On leak dumps

[dada_dave]

Marcy “emptywheel” with an interesting essay on leak dumps and how not all are equal but more are similar in the wrong way that we like to admit:

Jack Teixeira: Leak Dumps Don't Care about (the Story You Tell about) Motive - emptywheel

The Discord Leaks are a leak dump. They may have more in common with past leak dumps than a lot of past leak dump journalists would like to admit.

www.emptywheel.net

In short: the motive of the leaker matters less than their expertise in judging the leak and its effects and we mythologize both “good” and “bad” leaks at our own expense. An interesting thesis, not sure I’m 100% sold, but some definitely good points about the myths we tell ourselves, especially those intimately involved, when it comes to justifying a good leak vs decrying a bad leak.

 

[Alli]

Marcy “emptywheel” with an interesting essay on leak dumps and how not all are equal but more are similar in the wrong way that we like to admit:

She wants “leakers” and “whistle blowers” to be the same. They are not.

 

[dada_dave]

She wants “leakers” and “whistle blowers” to be the same. They are not.

Actually I think her point was the opposite - that most leakers aren’t really whistleblowers, even the ones we tell ourselves are aren’t, as even leaks done for the noblest of reasons can be damaging if done carelessly.

 

[Alli]

Actually I think her point was the opposite - that most leakers aren’t really whistleblowers, even the ones we tell ourselves are aren’t, as even leaks done for the noblest of reasons can be damaging if done carelessly.

Or the other way around, since whistleblowers are traditionally the good guys, she’s trying to say that most whistleblowers are just leakers?

 

[dada_dave]

Or the other way around, since whistleblowers are traditionally the good guys, she’s trying to say that most whistleblowers are just leakers?

Yes basically. That’s her main point. I think she’s on strongest ground with her arguments about Chelsea Manning. Manning was horrified (rightly) by some of the things she saw in the Iraq war but put on blast almost everything she had access to. Her motives were good but in the end what she did was leak more than whistleblow. emptywheel contrasts that with Ellsberg who put out a very specific classified study that he himself had worked on and felt the public needed to know about. She argues the same for Snowden though I’d push back that he did put out stuff that was more consequential and forced a positive reaction even if there is some myth making around him and those programs he exposed as well. Also while we may never know for sure, there’s a strong possibility that Snowden’s method of data scraping would’ve acquired a lot more sensitive information that had nothing to do with the intelligence programs like weapon systems and nuclear shit and there are concerns about what happened to that data. However, hard to judge the veracity of that as we naturally don’t have access and so may or many not be true. emptywheel also offers that as an additional caveat the other direction about prosecutions alleging damage during sentencing that they can’t or won’t back up.