Slashdot Mirror
Interview With the Man Behind WikiLeaks
An anonymous reader writes "Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, explains why he feels it is right to encourage the leaking of secret information. He maintains that the more money an organisation spends on trying to conceal information, the more good it is likely to do if leaked. For Assange, leaked intelligence reveals the true state of governments, their human rights abuses, and their activities, it's what the 'history of journalism is.' On the media's role in making information available to the public, Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information [classified documents] than the rest of the world press combined.'"
But for some reason the firehose put it down to purple and it was rejected. I understand he's a media whore with shady beginnings but what was everyone afraid of? That the interview would go poorly and he'd start releasing sensitive Slashdot information? :-)
My work here is dung.
Julian Assange also admits someday he's probably going to have "blood on his hands." He has put himself in a tough situation. But I'm betting the increased daylight will do more good than bad.
As a USMC Iraq combat vet, who has for the past few months been studying the Afghan situation extensively, I can say that this is a good thing. Anybody who is actually involved knows that the Paki, and more specifically ISI, have been a problem for us since the early 80's, and not much has changed. The Paki's have and will continue to say "What? Not us!" but they are full of shit. The fact that the politicians are relatively good at hiding this fact undermines the general public's knowledge about the situation, and therefore it is a major part of controlling public opinion about our war. The facts are that we send money to ISI (often bypassing paki authorities completely) who then have (sometimes rogue) officers directly funding everything from afghan warlords, to Al Queda, to Paki Talibs, and on down the line. The fact of the matter is that Pakistan has absolutely no interest in really getting rid of their extremists, on either border, because Islamabad has so much fear of India, the militants are a tool they plan to use if needed. They will only do enough to keep our money flowing to them, but not enough to truly alienate the extremists. Its enormously complicated, with factors such as Iran and Russia playing into the equation. Regardless, I just hope that Assange did a good enough job purging of intel that could jeopardize people, but when so much is being hid, this kind of knowledge should be made public, albeit perhaps a bit with a bit more ambiguous information.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
I sometimes wonder if perhaps government needs another wing,
an executive, a legislature, a judiciary and another wing(investigative?) with the job of (but not monopoly on)letting everyone know what the hell the other 3 are up to with as much protection from the other brances as they have from each other and as much power to root around in the others buisness as any wing of government.
it used to be that the citizens were good enough at that job but nowdays with the way the weak ones are getting stamped on for trying and the rich and powerful don't give a damn I think it would be better.
It was a very smart move of him to involve big names like the New York Times. That will give him a degree of protection. But that only goes so far. If the powers-that-be are determined enough to get you, they'll either find some way to discredit you (the Scientologists are the Jedi masters of that one), or if they're REALLY pissed you'll just be the victim of an unfortunate car or plane crash (the CIA and KGB were best known for that trick).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Fluff is not just Idols, it is news that doesn't upset you.
To paraphrase a great 19th century British newspaperman: news is what someone is trying to censor. Everything else is entertainment.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I sometimes wonder if perhaps government needs another wing,
an executive, a legislature, a judiciary and another wing(investigative?) with the job of (but not monopoly on)letting everyone know what the hell the other 3 are up to
I'm often surprised (and impressed) by how well the CBC here in Canada and the BBC in the UK objectively report on government actions and policies. Both of them are government-owned entities, but they seem to provide a much more critical lens on that very government than the private commercial news broadcasters do. It's really counter-intuitive.
Why, then, does the US government want to keep the American public in the dark about civilian deaths in the wars that we are fighting?
That's easy. The lessons that the military learned from Vietnam:
1. Never show anything on TV that would indicate that US soldiers are suffering and dying. That includes flag-draped coffins, military funerals, wounded vets, etc.
2. Never show anything on TV that would indicate that US soldiers are killing civilians. This is best done by carefully controlling the situations that reporters can see (see "embedded" reporters).
3. Never institute a draft, so that wealthy college kids aren't affected, only poor and powerless kids.
4. Never let on to the public how expensive the war is.
This is an exact outgrowth of the "stab-in-the-back" theory of why we lost Vietnam - that the war was winnable except that those darn commie peacenik hippies convinced the politicians to end it. Notice how the entire process is to avoid letting the public know what it is that their money and blood is going towards.
I am officially gone from