There's no "shade" here. It's straight up criminal. He got phished, deliberately, via a targetted human engineering operation. Again I just don't understand the desire to hide the underlying crime here.
It's possible to be very uneasy with the direct prosecution of Assange for this stuff, to view Manning as having been unfairly targetted, but to also recognize that there's a really serious underlying crime here that we need to address.
But no, everyone wants to pick sides here and stand with... Putin. Seriously?
I suspect the difference here is between people old enough to remember the Cold War and those whose political awareness doesn't go beyond the election of Trump. I've been watching NATO expand to Russia borders and hearing US officials pine for the days of the Cold War for decades. I say fuck that. Putin is what he is, but that doesn't mean i want to go back to the days of nuclear brinksmanship and paranoia.
You don't think it's possible to recognize legitimate crimes without... pining for nuclear brinksmanship? The end of the cold war means we need to be OK with random foreign powers phishing our email?
Again, this binary nonsense is just crazy to me. It's possible to view the current geopolitical environment as safer than the 80's and see Putin as a dangerous despot and his actions in the 2016 election as crimes worthy of prosecution. Right?
Phishing our email is extremely low on the scale of “bad” things governments do.
Personally, I am much happier with intelligence agencies collecting information remotely than supplying weapons and overthrowing governments etc. In relative terms releasing accurate information is just not a major issue.
So, my concern is people take issue with this not because of what happened but because of the country that did it. And if that’s what’s going on, it’s the continuation of some very dark times. I have genuine concerns about what’s happening to the in Russia, but I think we need to judge their actions in absolute terms rather than let bias spiral.
There's no "shade" here. It's straight up criminal. He got phished, deliberately, via a targetted human engineering operation. Again I just don't understand the desire to hide the underlying crime here.
It's possible to be very uneasy with the direct prosecution of Assange for this stuff, to view Manning as having been unfairly targetted, but to also recognize that there's a really serious underlying crime here that we need to address.
But no, everyone wants to pick sides here and stand with... Putin. Seriously?