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Pentagon Seeking Out Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange
clustro writes "The Pentagon is desperately seeking the 'cooperation' of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in order to stop him from releasing over 250,000 pages of confidential foreign policy documents. The documents were allegedly provided to Assange by Bradley Manning, the same solider who leaked a video showing a US Army helicopter killing unarmed civilians and international press correspondents."
Could you just provide us your GPS co-ordinates? Thanks!
Good luck finding "Julian" as if such a man would have parted ways with his real name. He is a master of 27 languages and knows the local customs as if he recited them as his daily prayers. This is a man who possesses a near chameleon like instinct and can instantly blend into the background anywhere. Only further surpassing his ability to sink into the inky blackness are the hundreds of contacts he has made from here to hoover damn. Hell, even the rocks and streams seem to offer the man comfort if so much as he breathes a heavy sigh.
I can only laugh when the Pentagon says they want to find "Julian." Just considering the sheer number of hells they'll need to climb down to find the darkest demon who might be able to guess what "Julian" had for lunch just makes me chuckle.
Either that or the Pentagon can just send him an email.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Good thing he's not a United States citizen then, or else he might be violating his social contract.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
You don't get to make that determination yourself
Why the hell not? What, can only "experts" determine that? Funny how the experts are always government paid.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
Yup. Now he's an enemy combatant. Now about those GPS coordinates...
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Leaking a video and foreign policy documents does not constitute "treason."
In Soviet America, leaks plug you.
Why is Snark Required?
Ever hear of the Pentagon Papers?
Classification is supposed to be used to protect the American people, not protect criminals in office, or protect certain classes' privileges, or protect certain corporations' contracts, or to DECEIVE the American public.
If you are privy to misuse of the law in such a way or of such abuses, it's the patriotic and moral thing to do to expose them.
We don't know (yet) what this information is, but breaking the law is sometimes justified if the law is unjust or is being used to protect uinjust actions.
The person taking such action, choosing to break a law they see as wrong faces the consequences knowingly. History will judge whether they were right or wrong.
And in general we should be uncomfortable with the idea of our government deciding that we don;t have a right to know what its doing - pretty much goes against the ideas behind the founding of this country and is abhorrent to anyone not having an authoritarian mindset.
Somehow I'm sure our country and citizens will manage to survive the release of this information that the government feels it must protect us from.
This space available.
Your own personal view on whether something should or shouldn't be classified is irrelevant. There are well-known and established processes that govern classification.
I don't know where you live, but I still live in a democracy. So while my opinion on what should/shouldn't be classified might not be the definitive one, an important one, or even a good one.. it's always a relevant one. You presumably live in a dictatorship, so I can see how you might have a different opinion on it. Of course, your opinion on everything is irrelevant, since you live in a dictatorship.
AccountKiller
I really hope this is a troll. If so, kudos - it is very well done.
If not, I weep that there are actually people who think this way. It is instructive to understand this kind of mindset. If the democratic will says it's ok, then it must be ok. Countless atrocities committed in the name of the majority have occurred on the basis of this mode of thinking. The Holocaust comes to mind.
I think I'm going to be sick.
All he is saying is that if you do release confidential data based on your personal determination that it is a moral thing to do, you should not be guaranteed to not suffer any consequences. What if the Pentagon is telling the truth and releasing these documents would cause "serious damage to national security" and people die as a result of your decision?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted. Constitution > Webster
In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.
Really, did _you_ vote on it, will your vote be reaffirmed every generation or so to ensure its still what the people want ?
Perhaps you should have said, a previous generation let the powers that be keep secrets from everyone, and now we cant get them to give up their power.
You're kidding right? Explosions are flashy, they get a lot of attention and everybody sees it. The last thing that a group interested in keeping their activities under wraps would want is for everybody to start looking at them because a critic just turned into a fireball.
Poisonings, "muggings gone wrong", character assassinations, etc. are all much more subtle ways to go about silencing a nuisance. They want a resolution where they can, reasonably, act just as surprised as everyone else. I'd be much more suspicious if he died of a sudden heart attack, or was murdered by an apparent Islamic terrorist than if he went out in a blaze of improbability.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Depends whats in the docs.
Another 5000 name death list as used in 1965 Indonesia?
The names crossed off as killed or captured?
Direct color revolution support, not washed by pro democracy foundations?
Black sights in countries where people where promised never again?
Enough for this generations Daniel Ellsberg?
or a huge list of faith based contractors doing very bad things on endless sole source contracts?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.
Yes. And Hitler was elected in democratic elections as well. (I know, I know, Godwin's Law) Just because we voted on it doesn't mean it's always the best case. We generally aren't informed on what exactly we're voting on. In this specific example, we're voting on who gets to keep things secret. Which means by definition we _can't_ know what exactly we're deciding. This is exactly _why_ we need people to leak things.
There's the famous saying about preferring that a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished for a crime he did not commit. I consider this to be quite similar. I'd rather have a thousand national secrets leaked than have that one thing covered up. Just because it's not the next Holocaust doesn't mean it isn't something that needs to be released. Not enough people leaked what was happening in Nazi Germany until it was too late, likely because they were afraid of the consequences. The more tools to lessen the consequences, the better.
I don't generally post on Slashdot... but couldn't resist. Post them. Now. Please. No doubt it'll hurt US relations with who-knows-who... but the truth is always the best way to create the best change. One day, this man should be nominated, and win, a Nobel Peace Prize.
From TFA:
Manning, 22 [...] As an intelligence specialist in the US army, Manning
I fail to see how a 22 year old guy can be an "Intelligence specialist".
(and get off my lawn BTW).
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I watched the whole video. It doesn't mention wikileaks, the wikileaks founder, or anything surrounding this case at all. The video is about an entirely different leak (of which almost no details are given), and Obama doesn't even threaten to arrest that guy.
AccountKiller
Much more interesting to me is what will happen with the dummy that leaked the info. Article 106 of the UCMJ defines this offense as punishable by death. This soldier knew with absolute certainty that he was committing a grave offense. A court martial is not handled like your everyday court case, no amount of money is going to save his skin.
Got Code?
Treason is lying to the american public about WMDs. Perhaps you don't think the boss can commit treason. But the public is meant to be the boss - and they were lied too, and money was laundered, lives were lost and countless suffered.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Er, this was thoroughly explained at the time of the original article - his passport was 'confiscated' because it was old and damaged and wouldn't pass through the bloody readers. It was returned 15 minutes later, and he was informed THAT passport would need to be cancelled. That is, he'd have to go to the post office at some point and request a new one. NOT that his right to a passport had been removed altogether.
No conspiracy there, just customs informing him his old and tattered passport needed replacing. Happens all the time to regular travelers.
"What if people die as a result" of leaking the confidential data? Many, many people *have* died due to our offensive military operations in that part of the world. I wager that obtaining the documents is an effort to examine the premises and policies surrounding those deaths, a la the Pentagon Papers. The claims of "serious damage to national security" have been seriously overblown in the past. Give the documents to someone trustworthy (outside the United States) to evaluate for their likelihood to "seriously damage" us.
Actually that would be an interesting experiment. Every law reviewed by the population every few years. This would give the population control, it would also limit the amount of laws that could be feasibly enacted ehich is something everyone should agree is a good thing. Every first world country is burying itself under the new laws it creates every year when we all have perfectly good laws already on the books to punish those same crimes.
Normal people worry me!
Depending on what he leaked he may be considered a hero by civil libertarians if some of the allegations and rumors swirling about these cables are true. I know I consider him one, this is far less a grave offense against the law and liberty than Cheney's death squads or Bush's/Obama's/Congress's support of the Patriot Act. You seem almost gleeful he has less rights during a court martial, any reason for that?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
First of all, I think that people do need a video to realize that war, and in particular the Iraq war, is tragic and disturbing. It's one thing to hear that lots of civilians are mistakenly killed in the course of our military occupations, it's another thing altogether to see some of the exact circumstances in which that occurs.
Do you recall the story that broke soon after the video, regarding a house that special forces stormed on bad intel, in which various people were killed, including two women that the soldiers apparently arranged deceptively so that they could claim in their report that they were previously killed in an "honor killing?" The incident that the commanding general of SOCOM had to fork over a wad of cash and apologize for? If there had been a video of that, with black-clad soldiers going "Oh shit! I think these people were just civilians!" and then digging out their rounds from the bodies, tying them up, artfully arranging them, and discussing their cover story, how do you think that would have gone over? Instead of everyone forgetting in a few weeks, we'd still be watching the congressional hearings on CSPAN.
Regarding the guncam video, do you find the destruction of the van, and the attack on the building with missiles while apparent bystanders walk by to be equally unavoidable as the deaths of the journalists? I am a little surprised that the video didn't at least make you wonder at all about the wisdom of the RoE they were operating under. You don't have to demonize the pilots and gunners personally to find fault in the incident. The military's reports found that the crewmen did make the right call in every case, and summarily declared all 20+ men killed in the various attacks "AIF" (Anti-Iraq Forces), so you can't write everything off as a tragic mistake; it was tragic official policy.
Even if all of these things are rendered "unavoidable" by our political need for near-airtight force protection (like the dozens of unarmed civilians killed at Afghan road checkpoints), many people are not aware that they occur. If everyone knew exactly what went on in Iraq and Afghanistan, they might not support the military missions there (or future hypothetical invasions) so much; war reporting certainly had that effect during Vietnam. If no one ever gets outraged, what motivation is there to avoid these entanglements, or even to try harder to avoid civilian casualties in the conflicts we are already fighting?
I can only imagine that all the random milita members on the streets with rifles and RPGs that day didn't realize that the helicopters ~1km away were or could be targeting them. I agree that the Reuters stringers took a foolish risk, and that the initial incident is not indefensible. Maybe "AIF" ambushes are always that ridiculously nonchalant. Everything that happens afterward, though...
Also keep in mind that the only reason anyone (any American) ever cared about this incident was that it was subsequently discovered that two of the "AIF" were Reuters stringers. Imagine how many incidents there must have been where people who didn't work for a major Western news organization were creatively classified as insurgents. I'm sure that some of them weren't pointing giant telephoto lenses at the Bradley convoy down the block, and would be harder to blame for their own demises.
"and people die as a result of your decision?"
How about the opposite: what if people die UNLESS you publish these documents and publishing them would save lives? That's not actually far-stretched, Pentagon and the US army is known for killing people, even completely unarmed civilians.
If you go the "what if" - route then you should consider several different outcomes and not only one.
I find it astonishing how willingly people will swallow bullshit handwaving out of the desire to avoid conscious guilt.
Let's get the facts straight: The civilians didn't have a rocket launcher. It has been shown that the initial reports were clearly fabricated lies. It shows us a policy of prioritizing military propaganda over professional thoroughness. As such, we have no reason at all to believe their other claims and can only draw conclusion from the raw material we have.
And what if You were driving your daughters somewhere through your hometown and came upon what to you looked like an explosion with dying people crawling to safety?
To Americans it's the 'warzone' but to people that live there it is 'home'.
*DrugCheese rants*
My security engineering textbook actually has a chapter on nuclear launch codes and how that system was designed. You could, in the absence of all other security mechanisms, simply brute force the codes, since they are of deliberately limited length; the military did some research and discovered that when people are under stress (which is likely if they are being asked to arm a nuclear weapon), they can only accurately enter a certain number of digits even if those digits are being read to them.
In my opinion, though, the most interested detail is the motivation for nuclear launch codes. As you pointed out, there should be (and there is) some physical security measure in place to ensure that some random guy does not launch a nuclear missile. The purpose of the arming codes is not to prevent Joe Schmoe from starting World War 3, but to prevent the soldiers themselves from doing so without authorization. Prior to the Kennedy administration, nuclear bombs were armed when they were deployed (dropped from an airplane), and the only measure in place to prevent a pilot from doing so without orders was a single soldier standing near the plane, who was supposed to shoot the pilot in such a situation -- but the commander might issue the order to strike without authorization.
As for the codes being leaked...that was considered as well. The codes change frequently, some change daily (i.e. the codes that the president carries -- there are other codes, like maintenance codes), so even a leak would have a low potential for causing a problem (a pair of rogue soldiers hell bent on launching a nuke would have to get the authorization codes on the same day they are leaked).
Really, people bring up nuclear secrets (and for some reason, launch codes) whenever they want you to abandon all logical thought and stop questioning the need for broad secrecy. A lot of things that people think are secret really are not secret, or are things that were once secret but are not anymore: it used to be the case that anything related to nuclear weapons, even chemical data about the fuel, was automatically classified, but that policy was relaxed somewhat. Sure, there are things that are secret and that are better kept secret, like the locations and planned movements of US military units in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the identities of spies in foreign countries, but there is a limit and things are supposed to be declassified after a certain amount of time, with certain rare exceptions.
Palm trees and 8
What are you talking about? Didn't you know that the war in Iraq was won in 2003? Or maybe you've forgotten Preseident Bush's speech declaring victory on a certain aircraft carrier about a certain mission whose goals were considered accomplished? He very clearly stated that is was the "end of major combat operations."
While I'm being facetious here, the point is that you claiming that "war is war" is directly contradictory to the official government stance, which is that the operations in Iraq are a police action. Does the killing of unarmed civilians sound like a valid police action to you? Does that sound like something that will win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis? I'll admit that yes, even in police actions sometimes mistakes can be made but there should be an investigation and if warranted, a trial, not a cover-up.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
And Hitler was elected in democratic elections as well.
No, he wasn't, stop spreading that BS please. Hitler was appointed by Hindenburg, then engineered the Reichstag fire, then enacted draconian laws on grounds of security, used that to rig the next election, which still didn't bring him majority. He then forced Hindenburg out, forced the new Reichstag into giving him legislative powers, effectively suspended the constitution, and then proceeded on to murder his opposition in and outside of his party, and, finally, using the "emergency" legislative powers to declare himself a Furher. Or somesuch. But he was never elected at any point of his national political career by a majority.
Your opinion on what should and shouldn't be classified has no direct relevance to the situation, if this isn't want you want you should exercise your democratic rights by participating in the same democratic process that established the current classification processes.
This discussion we're having right now is a big part of that process. Speech is obviously a necessity in a democracy. This idea you have that democracy is sitting in isolation, calling up your representative and having a little chat with him/her is utterly ridiculous. Democracy happens by people forming opinions, and voting for people who hold those opinions. Peoples opinions are influenced by discussion. Giving your opinions to elected officials is part of the process, but it most certainly isn't the only part. Does this really have to be spelled out for you?
AccountKiller
Uhhhh - I didn't see the same video you saw. I saw an Apache firing on a group of armed men, located in an area from which our ground troops took fire.
The thing that I find most interesting about this argument is that the predominant sides of the argument consist of the side that says, "These guys were irresponsible/criminal Rambo-types. They/we need to do better!" versus the side that says, "These were good soldiers doing the best they could in trying circumstances. Bad things happen in war."
Now, considering that the fighting in Iraq is an anti-insurgency campaign, and the U.S. military is supposed to be winning "hearts and minds," dead civilians, dead reporters, wounded/dead children foster hatred of the U.S. and undermine the mission. Therefore, the people defending those soldiers and saying that mistakes happen are essentially saying this:
"This war cannot be won."