<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>dmix</author><text>If Wikileaks  treats all leaks as equal then I don&amp;#x27;t see how this argument holds water.&lt;p&gt;Where else are we going to get insight into the globbal power &amp;quot;underworld&amp;quot;, which the intelligence community just happens to always have a finger in? Anonymous sources feeding into New York Times? Because that&amp;#x27;s all we had before and continue to have today otherwise.&lt;p&gt;People just don&amp;#x27;t like when certain inconvenient information comes out and Wikileaks didnt care about the source.&lt;p&gt;People constantly try to pin ideological stuff on Wikileaks or data leaking in general  but that misses the bigger point and it&amp;#x27;s a point that extends beyond Wikileaks itself and goes into information releasing in general (we don&amp;#x27;t need to defend Assange personally or Wikileaks itself to be concerned or defend the  general idea). I also highly doubt they are selectively choosing NOT to release political information... like news outlets apparently do.&lt;p&gt;But I also don&amp;#x27;t care, there&amp;#x27;s a huge amount of risk and blowback doing such a mission regardless of source or content which we should respect.&lt;p&gt;They get what they can from where ever and publish it if it has some value to the general public, and we&amp;#x27;ve gotten tons of value from Wikileaks already. So do plenty of other organizations now inspired by Wikileaks, plenty which have exposed corruption in a new way (like Panamaleaks).&lt;p&gt;The fact this sometimes can have an &amp;#x27;agenda&amp;#x27; or be exploited by the original sources will never negate the value of a neutral 3rd party who releases stuff publicly we&amp;#x27;d never see otherwise. And will continue to do so as long as operational.&lt;p&gt;My only fear is that there won&amp;#x27;t be people brave enough to do this given nation-state harassment and those who think its all a political-inspired conspiracy (which litter every social media site).</text><parent_chain><item><author>woodruffw</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m normally loathe to defend any aspect of the US MIC, but I &lt;i&gt;think&lt;/i&gt; Pompeo&amp;#x27;s point is that Wikileaks &lt;i&gt;knowingly&lt;/i&gt; publicizes information that has already been processed into &lt;i&gt;Intelligence&lt;/i&gt;, and &lt;i&gt;willfully&lt;/i&gt; turns a blind eye to its role as a laundromat for hostile powers under the guise of an ideology of totally free data.&lt;p&gt;I, for one, think that all information should be free. I think Pompeo&amp;#x27;s motivations are suspect and geopolitical and I don&amp;#x27;t trust &lt;i&gt;him&lt;/i&gt; personally. However, I &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; think that Wikileaks has a myopic view of information freedom that chiefly benefits powers whose &lt;i&gt;long term&lt;/i&gt; vision is the decline of liberal democracy.</text></item><item><author>for_i_in_range</author><text>He makes an important point early on in outlining the mission of Wikileaks centering on making Data and Information freely accessible to all (the concept of Dataism, for those who have read Yuval Harrari’s &lt;i&gt;HOMO DEUS&lt;/i&gt;).&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;i&gt;processing&lt;/i&gt; of Information into &lt;i&gt;Intelligence&lt;/i&gt; that can be acted upon is what characterizes Intelligence agencies. Wikileaks does not concern itself with this phase. Yet, the CIA’s Pompeo is trying to paint a narrative that Wikileaks &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; doing this by labeling them a “non-state intelligence agency”, thereby justifying the CIA’s actions to attack Wikileaks.&lt;p&gt;In brief:&lt;p&gt;Narrative #1 - the CIA attacking an “Idealistic Free Information Publisher”.&lt;p&gt;Narrative #2 - the CIA attacking a “Non-state Dark Intelligence Agency”&lt;p&gt;The CIA is actively trying to create Narrative #2, which is a bit concerning.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]</title><url>https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11512-cia_vs_wikileaks</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>rmrfstar</author><text>The primary threat to &amp;quot;liberal democracy&amp;quot; is CIA, DHS, MI5, and MI6.  It is not SVR or MSS.  This has been true since the Cold War.  Who did more harm to &amp;quot;liberal democracy&amp;quot;, J. Edgar Hoover (who tried to extort MLK into suicide), or KGB?</text><parent_chain><item><author>woodruffw</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m normally loathe to defend any aspect of the US MIC, but I &lt;i&gt;think&lt;/i&gt; Pompeo&amp;#x27;s point is that Wikileaks &lt;i&gt;knowingly&lt;/i&gt; publicizes information that has already been processed into &lt;i&gt;Intelligence&lt;/i&gt;, and &lt;i&gt;willfully&lt;/i&gt; turns a blind eye to its role as a laundromat for hostile powers under the guise of an ideology of totally free data.&lt;p&gt;I, for one, think that all information should be free. I think Pompeo&amp;#x27;s motivations are suspect and geopolitical and I don&amp;#x27;t trust &lt;i&gt;him&lt;/i&gt; personally. However, I &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; think that Wikileaks has a myopic view of information freedom that chiefly benefits powers whose &lt;i&gt;long term&lt;/i&gt; vision is the decline of liberal democracy.</text></item><item><author>for_i_in_range</author><text>He makes an important point early on in outlining the mission of Wikileaks centering on making Data and Information freely accessible to all (the concept of Dataism, for those who have read Yuval Harrari’s &lt;i&gt;HOMO DEUS&lt;/i&gt;).&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;i&gt;processing&lt;/i&gt; of Information into &lt;i&gt;Intelligence&lt;/i&gt; that can be acted upon is what characterizes Intelligence agencies. Wikileaks does not concern itself with this phase. Yet, the CIA’s Pompeo is trying to paint a narrative that Wikileaks &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; doing this by labeling them a “non-state intelligence agency”, thereby justifying the CIA’s actions to attack Wikileaks.&lt;p&gt;In brief:&lt;p&gt;Narrative #1 - the CIA attacking an “Idealistic Free Information Publisher”.&lt;p&gt;Narrative #2 - the CIA attacking a “Non-state Dark Intelligence Agency”&lt;p&gt;The CIA is actively trying to create Narrative #2, which is a bit concerning.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>CIA vs. Wikileaks [video]</title><url>https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11512-cia_vs_wikileaks</url></story>