Human Rights Groups Join Criticism of WikiLeaks

e065c8515d206cb0e190 writes "Several human rights organizations contacted WikiLeaks and pressed them to do a better job at hiding information that endangers civilians within their leaked documents. From the article: 'The letter from five human-rights groups sparked a tense exchange in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange issued a tart challenge for the organizations to help with the massive task of removing names from thousands of documents, according to several of the organizations that signed the letter. The exchange shows how WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange risk being isolated from some of their most natural allies in the wake of the documents' publication. ... An [Amnesty International] official replied to say that while the group has limited resources, it wouldn't rule out the idea of helping, according to people familiar with the reply. The official suggested that Mr. Assange and the human-rights groups hold a conference call to discuss the matter.'"

Comments

The sad part?

[grasshoppa]

I hate the need for wikileaks, if not wikileaks directly.

Freedom of the press was supposed to be a balance between this and the traditional media. However, with the major news outlets falling over themselves to appease different market segments, real news gets lost in the translations. Real information is not reported when it should be, letting situations like Iraq happen.

Re:The sad part?

[Frosty Piss]

The problem is, thus far these leaks of U.S. "secrets" have revealed *NOTHING* that anyone with eyes and common sense did not already know. Except the names of those sources that are surly now on someone's "death list". In fact, nothing at all other than the possibility of these sources being murdered has come of the "leak" at all.

Re:The sad part?

[Wrath0fb0b]

The possibility of these sources being murdered? How about the actual fact of at least one Afghan tribal elder -- Khalifa Abdullah -- who was murdered because one E3 did not appreciate the actual risk to real life human beings from releasing these documents.

I am quite sympathetic to the argument that the documents needed be redacted. The American public needs to know about the nature and results of the operations. They do not, however, need to know exactly which grid-square they took place on, the composition and distribution of our forces or the names of the locals brave enough to cooperate with us. Those details are irrelevant to the policy questions.

In an ideal world, the government would redact the documents appropriately and the American public would be given a clear and accurate picture of what was going on without revealing operational information. It is utterly unenviable that we must chose between the palpably bad choices between the status quo (classifying everything and presenting the public with a Potemkin Village) or the Wikileaks solution (revealing operational details that endanger our troops and allies).

Re:The sad part?

[carp3_noct3m]

It is, but nobodies listening.

Re:The sad part?

[Ironhandx]

It is very true and there is a very large very powerful misinformation campaign going on against Wikileaks right now. Amnesty International does do good work, but they also bend over backwards to various governments requests in order to get anything that they would deem "more important". They've done it in the past, and I fscking HATE to be crying conspiracy but this just stinks too much.

Re:The sad part?

[steve buttgereit]

You have to be joking. That anyone would expect the Pentagon to abet the compromise of its own classified material is as assine as the idea that civilians don't die in wars and that the enemy is always given a trial prior to actions on the battlefield.

Mr. Assange had a clear choice and clearly he's made it. This choice was whether or not sacrificing the lives of others for your own political objectives is moral course of action. Clearly and without hesitation Mr. Assange made the choice that yes, his political objectives was paramount to the lives of those he outed. The fact that the Pentagon didn't save him from his own philosophy but rather forced him to accept its consequences is a side show. The choice was still his and his alone (OK, perhaps his 'organization') and it was a choice he made willingly.

Re:The sad part?

[c6gunner]

That's right, it's their fault for siding with the western capitalist pigdogs over the greater glory of Islamic Justice!

Seriously, I expect your kinds of responses from the fascist theocratic assholes whom we're currently fighting, but it's rather sickening to see such behavior from a supposedly educated, enlightened, and tolerant citizen of the free world. I guess every society has it's collaborators.

Re:The sad part?

[copponex]

The problem is, thus far these leaks of U.S. "secrets" have revealed *NOTHING* that anyone with eyes and common sense did not already know. Except the names of those sources that are surly now on someone's "death list". In fact, nothing at all other than the possibility of these sources being murdered has come of the "leak" at all.

Oh, shit! Who are you working for these days? The same guys who did the whole "babies on the floor" thing for the first Iraq War? Oh, no, brilliant stuff. You guys are on top of your game, too, though.

When I saw that some asshole who didn't play by the rules was going to reveal the fact that the Taliban are using missiles we gave them back in the 80s to try and shoot our copters down, I was thinking "Uh oh - disaster!" And then when the documents revealed that accounts given by the military were wrong and that many more civilians died, I thought it would be a real shit storm. Don't even get me started on Task Force 373 extrajudicially executing people. Or the fact that many of the military operations are now classified and under the direct control of the CIA. You'd think in a place like the US that would generate a little buzz. Even the fact that the Taliban is growing stronger every day, despite official reports to the contrary seemed like a huge turd on top of a shit sandwich.

But you guys wrap all that up with "No Big Deal," and feed it to all the media outlets who depend on you for access to government officials? Fucking. Brilliant. They don't even have to pretend to have reported on those things before. They just say, basically, the emperor has clothes, and then Joe Sixpack nods his little beer storage unit up and down and switches back to WWE. I know, and now they're all uppity about this Australian guy possibly getting innocent people killed when we're laying civs out left and right - with secret police and secret budgets! God bless the US of Amnesia.

Anyway, I gotta get going. No, some more disinformation work with energy execs, and then later we have to pretty up the apologetics about the net neutrality crap.

Keep up the good work! See you at the Press Corps dinner.

Re:The sad part?

[c6gunner]

So true. This one time when I tried to rob a bank, I asked the cops for help so that I could do it safely without hurting anyone. But the fucking pigs just wanted to stop me. Clearly it wasn't my fault that people died.

Re:The sad part?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Newsweek article you refer to:

Locals have long known that the Taliban deals harshly with those it suspects of working against it: the ruthless guerrillas have assassinated scores, if not hundreds, of tribal elders and Afghans of all ages for their alleged cooperation with the coalition. In one particularly gruesome case a few months ago, according to the intelligence officer, the Taliban discovered that a group of recent high-school graduates in Ghazni province had been feeding information to the Americans.

I wouldn't exactly say these guys were safe had the documents not been leaked. Safe*r*, true, but certainly not safe.

Re:The sad part?

[Sovetskysoyuz]

If the Pentagon aided Wikileaks in any way, they would be conceding legitimacy to them, which would open several cans of worms that would not help them in any way.

Re:The sad part?

[RingDev]

Tens of thousands of people are dead, and it is your opinion that only 1 of those deaths represents the 'sad part'?

The hope is that balances of power, like Wikileaks, like our own journalists and news media should be doing, will prevent, or at least deter us from entering into such conflicts and rogue actions again in the future. If it even just slightly aids in the process of maintaining peace, it will save far more lives than this limited exposure will cost.

Also, if you are looking for a target to blame, review the intelligence officers who put informants names in Secret classified documents. Secret is virtually meaningless if you are in a data access position in the military. A 19 year old kid with a drinking problem in the military can hold secret clearance with out a problem (I've known a few). Any of these documents that contained contact/informants names or any other information that could get a person killed, should have been classified top-secret or better.

Also be GLAD that they were leaked to Wikileaks instead of sold/traded/given to strategic entities. Sure, everyone knows now, but we also know exactly what they know and who is likely to act on it. If it had been leaked covertly, we might not even have realized it until everyone who had been named was dead.

I wish we lived in a world where Wikileaks wasn't necesary. But seeing as how we live in the real world, I'd strongly prefer that Wikileaks continues to exist. That he asked the Pentagon for help in redacting the documents really strikes me as a stand up thing to do. I don't envy him, I wouldn't want to be him, but I sure appreciate what he is trying to do.

-Rick

Re:The sad part?

[sumdumass]

Why would anyone want to mode it up? I mean his premise is that because the pentagon didn't validate leaked secretes by combing though them and saying what was sensitive and what wasn't, it's now their fault?

The entire validation effort could have been an effort to gather information on which piece of information was important which this ass at Wikileaks could have used once again to his name in the paper by saying not only do we have the leaked shit, but we have what the pentagon doesn't want you to know. And for that matter, For all we know, this could be a secrete Taliban/Al Qeada sympathizer who is just attempting to narrow down what was important to the US in order to save the enemy the time it took to comb though it themselves.

So why would the pentagon want to help spread the crap that shouldn't be public at all at this stage? I mean this guy is giving the enemy information right now and blaming it on "I don't have enough time before I release this crap and get my name in the papers again" then suggesting to people who ask him to not release it until after he gets the time because it's getting people killed, that they would have to do it themselves if they wanted it done.

Someone mod him down or save your mods for something else entirely. Perhaps for something that has some merit.

Re:The sad part?

[Sir_Lewk]

The Pentagon had a clear choice and they clearly made it. This choice was whether to help Assange remove sensitive information from documents to be released, and in the process save innocent lives, or to be childish and refuse to help, knowing full well that their refusal would not prevent the release of those documents. Clearly and without hesitation the Pentagon made their choice.

It is because the Pentagon makes decisions like this that Assange's service is so dearly needed.

Re:The sad part?

[steve buttgereit]

This is a false premise. Whether you agree with the actions of the Pentagon or not, they didn't offer the documents for release: these documents were stolen from them and then released by other people that put their interests above the lives of others. No matter whether this is a Just War being conducted as honorably as is possible in war or if this war is merely cruel and arbitrary: there is zero culpability on the part of the Pentagon in this matter. The choice to proceed with the publication, and to do so when other might well die, was WikiLeaks alone. They were not forced to publish the documents and they were not forced to do so without first protecting those that they endangered: they exercised free will.

Man up and admit that you would gladly sacrifice a few lives for your ideals to dominate, even if to do so was not to risk your own. I realize the reality of your philosophical view, and that of WikiLeaks/Assange, brings you down to the level of those you chastise: that you, too, believe that to kill and be killed is alright so long as the cause is the politically correct cause.

The reality is that you're no damn different than those that you would call 'murderer', save for political outlook.

Re:The sad part?

[_Sprocket_]

The Pentagon had a clear choice. And Wikileaks had a clear choice. The Pentagon did what was appropriate - insisting on the sensitive nature of that information. Wikileaks did what was appropriate by them - publish sensitive information. If that sensitive information causes damage, then it is entirely the fault of Wikileaks. It is boggling that someone would claim that the Pentagon is somehow responsible for Wikileaks' actions.

Web of Trust. Access Control.

[elucido]

It appears Mr. Assange does not know the basics of information security. Wikileaks does not have a system through which to vet it's insiders. These insiders who are supposed to help Mr. Assange in editing out or redacting the names could very well be foreign intelligence agents sifting through the data specifically to get the list of names to sell to Al Qaeda, Taliban or whomever has the money to pay for it. I expected more from Mr. Assange, if he does not take his information security a lot more seriously how do we trust this man to keep these secrets safe? The leakage of these secrets can cost lives, so this is very serious.

Who vetted Julian Assange? How do we know he's not foreign intelligence himself?

If they fought war instead...

[datakid23]

Maybe those human rights groups should spend their time more vigorously fighting the wars, corruption and shenanigans that make wikileaks such a required global asset.

Re:If they fought war instead...

[Nyeerrmm]

Have you tried to help them do so? Do you have any ideas of how they could? I'm curious how you propose that they do so.

Nonprofits have limited manpower, and more importantly limited power. Amnesty International isn't going to be able to stop the US government from going to war. No chance that they can. However, here they saw an situation that they can attempt to improve, and are doing their best to bring attention to it. That's admirable in my book, far more admirable than bitching about it on the Internet.

Re:nice

[RabbitWho]

Amnesty International are an incredible organization that are making real change on a daily basis. I haven't read much of the leaks, but if they're worried about this then suddenly I'm worried.
Mr. Assange should show a little respect for an organization that have educated and mobilized so many people around the world with real life consequences for human rights. Guess he's too busy talking about himself to every journalist he can find.

Info sec, trust, access control.

[elucido]

Obviously my last post resulted in an immediate troll rating but I'm going to say it again.
The US government and governments around the world go through ridiculous means to keep this information secret. It's not stored on a laptop somewhere. It's stored in such a way so that only people with top secret security clearance can access it. This classification system is called access control. Anybody who knows about information security knows that in order to secure or keep information secret you need absolute control over who accesses it. You have to control it on the "eyes only" level in some cases and in other cases you have to minimize it to only people who have been fully vetted and checked so as to find out if they are a member of a foreign intelligence agency, or if they are a compromised individual who can be turned into an informant for a foreign intelligence agency.

Wikileaks does not appear to have any internal classifications or compartmentalization. If Julian Assange thinks he can just let entire organizations with hundreds or thousands of eyes access top secret information then hes naive. If he thinks he can come up with his own classification system without government support hes also probably naive but at least this would be a step in the right direction. If he gives the documents out to one wrong person it will get to the Taliban. If he does not take information security seriously it will get to the Taliban. The only solution is for Julian Assange to work with the US government on this.

The real question is who vetted Julian Assange? If he has these documents how do we know he isn't passing it along to some foreign government himself? It's a matter of who to trust and how would Julian Assange know who to trust in this situation assuming he really is an honorable individual? And if he is a corrupt individual how do we know we can trust him? With no government or state protecting him or doing the process of handling the web of trust, it's like not having a certificate authority, or not having a web of trust for PGP. You don't know if there is a man in the middle or if the person you communicate with is friend or foe, or just a neutral who sells information to friend and foe.

Re:Info sec, trust, access control.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

There was a simple solution to this... Let the US government go through the documents redacting sensitive names and locations.

Unfortunately they refused putting those afghans in danger.

That's the same line of thinking that says "Well you didn't shovel your walk -- so it's YOUR fault I slipped and fell.". Nobody made Assange post the documents. His actions are his own responsibility; no matter what fingers are pointed or what excuses are given, he is the one that published them.

Re:Info sec, trust, access control.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That's the same line of thinking that says "Well you didn't shovel your walk -- so it's YOUR fault I slipped and fell.". Nobody made Assange post the documents. His actions are his own responsibility; no matter what fingers are pointed or what excuses are given, he is the one that published them.

However it is hypocritical for the same people who refused wikileaks's request to help "save the civilians" to now criticize wikileaks for not doing it either.

Re:Free Speech

[Meshach]

More importantly, wasn't Obama supposed to have the most transparent administration?

To be fair, all the information comes from 2006 or earlier; way before Obama came into power.

Re:Free Speech

[elucido]

It's time that people understand that information wants to be free. And we the people should want information to be free.

One of the secrets released was that the Taliban are quite a bit more violent and willing to kill innocents than has been reported. It has sums of civilian casualties created by the NATO (US) forces and the Taliban. Yeah, these guys are scum bags.

More importantly, wasn't Obama supposed to have the most transparent administration?

But most importantly, government secrets in the open are inherently good for the People. Why is there not an understanding of this? 9/11 did not teach us how bad the terrorists were. We already knew that. Instead, we should have learned that government cannot, under any circumstances, be trusted.

Information wants to be free is a ridiculous quote coming from a person who does not understand the concept of the GPL. Information is power, in some cases the power over life and death. In some cases information released about you, can help your enemies plan to kill you. Personal information like names and identities have to be protected. The fact that these documents stored the names of informants is ridiculous in itself because all names in these sorts of documents should be replaced by code names, code words, etc. Redacting the names is not good enough. Also locations have to be changed so as to confuse the enemy. Anything which can allow the enemy to determine anything has to be changed.

Only a government or spy agency has the tools and skills necessary to deal with this. One man, Julian Assange, cannot possibly be qualified to do this type of work. If he is qualified then qualified through what experience? The point is that the global community is losing trust in Julian Assange. Unless Julian Assange can be trusted Wikileaks cannot be trusted. If Julian Assange cannot handle the task of declassifying the documents through a strict secure process, then he needs to find someone or some entity with the expertise to do just this.

Wikileaks and Assange own this

[steveha]

Wikileaks and Julian Assange own this now. The good, and the ill, from publishing that information are on them. And it looks pretty ill to me.

According to Newsweek, a man named Khalifa Abdullah was killed after the release of these documents. So that's one man dead already. The Taliban has vowed to hunt down and kill anyone who is a "spy", and they are using the Wikileaks information to do it, so there will be more. Some of the people listed in Wikileaks have disappeared, hopefully into hiding rather than dead.

Julian Assange's stance on this is callous. He "insisted that any risk to informants' lives was outweighed by the overall importance of publishing the information." Okay, at least one man is dead now. What is that "overall importance"? I sure don't see it.

I'm also not buying his idea that this is really the US military's fault, together with Amnesty International, for not helping him redact the critical info. Much of the info is years old. What was the big rush? If Wikileaks didn't have enough volunteers to vet the info carefully, why rush ahead and publish it anyway?

If I were Julian Assange, I wouldn't be sleeping well at night.

steveha

Re:Wikileaks and Assange own this

[Rakshasa Taisab]

There was no 'big rush', the documents were in the hands of reporters for months prior to public release for fuck sake.

And why aren't you buying that it's not the US military's fault? They were given a pretty simple choice; help us redact or risk sensitive information falling through. A simple choice. No rush.

Re:Wikileaks and Assange own this

[flyingkillerrobots]

There was no 'big rush', the documents were in the hands of reporters for months prior to public release for fuck sake.

And why aren't you buying that it's not the US military's fault? They were given a pretty simple choice; help us redact or risk sensitive information falling through. A simple choice. No rush.

So, you're basically saying that Assange told the military something along the lines of "if you don't redact this information, I will release it anyway, and these innocent people mentioned in these papers will likely be killed."

To say it more concisely, what Assange was saying was essentially "if you don't comply with my demands, these innocent people will die." Wow. He should be shot with Bin Laden.

Re:Wikileaks and Assange own this

[dbIII]

According to Newsweek, a man named Khalifa Abdullah was killed after the release of these documents.

Sadly that sort of thing has been happening every week so it's a bit of a stretch to blame it on redacted wikileaks documents. It's a fair bet that the killers don't even have net access and that it's completely unrelated to the idea that they read something, put two and two together until they knew who it would be, and then planned the murder.
We're mostly seeing a cloud of pretend patriotism bullshit, guesswork and namecalling instead of a story with any substance. Each story goes along the lines of "dead Afgan - must be wikileaks" or "stop him in the name of the King!". That sort of "patriotism" went out of fashion with Cromwell and when it resurged Washington had a few things to say about it.

Re:This information is KILLING PEOPLE

[Rakshasa Taisab]

If I ran into Assange right now, I'd kill him with my own bare hands. He's a traitor.

And you'd be a simple murderer.

BTW, he's not from the US (and easy to assume you are since that is one of the few western country where they pull the traitor card so freely) so he can't really be a traitor against you/your country.

Wikileaks is a good yet naive concept.

[elucido]

Wikileaks can only work as a concept in the same way that the UN works as a concept. You get all the governments of the world to agree to support Wikileaks with technological support, experience, advisory support, financial support, and so on. This would allow Wikileaks to work. The problem is that no government on planet earth is going to support Wikileaks releasing the names of informants. Once Wikileaks passed that phase it became a foreign intelligence instrument itself because now it's actually assisting the Taliban and is no longer neutral in the information warfare theater.

Wikileaks should have NEVER under any circumstances for any reasons released information which could lead to the death of sources. The sources in my opinion are more important than the Wikileaks project itself. Wikileaks exists to protect the sources, and to protect civilians from abusive regimes. Wikileaks did not however develop the appropriate legal, technological, and physical structures necessary to actually protect certain kinds of information. First of all Wikileaks has complete faith in AES256, and while the US government uses it and it's difficult to crack it may be crackable through mechanisms or math we don't know about. Wikileaks also does not seem to have a system to determine who can view what, who can access what, and if they do have such a system there is no indication as to how it would work.

They need an American with Top Secret Clearance to work with Julian Assange on certain documents. This requires working closely with the US government. They'd need to do this with every government around the world for the exact same reason, so they'd need people from all governments who they can contact and work with. This would present major information security problems which I don't see how they'd be able to resolve. Foreign intelligence agencies around the world know Julian Assanges face, and even if he hides his identity they have trained hackers to target him. This puts him and his information in constant danger and under constant attack. This constant attack means there will be nobody for Julian Assange to trust, so how can Wikileaks have the web of trust necessary to get anything done?

I would say it would be very very difficult to do without government support of some kind. So once again if a government is supporting Julian Assange then can the global community trust him? There are so many issues here that Julian Assange is very probably going to have to resign his position over this. Wikileaks can survive this, I just don't know if it will survive with Julian Assange as it's editor.

Re:Free Speech

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

t's time that people understand that information wants to be free. And we the people should want information to be free. O

Great - go ahead and start by posting your SSN, home address, and full medical history. Then we'll talk about how much information "wants to be free"

Re:HAPPY 8/9/10 to you !!

[hldn]

huh? today is 10/8/9..

Re:nice

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a terrible analogy. People's lives aren't at stake if an OSS project comes out with shitty documentation. If Wikileaks lacked the manpower to properly scrub names from the documents, they shouldn't have released them.

Re:Free Speech

[bsDaemon]

Yeah, see, and here's the thing... information, just like any other inanimate object, doesn't want anything. it simply *is*, and personifying it is akin to using the passive voice to try and sound authoritative when you're really just pushing your own opinion.

There is no real reason that everyone should be able to know everything all the time. First off, that's on its face impossible, and when less hyperbolic is merely impractical. Plus, the facts of the matter are:
- Most people aren't interested in actually knowing what's going on
- Most people aren't clued in to understand even if they suddenly develop an interest
- Facts without context aren't particularly helpful
- Some things shouldn't be known by some people (particularly the proverbial "them"; the outsider. the "not us")

Would it be nice if citizens had more information about the workings of their government? yes. and on domestic policy that's totally fine. However, documents dealing with the prosecution of a war are different, and putting them on the internet is completely irresponsible. This should be perfectly evident by the fact that the Taliban have stated their intention, and probably have already started, killing Afghan civilians who are mentioned as helping NATO forces.

So, now we have a situation where people who were helping us are going to get killed for helping us. That makes our job over there harder as we won't have those sources, and people are going to be a lot less willing to cooperate in the future because what if another pissed off nerd who never should have joined the army decides he's going to go all Deep Throat and leaks those names onto the internet, thinking he's doing something noble?

Well, you know, I think I'm OK with *NOT* having that information if it means there is less chance that those people are going to be killed and that the job that my friends over there are doing is going to become harder than it already was.

Information wants to be free my ass. This isn't a math formula and isn't a basic, universal truth about the universe. Some stuff needs to be secret. Loose lips sink ships and all that jazz.

Re:Web of Trust. Access Controle.

[GameMaster]

The correct answer, and ideal situation, would be for the Pentagon to be redacting the personal information and releasing these documents themselves in the first place. Instead, they choose to classify documents in order to manipulate public opinion. Manipulating public opinion blinds voters to the reality of the situation. If voters don't have the complete picture, they can't make an informed vote and we have a de-facto totalitarian state. Military personnel intentionally trying to manipulate public opinion by hiding information (as they've admitted that they do) should be considered an act of treason. Wikileaks is doing what they can because the Pentagon refuses to do their job.

Re:nice

[poetmatt]

Look, you either have a: freedom of the press, or b: you give it up for "safety of civilians". There isn't an imbetween.

However, this would never be an issue in the first place had the gov't released the information via FOIA. It wouldn't have had this much coverage. Read that and you'll understand why Amnesty International attacking Wikileaks is avoiding the real problems entirely.

Re:Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time that people understand that information wants to be free. And we the people should want information to be free.

If you think Julian Assange wants information to be free, can somebody please explain to me why I received this take-down request from him ten years ago?
This was to remove a transcript of his court case, and yes, I did remove it. (Note, I don't own mindrape.org any more.)

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taking some responsibility

[aslashjax]

Assange needs to take some responsibility for his own actions and quit playing the martyr. His irresponsible behavior, by not redacting the documents, will quite likely get people killed. That is not the US government's or Amnesty's responsibility. It is his and he needs to man up to it and quit being such an ass.

Re:nice

[c6gunner]

Look, you either have a: freedom of the press, or b: you give it up for "safety of civilians". There isn't an imbetween.

Right. Guess we've just hallucinated the last hundred years or so.

Only fools see such issues as black and white. The statement you've just made sounds every bit as retarded as Bush and his "You're either with us or against us" nonsense. Mature adults understand that life is a series of compromises rather than a list of ultimatums.

Re:nice

[martin-boundary]

But lives are at stake if the information is not leaked either, since the leaks have proved that the US military forces sometimes act ... rashly. That kind of behaviour only gets worse when it stays secret.

Does an Afghan civilian prefer to die from a US missile or a Taliban bullet? How can wikileaks estimate the number of deaths in each alternative?

Re:nice

[Bacon Bits]

Hmm. Is it narcissistic, or is it perhaps the typical OSS response of "you want to help? Ok, then show me the code you're writing".

It's still a bullshit response.

One doesn't need to know how to find a solution in order to identify a problem. It's rather how the human species gets from point A to B. Fundamentally, this is why criticism is generally valid, and "the typical OSS response" is so reviled by developers and non-developers alike. It's a response that's aggressive, unhelpful, and, frankly, quite rude. No person is going to be inclined to help someone who is so rude. I understand that application support is tiresome and draining on developers who often answer the same question over and over or make the same argument over and over. It sucks, but reacting rudely is simply the worst possible choice. You alienate rather than build a community. It's anathema to the basic ideals behind OSS.

Re:Hate the messenger

[bsDaemon]

Because he basically received stolen property from a guy who should be tried for treason. He then put it up for all the world to see in the form he received it in. The fact that names weren't redacted prior to him receiving the documents is immaterial because he never should have had them in the first place.

This isn't evidence of illegal dumping or insider trading. People are going to die because of this.

Re:nice

[Albinoman]

Amnesty's sole purpose is to support the rights of humans everywhere. They should be having a huge outcry over the things found in the leak. A human rights group should be an authority on what is right and wrong. Instead they are calling for censorship. What could a meeting accomplish other than expressing our freedoms less? It's not like he's going to convince the Amnesty rep that what he's asking is entirely counter to their cause. Ever consider he might be right to out them too? You don't call a meeting so you can get someone to change your mind.

They're worried that putting Afghan's names out in the press releases might hurt them, yet seem rather indifferent to soldiers going on shooting sprees? I suppose technically you're aren't hurt if you're dead. Besides, I don't really believe in a country with a %20 literacy rate, that there are a lot of Internet using, English reading militants sifting through 76,000 documents looking for a reasons to kill their neighbor. If they want to kill them they don't need an excuse.

Re:nice

[Wrath0fb0b]

Look, you either have a: freedom of the press, or b: you give it up for "safety of civilians". There isn't an imbetween.

Wow, talk about false dilemma! You have a serious lack of imagination if you cannot think of any way the press could responsibly report on the actual conduct of the war without endangering operational details and local friendlies? Let's try this:

American troops swept into this village in NW Afghanistan today after receiving information about a Taliban arms cache. Three insurgents were killed, as was a civilian caught in the crossfire.

versus

The 23rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne (strength 120 men, two APCs, 10 HMMVs), based in gridsquare* 423-12 sent a single platoon (strength 18 men, 4 HHMVs) swept into the village of Almar after receiving a tip from local tribal elder Khalifa Abdullah. Three insurgents were killed after they called in Apache support that is 16 minutes away from the airbase at 412-22 in Herat, as well as one civilian. The soldiers seized 12 AK-47s and 4 RPG-7s and an IED kit that was reverse-engineered and so now they are jamming the particular RF bands used to trigger it.

Do you see the difference? There's just no need for that kind of detail, especially where it's irrelevant to reporting the actual story. I will be the first to say that I don't trust the Army not to overclassify the hell out of the operation and generally apply a coating of whitewash. The logic that means that therefore it's OK to release sensitive operational details, however, escapes me entirely.

*I read the Wikileaks documents, most of them had 10-digit grids. I have no idea how anyone could consider that having locations down to the centimeter is at all relevant to the journalistic story. The events happened, the American public absolutely deserves to get the clean truth. I'm not disputing that bit.

The USA can assassinate US Citizens.

[elucido]

Do you really believe that any law would stand in the way of military objectives? Look at US law. Look at the fact that a US citizen is currently on the governments hitlist. The US government has the capability to capture or kill anybody anywhere in the world if they become an armed combatant.

I don't think that will happen to Julian Assange, but lets not pretend like the US government wouldn't do it.

Re:nice

[Jack9]

It's a response that's aggressive, unhelpful, and, frankly, quite rude.

That's a lot of words. I've seen those before, many times. They are often used in the stead of, "pragmatic".

When your time is valuable and accounted for, get back to me on why you aren't working in a 3rd world country to save the lives of other people. It's quite rude to be so self-centered about your limited efforts in this lifetime.

Re:nice

[hsthompson69]

Not expressing an opinion on this one way or the other, but it seems that in this case, the leak *can possibly* prevent rash US behavior, and the leak *will* incite Taliban retribution.

Of course there are other ways to prevent rash US behavior without going public with raw data, and even if "unincited" the Taliban have no qualms about applying retribution without any sort of due diligence.

It seems that 1st world countries, the US in particular, hamstrings itself by trying to be nice while going to war. Now overall, I think that's a good thing, but it puts us at a disadvantage when fighting an enemy that has no such reservations.

Re:Free Speech

[PitaBred]

Yeah. But all those soldiers that are dying over there in the war are expected, right? We can just ignore all of those deaths, and just focus on the informants.

The information was leaked because it is critical that the voters know what they're supporting over there. Otherwise, we could be told that "everything is rosy!" and given the government control over media, we'd be none the wiser.

Do you really want to be in that position?

Re:nice

[grcumb]

Mr. Assange then replied: "I'm very busy and have no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses. If Amnesty does nothing I shall issue a press release highlighting its refusal," according to people familiar with the exchange.

Kind of comes off as a narcissistic jerk here.

"A jerk, and a narcissistic one at that? Well, fuck him, then! Hanging's too good for him. Information wants to be detained and tortured at a secret facility!"

Seriously: What, exactly, is your point here? Is Assange wrong to infer that other organisations are distancing themselves because the US is bringing heat on them, quite likely through threats of reduced funding or cooperation?

Or is his sin that he is impolite?

If that's the case, then perhaps you could explain the merits of declining to support an organisation on the grounds that you don't like one of its members because you find him rude?

(There is a case to be made along these lines, but it requires something more than name-calling to convince me.)

Re:Hate the messenger

[Sovetskysoyuz]

Assange had the power to say "no, we will not release these". He also had the power to wait to release until the documents had been carefully scrutinized to remove names and identifying details of anyone who might be endangered. At the very least, he is accessory to any crimes that might have been committed by the sources of leaks.

Re:So, Julian, there's this thing called the inter

[lightspeedius]

Which thousands of people do you trust to do this without exposing the data themselves?

Re:This information is KILLING PEOPLE

[bendodge]

You don't get it. Truth is important, but this isn't a political game in our safe Western political environment. The release of these documents (and especially the piles of needless and real details) has caused incalculable damage to the Free World's ability to get cooperation out of locals. At least one informant has already died because someone thought it would be cool to dump classified military operations on the net.

If you were living under Islamic rule, and you were part of the local underground aiding the enemy capitalist, what would your opinion be when you learned that one of the capitalists' own men had given YOUR name and location to the oppressors? That's betrayal, pure and simple. You and your family will die, and others in the underground are far less likely to risk anything in the future.

Protecting sources should be a number one priority, and has been for many years and through many wars and agencies. It is a blot on our entire nation when you betray someone who has voluntarily aided us. There's a reason militaries have classification schemes! Information has more power than bullets. Yes, it is often abused. But the decision to release these documents was grossly irresponsible and stupid.

Re:nice

[c6gunner]

maybe you might want to look at what the real issue is here.

That's exactly what I was doing.

Of course, YOUR idea of "the real issue" is every bit as silly as the actual issue (which I discussed). The idea that governments should just freely give out all classified information in order to avoid having it leaked is only surpassed in foolishness by the idea that freedom of the press and protection of civilians are incompatible.

Re:nice

[nomadic]

Seriously: What, exactly, is your point here? Is Assange wrong to infer that other organisations are distancing themselves because the US is bringing heat on them, quite likely through threats of reduced funding or cooperation?

Well, first of all, yes, if he thinks that he is wrong to think that Amnesty International is distancing itself because of US pressure he is astoundingly ignorant of AI and its relationship to the US.

But what I meant by narcissism is his demanding not that AI work with him to rectify the problem, but rather that he dictates what they will do, and if they don't accept unconditionally his demand they are "covering their ass." Refusing to take a phone call because he's too busy? Doing what, giving interviews? He exhibits an unfortunately common hacker stereotype; the neurotic moralizer who is convinced of his own moral superiority to everyone else.

If that's the case, then perhaps you could explain the merits of declining to support an organisation on the grounds that you don't like one of its members because you find him rude?

Oh, you've gleaned my lack of support of Wikileaks because I called Assange a narcissistic jerk? Overextrapolating a bit there, eh?

Re:Valis dilemma

[nomadic]

Finally, if they released redacted documents. they would lose the credibility they have gained by releasing ALL the facts, no matter the consequences. Then people could (rightfully) question what they redacted and why.

And they could have answered "we only redacted the names of specific Afghani civilians, because revealing those names does not serve any greater purpose, and these people would face grave danger." You really think that shows they lack credibility? I think it adds moral credibility.

Opinion unsupported by facts...

[xmundt]

Greetings and Salutations.
          I have read a number of the opinions posted here, and, my first reaction is "Have any of these people actually even LOOKED at the documents posted on Wikileaks?"
I have read quite a number of the documents available on line, and there are a few things that have popped out at me.
          1) the only names that I have run across in the documents have been known taliban, insurgents and supporters of the insurgency.
          2) A huge percentage of the reports are recording general suspicious activity picked up by routine patrols both on the ground and in the air.
          3) There have been some interesting notes about aerial vehicles being shot at with missiles positively identified as stingers ( a little fact that has been, shall we say, downplayed, by the official military sources).
          4) On the other hand, there are quite a number of reports of Afghan nationals (so far, all un-named) with war-related injuries being flown out for medical attention. Pretty much all the ones I have read have apparently been civilians caught up by accident.

          Now, there may be some military usage in the times and dates and such listed with each event, but, I suspect that any decent intelligence service will already
HAVE the time and location details listed in the reports.

          I was also interested to see the number of times when fairly suspicious behavior, or serious weapons of war were observed, yet, no action was taken to kill the enemy, or, destroy the weapons (tanks, howitzers, etc).

            Overall, it seems to me that the biggest issue with Wikileaks is that they have dumped out a bunch of information, concealed by our government, that shows that some of the positive spin put on the situation in Afghanistan is a bit thinner than they would have us believe.

          Pleasant Dreams
          dave mundt

Re:HAPPY 8/9/10 to you !!

[Arthur Grumbine]

I prefer 2010.09.08 (yyyy.mm.dd)...P.S. I'm an "American".

I'm guessing you were also educated in the public school system?

Re:nice

[victorhooi]

heya,

Well said, and ever so witty =). Lol, however, a better way to think about it, and one that's a little more honest is, would the Afghanistan's prefer to:

1. Live under the Taliban, and suffer the consequences there (random killings and maimings for various implied crimes against Islam's, a gutted education and medical system, and rampant abuse of women's right)

2. Live under the current situation, and suffer the consequences there (a US military that is apparently hamstrung by it's own regulations and moral strictures on one side, and on the other sides acts rashly and causes avoidable collateral deaths while trying to bring the Taliban to justice), in the hopes for a better future.

I think ultimately that's a question you have to ask the Afghan people. And look, at the end of the day, we gave them the vote, and they voted in one of their own, and by and large, they seem happy the Taliban is gone.. Now, you might not like the Afghan president, but you're not a Afghan resident, and neither am I. It's up to them who they want to vote in. And if they say the Taliban can go get stuffed, who are we to stop them.

My hope is that the Taliban will ultimately be brought to justice for their crimes, the Afghans will have a democracy and a government that they feel ownership in, and we can pack up our bags and leave.

The recent time cover, with a woman's nose cut off really highlights why we don't want the Taliban coming back - they frigging cut off her nose, because she tried to run away from her wife-beater of a husband. And the husband watched, while the Taliban lackeys held her down and cut off her nose? Like, seriously, what the heck? That's just sick..by anybody's standards. Who the heck watches happily, while government people cut off your wife's nose?

Is that the sort of barbaric government we really want to inflict back on these people?

And now the US government is talking about giving the Taliban a say in government again, because they can't beat them (or rather, they won't, since the US public is so sissified and gutless these days that any military deaths or collateral damage is means to end the war). I'm not saying those things aren't tragic, and we shouldn't do everything we can do avoid them, but let's not try and dress the situation up - we're at war here, against an opponent who has no qualms about capturing and beheading civilians, in the name of propaganda. I'm glad we haven't sunk to that level.

It's very, very regretable that there are casualties in war, but really, the alternative is what, to pack up and leave, and let the Taliban sweep in, and carry our retribution against anybody that helped the Americans? Great plan. And they'll also begin dismantling the education and health systems again, like before we arrived. Just brilliant. And then the drug trade will flourish, and our criminal syndicates will start buying up drugs, which are then used to buy munitions to kill us. Awesome....not.

Notice how it's the Afghan's themselves who are crying "NO, NO! Don't let the Taliban back!". And now we're trying to legitimise the Taliban, and say, look, if you clean yourselves up, and stop cutting off people's limbs, fine, you can be part of the government. I say we finish the job, find them, and let the Afghan people deal with how to bring them to justice.

Look at how happy the Iraqi's were to hand Saddam Hussein. Now personally, I'm not a fan of the death penalty, and I think he should have just sat in a small cell somehow, thinking about all the horrible things he, his sons, and his commanders inflicted on his own people (and all the neighboring countries). But look, I have a feeling that the Iraqi's probably hated Saddam even more than we do, just like the Afghan's seem to hate the Taliban even more than we do - and probably with good reason.

Cheers,
Victor

Re:nice

[interkin3tic]

Only fools see such issues as black and white.

Wheras only smart people see the world in terms of fools and smart people :-P

Re:nice

[Richard_at_work]

Look at how happy the Iraqi's were to hand Saddam Hussein. Now personally, I'm not a fan of the death penalty, and I think he should have just sat in a small cell somehow, thinking about all the horrible things he, his sons, and his commanders inflicted on his own people (and all the neighboring countries). But look, I have a feeling that the Iraqi's probably hated Saddam even more than we do, just like the Afghan's seem to hate the Taliban even more than we do - and probably with good reason.

Cheers, Victor

Aside from everything else that was wrong with the Iraq war, this was one of the biggest for myself - Saddam Hussein, regardless of who he was or what he had done, should not have been subjected to that particular court.

Both Chief Judges in the case were ethnic Kurds, so there is an immediate uncertainty of bias, but the second Chief Judge (Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman, and the one who presided over the courts verdict) was from Halabja and suffered loss of family and friends during the 1998 gas attacks ordered by Hussein, which strengthens the uncertainty of bias.

You do not *ever* subject someone to a court of their victims - for a court to be legitimate, it should be completely independent of both victim and accused.

Stop equivocating

[MikeRT]

But lives are at stake if the information is not leaked either, since the leaks have proved that the US military forces sometimes act ... rashly.

You can't predict how many civilians may die in such a fluid situation tomorrow if US forces have to act quickly. What you can predict is the extremely high probability that every single solitary last informant/source in those documents will take a dirt nap after the Taliban locates them.

Re:Free Speech

[Kagura]

And he didn't release any of this information... I think that is the OP's point.

Re:nice

[nlvp]

True, but any assistance by the government in redacting the documents can be interpreted as a partial authorisation to leak the unredacted bits.

I would have sent back documents covered in black ink with a couple of conjunctions and a few bits of punctuation unredacted.

The US goverment's point is that the documents were illegally obtained, that they are protected as official secrets and that therefore their dissemination is a criminal offense, and no, they're not going to play ball.

While there's an argument that says they could have limited the damage, there's an argument that says WikiLeaks shouldn't be publishing classified government documents in the first place.

If even one thing published by WikiLeaks turns out to have aided an enemy of the US, I would imagine (IANAL) that this would put the members of WikiLeaks in a highly dubious legal position vis-a-vis the US authorities, and any allies they may have. They're handling stolen documents, saying "we gave you the opportunity to help us redact the documents we stole from you" doesn't actually exonerate them in any way.

Re:nice

[LWATCDR]

That is a bad reason. My opinion is that Amnesty International is mostly good but not prefect. I wouldn't take just their word for it.
The fact that a number of these groups is speaking out should raise some red flags and make you do your own looking.

Frankly I have an extremely low opinion of Wikileaks.
There "journalistic integrity" is right up there with the best of yellow journalism of the late 1800s yearly 1900s. Those that get offended by that statement and defend them don't realize that it is simply because they agree with the agenda of Wikileaks and that they are convinced that what they are trying to deal with a "bigger problem" aka that the ends justify the means.

Never let anybody or any group do your thinking for you. Never hold any group or organization in such high regard that if they say this is bad you instantly agree.
The greatest sign of respect that anyone could show me would be that if I say, "This is wrong or worries me" that they ask why and then listen and even ask questions. To me that is the way world should work.

Re:nice

[greenbird]

There "journalistic integrity" is right up there with the best of yellow journalism of the late 1800s yearly 1900s. Those that get offended by that statement and defend them don't realize that it is simply because they agree with the agenda of Wikileaks and that they are convinced that what they are trying to deal with a "bigger problem" aka that the ends justify the means.

Hmmm...in my mind you've got Wikileaks and the MSM (main stream media) organizations reversed here. The MSM organizations have shifted to producing the best of what's historically been known as yellow journalism. They print sensationalized crap that has been poorly research with almost zero fact checking simple because they think that's the way to get people to look. In most cases it's simple press releases from the main players in the story. As an example, stories about file sharing and digital piracy read like press releases from the RIAA with absolutely no challenge of even the most blatantly false propaganda they spew. The MSM also tends more and more strongly to having an editorial slant in what they're producing as news stories.

I really don't see an "agenda" for wikileaks. Nor are they a journalistic organization in the traditional sense. They're providing a function that the MSM use to provide. It's a secure place for people to distribute secret information about things that they feel are wrong. Wikileaks publishes the raw material. They don't report on it or editorialize. They simple make it public and let others do the that. In my mind that's a very important function. That is the purpose of a free press. It helps keeps those in power accountability for their actions. They make an effort to publish the material in a manner that doesn't directly harm anyone. In this case they offered to let the fricking Pentagon redact the documents but the idiots refused. Who's fault is that? I find it hard to blame wikileaks.

why mod up dishonest idiocy?

[Scrameustache]

So true. This one time when I tried to rob a bank, I asked the cops for help so that I could do it safely without hurting anyone. But the fucking pigs just wanted to stop me. Clearly it wasn't my fault that people died.

"This one time when I wanted to reveal that the cops had shot up a bunch of hostages I asked the cop to tell me who were the robbers and who were the hostages so I could blur out the innocent faces in the video, but the cops refused to help and when I revealed their deadly mishap they said more hostages would be shot because of me."

This is the honest version of your allegory. The way you say it you've conflated Wikileaks and the Taliban, because you're biased against wikileaks and are actively trying to smear them, apparently.