WikiLeaks' International Man of Mystery

AcidAUS writes "The founder of WikiLeaks lives a secret life in the shadow of those who blow the whistle. Here's a detailed profile of the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, by Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald."

Comments

Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[BadAnalogyGuy]

You gotta hand it to the CIA. When they attack something like Wikileaks, they really take the long view.

First, show how Wikileaks is somehow providing incorrect/incomplete/biased information. Now, set the founder up for more publicity, implicitly encouraging violence upon him.

It's a chilling effect on anyone who might be initially inclined to provide information to Wikileaks under their cover of anonymity.

Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[Animaether]

First, show how Wikileaks is somehow providing incorrect/incomplete/biased information http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2010/04/truth-but-not-the-whole-truth.html. Now, set the founder up for more publicity, implicitly encouraging violence upon him.

If that article was intended to show that Wikileaks is "providing incorrect/incomplete/biased information", then that article failed on numerous accounts. I won't list them here - it looks like the people commenting on that article (although going off the deep end in another way) have already taken that bother. I highly doubt that was its intent anyway as it goes more into the general topic of what you see in a video and what the actual circumstances were. It still fails even at that, but it's not really directed at Wikileaks.

Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[Anonymous Coward]

So the CIA controls both the New Yorker and the Sydney Morning Herald?

Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Jayzuz. PR firms feed the journalists with pre-researched, pre-angled cases. The journalist checks a few of the facts, rewrites the prose a bit/writes the prose. And the desk approves. Everybody does this: Government, big tobacco, Toyota, UNICEF. Everybody. There's no need to control the media when the productivity expectations of the journalists ensures they are toothless and more than happy to regurgitate your propaganda.

Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[chrb]

Now, set the founder up for more publicity, implicitly encouraging violence upon him.

Assange brings publicity on himself. He is the media friendly face of Wikileaks. He won the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award and he has been a guest speaker at various international conferences. He chose to be interviewed on Al Jazeera, which is watched by 50-100 million households. I'm not suggesting that he actively seeks publicity for himself, but he does choose to seek it on behalf of Wikileaks, in order to further the Wikileaks mission.

It's a chilling effect on anyone who might be initially inclined to provide information to Wikileaks under their cover of anonymity.

Assange chose not to be anonymous so the analogy does not apply. Read his Wikipedia biography for more information. There is no evidence that this will have any effect on anonymous leakers. The people opposed to Wikileaks have various options at this point:

• Undermine and discredit Wikileaks by publically unmask some of the anonymous leakers
• Ignore Wikileaks, and accept that leaking happens.
• Use Wikileaks by leaking "friendly" info, info that makes opponents look bad, etc.
• Discredit Wikileaks by leaking info that is subsequently shown to be false.
• Push for the legislation and political will to punish Wikileaks as a criminal organisation that undermines national security.

Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[LWATCDR]

But they did and do present the data in a biased way.
Look at the prologue they added to the video. Just what does a picture of the dead reporters son holding his fathers picture have to do with truth?
That is a classic case of "what about the kids" that gets so often bashed on Slashdot when it is convenient.
For the most part what I have seen of Wikileaks they are the Nation Enquirer of the internet. They present the data in the most inflammatory way possible and it is often incorrect, incomplete, and biased.
They do not just present the data but comment on and embellish.

I am not for taking them down but my goodness they need to clean up their act. Between releasing all sorts of personal data they got from the 9/11 pager traffic to the prologue and added commentary they added the the Apache video just released they show that they don't care anymore about being unbiased or responsible than Fox news does.

Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[digitalchinky]

I think the article was just trying to milk the whole wikileaks publicity train for an extra 15 minutes of fame :-)

Espionage in real life is more likely to land your backside in jail (naturally a few exceptions here and there): Back when I was working for 'them' (secret 3 letter agency) there was a guy who tried to sell a certain ELINT publication to a foreign country - as far as classified documents go, this one was (and still is) pretty damned important, with a short shelf life. Ultimately not of much interest to anyone other than the people that make use of it. What struck me as both amusing and interesting was that representatives of this particular country returned the document and helped out with the investigations. Naturally the guy is sitting in a cell. A good many classified documents and publications can sometimes (read: very rarely) be interesting, but it's often not the publication itself that is important, it's how it came to exist. Politicians are a terribly leaky bunch, but they are also usually a little smarter than they look, you rarely, virtually never, hear them talk about collection systems.

My point: throughout all of the agencies I worked for over the years, WikiLeaks was pretty low on the Radar. So low that most people, until now, had no idea it actually existed. It might be a very small PR problem every once in a while, but this little pony show you saw on CNN is about publicity just at the moment. Nothing more, nothing less. War sucks for sure, but cherry picking pieces of a story to highlight ones own agenda, that's not cool, though it probably does bring in the money, fame, hookers and whatever.

Disclaimer: I'm just one guy though, so what matters to me might not be viewed the same way by another. If you feel differently this is okay. I'm good with it. Slashdot actually gets far higher publicity than WikiLeaks anyway. Some of these 3 letter agencies may or may not have even approached Mr Taco (and others) for permission to graft certain articles along with their comments such that they are visible 'on the other side of the air gap' so to speak.

Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[gambino21]

Just to be clear they presented the data in both an edited and unedited version . I would agree with you if wikileaks had released only the edited version, but the fact that they released the full video right next to the edited one, puts them several levels above something like National Enquirer IMO. It also puts them at a higher standard than most of the current US mainstream media which is usually very light on references and heavy on granting anonymity even when it's not needed.

Did the edited video go overboard with the picture of the son in the edited video? Yes, probably. But in general I think wikileaks does a good job of providing unbiased information and filling a big gap left by most of the media.

Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[digitalchinky]

This is going back a few years, but permit me to explain the logic used:

Because the stories were being 'transplanted' from the real slashdot to some server or other 'as is', completely unmodified, everyone involved was okay with it.

Possibly I've made it sound a bit more frequent that it actually was, though the stories were usually pretty high profile in so far as they related directly to the agencies themselves along with public knowledge and perception thereof.

I would definitely give you an irony mod if such a thing existed, some people here do indeed have fame they don't realize they have.

Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[LWATCDR]

No they don't they have one marked as the short version and one as the full version. The short version has the prologue on it and is put on the top of the order.
There should be only one and that is the unedited on with out the commentary. There is no reason for their to be two versions at all except to allow for manipulation disguised as making it clearer.
Wikileaks can not make any claim as to being unbiased. They are clearly in this case taking on the job of judge, jury, and prosecutor.
Please even the URL you posted is inflammatory. collateralmurder.com! Gee no slanting there at all.
So just how is this in your own words "doing a good job at providing unbiased information"?

This is as bad as any hatchet job by 60 minutes or Fox News. I think you need to review what unbiased really means. There is no way anything posted under the url of collateralmurder can be considered unbiased when the url and title on the page are clearly biased as to what the actions shown constitute. I can not believe that you posted a link to the url and still defend any claim of being unbiased!

Nope it is classic yellow journalism.

Re:Looks like the discrediting is well begun

[LWATCDR]

Again with an emotional plea. Of course it is tragic that this gentleman died and that his child is an orphan. But him having a child or even being a reporter has nothing to do with was the Apache crew justified in shooting or if it was a war crime.
You are using one emotional manipulation to justify another.
Suppose instead we showed vets with their kids saying how they wouldn't have gotten home without that Apache crew protecting them? You would claim that was just emotional manipulation as was the prologue added to this video.
Justice is supposed to be blind and only look at the facts. This video contains a prologue that is designed to push the viewer into agreeing with the conclusion of the people that edited the video. Even the URL that it was listed under is inflammatory. If you don't think that is biased then you don't understand the meaning of the word.
To be unbiased they should just present the video without commentary and let each of us decide for ourself. Any commentary changes it from unbiased information to editorial content that reflects the views of those making the commentary.
Even your comment that me seeing the bias shows that I am biased is just silly. Claiming I have lost all sense of humanity is just insulting.
However to be an unbiased source of news (and they are very rare) you really should let the viewer decide without adding emotional manipulation.
Let the evidence speak for it's self or admit that you are a biased source.

why all the publicity?

[je ne sais quoi]

This is the second time I've seen Julian Assange come up in reference to the video. I wonder why he's giving all this publicity? Surely this will hamper his efforts and get him on watch lists that make it difficult for him to travel. Maybe he's succumbing to the temptation to become infamous. Or maybe he just feels this is the best way to make sure the media hangs onto this story to make sure something changes. The interesting thing is that if he is a hacker, it makes it all that more interesting about how wikileaks is getting their stuff. Is it really even being leaked?

Re:there's another australian creator of edgy cont

[Cimexus]

Although I can see why Slashdot might give you that impression, do remember that the reporting on here is usually quite sensationalist.

Australia doesn't yet have an internet filter (hell, the Bill hasn't even been introduced into the House yet, and even if it passed there would face near-certain death in the Senate), and it's been aggressively fought every step of the way. Contrast this with China, which obviously has a well-known filter (and one far, far more intrusive than the simple URL blacklist proposed in AU). Contrast this further with other countries have introduced an AU-like filter quietly and without much debate (most recently, New Zealand).

If anything, it shows that the democratic process is working well in Australia, the fact that you are hearing and seeing so many stories (read: so much opposition) to such proposals.

The other kooky story you are likely to have heard out of Australia in the last 12 months is the lack of an R rating for computer games. There's been quite a breakthrough on that front, with the one man primarily responsible for blocking the introduction of the R rating retiring as South Australian Attorney-General. His replacement has publicly stated they are in support of an R rating for games. So it appears we'll get our R rating within the not too distant future, bringing us into line with the classification systems in the US and EU.

Australia has problems like any country. But I don't think they are anywhere on the scale of China, or even on the scale of other Western countries like the UK (far more surveillance there than in AU). The US overall has a good record on such matters, but it too is not perfect (witness the whole warrantless logging/tapping of public phone conversations debacle etc.). The problems might be ~different~ in other countries but they are no less serious.

Re:there's another australian creator of edgy cont

[dkleinsc]

Haven't you heard? In Australia, the penalty for serious crimes is exile to the United States.

It's a warzone.

[TheLink]

Actually such things are inevitable in a warzone. That's why you should never start wars lightly[1]. Lots of bad stuff will happen.

It's obvious to many in hindsight that it's a camera. But if you look it from the POV from a paranoid nervous young military helicopter pilot, it does look like the tube of a RPG - esp when the camera sticks out from behind the wall...

What follows after that is just what soldiers do - they kill people, and they are _conditioned_ to think it's OK to kill people. So they make up all sorts of excuses so that they can pull the trigger.

If the helicopter pilot isn't paranoid enough, he or his friends will get killed. Because there ARE people out there who are out to kill him and his friends, and yes sometimes there are children around when it happens. And yes, both sides can be relaxed and merrily joking about stuff minutes before they blow away the other side.

War is how you get otherwise reasonable people to kill strangers they have never met and would otherwise be happy to sit down and have a meal with together. You set things up so that if they don't kill the other side, the other side would kill them and/or their friends. If that doesn't happen, you kill/punish them for disobeying orders.

To me the appalling bit is not that civilians were killed because the pilot made a mistake, it's that the war was either started due to lies or incompetence.

I have to say though that the US military seem to have a reputation of being more trigger happy, and even since the WWII days - the joke goes that when a German plane flies over, the British take cover; when a British plane flies over, the Germans take cover; when a US plane flies over, everyone takes cover... ;)

[1] http://slashdot.org/journal/208853/How-to-reduce-unwanted-wars