Trust me, I'm aware of the thin lines that these things ride upon. I don't care that, in particular, the Podesta emails, the DNC emails, the Brazile questions, or anything else about the Clinton campaign were leaked. It was information, and it was illuminating to the nature of American politics.
What I have a problem with is, these sorts of leaks allow American elections to become a target of nation-state attacks. We shouldn't become used to making electoral decisions based on what the Russian state wants us to know about our politicians-- we need to make those discoveries ourselves, with investigative journalists that have skin in the game.
I understand that the request has nothing to do with the election, and likely would have happened without. Still, when inciting American citizens to break the law, I would hope that one would have some stronger backup than a single embassy's forbearance to carry you through to safety. Conspiracy isn't some newly made up charge, Assange didn't have to encourage Manning to do anything other than release what she had legal access to at the time.
You are prescribing the problem as the solution. Journalists being unwilling to hold political feet to the fire is what caused the buildup of weaponizable secrets in the first place.
> What I have a problem with is, these sorts of leaks allow American elections to become a target of nation-state attacks.
Let's look at it this way, assuming those leaks were really backed by nation states, they will have a way to achieve what they want with the materials they have whether WikiLeaks exists or not.
WikiLeaks is just a tool that anyone could use to release genuine information. The existence of such an entity could be good or bad. But when you start arguing that they are bad because they allowed some nation state to swing the election, you should remember said nation state could almost certainly do the same thing even if WikiLeaks never existed.
I don’t see how that makes sense in practice in a globalised world with the internet. The information is going to come from everywhere, and given the way the US meddles, our elections are of interest to practically every country. OF COURSE they’re going to try to influence our elections. Even a brief glance at our own history shows us doing that to, uh, practically every other country. It’s only going to get more pronounced! I see no practical way of achieving what you want other than burying our heads in the sand.
This line of thinking seems right and what I assume most would take away from this incident (Maybe I have to reevaluate my line of thinking?). I'm surprised to see so many people making this a black or white, 1 or 0 binary choice out of this whole ordeal.
If a game show that gave away real prizes leaked the questions in advance to one contestant but not the other, that would be fraud. I'm not sure if a debate can be held to that standard, however?
In politics perceptions matter more than reality. Partisans on both sides are quite convinced that the other side's candidate is a criminal.
Democratic partisans believe the other candidate was involved in a criminal conspiracy with foreign powers and/or engaged in criminal conduct to cover it up, and Republican partisans believe that the Wikileaks emails are full of proof of criminal activity by the other side's candidate. (they have probably never actually read any of the emails, but they believe it, which is all that matters)
Neither of those beliefs are strongly supported by evidence but both result from the fact that both candidates have a long history of dubious conduct that their detractors reasonably believe would be criminal if the laws were equally enforced without regard to wealth and political power.
What I have a problem with is, these sorts of leaks allow American elections to become a target of nation-state attacks. We shouldn't become used to making electoral decisions based on what the Russian state wants us to know about our politicians-- we need to make those discoveries ourselves, with investigative journalists that have skin in the game.
I understand that the request has nothing to do with the election, and likely would have happened without. Still, when inciting American citizens to break the law, I would hope that one would have some stronger backup than a single embassy's forbearance to carry you through to safety. Conspiracy isn't some newly made up charge, Assange didn't have to encourage Manning to do anything other than release what she had legal access to at the time.