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Pentagon Demands Return of Leaked Afghanistan Documents
Multiple news agencies are reporting that the Pentagon has demanded the return of WikiLeaks' collection of secret documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said, "The only acceptable course is for WikiLeaks to take steps immediately to return all versions of all of these documents to the US government and permanently delete them from its website, computers and records." According to the BBC, Morrell also "acknowledged the already-leaked documents' viral spread across the internet made it unlikely they could ever be quashed," but hopes to prevent the dissemination of a further 15,000 documents WikiLeaks is reportedly in the process of redacting. "We're looking to have a conversation about how to get these perilous documents off the website as soon as possible, return them to their rightful owners and expunge them from their records." WikiLeaks, predictably, shows no sign of cooperating.
It is already out in the open. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. Or "Things that have been seen can not be unseen."
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Government is the only business which holds the special right to employ coercion (meaning physical force or threat thereof) against you in order to achieve its goals. Secrets have absolutely no place in such a relationship.
Am I saying I wouldn't put an ounce of trust in such an entity no matter how loud they scream "we need secrets"? You're damn right I am.
It's all bark and no bite. They're just pissed for getting called out for what most intelligent people already knew. That the wars are not going well and that W wasn't taking the war seriously at all. At this point any damage that's going to be done has been done, and this is mostly just about saving face.
Here we go again with people thinking that the paper paradigm applies to the digital world.
How on Earth do you return digital documents? Do you scrape the oxide layer off the hard drives, put it in a little vial, mark it with volume mount point(s) and put it into an envelope addressed to Pentagon? Oh, yes, I know, you first print out the directory listing (like we used to do with the floppies), tape it to the vial, then scrape, fill the vial and ship.
As for the further documents -- they better watch out, because WikiLeaks may just give up and publish all of the unredacted stuff just to preserve it.
As for WikiLeaks somehow "embarrassing" the U.S. military: waitaminuzel here. Did WikiLeaks compel the military to do all the embarrassing stuff? No? Then well, maybe it was better the taxpayers knew what their money is spent on, huh?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Fame whore? Without googling, off of the top of your head, what's the full name and correct spelling of the guy behind WikiLeaks? And what does he look like?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
That's what I'm afraid of!
It's been made clear to governments around the world that an untamed Internet is more powerful than all of them put together. Because the Internet is nothing but their populations truly free.
They should realize they work for us, and stop fecking up because it'll get them into trouble.
But instead they'll pretend it's a security risk and a danger to children and destroy it piece by piece.
The documents leaked so far illustrate the frustration of U.S. forces in fighting the protracted Afghan conflict and revived debate over the war's uncertain progress.
These documents are showing that the US' operation aren't doing too well. WikiLeaks is holding back stuff that may endanger people's lives.
This is all about the Pentagon and the Government trying hide their incompetence and stupidity. It's also to trying to keep information out of our hands to keep the support for the wars from it's continual slide down.
We're in another Viet Nam type era.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Well, it is the business of a military to conduct war. In the case of the US military, it is their job to conduct war when the executive asks them to. And he did. Do you know why he did? Because Americans demanded and supported it overwhelmingly. How is that not the "right" thing for the US military to do?
It has already been proven that most of the people who supported military action also believed that saddam was responsible for 9/11 and a whole bunch of other total bullshit that the then-current administration deliberately led people to believe (with media collusion) specifically to drum up support for the war. Fuck, anyone who's seen Wag the Dog should be capable of seeing through it, let alone anyone who has paid any attention to history at all. Nice to see that the Halliburton shills are still too unpopular to risk logging in, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
return them to their rightful owners
Rightful owners? They must mean the American people who paid for all of this, right?
Reply to That ||
Losing a war? Here's the plan!
1. Leak documents that show boring day to day operational details, including civilian casualties on the internet
2. Blame the people who distribute, download and read said documents for the deaths of those people and the deaths of everyone else from now on in the war due to "security risks"
3. ???
4. Profit
5. (STILL lose the war)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Because while the name of some Afghani that ratted out where a random weapons cache or meeting point is isn't exactly important or ground breaking news to us, it sure makes them less likely to help and the Taliban is already saying their looking over the lists for reprisal targets (probably partially in truth but mainly to scare Afghani civilians into not cooperating anymore).
I don't think that's the way it is going to have been set up. Far more likely it's going to be an automatic disclosure of the decryption process from a source independent of Wikileaks should Julian Assange or any other key members fail to check in some how at regular intervals. That way if they should be detained or "meet with an unfortunate accident" the contents of the assurance file go public.
Quite frankly, I think the US military and government are pointing their fingers in the wrong direction here. The people that are really at fault here are those who have still not managed to put adequate controls on the access and export of sensitive data; one of the task given to the DHS, IIRC. Quite simply put, I doubt that there is any reason why a single person should have been able to access all those documents in the first place, let alone be in a position to take copies and pass them on too WikiLeaks and the media. It's not like Gary McKinnon hasn't given them enough egg on their faces about poor security procedures already, is it...?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Seriously? The guys been in the paper constantly the last few months and has given countless interviews. My mother knows his name. Oh, and he looks like Bill Maher but slightly gayer and more strung out.
Yes, Seriously. I guess everyone missed my point.
WikiLeaks has been around for years and it has only been in the last couple of months that he's come out of the woodwork to defend what they have done.
Before this episode, one would would have to look kind of hard to get his name and his photo wasn't the easiest thing to find - I tried a couple of years ago when WikiLeaks first started making waves.
That isn't a media whore.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Obama is? He took three months to consider his general's report, then gave the man LESS than the MINIMUM number of troops the general asked for-- as if to claim that he somehow knew better.
My point is this: don't pin it on W. All of our leaders are rife with incompetence.
I think I'm gonna go ahead and pin it on the guy that started it, if it's okay with you. Or even if it's not.
I don't know how they intend to save face by claiming they shouldn't be held accountable, and will make people pay for embarrassing them.
The fact that they consider embarrassment a bigger issue than accountability or civilian lives, is a clear sign they have their priorities wrong.
I think I'm gonna go ahead and pin it on the guy that started it, if it's okay with you. Or even if it's not.
Osama Bin Laden?
Obama is? He took three months to consider his general's report, then gave the man LESS than the MINIMUM number of troops the general asked for-- as if to claim that he somehow knew better.
So Obama is not taking it seriously because he took three months to decide? How long is long enough? And he didn't give the general everything he asked for? That indicates he's "claiming he knows better"? Or are you saying that "taking it seriously" requires immediately granting the Pentagon everything they ask for? Strange test.
They knew what we were in for.
When you see photos of Afghanistan and see all that rubble, guess who did that? The Russians bombed them back into the Stone Age and they still couldn't get them under control - and if you consider that the Soviets didn't give a rat's ass about PR, I'm sure they didn't pull any punches like we do (read: the didn't give a shit about civilian casualties)
Bush KNEW this would be folly if they didn't have an adequate plan but Nooooooo, he went in there shoot'in up the place with no plan.
So yes, I'll blame Bush - he deserves it.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
It's a question of access and sharing vs security. Controls on information are more lax towards the front because it's there where the information can make a difference between soldiers connecting the dots and making the right move or not, and the consequences are very real. You try to push that information to the front so the people there can make the most informed decisions possible. You run the risk of something like this happening but on the other hand controlling that information more tightly runs the risk of people messing up and dying in incidents that could have been prevented by better access to information. In the tighter control scenario you would have bureaucrats telling soldiers they can't have access to information that could save their lives and in the other scenario you would have to have a soldier that's willing to put his comrades and mission in harms way in order for there to be a leak. So I think it should be easy to see why it's generally supported to push intel like this to the front, and I doubt they'll let this incident change that much.
I should hope not. Too bad the authorities have convinced the public to condemn the messenger instead of the message... Very sad state of affairs we have here.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
he had (has?) a home country. Its just that as with nearly everyone in his organisation, it was neither of the 2 countries that got attacked
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
It's already been proven that most of the people who voted for they guy who promised to end the war but hasn't also fail to comprehend basic economics and a whole bunch of other bullshit and were also much less informed about facts than those who didn't fall for shallow and, err, hopey shtick that's given us almost two years of FAIL.
This is a red herring, because I think Obama is part of the same problem that Bush is a part of, that the Clintons are a part of... There's a reason republicans and democrats unite to attack "third-party" candidates and it has nothing to do with delivering to you the best possible president. I have utterly given up on voting for the lesser of evils, because I no longer believe in the lesser of evils. Better to make a statement, however feeble, than lend your support to the two-party system.
I usually try not to feed the trolls, but you handed me a pretty fantastic straight line. If that was your goal, then you're still a troll, but thanks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You are aware of the fact that you can't actually count to 2^256, no matter how many acres of computers you have? If they are able to crack 256-bit AES, it would be because they found some usable weakness in the algorithm, in which case we have no idea how much computing power is required, and maybe an ordinary computer will do.
I like to think they use those acres to play raytraced Crysis.
That's right. "Taking a war seriously" means hollering "Let's get it on" and sending in the shock and awe, killing a few hundred thousand civilians and then letting the guy behind 9/11 have a nice vacation in Tora Bora.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Make no mistake, by the standards of any state in the union, Julian is a murderer.
Wikileaks is probably moribund now because of how they handled this. But this is the internet, so there will be a replacement sooner or later. I can only hope that the replacement learns the right lessons here.
The leaked data can fit (broadly) into 4 categories.
1) Junk. Unavoidable in any large data/document set.
2) "This is what war looks like." Gun camera footage, etc. Kudos for releasing this. The people back home should be able to see this so they can make informed decisions.
3) "Our plan isn't working very well." We all knew this already. No harm in releasing it, and drawing attention to it might foster real debate.
4) Shit that is going to get people killed. There is no journalistic value in publishing a list of villagers that are helping us. The world does not benefit from knowing which people in the Taliban were feeding us information. These people are DEAD, some already and some soon to be. And Julian killed them just as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
So, after the leak hangs and Julian goes into hiding, if you decide to start Wikileaks 2.0, please try really hard not to help our enemies kill our friends. We want to support your cause and we think that it is important to make the truth available to the people so they can make informed decisions. But we have limits, so you need to have some decency and exercise some discretion.
See that "Preview" button?
Why no classified Russian or Chinese documents on Wikileaks?
Oh that's right.
The Russians and Chinese would hunt them down and kill them.
Which is not out of the question, btw. It will be a real tragedy when Julian is knifed in a botched robbery attenpt.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
You guys seem to make waaaay too many really evil choices.
It's not the US Military that drives the decisions of the US Government. It's the military contractors that drive the decisions of the US Government.
Military-industrial-congress complex: The same people go through a revolving door and alternate between military, government and private enterprise. Perfect example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld
You see, term limits only mean that the people in power have a rotation. They go from being in control of the government to running newspapers and contractors when the other team is in government and then they come back to power with a new frontman.
The people behind Nixon were the same people behind Reagan, and Bush1, and Bush2. You can look at group pictures and litterally see these same people standing behind the frontman.
You can't take the sky from me...
Last I checked the citizens of the USA are the rightful owners and based on the information in them, the Pentagon as a whole needs to be fired by their employer AND the rightful owners of those documents: US citizens.
Consider this my official endorsement of the "Anyone but a Republicans and Democrats" candidate.
Brewster had it right, time to vote "None of the Above"
Clinton dropped the ball.
Bush kicked the ball out of bounds.
Obama then robbed the spectators and sold the ball to the opposing team.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
>>>Choosing the lesser of two evils sometimes means you're left with a really evil choice.
The third choice is for the CIA to stop trying to project power beyond the US border. They should not be interfering with foreign affairs, anymore than we would want the EU to assassinate a Governor (Schwarzenegger for example) and install somebody the EU likes better.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The people behind Nixon were the same people behind Reagan, and Bush1, and Bush2. You can look at group pictures and litterally see these same people standing behind the frontman.
And?
Obama has Clinton carry-overs. Clinton had Carter carry-overs. Carter had LBJ carry-overs. JFK/LBJ had FDR carry-overs. And some of those administrations had guys that had White House time going back 40 years.
When a President enters office, he wants some seasoned hands with him. That means people that have served in previous administrations. There's nothing sinister or conspiratorial about that. That's just common sense. One of the things Clinton suffered from his first two years was having more green rookies than guys like Lloyd Bentsen who actually knew what the hell was going on. Plus, since Republicans have won more often than Democrats in the White House since 1970, there's a lot more guys with experience working there on the GOP side. You want to bring in some fresh blood, but at that level, it's more important to have experience.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel