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.

Comments

And they should know

[vm146j2]

They could only publish it if they were getting the acceptable, authorized leaks which told them so.

What about the insurance file?

[spun]

According to The Register, there is a huge encrypted file up on wikileaks now, called 'insurance.' The US goes after wikileaks or Julian Assange, the key to that file goes out to the world. And according to Assange, everything dangerous was redacted out of the Afghanistan documents. Cryptome's John Young speculates that the 'insurance' file contains all the redacted bits.

Re:too late

[Inzite]

This is neither about putting the cat back into the bag nor about preventing future leaks. This is about responding by doing something , regardless of whether or not that something that must be done is justified, legal, pragmatic, ethical, or effective.

Reacting has become the solitary goal of politicians...to take some kind of action when their constituents feel threatened, regardless of whether that action is appropriate, or if there even exists any action whatsoever is appropriate.

Cases in point:
The TSA
The War on Terrorism
Warrantless Wiretapping
The War on Drugs
MADD
Felony Time for Personal Drug Use
Religion
The Pledge of Allegiance
The Witchhunt to Determine Who Killed Michael Jackson
Laws Banning Assisted Suicide
Censorship of (insert media here)
Laws Against Flag Burning
The RIAA
The MPAA
etc.
etc.
etc.

It's a tragedy of this fully-padded, 100% sterilized, risk-free, instant-gratification, 24/7-connected dreamworld that we are increasingly inhabiting that there has to be an immediate cure for every evil. People no longer accept that sometimes the best action is no action at all.

Re:I Do Not Love It

[Anonymous Coward]

Two of the most recent wiki leaks (Collateral damage and Afghan War diary) are examples of not strategic information but examples of information that shows that the wrong things are done in the wrong places and in the wrong way.

One of those tells us that the strategic efforts of the USA in the war were wrong in many ways; the other tells us that civilians were killed by a psycho that was imploring to kill civilians.

I don’t see how this can be of any use to an “enemy” if this is just a report of things your enemy knows but you don't.

Re:srsly govt?

[spun]

He isn't a US citizen, so, is he breaking any Australian laws by publishing US state secrets? If not, then publishing more state secrets is not a crime either. He has not made any statements about the contents or use of the 'insurance' file, so it would be hard to pin extortion on him.

Re:I love it

[FriendlyLurker]

Wikileaks is a small group of people dealing with lots and lots of data. It's not surprising that they screwed up and released papers with personal info in them.

Well, actually, they didn't released papers with personal info - Only Rupert Murdochs paper The Times/Fox media mouthpieces tried to make that shit stick - however the echo chamber that is the US mainstream media has tried (successfully I might add) to amplify this lame point despite there being not one single shred of evidence to back up the claim. Oh yeah, the one name that they do mention as already dead - died two years ago... but they fail to mention little facts like that, or tell you buried down on page 13.

Re:Well Regarded Warmonger

[Doc Ruby]

The Washington Post was one of the chief cheerleaders in the rush to war in Iraq, in the determination to "stay the course", in the attacking of any discussion of any metrics towards or for withdrawal (like a timetable) as surrender.

Since around 2007 and Iraq's government forcing the US to commit to the withdrawal timetable now nearing its 50,000 troops milestone, that editorial policy has been moot. It did its job. Now the WP can go ahead and act like it wasn't the cheerleader, because people's memories aren't that long, and its business is the current manipulations.

My Deep Fear

[pugugly]

I look at all these relics of the Nixon administration that got us into this, and can't help but think . . . as much as I have to believe that Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in good faith, so much of their actions seems to me to indicate that they took that pardon as a validation of the kind of imperial presidency Nixon sought to create. "If he had been *wrong*, then why would Ford have pardoned him?" goes the rationalization in my mind.

And I have to wonder, are we going to be dealing with these fools again in another 30 years. McCarthy begat Nixon, Nixon begat Cheney, Cheney begat . . . Yoo, Thiesen, Gonzales, Bush himself . . . another cabal of contemporaries determined to rewrite history after the fact, to show the world "No . . . we were *right* and we will prove it to you" again in thirty years.

We can't keep having this "Well, politics is politics" attitude that pardons and covers for the crimes of an administration as Obama and the Media has done here. We need to make sure that the historical record is clear that these people are war criminals.

Or we're going to go through this again in a generation.

Pug