Where the Shannon is
Just figured something out with the help of a rather unpleasant dream**.

From the start I've been back-and-forth about the motives of Assange. His first revelations from Bradley Manning were completely non-news. Those messages from diplomats actually showed that diplomats are normal humans with normal emotions. Diplomats may sound disloyal at times, but they generally dislike the dictators they negotiate with. Basically PR for diplomats. The DNC load was not PR; it was clearly not wanted by the DNC. The latest CIA stuff may be chaff, but we can still see RESULTS from the release of the chaff.

And that's the key. Leakers have various motives, some noble and some nefarious. The MOTIVE of the leaker and the TEXT of the leak are irrelevant. The text may be real news or fake news, but we don't need to analyze the text. The REAL NEWS is the RESPONSES of insiders to the contents. We have to treat the leaks as test stimuli, like selective herbicides or classical music in public spaces. We have to do traffic analysis.

After the test chemical is sprayed, who goes on with business as usual? Who pops up and runs away?

With the Manning material, nobody quit, nobody changed their behavior. It was PR.

With the DNC material, we learned which parts of the conspiracy are INDISPENSABLE and which are DISPENSABLE. Nobody in the media quit or got fired or even changed their public attitudes after we saw specific evidence of their total obedience to Hillary. Several DNC employees got fired.

With the CIA material, we learned who was truly surprised by the hacking tools and who helped to design the tools. Cisco was surprised and took steps to fix the security holes. Apple and Google are completely unsurprised and unfazed.


= = = = =

** In the dream, some people I believed to be friends suddenly sprayed a chemical at me while shouting the same taunting words that bullies had used in junior high. I ran away, then realized: Now I know they're not friends, AND they know for sure how to make me run away. The first part wasn't news. All humans behave that way toward me. The second part was news. I'd never thought about the motives of bullies before, never realized they were experimenters.

Labels: Age of Stings

  ¶ 1:19 AM