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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.'"
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.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
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.
it's under construction
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.
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.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
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.
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.
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.
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
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
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.
Who is John Galt?