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

nice

[nomadic]

An Amnesty 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.

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.

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.

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: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

[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.

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

[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.

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?

[HungryHobo]

And a point that isn't made enough: people complain that wikileaks didn't do a good enough job of redacting the info themselves yet wikileaks requested help redacting sensitive info from the pentagon(they would after all have all the knowledge required to pick out what could potentially reveal their sources in a roundabout manner after all) but they got no reply other than attempts to shut them up entirely.

In an ideal world wikileaks would not be necessary.

Re:The sad part?

[carp3_noct3m]

It is, but nobodies listening.

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Interesting. Searching google with the terms: "site:wikileaks.org abdullah" returns about a page of results. I see some references to a gentleman in Canada, some about one in Somalia, some references to King Abdullah (didn't bother to see whether it was Saudi Arabia or Jordan, since it's clearly not relevant,) the Foreign Minister of Turkey... ...not a single result was from the Afghan files.

The Taliban have been ramping up assassinations in Kandahar for months. Correlation is not causation. If you want to pin a dead civilian on Wikileaks, you might want to start with one that's actually mentioned.

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:Wikileaks and Assange own this

[carp3_noct3m]

As a USMC Iraq combat vet, who has for the past few months been studying the Afghan situation extensively, I can say that this is a good thing. Anybody who is actually involved knows that the Paki, and more specifically ISI, have been a problem for us since the early 80's, and not much has changed. The Paki's have and will continue to say "What? Not us!" but they are full of shit. The fact that the politicians are relatively good at hiding this fact undermines the general public's knowledge about the situation, and therefore it is a major part of controlling public opinion about our war. The facts are that we send money to ISI (often bypassing paki authorities completely) who then have (sometimes rogue) officers directly funding everything from afghan warlords, to Al Queda, to Paki Talibs, and on down the line. The fact of the matter is that Pakistan has absolutely no interest in really getting rid of their extremists, on either border, because Islamabad has so much fear of India, the militants are a tool they plan to use if needed. They will only do enough to keep our money flowing to them, but not enough to truly alienate the extremists. Its enormously complicated, with factors such as Iran and Russia playing into the equation. Regardless, I just hope that Assange did a good enough job purging of intel that could jeopardize people, but when so much is being hid, this kind of knowledge should be made public, albeit perhaps a bit with a bit more ambiguous information. But the real interest here is that that at the moment, as do many of the officers and enlisted I have talked to who are active in "Ganny" agree that we should not be there. First, not only does history show us that attempted conquer after attempted conquer, (including Russia, the British, and Rome as the most cited examples) Afghanistan is not a place that has ever been receptive to foreign rule. Second, our objectives are far too abstract. I often hear conflicting statements from politicians, some say we are there to prevent a safe haven for terrorists, but if that is the case, there are more AQ in places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, UAE, and especially Pakistan than there are in Afghanistan. Not to mention the amount of funding flowing from third parties with interest in AQ and AQ like organizations that we do little about. We even fund the militant talibs with protection money for convoys! Others say we are there to help prevent Pakistan being overrun with terrorists (who we are afraid will attempt to take control of Paki's nukes), but if that is the case, why are we not forcing ISI and Paki to help destroy these enemies? It is because, as I said before, they don't want to! Others say we are there to help restore the people of Afghanistan to a "Representative Government" but I have multiple problems with this. One, the culture is not conductive to such things, there is far too much fighting between Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras, Pashtuns, Foreign Arabs, et al. If they don't even claim to be Afghan, but rather claim their ethnicity, how can they unite to rule themselves? Sure we could do it for them, but we would be there for another 150+ years. Not something I think we are willing to do. The other question this brings up, is, "Where do you stop in your effort to "liberate" peoples from oppression?" I have been places I might consider worse than Iraq or Afghanistan (usually in Africa). So should we be "liberating" the people of Darfur(in Sudan), Somalia (I thought we learned our lesson there, apparently not with recent events) etc? I have said it before, and I will say it again, tactically, our military is pretty much capable of anything you throw at them. It is strategically that we have failed, and I blame this on a handful of issues. A few of these being, a blatant disrespect for learning histories lessons, the infiltration of the military system with political "control/influence", and the lack of ranks above 0-6 not having the balls to tell truth to power, because once you get stars on, your are no longer military, you are a politician (With a few exc

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