WikiLeaks' giant data dumps have rattled the National Security Agency, the U.S. Democratic Party, and the Saudi foreign ministry. But its spectacular mass-disclosures have also included the personal information of hundreds of people — including sick children, rape victims and mental health patients, The Associated Press has found.
In the past year alone, the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web. In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, an extraordinary move given that homosexuality can lead to social ostracism, a prison sentence or even death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom.
WikiLeaks' mass publication of personal data is at odds with the site's claim to have championed privacy even as it laid bare the workings of international statecraft, drawing criticism from longtime allies.
Attempts to reach WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for an interview over the past month have been unsuccessful and the ex-hacker did not reply to written questions. In a series of tweets following the publication of the AP's story, WikiLeaks dismissed the privacy concerns as "recycled news" and said they were "not even worth a headline."
I have been over this "hacktivist" nonsense for quite some time now.
I was down with Anonymous when they leaked those documents about the Iraq War and when they went after the folks protecting the Steubenville rapists.
But things have become much muddier as of late, and after they leaked the information about the Democrats that was hacked by the Russians I am just not feeling it anymore.
And now this.
Source http://ift.tt/2bYOBz5
