Kinja reply list

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eggowarehouseeleventyHamilton Nolan
9/15/14 11:53am
Is it cool if I just torrent your book?
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PootMcFruitcakesHamilton Nolan
9/15/14 11:54am
Given the collapse of your support since avoiding rape charges for several years, don't you think that Wikileaks, as an organisation, would have been better served if you resigned?
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  scroogemcduckkPootMcFruitcakes
  9/15/14 12:00pm
  WikiLeaks isn't an organization anymore. JA IS WikiLeaks.
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  Julian AssangePootMcFruitcakes
  9/15/14 1:05pm
  Here we go. This chat is about my book, but there's always one misinformation victim ready to crash and burn. I'm not charged. No woman accuses me of what you say although I do have an unresolved "preliminary investigation" still in Sweden. My asylum was granted not in relation to that but to the ongoing DoJ attempt to prosecute me and other members of our staff. We don't confuse negative PR campaigns for public opinion. Opinion polling from the US just two months ago shows that WikiLeaks has majority support of people under the age of 40. If you are interested in the various legal cases going on, see http://freeassangenow.org/faq and http://justice4assange.org/
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Adam WeinsteinHamilton Nolan
9/15/14 12:08pm
What is Wikileaks good for after Chelsea Manning? It seems something like a media outlet that never got another big scoop after the war logs and cables. Perhaps that's a function of the government scrutiny it earned after those leaks. If so, does that mean that Wikileaks has run its course and the open society you envision will come from other actors on the internet and off it?
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  alittletruthforyouAdam Weinstein
  9/15/14 12:11pm
  Since your questions automatically go to the top, you should ask him the question about the big duck. That's important.
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  Julian AssangeAdam Weinstein
  9/15/14 12:27pm
  Please see today's "Spy Files 4" [ https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles4/ ] In the past year, we have published a lot of material including the big open shots for the TPP and TISA and several hundred thousands cables. We're now upto more than 2 million.Also, see our release of an Australian superinjunction on reporting on an anti-corruption case involving Australia, involving Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. You can now search more than 8 million of our publications at once using WikiLeaks search: https://search.wikileaks.org/
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exotericHamilton Nolan
9/15/14 11:54am
Mr. Assange,

Predictive/imposed determinism translates (for the purposes of the NSA) into a regime of political and economic unidimensionality over the entirety of the world and over all the human individuals contained within it; it is a subject that is amply discussed in academic sources, and yet there is hardly any mention of it in Wikileaks’ entire archives. On the other hand, predictive analytics/determinism forms the very substance of and the basis for the Snowden revelations; how do you explain the yawning discrepancy between the paucity of testimony of predictive/imposed determinism in the Wikileaks archives on the one hand, and its overwhelming corroboration, indeed instantiation, by Snowden’s NSA-centered revelations on the other?

Also, if you would care to comment on this quote: "[Stratfor's] reports reflect the ideas and conceptual changes of institutions linked to U.S. national security...in such [official report's] more than verifiable facts, what are observed are elaborations of strategic analysis which begin to change the focus; the staging of conceptual-operative frameworks; and the uses of terminology in preparation for near-future transformations in American geopolitical strategy."—Sergio González Rodríguez (Campo de Guerra, 2014)

Thank you.
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  SwimmingBird567exoteric
  9/15/14 12:05pm
  Exoteric hasn't met a semicolon he didn't like.
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  Gemmabetaexoteric
  9/15/14 12:08pm
  Are you expecting Mr. Assange to do your homework or something?
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joshua lamoreyHamilton Nolan
9/15/14 12:00pm
Julian, do you think you have anything—anything at all—in common with Eric Schmidt?
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  Julian Assangejoshua lamorey
  9/15/14 12:42pm
  Plenty - I discuss it a lot in the book, e.g. : "Schmidt’s dour appearance concealed a machinelike analyticity. His questions often skipped to the heart of the matter, betraying a powerful nonverbal structural intelligence. It was the same intellect that had abstracted software-engineering principles to scale Google into a megacorp, ensuring that the corporate infrastructure always met the rate of growth. This was a person who understood how to build and maintain systems: systems of information and systems of people. My world was new to him, but it was also a world of unfolding human processes, scale, and information flows. "
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  alittletruthforyouJulian Assange
  9/15/14 12:46pm
  So, he's the kind of guy who can put together and manage a groundbreaking, world-changing, highly successful organization... and you recognize that. What is it that you have in common? Another non-answer.
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hazelpressHamilton Nolan
9/15/14 12:21pm
BBC News June, 2014 "According to Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, Google has within its power - whether intentionally or not - to give a winning push to a political candidate in a close election."

Does Julian Assange consider this a real possibility? Electoral fraud is as old as elections, and so, is this form of manipulation a question of not if, but when (if not already quite some time ago)? Also, if unconscious biases held by the search engine's creators could result in distortions of the engine's selectivity (something that could then effect elections), are those controlling Google vulnerable to being manipulated (perhaps without their knowledge) by interested parties into slanting the engine's behavior?
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  Julian Assangehazelpress
  9/15/14 12:44pm
  Yes, it is a real possibility. There are also examples of Google abusing this kind of power in my book, for e.g.; "In Autumn 2013 the Obama administration was trying to drum up support for US airstrikes against Syria. Despite setbacks, the administration continued to press for military action well into September with speeches and public announcements by both President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. On September 10, Google lent its front page—the most popular on the internet—to the war effort, inserting a line below the search box reading "Live! Secretary Kerry answers questions on Syria. Today via Hangout at 2pm ET.""
  
  An archive snapshot of the page can be found at archive.today/Q6uq8.
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Matthew PhelanHamilton Nolan
9/15/14 12:04pm
There was a piece in Slate last year about Google, that I kept thinking about with respect to this book, about how Google's internal culture and goals are bound up in Star Trek. For example: Amit Singhal, the head of Google's search rankings team, told the South by Southwest Interactive Festival that "The destiny of [Google's search engine] is to become that Star Trek computer, and that's what we are building."

It makes sense to me in that there's a real Camelot-era liberal pro-statist ideal underlying Star Trek's vision of the future, and I'm curious what your sense was as to whether or not Eric Schmidt really buys into that. AND/OR I am curious to know how your idealized vision of the future differs from that Google Star Trek model.
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  Julian AssangeMatthew Phelan
  9/15/14 12:56pm
  I hadn't seen that piece. At a glance, it reminds me of the discovery that the NSA had had the bridge of the Enterprise recreated. In my experience it is more reliable and fairer to look at peoples interests and expenditure rather than try to diagnose their inner mental state, as the latter often lets people project their own biases. As I say in the book, I found Eric Schmidt to be, as you would expect, a very sharp operator. If you read "The New Digital Age", the apolitical futurism of Star Trek seems to fit what Schmidt writes quite well. I also quite liked this summary of Google's vision for the future: "Google's vision of the future is pure atom-age 1960s Jetsons fantasy, bubble-dwelling spiritless sexists above a ruined earth." https://twitter.com/jakebackpack/s…
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  Matthew PhelanJulian Assange
  9/16/14 7:53am
  I feel suitably chastened for the more controversy-stoking aspect of that question. This answer was great. Thank you for introducing me to this Jacob Bacharach fellow. Best of luck, Julian!
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ChristopherSHamilton Nolan
9/15/14 12:00pm
Mr. Assange, thank you for taking the time to answer some questions. Today, Comcast announced that they will shut off the service of any customer that they see using Tor. How would you recommend combating such an egregious restriction on consumer freedom?

Also, more generally, how do you see the next 5 years playing out in terms of a free and open internet in the United States and abroad?

Thanks again for your time.
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  Julian AssangeChristopherS
  9/15/14 12:41pm
  For now, learn how to use a Tor bridge, the way Chinese Tor users must. In the long term, it's going to be about fighting the fight for public ownership of ISPs, because clearly it is unacceptable to have Comcast as our line to the network.
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handmadeproteinshakeHamilton Nolan
9/15/14 12:10pm
Dear J.A.,

I find it perplexing that you campaign against the US and it's secretive programs, always advocating for more transparency in government actions, yet you won't face your charges in Sweden. I mean why should I listen to your rants about how we need to shine a light on what our government has done, when you don't shine a light on our potentially criminal activity? Is this one of those cases where the kettle thinks it's of a different color than the pot?

Sincerely,

Me.
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  Cosmo Lupertazzihandmadeproteinshake
  9/15/14 12:21pm
  For JA: And also on this topic, what do you think about the comparisons between you and Roman Polanski?
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Wpark83Hamilton Nolan
9/15/14 11:58am
I feel you've done a great service to humanity for pulling the curtains back on corruption and lies. Do you have any ideas, or see any ways that the human race can change our ways to create a path towards more transparency, truthfulness, and doing what's right?
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  Julian AssangeWpark83
  9/15/14 12:39pm
  One thing you can do, which is quite simple, is treat companies like Google and Facebook as the corporations they are. Lots of people - especially on the left - are aware of the ways in which corporations are exploitative and harmful. But there is a disconnect when it comes to Silicon Valley. Lots of people refuse to buy Coca Cola, but they don't see any problem with having a Gmail account. I think that is changing lately, but we need a movement to divest from these corporations - which destroy privacy - and to build an alternative internet that isn't as actively harmful to human interests.
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