I'm going to present an opinion which is unpopular in tech-related communities: The EFF gets it wrong when they balance journalism/freedom of expression against a country's need for secrets. To...
I'm going to present an opinion which is unpopular in tech-related communities:
The EFF gets it wrong when they balance journalism/freedom of expression against a country's need for secrets.
To summarize: the EFF doesn't apply reasonable requirements for responsible reporting, and so overstate their proposed journalistic exceptions.
Just like "national security" can't be or become a catch-all phrase to avoid scrutiny, "journalism" can't become a circular argument for the right to publish things in any format, especially when it's done irresponsibly.
This specific article on Assange deals with the hacker, but also matters of principle.
I'd like to again bring attention to three must-read topics regarding Assange to cut through all the spin written about for all sorts of purposes.
Here's Assange's ghostwriter of an autobiography laying it all out from 2014. Read about Assange as the self-proclaimed "third best hacker in the world", Assange the person, Wikileaks leader, narcissist etc. etc.
Here's the 2018 Muller Investigation-produced outlet that shows clearly and definitively that Wikileaks (and certainly Assange personally) worked with the Russian GRU (in the form of Guccifer 2.0) to influence US elections.
Now that we're up to speed on what Assange's actually done, it appears not only reasonably but obvious that the US must systematically seek to prosecute Assange for his obvious crimes.
That's when we get into whether or not what Wikileaks has published is journalism, and if so if it's responsible journalism that should have special legal protections from what would otherwise be crimes.
The EFF is perfectly right in pointing our that journalism is often about publishing information powerful people don't want the public to see. an integral part of that editorial process is choosing what not to publish.
How would a serious US publication have treated the diplomatic cables Wikileaks published?
Wikileaks endangered the lives of undercover agents when choosing not to redact their names.
Wikileaks undermined US diplomatic efforts by embarrassing the US through identifying a lot of sensitive diplomatic information seemingly wholesale (they may have not published certain things for their own ideological reasons).
What editorial decisions would a reasonable outlet have made given the same cables? A US medium would certainly treat the cables differently to a British one, much less a Chinese or Russian one.
We rely on the editorial standards of all or news sources every time we consume their content. That's a bitter pill a lot of youth have to swallow. It's easy to say that everything should be open and reported, but that's a simplistic and indefensible view when principle encounters real life.
Manning and Schwartz were both changed with crimes they'd clearly committed.
I completely agree with the EFF that it sure looks like the US went on fishing expeditions to find something to charge them with. Why not settle for the slam-dunk, self-evident case as you build cases on the big crimes? That seems only reasonable.
The EFF is perfectly right in asserting that the current computer- and coders' laws in the US are bad and should be reformed.
They point out clear issues of how to split reasonable journalism in the US from nonsense and fakery. It's too easy to mislead people in the US without consequence because the First Amendment in 18th century fashion equates more speech with necessarily more free speech.
Reasonable speech regulation in the US must stem from constitutional change. Barring that, small legal fixes make sense, but the main underlying issue remains.
If what Wikileaks has published is "journalism", then the EFF is essentially saying that as long as some editor finds something newsworthy, hack all you like and publish anything irrespective of how many lives are endangered. That is not a society we should aspire to but that's the consequence of the EFF's policy on these issues.
Possibly unpopular... but I, for one, actually agree with pretty much everything you said. The EFF (and Cory Doctorow esp.) are absolutists in a lot of ways, and their views on journalism, free...
I'm going to present an opinion which is unpopular in tech-related communities:
Possibly unpopular... but I, for one, actually agree with pretty much everything you said. The EFF (and Cory Doctorow esp.) are absolutists in a lot of ways, and their views on journalism, free speech and DRM in particular reflect that. E.g. Them resigning from the W3C over adopting the Encrypted Media Extensions standard, allowing DRM in HTML5 video. And as a result of that absolutism and their often hard-line stances, it honestly makes it hard to justify supporting them sometimes, IMO.
I'm going to present an opinion which is unpopular in tech-related communities:
To summarize: the EFF doesn't apply reasonable requirements for responsible reporting, and so overstate their proposed journalistic exceptions.
Just like "national security" can't be or become a catch-all phrase to avoid scrutiny, "journalism" can't become a circular argument for the right to publish things in any format, especially when it's done irresponsibly.
This specific article on Assange deals with the hacker, but also matters of principle.
I'd like to again bring attention to three must-read topics regarding Assange to cut through all the spin written about for all sorts of purposes.
Here's Assange's ghostwriter of an autobiography laying it all out from 2014. Read about Assange as the self-proclaimed "third best hacker in the world", Assange the person, Wikileaks leader, narcissist etc. etc.
Here's the 2018 Muller Investigation-produced outlet that shows clearly and definitively that Wikileaks (and certainly Assange personally) worked with the Russian GRU (in the form of Guccifer 2.0) to influence US elections.
Assange (not an American) and Manning systematically attempted to steal US secret documents.. If they believe that's the right thing to do, knowingly breaking the law still lands you in jail.
Now that we're up to speed on what Assange's actually done, it appears not only reasonably but obvious that the US must systematically seek to prosecute Assange for his obvious crimes.
That's when we get into whether or not what Wikileaks has published is journalism, and if so if it's responsible journalism that should have special legal protections from what would otherwise be crimes.
The EFF is perfectly right in pointing our that journalism is often about publishing information powerful people don't want the public to see. an integral part of that editorial process is choosing what not to publish.
How would a serious US publication have treated the diplomatic cables Wikileaks published?
Wikileaks endangered the lives of undercover agents when choosing not to redact their names.
Wikileaks undermined US diplomatic efforts by embarrassing the US through identifying a lot of sensitive diplomatic information seemingly wholesale (they may have not published certain things for their own ideological reasons).
What editorial decisions would a reasonable outlet have made given the same cables? A US medium would certainly treat the cables differently to a British one, much less a Chinese or Russian one.
We rely on the editorial standards of all or news sources every time we consume their content. That's a bitter pill a lot of youth have to swallow. It's easy to say that everything should be open and reported, but that's a simplistic and indefensible view when principle encounters real life.
Manning and Schwartz were both changed with crimes they'd clearly committed.
I completely agree with the EFF that it sure looks like the US went on fishing expeditions to find something to charge them with. Why not settle for the slam-dunk, self-evident case as you build cases on the big crimes? That seems only reasonable.
The EFF is perfectly right in asserting that the current computer- and coders' laws in the US are bad and should be reformed.
They point out clear issues of how to split reasonable journalism in the US from nonsense and fakery. It's too easy to mislead people in the US without consequence because the First Amendment in 18th century fashion equates more speech with necessarily more free speech.
Reasonable speech regulation in the US must stem from constitutional change. Barring that, small legal fixes make sense, but the main underlying issue remains.
If what Wikileaks has published is "journalism", then the EFF is essentially saying that as long as some editor finds something newsworthy, hack all you like and publish anything irrespective of how many lives are endangered. That is not a society we should aspire to but that's the consequence of the EFF's policy on these issues.
Possibly unpopular... but I, for one, actually agree with pretty much everything you said. The EFF (and Cory Doctorow esp.) are absolutists in a lot of ways, and their views on journalism, free speech and DRM in particular reflect that. E.g. Them resigning from the W3C over adopting the Encrypted Media Extensions standard, allowing DRM in HTML5 video. And as a result of that absolutism and their often hard-line stances, it honestly makes it hard to justify supporting them sometimes, IMO.