Hacker Cinema
The Fifth Estate
2013 · Film · 128 min
Directed by Bill Condon
A look at the relationship between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his early supporter and eventual colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and how the website's growth and influence led to an irreparable rift between the two friends.
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14 comments on Hacker News
>Assange film
The Fifth Estate.
Feels like a sequel to The Fifth Estate [1] or the books it is based on (Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World's Most Dangerous Website, and WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assanges War on Secrecy) is in order. Same, eventually, with Snowden.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1837703/
The "fifth estate" usage as referencing bloggers long predates any recent social media apologia.
Wikipedia article history shows the reference already by 2009:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fifth_Estate&oldid=308845816
It cites Stephen D Cooper (2006). Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate. Marquette Books. ISBN 0922993475.
It's possible that there are yet other estates to be discovered:
https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/102989723532565277
And of course there was the 2013 film of the same title:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Estate_(film)
The Fifth Estate tried to make things look realistic, so a fair number of CLIs have actually made their way into at least a movie
http://sciencefictioninterfaces.tumblr.com/post/160895580781/the-fifth-estate-part-2-seriously-how-great-are
> I think people often underestimate it, but one of the biggest influences you can have -- I mean you, the HN reader! -- may be cultural.
> People who work on building surveillance, people who have done it, people who may do it in the future, are your classmates in your CS program, your colleagues in your startup, your neighbors, your fellow conference attendees, you.
Exactly. I wish more people here would realise this. The powers-that-be do realize this, and are concerned about it. I remember when the "Fifth Estate" movie came out (which was critical of Assange), everyone in our company (a large tech company that I won't name) was given free tickets (and the afternoon off) to go see it. First time ever we were given such free tickets; I wonder why?
"documentary"? The Fifth Estate is not a documentary.
Give me something I can print off and a way to attach it to a movie poster without damaging the theatre owner's display case and I'll visit my local theatres and make sure the URL and QR code to "Mediastan" is visible to all patron who go to see "The Fifth Estate"
I saw this last week with a really fascinating Q&A from Assange, thought he was very compelling. I'm not sure how the people of Sixteen Films will feel about this "challenging" The Fifth Estate though.
It was a worthwhile doc as well, worth the watch - much better than the Alex Gibney thing earlier this year, which felt very much phoned in.
Given that he's pretty anti-Manning (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/14/benedict-cumberbatch-interview-fifth-estate) I strongly doubt that's a genuine response. Most likely it was written by a PR manager.
A Redditor made a very discerning comment about possible motives behind the movie here: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o8l5f/i_am_benedict_cumberbatch_ama/ccpxfqv
Assange should do a Reddit AMA promoting this movie, seeing as Cumberbatch just got done promoting The Fifth Estate yesterday on Reddit. The Cumberbatch AMA was very disappointing, because all upvoted questions were just fawning compliments from Cumberbatch fans.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg (the same guy who wrote the hit-piece book on Assange and worked on "The Fifth Estate" movie) destroyed those leaks in an apparent attempt to sabotage Wikileaks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Domscheit-Berg http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wiki-war-3500-unpublished-leaks-destroyed-forever-as-assange-hits-out-20110822-1j5gw.html
I found the memo quite insightful as it goes into specific details on why and how the movie depiction differs from their perspective. Some quotes from the memo:
"THE FIFTH ESTATE falsely implies that WikiLeaks harmed 2,000 US government informants. ... US Brig. Gen. Robert Carr – who was tasked to investigate this matter by the Pentagon – in fact stated under oath when examined by the defense counsel that there was no harm whatsoever."
"Although THE FIFTH ESTATE purports to be about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, the film was made without the involvement of WikiLeaks or any of its staff, including Julian Assange. ... The multi-million dollar production, produced by Dreamworks and distributed by Disney, has not financially contributed to WikiLeaks or any of its defence funds."
Actually if you go to Reddit you'll see that support for Assange is not universal, even on subreddits like /r/worldnews.
The day used to be that being negative of Assange at all got you "downvoted into oblivion", but that's no longer the case. People are even able to mention the idea that Assange might have actually did it without having their comment necessarily achieve negative karma.
For example, go read the /r/movies link talking about Benedict Cumberbatch's comments from Fifth Estate about the topics. Assange was certainly positively mentioned, but he had a lot of opposition as well, along with people simply keeping their minds open.
I think the Social Network, for example, is quite accurate about the most important things (the zeitgeist of how a startup like Facebook comes about .. the energy, the betrayals (both perceived and real), the craziness, the attitude of great founders etc).
This is a movie and not a documentary .. for my money I expect the Director to put his creative efforts into making something enjoyable to watch. As long as it's not a blatant fabrication, fact for fact historical accuracy isn't why I'm going to watch this movie.
Aaron Sorkin viewed Zuck & co as a vehicle to tell a larger (and more important) story about modern culture .. if The Fifth Estate accomplishes the same, it will be a great movie.