Surprise Eviction For Assange

[Joe]

I have mixed feelings about Wikileaks and Assange. I thought it was a great idea in the beginning, when it was more of a Wikipedia for leakers. They've been a conduit for valuable sharing of evidence of corruption, fraud, and criminality that would otherwise not have come to light, especially in smaller countries with less capable press and law enforcement.

However, their focus has changed in a disturbing way, and Assange seems to be the reason.

The US has become target number one, and while I'd expect my country to dominate in the number and magnitude of leaks due to our institutionalized clandestine skulduggery, the paucity of Russian leaks is worrying. When Wikileaks declared they would "intervene" in the 2012 election, and Assange allegedly said in an email that Wikileaks, "can advance the political/governance aspects of these developments by several years which will have all sorts of positive cascades, not the least of which is total annihilation of the current US regime and any other regime that holds its authority through mendacity alone," I became concerned that Wikileaks was becoming too much Assange and his agenda, and hostile to my country.

One man is too easy to subvert, especially when he's a desperate refugee in an embassy, and the Russians have a track record of subverting people.

The Steele dossier indicated that the Kremlin used Wikileaks to disseminate the DNC emails for "plausible deniability," and the Stone indictment alleges he was in contact with both the GRU officer "Guccifer 2.0" and with Wikileaks via an intermediary.

None of this is enough to convince me that Wikileaks has become the "non-state hostile intelligence service" Mike Pompeo called them recently, but I am mindful that their leaks benefited Vladimir Putin's preferred candidate in 2016.

If Assange truly crossed the line with Chelsea Manning, I hope he is extradited. However, I'd be happy if he cut a deal that shed light on Russia's involvement and escaped incarceration.

As for Wikileaks, I'm glad to see the appearance of imitators.

[laklak]

There's a paucity of Russian leaks because it's one thing to leak U.S military and political secrets, but another thing entirely to leak Vlad's military and political secrets. One gets you a trial and probably prison, the other gets you an all expense paid tour of the Lubyanka sub-basement.

[Joe]

Fortunately, other sites manage it.

Huge Trove of Leaked Russian Documents Is Published by Transparency Advocates

A group of transparency advocates on Friday posted a mammoth collection of hacked and leaked documents from inside Russia, a release widely viewed as a sort of symbolic counterstrike against Russia’s dissemination of hacked emails to influence the American presidential election in 2016.

Most of the material, which sheds light on Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as ties between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church, the business dealings of oligarchs and much more, had been released in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere, sometimes on obscure websites. There were no immediate reports of new bombshells from the collection.

But the sheer volume of the material — 175 gigabytes — and the technical challenges of searching it meant that its full impact may not be felt for some time. The volume is many times greater than the total known material stolen by Russian military intelligence from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign nearly three years ago.

The core files from the new collection, called “The Dark Side of the Kremlin,” included “hundreds of thousands of messages and files from Russian politicians, journalists, oligarchs, religious figures, and nationalists/terrorists in Ukraine,” said the group that posted it, Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets. The name is a play on the term for a common cyberattack known as a distributed denial of service.

As I mentioned, there are new kids in town.

[Forty Two]

It's odd, though, since the overall allegation is that Trump was in league with the Russians and Wikileaks was a propaganda arm for Moscow, working on behalf of Trump.

Joe is correct, that hacking is not protected by the First Amendment. It is unlikely, in my view, that Assange would be stupid enough to actually participate in any hacking.

I don't see anything in the indictment, though, that it has anything to do with Russian hacking. It's all Manning.

I wonder if they are pressing charges in the hopes of squeezing Assange to give up its source on the hacking of the DNC. If it's not Russia - if it's someone else - it fits. Let's say it was a leaker instead of a hacker that leaked all the DNC data after downloading. That would be huge for Trump - reelection huge. So, arrest Assange - put him at risk of life in prison, but offer him a deal if he talks about DNC stuff from 2016.

[pErvinalia]

I read somewhere that the hacking offence carries a maximum sentence of 5 years.

[Forty Two]

I hadn't looked up how many counts, or what he's at risk of.

But, 5 more years is 5 more years. I'll not argue about it. Although, he already did 7 in an Ecuadorian embassy room. Maybe doing 5 more won't bother him much. But, it will be in a US prison, where people will "visit" him from time to time to put him under a heat lamp.

I am surprised that he's now being extradited. If Trump was really in league with Russia and Wikileaks was an arm of Russia - then the last thing Trump would want would be for Assange to have a reason to spill those beans. Yet, Trump could easily have carefully blocked any such move by the Justice Department to prosecute Assange. Obama didn't want to prosecute Assange. The charges overseas are all dropped. The allegations in the indictment are rather flimsy, rather small time. Tepid.

Speculating - I would be guessing that there is something for Trump to gain out of this. And, if it's true that Trump wasn't in league with Russia, and if it's true that Wikileaks clearly did not get the info from Russia, it would be extremely helpful to Trump to have some of that aired - to get Assange to say who gave them the info. If it was an inside leak - if it turns out even that Wikileaks had a contact inside the Clinton campaign -- that would be reelection for Trump. He would declare - persuasively - that the entire Mueller thing and all the Russia-Trump stuff was concocted and based on the lie that the DNC was hacked, when in fact it was a leak. Not only would Trump be forgiven his defalcations, but he likely become massively popular, having been essentially proven right.

[Brian Peacock]

There's a paucity of Russian leaks because it's one thing to leak U.S military and political secrets, but another thing entirely to leak Vlad's military and political secrets. One gets you a trial and probably prison, the other gets you an all expense paid tour of the Lubyanka sub-basement.

People who leak Russian secrets often have to take an impromptu flight from a third story window.

[Forty Two]

If there is one thing that the last 20 years of "leaking" of all the "top secret" and "sensitive" and "national security" type documents reveals, it's that 99% of documents that are supposedly secret, confidential, sensitive and important to national security, well... aren't any of that. Most of it is kept secret to protect wrongdoing, and things that the public wouldn't like.

[Joe]

There's a paucity of Russian leaks because it's one thing to leak U.S military and political secrets, but another thing entirely to leak Vlad's military and political secrets. One gets you a trial and probably prison, the other gets you an all expense paid tour of the Lubyanka sub-basement.

People who leak Russian secrets often have to take an impromptu flight from a third story window.

Even people who merely criticize Putin can get that opportunity. I wonder how long the applause lasts at his speeches.

[Cunt]

If there is one thing that the last 20 years of "leaking" of all the "top secret" and "sensitive" and "national security" type documents reveals, it's that 99% of documents that are supposedly secret, confidential, sensitive and important to national security, well... aren't any of that. Most of it is kept secret to protect wrongdoing, and things that the public wouldn't like.

when working in social work, the confidentiality shield is most often used to protect staff incompetence, rather than the private details of clients.

It wouldn't at all surprise me to find more incompetence hiding similarly under other confidentiality shields.

[Rum]

I’m surprised to hear that and would be interested in an example or two. ‘Confidentiality’ was pretty much the first issue on my social work degree course. A cornerstone of good practise. I can’t think of an example in my experience, which is not to say there aren’t any.

[Cunt]

I’m surprised to hear that and would be interested in an example or two. ‘Confidentiality’ was pretty much the first issue on my social work degree course. A cornerstone of good practise. I can’t think of an example in my experience, which is not to say there aren’t any.

I'll pick on the whole industry if you want, but how about a creepy example of how I fucked it up, how I fixed it and how MANY people don't?

I had work with people who were shit at keeping appointments.

All I had to do, was make an appointment that they would miss, and I could appear to be doing a good job, while they were just missing their obligations.

Once I realized I was doing it, I was mortified. I thought I was doing a good job, but had been keeping a client away in this fashion. I changed my tack, and from then on, appointment-keeping was MY responsibility.

Once I supported that client through the appointment-keeping, I failed to help him anyway (to master employment) but that, at least, wasn't blamed on him for missing appointments.

After having that experience, and feeling like a shit because I fucked up someone's help, I watched it happen again and again. Not just with appointments, sometimes an asshole employee would (knowingly or ignorantly) trigger an outburst from an asshole client, and guess who learns about it?

Nobody. Usually.

I worked with an industry where people come out of uni, get a job in social work, and try to leave it within 2 years. This lively setting meant that people don't have to be good at work, only good at passing interviews. It also meant that people who don't do a good job, just follow that system and end up working for 10 - 20 years, doing a shit job for a year or two at every post they fill. Their bosses know they are shit, but it's a lot easier to give them a good recommendation and get rid of them that way, than to dig into their incompetence and follow a progressive discipline model.

By the way, social workers are VERY well trained to defend themselves against improper discipline or dismissal. The clients are generally the opposite. The social workers are trained that way so they CAN defend those clients, and they do. But they also defend themselves or each other very vigorously.

You should check out the Auditor General's last two reports on social services in the NWT

Here is a snippet from one, which might give you an idea of the kind of obstruction confidentiality can be, while providing NO protection for the clients...
https://www.assembly.gov.nt.ca/sites/de ... 58-175.pdf

Furthermore, because of the small population of the territory and
the isolation of many of its communities, child protection workers face
the reality of being in close contact with families while being required
to maintain confidentiality and discretion. They also have the difficult
role of arguing in court for applying protection measures that could
place children outside of their families, while at the same time assisting
those same families in making improvements that would help them
regain custody of their children

It's a shit job, and I would thank you if you offered to come do some of it - and I would mean it. That doesn't mean I think you wouldn't be susceptible to the same crap. My guess is, everywhere you found yourself doing something wrong, you would be firm and clear in your handling of it. I'm not accusing you of being anything more than human. This knot is weird to untangle, because people who can are usually from cities and, like you, would think that confidentiality was a good and right thing.

What do you do when it works for everyone BUT the clients?

Social workers generally are motivated to be good to people around them. This means that the 'confidentiality shield', when used inappropriately, is usually covering incompetence and laziness.

I suspect it is covering more things, when applied to intelligence services.

[Joe]

If there is one thing that the last 20 years of "leaking" of all the "top secret" and "sensitive" and "national security" type documents reveals, it's that 99% of documents that are supposedly secret, confidential, sensitive and important to national security, well... aren't any of that. Most of it is kept secret to protect wrongdoing, and things that the public wouldn't like.

Well, that's gotta be a guess, because the stuff's classified.

I'd be interested in who's doing the guessing, so I can gauge how educated their guess is.

[Rum]

I’m surprised to hear that and would be interested in an example or two. ‘Confidentiality’ was pretty much the first issue on my social work degree course. A cornerstone of good practise. I can’t think of an example in my experience, which is not to say there aren’t any.

I'll pick on the whole industry if you want, but how about a creepy example of how I fucked it up, how I fixed it and how MANY people don't?

I had work with people who were shit at keeping appointments.

All I had to do, was make an appointment that they would miss, and I could appear to be doing a good job, while they were just missing their obligations.

Once I realized I was doing it, I was mortified. I thought I was doing a good job, but had been keeping a client away in this fashion. I changed my tack, and from then on, appointment-keeping was MY responsibility.

Once I supported that client through the appointment-keeping, I failed to help him anyway (to master employment) but that, at least, wasn't blamed on him for missing appointments.

After having that experience, and feeling like a shit because I fucked up someone's help, I watched it happen again and again. Not just with appointments, sometimes an asshole employee would (knowingly or ignorantly) trigger an outburst from an asshole client, and guess who learns about it?

Nobody. Usually.

I worked with an industry where people come out of uni, get a job in social work, and try to leave it within 2 years. This lively setting meant that people don't have to be good at work, only good at passing interviews. It also meant that people who don't do a good job, just follow that system and end up working for 10 - 20 years, doing a shit job for a year or two at every post they fill. Their bosses know they are shit, but it's a lot easier to give them a good recommendation and get rid of them that way, than to dig into their incompetence and follow a progressive discipline model.

By the way, social workers are VERY well trained to defend themselves against improper discipline or dismissal. The clients are generally the opposite. The social workers are trained that way so they CAN defend those clients, and they do. But they also defend themselves or each other very vigorously.

You should check out the Auditor General's last two reports on social services in the NWT

Here is a snippet from one, which might give you an idea of the kind of obstruction confidentiality can be, while providing NO protection for the clients...
https://www.assembly.gov.nt.ca/sites/de ... 58-175.pdf

Furthermore, because of the small population of the territory and
the isolation of many of its communities, child protection workers face
the reality of being in close contact with families while being required
to maintain confidentiality and discretion. They also have the difficult
role of arguing in court for applying protection measures that could
place children outside of their families, while at the same time assisting
those same families in making improvements that would help them
regain custody of their children

It's a shit job, and I would thank you if you offered to come do some of it - and I would mean it. That doesn't mean I think you wouldn't be susceptible to the same crap. My guess is, everywhere you found yourself doing something wrong, you would be firm and clear in your handling of it. I'm not accusing you of being anything more than human. This knot is weird to untangle, because people who can are usually from cities and, like you, would think that confidentiality was a good and right thing.

What do you do when it works for everyone BUT the clients?

Social workers generally are motivated to be good to people around them. This means that the 'confidentiality shield', when used inappropriately, is usually covering incompetence and laziness.

I suspect it is covering more things, when applied to intelligence services.

I’m not sure the example you provide is about breach of confidentiality so much as dubious moral judgement.

I’m also struck - and have been in the past - by the differences between the profession here and in the States (and I’m making a presumption Canada’s model is closer to the States than to the UK). Here ‘social workers’ are primarily problem solving case workers. After training, these days, you specialise in children and families (primarily child protection) and ‘adults’ (primarily elderly and some mental/physical disability). Both specialisms focus primarily on people in crisis - kids who have been abused or at risk of being so and elderly people needing social care.

These people have nothing to do with financial welfare and employment - that ‘casework’ is done primarily by civil servants and is seen as an administrative task generally speaking.

I did child protection, more or less by default, as the full extent of the social issue started coming to light in the 80s, I did it for over ten years and it burnt me out badly. It made me tough too I think.

I don’t think I ever breached confidentiality though. You don’t need to if you are clear from the outset who you might be required to share info with, for example, in the event of a disclosure about child abuse. I know I carried a lot of secrets and some nasty shit around with me for quite a few years after I escaped into education and ultimately into management - where another kind of shit awaited me..

[Cunt]

I’m not sure the example you provide is about breach of confidentiality so much as dubious moral judgement.

Yeah, I made 'dubious moral judgement' I guess...I would call it 'fucked up my work', but you always use that Brit-bong language-softening.

I fucked up, and said so, corrected it and moved on. What was significant for me, was how easy it would have been for me to have dodged the blame, hiding my incompetence behind the many ways I could decline to talk about what happened.

It was a very small issue, Rum. I suspect that if you hated me, and were my manager, you would have been satisfied with how I dealt with it, and forgotten it. The thing is, it pointed me to how easy it was to navigate, when half the people who could 'catch' me doing a shitty job, had no right to know what was going on.

I’m also struck - and have been in the past - by the differences between the profession here and in the States (and I’m making a presumption Canada’s model is closer to the States than to the UK). Here ‘social workers’ are primarily problem solving case workers. After training, these days, you specialise in children and families (primarily child protection) and ‘adults’ (primarily elderly and some mental/physical disability). Both specialisms focus primarily on people in crisis - kids who have been abused or at risk of being so and elderly people needing social care.

That seems to cover what it's like in Canada.

These people have nothing to do with financial welfare and employment - that ‘casework’ is done primarily by civil servants and is seen as an administrative task generally speaking.

Yup again...Education, Culture and Employment is the department handling income support and such.

My pal finally got the job of managing that department, and went in to do so. Within a year, he left the position (and government entirely) because they refused to provide him the necessary means (staff, other resources) to do the job properly.

He teaches a combat sport in town now, and probably does a lot more good for people in that role, than he could have as manager of Income Support.

(the guy who took over from him has been there a few years now, and is about due to either change jobs, die by suicide or stop paying any attention to the problems brought before him.

It's a FUCKING tough field.

I did child protection, more or less by default, as the full extent of the social issue started coming to light in the 80s, I did it for over ten years and it burnt me out badly. It made me tough too I think.

10 years is more than most here do. Even the 'hardened' or 'indifferent' don't usually stay that long.

I don’t think I ever breached confidentiality though. You don’t need to if you are clear from the outset who you might be required to share info with, for example, in the event of a disclosure about child abuse.

Maybe true, but here is a weird one...

A coworker was aiding a client in her duties, when she noticed that this client seemed to have flu-like symptoms. At this time, there was 'pandemic' talk coming through the news about something from Mexico and southern destinations. This client had other supporting staff who had just returned from an affected region, and when my coworker brought the matter up with our boss, she was tut-tutted and told it was probably nothing.

She went over our boss's head, and contacted the public health nurse (an official with our public health department) to ask about it. After being assured that she could disclose this information, she did, explaining her concerns, and the fact that this client was still being hauled around to all her daily disease-spreading daily duties. The nurse took the info, spoke to her people, and decided it was best to contact our organization, and talk to those involved. It was done, and then was addressed satisfactorily (to Public Health) and should have been dropped.

My coworker was 'written up' for breaking confidentiality, even when it was explained, during the meeting with public health, that doctors, police, and anyone else had an obligation to disclose, and protection from breach of confidentiality rules.

She objected to being 'written up', and I joined her. No union, though, because our government farms out all it can to 'Non-Profit Organizations' so that they won't have as much work to do.

Her next raise was affected by it, I'm pretty sure. They scored her low on her annual review because of it. She could have sued successfully, too. I know because we both spoke to the labour lawyer about it.

None of that matters, just that I saw how people reacted when their bs use of confidentiality was swatted aside. They just keep on being shitty.

As I said though, this is pretty mild stuff, because of the mild mishaps they were covering up. I wonder how much more of it is going on, when the stakes are diffreent.

Say, in national security.