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WikiLeaks 'a Clear and Present Danger,' Says WaPo
bedmison writes "In an op-ed in the Washington Post titled 'WikiLeaks must be stopped,' Marc A. Thiessen writes that 'WikiLeaks represents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States,' and that the US has the authority to arrest its spokesman, Julian Assange, even if it has to contravene international law to do so. Thiessen also suggests that the new USCYBERCOM be unleashed to destroy WikiLeaks as an internet presence."
Reader praps tips an interview with another WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt, who says they have no regrets about releasing the Afghanistan documents, and says WikiLeaks is "changing the game." Several other readers have pointed out that WikiLeaks posted a mysterious, encrypted "insurance" file on Thursday, which sent the media into a speculative frenzy over what it could possibly contain.
So apparently The Washington Post presents a clear and present danger to public freedom and the accountability of government and industry.
I love that an organization is a danger because it reveals coverups and secrets to ordinary citizens.
"But Pojut, our enemies will use this information against us!"
Well then maybe we shouldn't be doing it in the first place. Doy.
Living With a Nerd
Sounds to me more like the United States is the clear and present danger. Particularly when they claim an authority and yet admit a conflict with international law.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I think it's safe to say that they're more concerned about what Wikileaks will publish in the future. This isn't about putting the cat back into the bag, but about prior restraint of future publication.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
...but Marc Thiessen is downright scary. Secret indictments. Grabbing foreign citizens in other countries against local laws and extradition treaties. Are you kidding, Marc? Want to bring back the Alien and Sedition Acts while you're at it?
I'm not sure that a regime where stuff like this happens is really worth protecting in the name of "national security".
... to the mainstream media who are more interested in printing out press releases than going out and finding news.
haven't you seen star wars? if you strike him down, he will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Dude, Julian Assange is not a Jedi. He won't come back as a ghost after death to advise Luke. If you strike him down, he'll be dead.
And, sure, martyrs can have a power to move opinion that living people lack, but I'm not convinced this is one of those situations.
The clear and present danger doesn't come from *talking* about the actions of the American government, but from the actions themselves.
Newspapers didn't aid the Northern Vietnamese when they published the Pentagon Papers, but instead the Government and Military hurt the America with their secretive and malicious actions in Southeast Asia.
Just the same, releasing more information about the military actions in Afghanistan (especially after taking all possible precautions to prevent harm before release) does not cause injury to the US. It's the actions the US is ashamed to talk about that cause the harm.
"and that the US has the authority to arrest its spokesman, Julian Assange, even if it has to contravene international law to do so"
Interesting interpretation of "international law" and America's opinion of it. No wonder the world hates the US.
Hence the insurance file. Presumably that encrypted file would contain information that the government would want to remain secret more than they would want wikileaks in general silenced.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Eh, my guess is that if it really is an "insurance" file, then someone involved in whatever department the files pertain to has already received the key, decrypted it, and knows exactly what it is. After all, if you really want to blackmail someone, you don't benefit from keeping the information secret from the person you're trying to blackmail. "I have 1.4GB of very sensitive information but I won't tell you what it is" isn't going to be particularly persuasive when you're trying to stop someone from coming after you. On the other hand, "I have 1.4GB of very sensitive information, it's already on thousands or millions of people's computers, and here's the key so you can see what it really is" carries an awful lot of weight if it's really something you don't want people to see. And the beauty of posting it in encrypted form is that if whoever holds this particular insurance policy decides to call it into effect, the US government has to prevent not the dissemination of a 1.4GB file (which would be nigh-well impossible anyways) but a 256 bit key, and we've all seen how well trying to stop people from sharing a single hexadecimal string worked out for the HD-DVD folks ;) Of course, there's also the danger that the public could get together and crack your key with distributed computing, and then you lose your leverage...
Horse shit. Their ink, their paper, their website, their responsibility.
It's all well and good to play both sides of the political theater, but ultimately anything they choose to print is endorsed by the entire organization, two line legal blurb or no.
For those of you who've forgotten this fellow, he's a former Bush speechwriter and author of the terribly misleading "Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack".
The New Yorker did a piece on that book, investigating some of the claims made within and revealing many to be clearly false. Basically the book was a defense of "enhanced interrogation". One claim that I recall off the top of my head is that information obtained by the CIA through enhanced interrogation was instrumental in preventing a conspiracy to hijack several planes flying from London in 2006. Yet according to the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism unit, all the intelligence involved was gathered in the uk. Thiessen's version of events is flatly contradicted.
This guy has been one of the primary fonts of misinformation and foolishness in the media since then. He has no credibility, and should be regarded only as a bellwether of neoconservative opinion.
WikiLeaks is in its essence just a Wiki site. A web site. It's clear that publishing text is in no way unique to that site, you can do it on any site. Hopefully the government isn't saying that free communication is the real threat to national security.
WikiLeaks didn't commit any of the acts in the leaked documents, it wasn't their job or responsibility for keeping those documents secret, and they didn't leak the documents from their origin: some unknown source did on their own will, and sent them to WikiLeaks.
All WikiLeaks did was take those documents, make a cursory check of authenticity, and publish them.
Of course, by doing so, they become an easy target for people who are willing to turn heads away from the actual problems that lead to projects like WikiLeaks, and instead blame the messenger.
The real problem (for certain people) is that WikiLeaks is now a vivid symbol nurturing an environment where people may not simply do something because it was ordered from above, and especially if it's in conflict with basic human rights and morals.
But by loudly blaming WikiLeaks for the created situation, they only serve to further strengthen the very symbol they want to destroy. Somewhat ironic. As long as WikiLeaks is on everyone's target, and not their anonymous sources, more and more whistle-blowers will choose to trust them with their data.
Let's keep it straight just who has blood on their hands.
Doctors Without Borders was in Afghanistan for 30 years, running rural health clinics and supporting and teaching Afghani doctors and nurses. They treated everyone without regard to who they were affiliated with or which side they were on. Their medical clinics were one of the few neutral areas in Afghanistan, respected by everyone, where guns were not permitted.
After the U.S. invasion, Colin Powell moved in a lot of U.S. medical charity workers, and referred to medical workers as "force extenders." The U.S. passed out fliers telling villagers that if they joined the American side and turned in the Taliban, they would get all kinds of benefits, including medical services.
That politicized medical services in Afghanistan. Doctors Without Borders was no longer safe, and had to leave the country. I read an account in which a German obstetrician was crying and refused to leave her patients -- Afghanistan has one of the highest infant and maternal death rates in the world -- and her supervisor had to order her to leave. It was too dangerous.
The other problems like checkpoints manned by soldiers who didn't speak the local language, and killed civilian families who didin't understand their orders, is too much to get into here.
The Bush Administration has blood on its hands. Thiessen was George W. Bush's speechwriter. Thiessen has blood on his hands.
Thiessen is arguing that we should ignore international law. He's using the logic of terrorists.
As long as bad people exist, you will always need to keep certain information secured
As long as bad people exist, you will always need to know what your government is doing in your name. Any solution to any problem which amounts to "trust the government to do the right thing" is wrong.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But only CORRECTLY classified works. 99% of the classified works are incorrectly marked classified to hide malfeasance or just plain incompetency.
See, for example, ACTA.
"In the territory of the Third Reich, we should presume he would have similarly exposed Jews, without concerning himself with their fate. If not, perhaps Jewish lives are more sacred to him than Afghan lives?"
Ever heard the term "straw man"?
He's generally anti authoritarian so he'd more likely be leaking the locations of nazi generals who went into hiding and V2 plans.
Believe it or not wikileaks did make an effort to redact sensitive information.
To propose a similar strawman, if wikileaks doesn't care about afghans who could be killed by the taliban does that mean you don't care about afghans have been killed by US army fuckups?
Would the world be a better place if the military knew it could get away with slaughtering civilians without getting caught?
How would you respond if Wikileaks put up your credit card information, bank account numbers, social security number and all your known residences and acquaintances?
Yeah, but that's not what they're doing, is it? Wikileaks isn't actually doing anything that our journalists wouldn't be doing, if they had the integrity to do their damned jobs.
There is basically nothing, aside from publicity, preventing him from being black-bagged by some three-letter-agency and never heard from again.
Aside from a pissed-off US government, I'd also worry about someone acting outside the realm of government direction (pissed-off Taliban sympathizers, etc.) deciding they want to find out what intel Assange is sitting on and just grabbing him off the street without concern for the consequences.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I really need to write a check to Wikileaks. And EFF. And ACLU. This liberty thing could get expensive, what with us having to fund the fight against the people who we elected to uphold it, who are also using our money.
There's one reason why this is a poor method of insurance. Suppose there's somebody out there with an even bigger axe to grind than Assange, who will stop at nothing to get the contents of this "insurance" file released. With over six billion people in the world, and a substantial number of them having a beef with the U.S., it's not beyond the realms of possibility.
The implication here is that if something happens to Assange, then the key gets released. So, it logically follows that if you want the key to be released.......
(For my own safety, I have no interest in the contents of that file. And while I personally think Julian Assange is a self-righteous ass, I don't wish physical harm on him or any of the other people involved with Wikileaks.)
Why isn't the US military just as evil or even more so for putting the names in the documents in the first place?
And remember that those who aided and abetted the US military can hardly be considered innocent civilians -- to the occupied, they are fifth colonists or worse: Quislings.
No, the brunt of the responsibility rests firmly on the shoulder of the US military, politicians and voters here:
1: For using civilians in the war effort.
2: For making notes that identify them.
3: For not safeguarding those notes, making a leak possible.
Against those travesties, the disclosure of a redacted subset of those notes is negligible.
Face it, it's all about lost face at this point, and taking out revenge at the whistleblower and his or her associates. Revenge and anger and two of the few things my country, 'tis of thee, are good at.
FLOG the impertinent child who dare to say that the emperor has no clothes. He's directly responsible for people's anger when being exposed to the truth! If someone throws a rock at the emperor's haberdasher as a result, it's clearly the evil child's fault! Shoot the messenger; off with his head!