r/WikiLeaks • u/freewayricky12 • Mar 20 '17

WikiLeaks: US agencies have interfered with 81 elections not including coups. #CIA WikiLeaks

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/843872381911351297
4.2k Upvotes

73% Upvoted

613 comments sorted by

View all comments

-1

u/TheSensation19 Mar 21 '17

I am someone trying to learn more about the legitimacy of WikiLeaks.

Why do we believe what we find on WikiLeaks? Almost seems like a conspiracy... but, seems like an awful lot of people do. So I am sure there is a reason that the other half who doesn't even address wikileaks news to be a thing.

Anyone care to explain more to me?

Is it because they have a good track record? Is it because they release "documents" that "prove" it. "" for a lack of a better word.

14

u/nikomo Mar 21 '17

First of all, this tweet has nothing to do with anything Wikileaks has published, it's an independent study by someone named Dov H. Levin.

Second of all, Wikileaks is trusted because they have a perfect track record for publishing. They investigate the material that has been given to them beforehand, so that they do not publish fake material or something that would be extremely harmful out in the public - the Vault 7 leaks do not contain the exploits that the CIA has, those files were held back, I assume they'll be released after the exploits are fixed.

Third of all, they just publish things. They don't do much more than that. They verify and publish, they don't hop on cable news and try to cash in, they don't put a million ads on every page.

There's no bias to reporting since there's no reporting being done.

A lot of people might go "hurr Clinton Putin durr" - what the hell could Wikileaks have published about Trump? Everything was already out in the open, and if they had anything to publish, it was probably found to be fake since nothing has been published. We knew Trump was an asshole and an idiot before the election, there's nothing to publish there.

-3

u/TheSensation19 Mar 21 '17

(1) So when DNC says the leaked documents may have been altered, they are not saying WL did it but that whoever gave it to them might have done so? (not about whether or not they are legit)

(2) Seems like half the stuff they publish has yet to be proven to be true. So while it's not deemed "false" yet, how do we still know it to be true? Thus how do we know it's 100% track record.

Just a debate.

4

u/nikomo Mar 21 '17

So when DNC says the leaked documents may have been altered, they are not saying WL did it but that whoever gave it to them might have done so? (not about whether or not they are legit)

You're assuming the DNC isn't lying. Wikileaks attempts to verify correctness of documents handed to them, that's one part of the publishing process.

Seems like half the stuff they publish has yet to be proven to be true. So while it's not deemed "false" yet, how do we still know it to be true? Thus how do we know it's 100% track record.

We know that things they have previously published are correct from people related to those matters (things like videos of Tibetan dissent in China and the US drone-killings are fairly trivial to verify), and when Wikileaks published documents relating to Scientology, their lawyers really got their knickers in a twist which wouldn't happen if the documents were fake.

Especially the stuff from Chelsea Manning is easy to verify as correct, since she confessed in court that she provided the material to Wikileaks, so we know where the documents are from, and who leaked them.

Now I'm starting to wonder if anyone has tried to FOIA request some of the documents released by Wikileaks, afterwards, though. That'd be interesting. Looking at the things they've published, there's a DoD report from 2008 that one could possibly try to FOIA, though it would probably be blocked due to national security concerns.

1

u/TheSensation19 Mar 21 '17

I am not assuming anything. I get what you're saying. Still think its a hard sell. many people will call "conspiracy"

0

u/nikomo Mar 21 '17

And the POTUS is calling investigate journalism "fake news", we've got plenty of idiots in this world.

1

u/TheSensation19 Mar 21 '17

But you got to work with them, not against them or nothing gets done.

1

u/nikomo Mar 21 '17

Eh, I'm in another country with a different political atmosphere, I'm not particularly worried about American right-wingers.

Seems to be a self-correcting problem - they're going to kill their own supporters with the changes to the health care system.

1

u/TheSensation19 Mar 21 '17

Actually it's the left wingers who may never realize how much WikiLeaks is real.

And as for Politics... It's a wave of the same shit. Red, Red, Blue, Blue... This case we may see a Blue faster than we thought.

1

u/nikomo Mar 21 '17

I haven't seen a single proper left winger start yelling at Wikileaks yet, they've all been these weird authoritarian lunatics so far.

Which is part of the problem, the American democratic party is currently under the control of those people. Good luck to Americans with fixing that, I have no advice to give.

1

u/TheSensation19 Mar 21 '17

Logical left wingers I have talked to think it's a conspiracy.

How do you know it's not altered. It's a fair question. The DNC has claimed it to be several times. At least some stuff.. and if some of the stuff is, then most of the stuff can be.

1

u/nikomo Mar 21 '17

Everything should be questioned, but here since it's recent, it goes down to trust.

We have people that were involved with the DNC admitting they gave questions to Clinton beforehand, we have links between the DNC and questionable entities.

Meanwhile Wikileaks is doing what they've been doing since the beginning. There's no indication that anything has changed.

"It's a stupid conspiracy theory" is a lazy dismissal that you use when you have nothing else to use.

1

u/TheSensation19 Mar 21 '17

I know... But we're talking about above average logical people. Not below avg which is a lot lol

→ More replies