Assange hisself!
That's funny, I remember dozens of comments from you going on about how Assange and Manning were bad for just dumping thousands of cables.
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Re: Re: No, imagine if it's Assange hisself!
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Re: Re: Re: No, imagine if it's Assange hisself!
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No they wouldn't, if the last week has taught us anything: we are complicit to the crimes committed by our government. Nothing they can do at this point will cause us to lift a finger from our sofas and computer chairs.
Learning our media and government are in bed together would be just another "Oh, I knew that all along" moment.
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Making assumptions
That is, if you don't treat Wikileaks as a media organization (and I agree with your reasoning that it is, but that's not the point), then paying an informant to get insider information is just something that the FBI does.
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OTOH...
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Journalist? Foreigner
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