Slashdot Mirror
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.
They could only publish it if they were getting the acceptable, authorized leaks which told them so.
"Lost time is not found again."
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
Julian? Sure, he's the face of WL, but that would not stop the signal.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
'The US Government is a Clear and Present Danger' says US Citizens
the cat is out of the bag, even if they killed wikileaks the information they posted is most likely on other people's computers already and it would be a trivial task to setup another server somewhere else with that same info or the very least seed some torrents of it all at various bittorrent sites.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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.
This wasn't the Washington Post saying this, it was a columnist who writes a weekly column for the Post. Saying that the Post says this is like attributing George Will's tirades to the Post. The Post publishes opeds from all over the political spectrum that may or may not reflect the editorial stance of the Post. Thiessen is a right-winger from the American Enterprise Institute. If you want to get pissed at someone, get pissed at the AEI, not the Post.
No sig? Sigh...
One of the major complaints by the gov't was that some of the Afghan informers that were named will now be Taliban targets. Seems an easy way to flush out more Talibs...just set up surveillance on the informers, and wait for the rats to find their way to the cheese...
...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".
Sounds like a job for CIA Analyst Jack Ryan.
... 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.
Well then maybe we shouldn't be doing it in the first place. Doy.
As long as bad people exist, you will always need to keep certain information secured. Whether you're a government or a citizen. 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?
I'm not implying that our current scenario is as cut and dried as World War II but how would you react if Wikileaks had been broadcasting over a magical radio station that blanketed the Earth the location of allied forces in 1942? Would you so callously respond that "maybe the Allies shouldn't be doing that in the first place?"
Yes, as an American, I am concerned about the people fighting for my country abroad. I'm not concerned one bit about the politicians and generals, it's the grunts and people out in the field that could suffer from this. And most of all the people helping those forces by giving them intelligence. War is not a cover-up. It has necessary secrets. It has since Roman times and it will continue to as long as humans exist. You know the names and locations of people informing American forces about where the Taliban are needs to be classified. At this point it's not even using this information against me sitting at home in comfort but about the people in Afghanistan and their safety.
My work here is dung.
It is not Wikileaks that is the danger, it is the trigger happy US and allied military and the uncaring and arrogant US government that is jeopardising the safety and image of Americans to the world. To turn the oft repeated slogan on its head; "If you got nothing to hide, you should not fear Wikileaks". I am sick of hearing "political analysts" and politicians saying Wikileaks is endangering American soldiers because they expose atrocities committed by American soldiers, and as the flawed logic goes, emboldens the enemy. Seriously, this is something Goebbles or Stalin might say, not the leaders of the free world. Wikileaks is actually helping the US by creating negative consequences for excesses of its military. Instead of trying to silence Wikileaks by extra-legal, Gestapo/NKVD/Kempetai-like "rendering" of the founder (which will only worsen the US image), maybe the US should rein in their cowboy soldiers and walk the "spreading freedom and democracy" talk.
And in other news, Joseph Goebbels has written a scathing denunciation of the Jews, and the threat they pose to German society.
Don't blame the Post (entirely) for this opinion piece; they merely published it. It was written by one of Bush and Rummy's chief apologists, an alarmist advocate of martial law.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
He he -- you're funny.
One could argue that the reason why leaders like Fidel Castor and Kim Song Il aren't assassinated or gotten rid of in some way is because they help, indirectly, to give the Military Industrial Complex a reason to exist.
But that would be just crazy, and I certainly wouldn't try and espouse it.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Isn't "Clear and Present Danger" the terminology used to justify Executive Orders to assassinate someone Without Remorse? The Washington Post is playing Patriot Games. I think we owe Wikileaks a Debt of Honor.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Being a martyr isn't even the half of it. Anything happens to Julian or the wikileaks site, then this happens: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/02/wikileaks_insurance/
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Somehow, leaking the uncomfortable truth sounds so unglamorous when you put it that way.
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...
Ever hear of Manuel Noriega and Panama?
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.
Thiessen didn't just work for Bush, Helms and Rumsfeld. He was spokesman for and senior policy advisor to Helms, when the ancient and decrepit Helms was in charge of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 1995-2001. He moved with Rumsfeld to the top of the Pentagon as his chief speechwriter 2001-2004, then to Bush's speechwriting team, becoming its chief in 2008.
He's "a well regarded pundit and speechwriter in Conservative circles" in that he was among the people most responsible for starting the Iraq War (as they'd planned through the 1990s), for ignoring the threats from the Qaeda in Afghanistan (because they cared only about invading Iraq), for running both wars as epic catastrophes while attacking everyone questioning them as a "clear and present danger" to America's security.
The Washington Post publishes columns by Thiessen because his radical rightwing warmonger faction is the Post's board's favorite tiny sliver of Americans. Who always get whatever they want, especially wars.
--
make install -not war
Lets assume something completely crazy for a moment: that there really is information that ought to be kept secret. for example, launch codes for nukes. let's continue with the mental exercise so far as to say other facts may similarly be in the legitimate national interest to conceal. I'll even give you that in some rare cases, THE TRUTH may be so shocking / valuable / topical / money making that that PUBLIC INTEREST demands disclosure. so, bobby, wtf is the one new thing you learnt from this leak? seriously? whats the one new piece of public interest type of info that you got from this? I sure as hell havent seen anything new. and why on earth couldnt someone have just REDACTED THE NAMES AND ADDRESSES of the informers?
Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.
WikiLeaks is in a great place for the press in that it allows WikiLeaks to be the source of scandalous documents; rather than actually being responsible for the leak itself.
What this means is that they have a huge overarching story they can flog for quite awhile and not have to worry about retribution for running any given story. WikiLeaks is a total win-win for an ever more lazy media.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
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.
Wikileaks only posts leaks. The leaks have already happened. Someone, somewhere in the organisation has decided that it's worth risking their job and their liberty over to get this information out, and since they have access to classified information, they must realise that by providing it to wikileaks, everyone will have access to it.
So what would happen if wikileaks didn't exist? Would the leakers simply not leak, or would they leak to the media? Or to the countries that the US is at war with? Do they leak because they get a thrill of being the whistleblower, oblivious to the dangers? I think it's much more important to understand the motives than to try to close down a website.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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?
...for repeating the "nothing new here" line.
Then there's known facts vs what the media bothers to report vs what's common knowledge.
Examples:
None of this things would be "new" news, but it would be news if the media started talking about them.
Not revealing secrets can be even more dangerous.
If someone throws you in prison and rapes or tortures you daily would you prefer that the world never found out about it? .....oh! you mean it's ok as long as it's someone else on the other side who's getting raped,tortured or killed?
that it was never stopped?
If a family member of yours was shot because some idiot thought his camera was a gun would you prefer they kept it secret?
This is princeton's somewhat muddled definition
Liberal:broad: *showing or characterized by broad-mindedness; "a broad political stance"; "generous and broad sympathies"; "a liberal newspaper"; "tolerant of his opponent's opinions" having political or social views favoring reform and progress tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties*
Wikipedia is more specific and defines two (three counting economic liberalism, but no one is referring to the third one when they say liberal bias) types of liberal:
"Classical liberalism is a political ideology that developed in the nineteenth century in Western Europe, and the Americas. It is committed to the ideal of limited government and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets."
"Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it recognizes a legitimate role for government in addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding civil rights."
So just remember that when someone says a newspaper has a liberal bias what they are saying is that the newspaper has a bias towards being broad minded, tolerant, favouring reform and progress and supporting civil liberty. This is actually what newspapers are supposed to do, it is in some cases written into their founding documents and is basically what newspapers have a mandate to be.
ah, yes, but then you have to gamble that the secrets which you hold are damaging enough that they'll consider leaving you alone (and keeping the secrets safe) to be the best option. (Or, that once they know what it is, they won't work to smother it before it even gets out.)
If you don't tell them what the secret is, then you can let their imaginations run wild as to exactly how damaging it is - they know all the secrets already, and have to gamble how far up the scale the one (or ones) you have is (or are).
The other option, of course, is to use a hybrid approach, and have within the file one damaging secret, and another encrypted file which has the others in it. This leaves them aware that you genuinely have damaging secrets, but leaves them guessing as to what else there is waiting to be released. Or give them 3 or 4 different samples which have clearly come from different sources, so they can't be sure that only one source has been compromised (and pin down the extent of the damage).
FGD 135
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.
That soldier released far more than a video and some secret war documents. If thats all it were, then they would just be douche bags and nothing more. Both Wikileaks and 'that soildier' released information about current operations. Information that could actually be used to kill American soldiers, and natives, and other countries soldiers. 'The video' was spun SO HARD that my head almost twisted off reading the freaking subtitles added on to it.
Wikileaks and that soldier didn't release untainted information, they skewed the facts into something completely other than what happened in order to get hits to their website.
Anyone who actually has half a clue watched the video and saw the truth, and the truth had absolutely nothing to do with the people killed in the video or the pilots.
We have legal ways to get the information, AFTER its no longer going to get someone killed. We have LEGITIMATE WAYS TO GET OUR GOVERNMENT TO GIVE US INFORMATION, we really don't NEED some tool with not a clue about what he's seeing spewing it onto a population that also has no clue what they are looking at.
You clearly think the government (whichever one) is pure evil.
Most Americans on the other hand, as surprising as you may find this, aren't fanatical lunatics who realize that the government isn't perfect, but its also not pure evil and somethings happen for a reason, even if I as a particular individual don't understand them.
I don't blindly follow the government, but I also know when to let someone else do the job that I'm not experienced enough to do nor do I have the full picture.
You don't have half the picture apparently because you've spent too much time reading Wikileaks and not actual facts.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Depraved Indifference: "to bring defendant's conduct within the murder statute, that the defendant's act was imminently dangerous and presented a very high risk of death to others and that it was committed under circumstances which evidenced a wanton indifference to human life or a depravity of mind. . . . . The crime differs from intentional murder in that it results not from a specific, conscious intent to cause death, but from an indifference to or disregard of the risks attending defendant's conduct."
I hope for Julian Assange's sake that no Afghani or Iraqi informants are killed because someone figured out from the unredacted information who the informants are. His releasing of this information directly led to these informant's death.
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!
Do any of you young folk remember a man by the name of Daniel Ellsberg? If not, please take a little bit of your time and look up a movie called "The Most Dangerous Man in America". For more information please visit the Internet Movie Database at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1319726/.
Daniel Ellisberg was the man who leaked what has become known as "The Pentagon Papers". He was the first man to be charged under the Espionage Act, with results that the administration did not intend. He never spent a minute in jail. The documentary of his actions came out last year (2009).
Here is a little breakdown of the story:
"The Most Dangerous Man in America" is the story of what happens when a former Pentagon insider, armed only with his conscience, steadfast determination, and a file cabinet full of classified documents, decides to challenge an "Imperial" Presidency-answerable to neither Congress, the press, nor the people-in order to help end the Vietnam War. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg shook America to its foundations when he smuggled a top-secret Pentagon study to the New York Times that showed how five Presidents consistently lied to the American people about the Vietnam War that was killing millions and tearing America apart. President Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger called Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America," who "had to be stopped at all costs." But Ellsberg wasn't stopped. Facing 115 years in prison on espionage and conspiracy charges, he fought back. Ensuing events surrounding the so-called Pentagon Papers led directly to Watergate and the downfall of President Nixon, and hastened the end of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg's relentless telling of truth to power, which exposed the secret deeds of an "Imperial Presidency," inspired Americans of all walks of life to forever question the previously-unchallenged pronouncements of its leaders. "The Most Dangerous Man in America" tells the inside story, for the first time on film, of this pivotal event that changed history and transformed our nation's political discourse. It is told largely by the players of that dramatic episode-Ellsberg, his colleagues, family and critics; Pentagon Papers authors and government officials; Vietnam veterans and anti-war activists; Watergate principals, attorneys and the journalists who both covered the story and were an integral part of it; and finally-through White House audiotapes-President Nixon and his inner circle of advisors.
Documentary is available at Megavideo: http://www.megavideo.com/?d=6VI4M5CC
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
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media