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US Intelligence Planned To Destroy WikiLeaks
An anonymous reader writes "This document is a classified (SECRET/NOFORN), 32-page US counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks (PDF). 'The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the US government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out.' It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization. Since WikiLeaks uses 'trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whistleblowers,' the report recommends 'The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site.' [As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no WikiLeaks' source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective.] As an odd justification for the plan, the report claims that 'Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website.' The report provides further justification by enumerating embarrassing stories broken by WikiLeaks — US equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable US violations of the Chemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay."
Wouldn't an easier plan to destroy the credibility of wikileaks be to overflow it with bogus leaks and fake whistleblowers, flooding them with misinformation?
Sounds like a great idea. If China, North Korea and Russia have already showed a good example I think the US should definitely follow their example.
Sometimes secrets are useful. Given all the money I pay in taxes I would hope my government is at least making plans to keep some of those secrets secret.
When a government serves its own purposes it cannot serve its citizens.
The war that began in the 60s has finally come to an end, and it looks like all the players switched sides. These 200 odd years were certainly a nice time.
Surely, that would run counter to the US first amendment? What's happened to respect for the First that would let such a plan get beyond any US official's fantasies of power?
The "If you have nothing to hide..." argument, while fallacious when applied to individuals, actually works for government.
I am pretty sure, the answer is a resounding "Yes". Some things should be kept secret for some time... No one seriously argues against that, even if there are disagreements over whether a particular bit of information needs to be classified or not (and for how long).
Now, if anything needs to be hidden, then somebody has to be making the everyday decisions on what gets classified, and enforcing them. Governments are the most natural pick for that, if only because they are — by design — charged with national security.
Any "leakers" inside the government usurp that decision-making to themselves and to the Wikileaks. Instead of relying on the judgment of people charged with making it, we will depend on the judgment of the "leaker" and of the Wikileaks editors. Personally, I'd prefer the government officials...
Thus any leakers (and the Wikileaks personnel) are to be prosecuted with the prosecutors having only to prove their involvement in leaking. They could counter by proving, that the particular leak was justified (see also "whistleblower laws"), but the burden of proof is on them...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Sometimes its for good national security reasons which in the long run protect the public. Reasons which a lot of wannabe Robin Hoods won't know about and as a consequence can put agents or even the entire country at risk.
Sure , some people in agencies will abuse their power occasionally, thats human nature. But people shouldn't write off all security issues as just the Men In Black trying to pull one over the little people. Life isn't that simple and only the naive would think it is.
"As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no WikiLeaks' source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective" Or much more likely never implemented. There are hundreds of people paid to come up with ideas for fixing solutions in just about every govt org. By design these ideas are suppose to be a free thinking as possible while staying within the guidelines of the problem. In this case someone came up with an idea to deal with the leak problem by destroying the org that posted the leaks. This could have been a very potent fix, but also brought out the possibility of blow-back (public outcry, legal action, extra exposure of data, etc) as well as just pushing the problem off to another newer site that is even harder to deal with (Like shutting down Napster or Kazaa). It seems to me there is a good chance that they choose not to directly attack WikiLeaks and instead worked on keeping data from getting out to begin with (Can't get the data that's out back, so just keep them from getting more).
Primarily because the only way for a government to work is if it is accountable to its electors - and they only way to hold an organization accountable is to make it transparent. I'm not accountable to my neighbor for what I'm doing in my office, but my representatives are sure as hell accountable to me for what they're doing in their offices.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Sorry to criticise people who are clearly on our side. The Wikileaks folk are great, and the job they were doing was great, and it will be great again when they start back up...
...but it was not a good idea for them to take all the leaked documents offline without notice in order to show their value so that people will donate. It was last year, probably December, and everything's still offline :-(
For one example, they published the only (at the time) big ACTA leak. (There's since been a bigger one, hosted elsewhere) Everyone was pointing to them, and they took their copy offline. To my amazement, no one had a back up, so us anti-ACTA campaigners simply lost the only leaked draft.
At the implementation level, it was a bad idea to simply cause all pages to give error 404. A page of "We need donations, we'll be back up when we get them" would have been better.
Lesson: take backups of important docs, even ones published by groups of good people.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
This information is marked SECRET and NOFORN (i.e. not for export or foreign eyes); simply accessing it without a security clearance may be committing a crime against national security.
Whether or not the US government will end up with a log of IP addresses that have downloaded it is a judgment for the reader.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
The First Amendment does not apply to classified information, and for good reason. The government does not classify documents simply to hide information from the general populace; it truly is a matter of life or death in many circumstances.
Abusing one's security clearance can result in severe penalties.
I, for one, cannot read the document, as I no longer hold a clearance, and am legally obligated not to read or download it.
Far more likely that it was never implemented.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
One would note that most of the time, the things that governments fight so hard to keep secret are things that aren't so much of national security interest but rather things that are embarrassing or things they're keeping secret not because of the enemy but because their own citizens might be upset if they knew. Wikileaks has shown many useful things, from drafts of ACTA, to the spying on citizens in violation of any numbers of laws, hypocritical actions by governments all over the world, and clear violations of treaties. In fact, very little of what Wikileaks posts is "top secret national security information" from almost any country - they're often things that governments want to suppress because they don't want to face reprisal from their own citizens for undertaking them, or are trying to hide actions they undertake that they know are otherwise illegal - not because they're afraid some other country is going to use that information against them.
Consider this - decades ago the US Supreme Court affirmed the State Secrets Doctrine, allowing the government to argue that trying a court case would reveal national secrets (and that the case must therefore be dropped without a hearing), because the government argued that revealing information about what was I think a plane crash would hurt national security. Decades later, when the files were unclassified, it turns out that there were no real secrets involved, certainly none that would have been revealed in a trial - the government was simply trying to hide the fact that there was government negligence involved. They wanted to avoid embarrassing themselves, not protecting secrets. Remember that next time the US Government invokes the doctrine (which they do with ever-increasing frequency).
And the problem with the above policy is that the government will regularly abuse its power to keep secrets.
Instead, it will spy on its own citizens, crush freedoms, trample the constitution, and generally run amok big-brother-style, all in the name of "protecting the country", when what it really is protecting is itself and its powers -- power for the purpose of power.
As far as I am concerned, this government lost its rights to keep secrets. They cannot be trusted to keep secrets. They cannot be trusted, period. When the government has lost its respect for its people, how can the people be expected to respect the government?
CAPTCHA == Founders
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
All the stuff wikileaks has leaked has been in the category of avoiding embarrassment rather than anything that was truly a sensitive matter of national security.
For example, a detailed report on the exact weaknesses of various pieces of military equipment, identities of our spies, details of planned troop movements are all things I would consider important to national security.
Covering up the fact that we're torturing people because it would make a lot of people upset to learn that is not a matter of national security.
Wikileaks has performed an invaluable service for the years its been in operation.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The elections are not pretend. They are real elections. The government need not fear real elections as it has already brainwashed the voters into voting for the establishment every time.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Newsflash: torture doesn't prevent and hasn't prevented any terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Moreover, torture only weakens image of USA in the world, probably provoking MORE attacks.
Can you think of an example of a secret that we couldn't be TOLD we were being kept from? One which would be a good thing. Military operations for example could be kept secret but we'd be know that it is being kept secret and can accept that. Which prisoners are on transfer busses sure... but again we are aware that it is being kept secret.
The article listed some things that the US gove would have preffered to kept secret and not have been leaked to wikileaks:
"US equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable US violations of the Chemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay."
The first one we could have easily been told they were keeping secret and either accepted it or have them tell us. The rest are offensive that they should be hidden from the public at all.
The problem is that the abuses seem to be outnumbering the legitimate cases. It's not some people, it's entire agencies abusing secrecy as a matter of unwritten policy.
That is. of course, against the law. Too bad the law enforcement agencies are amongst the worst offenders.
They are demanding a budget significantly larger than Wikipedia's was just a few years ago... for a site that gets 1/1000th of the traffic. They could never hope to fight the legal battles directly with any amount of money, the only solution for materials with serious legal force behind them will be freenet.
Meanwhile, Cryptome trucks on as they have since damn near the beginning of the internet. They'll send you a DVD set of their content for _free_ if you ask.
Like here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/oct/03/world.guantanamo
Or a nice writeup here: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/01/kiriakou_retracts_claims_on_wa.php
Or here: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/04/about_that_library_tower_plot.php
Etc.
There's really not a single shred of evidence that torture helped to prevent a single attack.
Of course, it might be classified, but I'm certain that neocons would have cried on every corner about their success if they had a single case to tell us about.
Newsflash: there was an attack during the Republican administration.
Ergo, Republicans cause terrorist attacks.
Governments DO keep secrets for the hell of it. Time and time again information is withheld, for years or decades. Then when every asshat involved with the project retires, it's declassified. What do we find? Absolutely nothing that would have jeopardized national security.
You'd have to be naive to trust the government to decide what to withhold. Remember, any power that can be abused will be abused. Chances are it will be abused more often than not. Who's a bigger threat? Our own government, with the largest military budget in the world, that operates in unaccountable secrecy, which has repeatedly and reliably abused every power afforded it? Or a third world country half way across the globe?
Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Corruption at home is a bigger danger than "evildoers" abroad. And you know what? Taking care of the former can help take care of the latter.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
No one provides credible information when they face imminent death/extreme pain. They'll say whatever it takes not to have $BAD_THING happen, hence why torture doesn't work.
Newsflash: torture doesn't prevent and hasn't prevented any terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Moreover, torture only weakens image of USA in the world, probably provoking MORE attacks
Even if it did, that is not a justification for the use of torture. In fact, we(The United States) has explicitly stated that there is no justification for torture under any circumstances. Even the mythical 'ticking bomb' of television and movie fame is not a justification.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Without secrets, the Normandy invasion would have failed, and the Allies could very well have lost World War II. The breaking of the Nazi Enigma Machine also directly contributed to our victory.
That many slashdotters have no idea of the realities of the world doesn't change things. China isn't going to open source their wartime strategies.
People who post classified information to WikiLeaks (like the aforementioned document itself) should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Leaking of classified information can and does lead to severe negative consequences for our nation, up to and including the loss of human life. It's not a game, and it's not as simple as
1. You don't get to make that determination yourself
Everyone has to make that determination themselves. In the end, you are only accountable to your own conscience.
People leak to WikiLeaks because they believe (mostly accurately) that there will be no consequences
I'd like to think that people leak to WikiLeaks because they believe there will be consequences. I don't think they do it for the hell of it, they want information to get out there and effect change.
There are well-known and established processes that govern classification.
And when those processes amount to nothing more than a rubber-stamp, what then?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Meh, give me twenty minutes, some saran wrap, a board that inclines, and a jug of water. I'll have you begging me to say that waterboading is torture.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Turn a candidate trying to fire up his supporters at a campaign event into... ..."THE SCREAM of an crazy man"
Mmm, yeah - I agree with your logic. But - there are a lot of secrets that SHOULDN'T be so secret.
Work your way through all the hype leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Oil never figures into the "official" line of reasoning. All the same, the flow of oil became a priority once the war started. Defending the oilfields became a matter of urgency. Getting oil workers to actually pump oil from the ground was "Job 1!"
I'm a veteran, and I've not one bad word to say about my little brothers who served in Iraq - but I will say that they were used by the administration. And, THAT should be made public knowledge. The "American interests" that were protected in Iraq were actually CORPORATE interests.
Oh yeah - what was the lineup of companies that eventually benefitted from the Iraqi oil wells? BP leads the list? British Petroleum? Operation Ajax was done for BP's sole benefit all those years ago. Man, oh man - those bigwigs at BP sure have a lot of stroke in Washington!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The government need not fear real elections as it has already brainwashed the voters into voting for the establishment every time.
Ah, the good old "We the sheeple" argument.
The United States has somewhere around 130 million voters. As much fun as it would be if it were otherwise, people's political philosophies do not rocket from left to right and back again every four years. The national candidates will generally reflect the center of the bell curve, and will thus wobble just a bit to one side or the other.
The other issue is that running for any office beyond the council of a small town is expensive. There's money involved, sure, but that's just part of it. You need people to go knock on doors, stuff envelopes, make phone calls, etc. If you don't have a fairly large group of people helping you along, you aren't going to get very far along on the process. The larger your group of people, the fewer wild-eyed crazies you'll be able to keep.
Frankly, the older I get, the less enthused I get by radicals, even ones who I'm philosophically aligned with. The ones who do make it into office generally get frustrated with the day-to-day realities of governance. The ones on the other side of the fence probably get burned out and frustrated too, but manage to scare the wits out of us in the process. Establishment hacks are boring and hopefully somewhat competent. That's supposed to be the point.
Newsflash: torture doesn't prevent and hasn't prevented any terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Moreover, torture only weakens image of USA in the world, probably provoking MORE attacks.
What's more, torture doesn't really help in most cases of interrogation.
It really depends on the goals.
If your goal is to get the truth, then torture will not get you any results at all.
Why would someone tell a torturer the truth, when that will only result in more torture?
Unless by pure coincidence the truth and the statements the torturer want you to say happen to match of course.
If your goal is to get someone to repeat what you tell them to repeat, for purposes of recording, faking confessions, or to be used as fake evidence against the person being tortured, then it works great.
Just depends on your goals.
We have both their stated goal, proof it is a lie, and on top of that there is only one use for torture, thus we can extrapolate the real reason they want to torture from their actions.
The public is under the incorrect impression that interrogation is to get the truth, because A) that is what is stated, and B) that is what interrogation is typically used for, so that excuse is fully believable.
It's not at all different from "If you weigh more than a duck, you are obviously guilty" type methods used in the past.
You're missing the point. That's not how the system is supposed to work, because of:
Maybe I'm missing the point, maybe I'm just not expressing myself correctly. I'll let Thoreau do it:
No. No consequences to them. Yeah, they want to "effect (sic) change".
Off topic, but that was an intentional and valid use of the verb "effect".
If it's so important to leak, why not risk the punishment that society imposes for releasing classified information?
Why should someone have to sacrifice themselves to an unjust system? It's not my fault that the system is unjust, why should I suffer punishment for it? If I can do what is right without suffering, isn't that better than doing what is right and suffering?
Again, such activities in a free[1] society are wholly different than actions in a non-free society.
[1] Yes, I realize no society is completely "free", but I trust you get my point.
Every society is free if you're in the privileged class. Every society is non-free when you're among the oppressed. I don't think there's a fundamental difference, just one of magnitude. China has a constitution guaranteeing many individual rights. But they carve out large exceptions for national security. The only real difference between them and us is the size of the exception. But once you poke a hole in the protections afforded to us by our rights, that hole just gets bigger and bigger.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Nope. You don't understand human nature very well. You don't torture people for information, you torture them to get confirmation of what you want to be true. If you torture someone long enough and they'll tell you exactly what you want to hear.
The inquisition used to force people into confessing they were satanists so that the church could confiscate their property, and, of course, they'd generously split that property with person who reported the dangerous sinner.
So you see, torture isn't used because it's a reliable method of gathering information, it's used because it's a reliable method of manufacturing evidence. You can get whatever you want out of a tortured confession, and that is why confessions extracted under duress are not admissable in most modern court systems.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
In any case, in the context of my original comment, this wouldn't apply to someone who merely downloaded what was purported to be a leaked classified document.
Precisely. It's so ironic that the guy criticizing unfounded legal advice for being modded +5 informative is himself modded +5 informative for unfounded legal advice.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Actually, A Democratic Administration and Justice Department used the criminal investigation and justice system to find, arrest, indict, bring to trial, convict and imprison for life almost all of those involved with the first WTC bombing. All within two years, if I recall the details correctly.
Compare and contrast to the Republican Administration and Justice Department in office on 9/11/2001.
(And yes, I KNOW you were being sarcastic. The above is to remind those /.ers who revere the names of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Limbaugh, Beck, et al, ad nauseum, of the real history of their fulsome, feculent "heroes")
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