Actually there's a third option you're overlooking. Trump was not targeted but the Russians were. If you call someone who's phone is tapped (Russian Diplomat) that doesn't mean YOUR phones have been tapped, but your conversation will still get recorded and logged anyway. Same as if you phone a mobster who's phone has been tapped you're going to get recorded.

This is so true. Back in the late 80's I was so proud of what us geeks were doing to free information. We were naive and ultimately wrong. Now I just feel shame at having participated in the creation of the tools that were (mis?)used to elect Trump. I have no idea how to unf*ck the mess we've made, or even if it's possible to find a technology solution for bots, fake news and state/corporate/government manipulation of social media.

Oh damn you caught me. You're right, I'm on the government payroll and I've been paid to tell you that I think Julian is a slimy weasel.

The truth is I'm not even American, Russian or traditionally employed by anyone. This post is only my opinion, and not a particularly important one at that, but the opinion of one who has the gall to believe you might be wrong. *shrug* At one time this very old school privacy nerd vehemently supported wikileaks, but learned to hate Julian when he, IMHO, jumped the shark with the panama papers. Around then it became obvious to me that his philosophy and mine espoused *very* different interpretations of his supposed driving principle of "information wants to be free". I believe all information on all parties should be treated equally and should be liberated to enact change as it will. Julian clearly believes information is leverage to apply pressure forcing change toward a particular goal he envisions. He has an agenda and it's not, at least by my standards, hacker or cypherpunk compatible and I'd really appreciate it if he kept his slimy hands and suspect narrative off the freed bits and bytes.

FWIW I support Chelsea's release. I think Snowden did the right thing, and believe psyops both exist and are being actively deployed world wide. I feel you might be existing in some weird backwards eddy of internet information if you don't realise that there are currently multiple paid adversaries (US & Russia being only the two largest, DNC & RNC being the most political) that are currently manipulating "grass roots" internet sentiment.

One thing that makes me believe the anti Julian sentiment is real is that it's always been there just modded/scored/deleted/buried below the surface. You just had to go look for it where the bots had buried it so it wasn't so visible. Ever since the end of the election a *lot* of pro-Trump, pro-Russian, pro-Wikileaks accounts have suddenly gone dark across the entire social media landscape, and that has left a lot of people confused because the massive "grass roots" support those ideas once had isn't there and is now easily drowned out by the remaining legitimate accounts, and those once hidden comments/posts are now easily visible. In other words this anti Julian hate has been here for quite some time but was drowned out by all the election propaganda. Of course an alternative explanation is ..

I just earned my two dollars (quite a good rate too btw) for attempting to change your mind or at least for sowing doubt in the truth of your post and pushing my alternate narrative. You know, active measures and all that.

Oh my, so true. Also the words "integrity" and "honourable", more words that are unable to fit within that twitter account's tweets.

Fixed that for you.

This is "active measures" consistent and only supports the theory that wikileaks has been compromised. The stated purpose "(to) develop a metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs", and presumably shine light on those "hidden relationships/secret collusion" seems on the face noble. But the execution will/is flawed (I believe intentionally). A pillar of Russian propaganda is to sow confusion so that the target no longer has certainly of what is or isn't true and thus is more receptive to intentionally false narratives. There has been a consistent attack on the reputation of main stream media (some of it well deserved, some not) but that the end result has been to further the delegitimizing of western media and /their/ narratives and thus create a vacuum into which alternative and more friendly narratives can take hold.

Make no mistake this is a direct attack on the credibility of main stream reporters and their publications (the majority of which have verified accounts), and gives a free pass to the agent provocateur's who aren't stupid enough to have verified accounts or that have hidden their true identities. I hate being lied to and manipulated as much as the next person but there is a HUGE difference between being lied to by corporate interests for money (who at least require the window dressing of western society to exist) and being lied to by a hostile nation who's end goal is to end the influence of America on the global stage (and will destroy western society to achieve it).

I expect the troll army to pull their regular attack on this post so I've gone anon because I honestly am sick of dealing with them and have found it's best to just ignore them instead of giving them a larger attack surface. Also I'm not even American so I didn't have a political pony in this race or a reason to push my own false narrative. I'm just a /very/ concerned "neighbor" who's own country is in deep shit if you American's don't get your act together.

p.s. there is a reason Russia controls and filters internet access, they know it is impossible to defend against the very type of attack the USA is experiencing now. Perhaps we just need to "pull the plug" on the internet?