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Wikileaks To Publish Remaining Afghan Documents
Albanach writes "WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange has been quoted by the Associated Press as stating 'the organization is preparing to release the remaining secret Afghan war documents.' According to Assange, they are halfway through processing the remaining 15,000 files as they 'comb through' the files to ensure lives are not placed at risk."
They are already risking the lives of our soldiers by simply posting their tactics and secrets.
"combing through" the documents to 'save lives' is bullshit and they know it. They just want to post the dirtiest, effective secrets that can have maximum damage.... which will in turn hurt our soldiers.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Afghanistan produces around 85% of the world's poppies. There was NOT ONE MENTION of poppies, heroin, or opium in the released documents. What are the odds of that?
Anon Y. Mous
Illegal detention.
"He said he had 'no comment' about his current whereabouts."
Free Martian Whores!
Open letter from RWB secretary general to Wikileaks founder
At least it seems Julian Assange heard previous criticism.
My favorite feature of this round of Wikileaks is how it divides us. We now have the privilege of mostly being sorted into two rather neat piles:
A) This stuff should never have been secret, and anyone who would hide it is un-American
or
B) These secrets are property of the government, and anyone who would divulge them is un-American
The framing is succinct, and I doubt there will be another issue of this type within my lifetime. No matter which camp you're in, from a certain point of view, you're right. Personally, I hold that nothing need remain secret for very long, and that our government should be in the business of printing this material itself. Others are calling for Pvt Manning's execution.
Amazing times to live in...
people announce their intention to do something incredibly stupid.
I wonder how many relatives/friends of MIA soliders will comb through these archives looking for clues as to their fate.
(Just to clarify that I'm not being macabre for the sake of trolling - I support both wars and occupations, even though they ignored sane advice as to the troop strength required to hold and secure the regions.)
Emotions! In your brain!
Frankly, if nothing else it will help America have some idea as to what is happening, and that there is a war going on.
Since when did being wrong make anyone LESS American? ;)
The whole idea that wikileaks has endangered lives due to releasing these documents is completely speculation. There have been no reports or any evidence even stating that peoples lives have been put at risk. Now I know I'm going to get a lot of negative responses for saying this but you can't deny facts. The facts are wikileaks released confidential documents that were only confidential because the US government knew these documents would hurt their mindless war effort.
more than just 2 camps, though.
how's this for a take: yes, afgans will (perhaps) be at risk. they will learn not to trust us (ever again).
this could be a good thing! it means we have ZERO chance of 'fixing that country'.
yay! we can go home. there's zero point in spending time, money, lives over there if its impossible to 'win' the war.
now, I think its impossible. 100.0% impossible. they won't trust us ever again.
time to go home. seriously.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
My favorite feature of this round of Wikileaks is how it divides us. We now have the privilege of mostly being sorted into two rather neat piles
There is always a tension between the need for secrecy on various matters of governance, law enforcement, and military capabilities/plans/activities. The problem is that the people who make the decision on what is kept under wraps aren't neutral parties, so it easily becomes a method of hiding incompetence and corruption.
I don't know a solution. Maybe our system should include an elected review board with the authority to release whatever they think was improperly hidden. But how long until that became as corrupt as the rest of our political system?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, count me as a rare option C: Some of this information (names and locations of informants, details of military strategies, etc) should be kept secret while other parts (involvement of the Pakistani military, civilian deaths, etc) never should have been secret.
He isn't a US citizen and therefore can not commit treason against us.
They are focusing on the US and the Global War on Terror, there are no thousand page releases from the Sudan, Congo, Burma, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or even Israel.
It's mostly focused on the US and to a lesser extent on some corporations.
I'd love to see what happened if they leaked 15,000 documents on Israeli operations in the West Bank or posted data on Israeli positions in the Golan.
i hear plenty of talk about how evil wikileaks are, for releasing the info, but not much talk in the corporate media or from our governments about the war crimes committed & subsequently covered up by the USA & UK.
so them inflated numbers of insurgents include how many woman, children and innocent men murdered exactly?
The Truth Is Out There:
I would say no matter the position you're in, most could agree that Wikileaks should provide the government with the redacted docs prior to release and give them an adequate deadline to point out other items that should be redacted and why, or at least a timeline of when it should be "safe" to release the info. Wikileaks can still choose not to redact the items, but it's better than just putting it out there and then saying "oops" and never being able to take it back.
The existing WikiLeaks documents contain 10-digit grid-squares, allowing people to know the location of various military resources down to the square meter. This is absolutely not required for any sort of public purpose -- the public would be just as informed if you would omit the grid-squares and replace them with a vague location/district.
This can be done without wasting any manpower, something like this regex pattern will redact all collections of more than 5 numerical digits:
sed -r s/'[0-9]{5,}'/'REDACTED'/g
If the grid-squares are broken into chunks with a delimiter, say '-', you can try:
sed -r s/'[0-9\\-]{5,}'/'REDACTED'/g
As usual with regex, grep out the first 1000 or so matches for casual perusal before you let them loose.
There is really no excuse, including lack of manpower, for removing these sorts of details that add nothing to public's knowledge but reveal very useful operational details.
this has been covered elsewhere, and it's basically crap.
a: the information was already out there and b: the gov't was supposed to release it via FOIA but has never done so. We're talking a 3+ year old FOIA request. Oh and c: that particular article has been covered before.
This is just straight up bullshit criticism because guess what? Assange is doing a better job than other news reporters because he's, you know, actually reporting news!
I still contend that operating with the knowledge that nothing is secret for very long is workable.
Yeah, I really wish he'd asked the White House or Pentagon for help in redacting these documents.
After all, they're the ones who are best placed to check that sort of thing, right?
Surely they would have wanted to minimize damage to the troops, right?
Surely they wouldn't want to just cover their asses, right?
Oh wait he did and they said no.
Hmm.
better than the chuckleheads at the pentagon or white house who have zero interest in releasing ANY data.
Is Julian Assange also the lead singer for Gorillaz?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
C) He did a piss poor job of redacting it, and it is very likely people are going to die because of it.
Any truth to the claim that Wikileaks asked the Whitehouse was asked for this very thing?
What about the people who think these documents should have been released, but only after real professionals redacted names?
One Afghanistan leader is already dead over this. Wikileaks killed him, end of story. If I were that guys family I would come after Wikileaks and anyone associated with them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's still B, I'm afraid.
+1 Amen. The idea that WikiLeaks would be capable of determining what would endanger the armed forces, and what wouldn't, is absurd. You should also keep in mind that this miscreant wants to be paid $700,000 for this "harm minimization review". I say, each of the affected nations should take turns hanging his ass, and the last country in line gets to finish the job.
It doesn't really matter - the Taliban will find all sorts of excuses to kill:
e.g. Dancing girls and musicians
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/4217690/Taliban-underlines-its-growing-power-with-killing-of-dancing-girl-in-Pakistan.html
http://www.rferl.org/content/British_Ethnomusicologist_Discusses_Talibans_Campaign_Against_Musicians/1753865.html
Medics who the Taliban in one breath claim are missionaries and in another US spies:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10900338
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10903737
So if you're in the war-torn zones in Afghanistan, your odds of being killed are higher anyway - doesn't matter whether you're civilian or soldier, local or foreigner. I doubt Wikileaks is going to increase your risk that much.
Fact is if you are a US citizen living in the USA you have more to fear from your government than the Taliban. Heck, if you are living in some other country (other than Afghanistan) the US Gov is more likely to negatively impact your life than the Taliban.
So even if the Taliban claims that Wikileaks helped them kill more people in Afghanistan, I don't see it as a big deal. They can claim all they like.
If Wikileaks helps reduce the excesses of the most powerful Government in the world, it's doing good overall even if that Assange guy is just on an ego-trip.
p.s. Maybe the US Gov should start swapping in names of Taliban "middle managers" in their documents, leak them and let the Taliban go kill those :).
The fact that this guy is still alive kind of blows a hole in all those Jason Borne-esque conspiracy theories. I think that if the US really did have secret assassins and super-spies all over the world, that they could activate at any time for any reason, people like Julian Assange would be all kinds of dead.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
c) There are considerations to made in every war and putting peoples lives at risk for self glorification is never justification.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I'd say variation of one of three camps.
a.) "I vote according to party lines and Assange's head should be a pike."
b.) "I vote for the speaker who appeals to my needs without stepping on too many heads, I probably question some of Assange's ethics, though I can see the overall necessity. I probably think he is also a bit of a dick."
c.) "I'm completely disillusioned by the idea of government. Let 'em burn, let 'em all burn and we can re-built something more just out of the ashes."
Well he's willing to accept help, with the last lot he was willing to let the pentagon help with redaction (of course you can assume with the implication that if they played silly buggers and returned 90K black sheets of paper or redacted things which were merely embarrassing it would be ignored) rather than counting their blessings at getting a second chance to remove sensitive info from a leak after it has happened(how often do you think organisations get a chance at that) they sat back, firmly lodging their thumbs in their rectums and ignored the chance.
Reporters w/o Borders is a blatant propaganda front for the US Government. Proof & References: "Reporters Without Borders Unmasked"
"Reporters Without Borders seems to have a geopolitical agenda"
"Source Watch: Reporters Without Borders"
Reporters w/o Borders are also trying to trap potential leakers and activist bloggers in their thin veil: https://encrypted.google.com/search?num=100&q=Reporters+Without+Borders+shelter
Let's hope he learned from it.
I have no particular gripe with this information being leaked to the public. I do have a gripe with Wikileaks rushing to publish it and putting people at risk by including names and everything else.
Why do I get the idea that you don't think they are trying to win the war and fix the country? Is it those little 's you put around those words?
If thats the case, why would this be reason to go home? If the objectives they've stated are false, than defying those objectives does nothing to their true scheme.
Military secrets are the most fleeting of all. (Spock, The Enterprise Incident)
Here's the thing - nothing really can remain secret for long. At least, not from the guys you're actively engaged in fighting against. Beyond immediate operations, the only people you can hope to hoodwink for long are your own citizens by way of information control and propaganda.
Are there ethical (and practical) issues involved in releasing this info? Are there similar issues involved in not releasing this info? Certainly. But in all likelihood, the harm involved in releasing it will be very limited. Anyone who could make use of it in a military sense probably already knows most of this stuff. Not all...but probably most. So what remains? It seems like it would be reasonable to conclude that the main effect is to inform the American public and international community - people the American government very much wants to keep in the dark, but people who they have no right to keep in the dark.
Anyway, the cat's out of the bag now. Everything you're seeing is spin control - it's not like making a big fuss over this is going to make it be un-leaked. On the other hand, if the government puts a big enough spin on it, the odds are that they can strongly diminish any informing effect it would have for the public. They can't go back and hide it from the people they're fighting, but they have a pretty good shot of hiding it from their taxpaying voters and from the international community. Does it make any sense to hand them a win on that front? Any damage the info could do in a military sensehas already been done.
This has become my litmus test for whether or not someone is both an idiot and an American.
He asked the US military to help him figure out what was dangerous to the US armed forces, and they refused and started trying to hunt him down and discredit him. He knows he's not an expert, but he's trying to at least make the best attempt he's capable of as a layman. Would you rather he didn't even try?
Now, if your position actually is that only the military has any right to determine what's classified and what's not, I think you're missing the point: The military can and does use classification as a way of hiding things that are embarrassing rather than actually dangerous.
I am officially gone from
Intelligence analyst? In the US military?
Let met tell you something: if there were any intelligence analysts who had any pull in DC, we certainly wouldn't have given the region to Iran on a silver platter by taking out Saddam Hussein, or held Afghanistan responsible for a Saudi Arabian terror group's actions.
The pieces of shit who architected the war thought
1) We'd be greeted as liberators.
2) Troops levels of several hundred thousand were "way off the mark"
3) The war cost would be less than 100 billion dollars and paid for by Iraqi oil revenues.
My favorite is Rumsfeld's quote: "The Gulf War in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.”
Scapegoating Assange is the equivalent of yelling at the vet doing the necropsy on the horse.
Others are calling for Pvt Manning's execution.
I wouldn't call for execution, but he's certainly due some discipline for disobeying orders. However, Julian Assange has done nothing wrong and the US shouldn't be hounding him. Instead, they should be investigating the abuses Manning and Assange have brought to light.
Free Martian Whores!
There is nothing--nothing--that Assange can do that will take the blood off his and his organization's hands for the way they handled the first round of documents. This is war, and as an anti-war activist, Assange knows damn well that the price of a mistake or negligence in war is someone getting hurt. This isn't nerds versus jocks in high school, this is an armed conflict in one of the most violent places on Earth and he put the spotlight on a number of civilians in a way that makes them targets of opportunity in a war zone.
I think the real moral here is "Don't be a bunch of secretive assholes that allow bad guys to do whatever the fuck they want, and people will not constantly try to expose your secrets."
Could this Wikileaks War, the Net Neutrality War, the beyond-ridiculous Intellectual Property War, and so many other bastardizations of basic human rights and nature, including but certainly not limited to our political system, really all boil down to the same thing? Ha. Yeah right. Next you're going to tell me some sort of magical open source distributed social networking tool with "apps" for open ID, open education, open industry, open government, could be the answer... NO! That would be uh, Dirty Socialism!
Pardon my childishness but I am still a child, hoping to grow up in a world not riddled with retards and bullies. Maybe I'll learn more about how adults should act when I'm in college.
there's zero chance we are there to 'fix the country'.
first, that can't happen. countries can't be fixed from outside; change HAS to come from within. they don't want it now and never did. they want foreign intervention as much as WE do on our own soil.
second, this is an 'orwellian war'. one that is meant to keep going on and on. no clear objectives, no exit strategy and no metrics for determining when the 'end' is.
perfectly in line with the 'we have always been at war' notion from 1984.
nope, I don't at all believe the lie that we're there to HELP anything. we are there due to bush's ego (firstly) and secondly, because the current president LIKES the extra powers he gets from keeping the country in a perma-state of fear and war.
this was never ever about helping the middle east. its all about keeping up the distraction and giving reasons for extra repression in our OWN country.
pretty obvious, I think.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I realize those quotes are about Iraq. I'm just saying our entire foreign policy over there has been operating without regard for the safety of our troops since day 1.
What our governments have to hide?
Do they really think we'll OVER-REACT and PANIC? :P
You really do have an axe to grind with Wikileaks, huh? Since you have such a unique user name, I Googled it to see what it was a reference to. Didn't find any answer to that question, however I did find that someone with this username has posted the same message (not this one) over a hundred times to different websites. Which branch did you say you worked for again?
Then releasing the documents change nothing, right?
My favorite feature of this round of Wikileaks is how it divides us. We now have the privilege of mostly being sorted into two rather neat piles:
A) This stuff should never have been secret, and anyone who would hide it is un-American
or
B) These secrets are property of the government, and anyone who would divulge them is un-American
It is very uniting, actually. We're ALL un-American now.
Everything you're seeing is spin control - it's not like making a big fuss over this is going to make it be un-leaked.
While I actually agree, it is amazing to watch the government behave as if this weren't true...
"The idea that WikiLeaks would be capable of determining what would endanger the armed forces, and what wouldn't, is absurd."
Well, the Pentagon refused to help, so they were on their own.
B) ... and the government is property of the public...
The archive is a 75MB 7-zip file, which uncompresses to 3.5GB of HTML.
$ grep -irl khalifa *
event/2007/05/AFG20070503n733.html
Just one hit for the word Khalifa, and it doesn't refer to Khalifa Abdullah. Whether or not he was an informant, he's not named in the original leak.
RSF/RWB opposes Cuba's (and China's, Iran's, ...) attitudes towards reporters (i.e. jailing, torturing, murdering). If that's a political agenda, if that's a bad thing, if that makes you a stooge of the US gov, then I'm afraid I'm a stooge too. By the way, RWB/RSF is a French NGO to begin with.
Now I agree that RSF's secretary general is not the most well-behaved and smartest person. But he is right most of the time.
I have a better solution: if your military's activities can't stand up to the scrutiny of the people who pay the bills and elect the leaders, maybe you shouldn't be involved in those activities.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
That is rational and reasonable.
It will never happen.
It saddens me to see what my country is turning into.
I'd say variation of one of three camps.
a.) "I vote according to party lines and Assange's head should be a pike."
b.) "I vote for the speaker who appeals to my needs without stepping on too many heads, I probably question some of Assange's ethics, though I can see the overall necessity. I probably think he is also a bit of a dick."
c.) "I'm completely disillusioned by the idea of government. Nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."
FTFY
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
If it were me, I'd have George Bush against the wall in front of the firing squad for murder.
I guess it makes sense to kill Julian to cover up the murders committed by George Bush and co.
It might have mentioned meetings with unnamed leaders at ${LOCATION}s, which would allow someone to deduce who it was. I don't know.
Where does Wikileaks draw the line? If transparency is one of their fundamental principles, why are they redacting, and how do they decide what should be redacted and what shouldn't?
He asked for the money to hire people to go through and remove all the names from the documents, after Amnesty and the others refused his request for help doing so.
It's pretty obvious the US government is spreading a lot of FUD and attempting to take wikileaks down.
Wikileaks is under serious US Government attack.
Yes, subject lines are quite useful, especially when they serve as a warning.
Woah, you linked more than ONE source on a single topic! I've been waiting for someone to do that for a long time!
Hey, if being an American is wrong, I'd rather be wrong.
(yeah, I think this makes sense, I think)
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Who has he murdered. While you don't need a body for murder, you do typically need a victim. An explicit victim whose death he intended.
George Bush, but not Clinton for bombing Iraq, overthrowing the government of Haiti, war with Serbia? Not Vladimir Putin? Dig up Pol Pot?
We gave the Taliban 43,000,000 dollars in May of 2001. This is because of their help with the War on Drugs. Only after 9/11 did we suddenly care about the Taliban's internal policies towards their population.
That's why wherever we go, we will be fought. The local population knows we'll only be there as long as is politically necessary. As soon as they are out of the local news, we'll be back to funding dictators and kings and not caring about who they are torturing to maintain order. Historical examples include Iraq (1980-1990), Iran (1953-1979), Saudi Arabia (present), Egypt (present), and unfortunately, I could go on.
Every war of aggression is illegal according to international law. Unless you think China could have legally invaded if they disagreed with the 2000 Supreme Court decision about the election, your argument does not hold water.
Sure. How likely would you be to "help" me clean up all the files on your computer and the entire contents of your filing cabinet that someone who hates you just happend to send me copies of? After all, you're familiar with these thousands of files so I'm sure you can put in the man hours to enable me to release them all to the public. Face it, you'd say "No, none of this stuff should be released so consider all characters in all files redacted." Even if you did agree, you'd still remove more than he wanted you too and he'd just release the rest anyway. I'm certain he asked exactly because he _knew_ there's virtually no chance they would agree to such utter nonsene, but that it could be later used as a defense for his stupid actions and the lives and strategic advantages that are and will be lost as a direct result.
Sure why not.
I don't give a fuck about Clinton either.
Throw Obama in there if you can tie civilian deaths in there.
Guess what, I am not a fucking hypocrite.
Or inversely, since when did being right make anyone MORE American? (;
How long until this self righteous Bush goes on trial for murder over his wanton disregard over the lives of innocents?
fixed that for you.
Yeah.
And I really wish Marshall had asked Himmler and Goebbels for help in redacting.
Because I'm sure there's stuff the average American knew during the Second World War
that the Nazi propaganda machine and German military didn't want them to know.
Y'know, for various reasons, such as for the safety of their troops, and to discourage opposition.
There's no such thing as a valid reason to shield information from the public, in a representative democracy.
If military leaders don't actively desire the citizenry to know what they're doing, they GOD DAMNED WELL
should NOT be doing it. Period.
Doesn't treason usually mean that someone's betraying their own country? Why do you assume that Assange should be loyal to the US??
Do they oppose the US government shutting out any reporters that dare point out problems? Many administrations have done this.
C. He has a right to say whatever he likes, this is free speech, he has no obligation to hide someone else's secrets.
That's me.
Pvt. Manning should get a dishonorable discharge.
Since 9/11
Do you have a source for this?
``A) This stuff should never have been secret, and anyone who would hide it is un-American
or
B) These secrets are property of the government, and anyone who would divulge them is un-American''
Personally, I think that if you think that "un-American" is a bad thing, you've already lost. I don't care if something or someone is American or not. What I care about is whether or not it's good for the world!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It would surprise me if they didn't.
For all its imperfections, the US gov still upholds free speech more than others.
along with assange stating along the lines:
"We only deal with real conspiracy theories, not fake conspiracies like the 9/11 inside job stuff"
This whole 'leak' reeks of CIA bullshit.
Okay, and then the response is "Sorry, the majority of this stuff is getting released whether you want it to or not. Do you want a chance to help redact the truly sensitive parts, which you would know far better than me?"
Do you still say no?
Yes, but he would have an idea of what you consider to be truly sensitive information* - and hey, he might just respect that if it makes sense.
I really think a lot of the outrage we're seeing here is an expression of the fact that Wikileaks has the United States Military by the figurative shorthairs, and it makes a certain class of person feel impotent (generally the same people who feel large and potent when they look at our gigantic military budget, I bet). They just can't get over that, and respond with bluster and hot air and unsourced claims of civilian casualties.
*because, after all, he's got the completely unredacted documents; if you try to cover up the really embarrassing stuff, someone will notice
McCarthy.
Human beings are the biological version of Von Neumann machines.
He is not an American, why should he care about American national security?
If you believe American law applies in this case, then I would suggest you read the first amendment.
He did. They declined.
we are there due to bush's ego (firstly) and secondly, because the current president LIKES the extra powers he gets from keeping the country in a perma-state of fear and war.
'War Profiteering' has to figure in as a distant third.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"There's a difference between exposing corporate malfeasance and national security that he clearly doesn't understand."
You mean like a sitting Vice President exposing the identity of an undercover CIA agent for pure political gain? How many people who had contact with her over the years were "disappeared" after that news came out?
The Bush Administration has set the standard: intelligence assets can and will be exposed as soon as it becomes politically expedient, with little more hand-wringing than tossing Scooter Libbey a pardon. Heck, we should applaud Assange for not having such an obvious political axe to grind in this exposure (if it truly is an exposure; the military will say it is sensitive information regardless) as Novak did. Anybody who entrusts their confidentiality to the United States government after the example of Valerie Plame has only themselves to blame.
Nobody is entitled to complain about WikiLeaks while Dick Cheney still walks free.
Wow, you people are still hung up on Clinton? You people are far more annoying than the Dubya whiners and Obama worshippers combined.
Hard to believe that some people are whining about legality/morality of Wikileaks, while US military forces are illegally occupying few countries and killing citizens there.
Oxymoron.
The term "un-American" should only be used ironically or to recall the dark times of Joe McCarthy. There's not really any such thing as "American" in this sense. If there is, then it is antithetical to the notion of freedom. The fact that it sees such wide spread use is disturbing to me. This is not the vocabulary of a free country.
"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" -- Kurt Vonnegut
Here's the thing - nothing really can remain secret for long. At least, not from the guys you're actively engaged in fighting against. Beyond immediate operations, the only people you can hope to hoodwink for long are your own citizens by way of information control and propaganda.
It's not a given that every military secret will be discovered. Look through history and you'll find examples of secrets that were uncovered and secrets that remained secret for years. It all depends on the nature of those secrets and the actors involved.
Are there ethical (and practical) issues involved in releasing this info? Are there similar issues involved in not releasing this info? Certainly. But in all likelihood, the harm involved in releasing it will be very limited. Anyone who could make use of it in a military sense probably already knows most of this stuff. Not all...but probably most. So what remains? It seems like it would be reasonable to conclude that the main effect is to inform the American public and international community - people the American government very much wants to keep in the dark, but people who they have no right to keep in the dark.
I don't believe it's a given that there is not sufficient military value in this information. Nor do I agree that there is significant information for the public. I find the documents fascinating (and more than a few incidents described tragic) - but there seems to be a distinct lack of smoking guns in the mix.
Anyway, the cat's out of the bag now. Everything you're seeing is spin control - it's not like making a big fuss over this is going to make it be un-leaked. On the other hand, if the government puts a big enough spin on it, the odds are that they can strongly diminish any informing effect it would have for the public. They can't go back and hide it from the people they're fighting, but they have a pretty good shot of hiding it from their taxpaying voters and from the international community. Does it make any sense to hand them a win on that front? Any damage the info could do in a military sensehas already been done.
I doubt anyone in the DoD thinks they can un-leak the documents. But what they can do is make an impression on those in a position of controlling similar secrets. And possibly weaken the support structure around organizations like Wikileaks. This is more than simply muddying up the waters to ensure limit the scope of public education.
Having said that - to be sure, there's a huge PR issue involved. The US Government is certainly going to be involved in that fight as well. But the propaganda is thick from all parties involved. One should be wary of everything that touches this subject.
He effectively released a hit list
I keep seeing people referring to this list, yet I never see any names.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Yeah, I really wish he'd asked the White House or Pentagon for help in redacting these documents.
...
Oh wait he did and they said no.
So what you're saying is that they redacted the entire collection of documents, he didn't agree, and then he went ahead and published. And after having taken this action, he is no longer responsible for that action because the US Government didn't agree with it.
Nice attempt at dodging the question. Are you seriously saying you would help someone who took your personal documents in redacting them so they could leak them on the Internet?
Not that I'm taking a stand either way, but to realistically expect anyone to want to willfully help someone redact information from documents that were stolen from you so they can leak them to the Internet is absurd.
made it freely available to one of the most violent organizations on the planet.
The american military already had the info.
And for the record, I'm pro-responsible-leaking. I don't like that wikileaks rushed to publish this information and did a shitty job of redacting information that puts people at risk
I agree IF that's the case, but do we actually know that wikileaks put people at risk? I keep hearing over and over and over that there are all these Afgani sympathizers that have been outed but...where's the list? Who are these people?
The redacted docs are public for the whole world to see, yet I still haven't seen any list. It's just "US government officials say it's possible that...blah blah blah".
Can anyone find this info? Seriously, not trolling.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
If I stole all your banking and credit information and wanted to leak it to the Internet would you realistically entertain me asking you for help redacting information before I leaked it?
starts playing world's smallest violin...
The fact of the matter is, if you release this kind of information, then it's on you to go through and filter it to make sure that nothing harmful is released. If you can't do that, then the responsible thing is to not release the information at all (which is not unrelated to the reason the material was classified in the first place).
The fact of the matter is, there is such a thing as an information expert for a given field. If you're not an expert in the field, and you just start puking up information on a Web page because no one can stop you, then you bear responsibility (moral and otherwise) for what happens when people use that information. Assange needs to grow a pair and deal with reality as it is, not as he'd wish it was.
Yeah, I really wish he'd asked the White House or Pentagon for help in redacting these documents.
Yeah, I'm sure plenty of people in the government would have jumped at the chance to spend some time in federal prison. Who cares about protecting your career and your freedom when you can help some foreign egomaniac release classified documents to the world? All of the rules and policies governing this sort of thing are just quaint suggestions, right? And you are a qualified expert on the matter, right? Oh wait, you're just another ignorant troll on slashdot repeating the same tired old criticism that has no basis in reality. But hey, so is everyone else here, so you get a pass.
This is not the vocabulary of a free country.
So you'd go so far as to say that it is un-American to use such a word?
I specifically referenced the scenario in this way for a reason. The contrast between the two extremes is crucial to the point I'm trying to make.
Do we,
A) Stand up for the principles we hold as 'American'
or
B) Stand up for the government itself as the embodiment of 'America'
Not an easy choice.
He asked for the money to hire people to go through and remove all the names from the documents, after Amnesty and the others refused his request for help doing so. It's pretty obvious the US government is spreading a lot of FUD and attempting to take wikileaks down. Wikileaks is under serious US Government attack.
When WikiLeaks decided to post the information, they became responsible for the information they posted. Assange can't cry about the fact that no one is helping him release the information responsibly when it's not information he should be posting in the first place. With the ability to post the information comes the responsibility for what happens when you post it, and you can't shirk that responsibility just by whining that no one will help you.
Yeah, I really wish he'd asked the White House or Pentagon for help in redacting these documents.
THEY ASKED Pentagon for help in redacting these documents. Pentagon denied, hoping that Wikileaks wouldn't raise the money for the menwork. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikileaks-to-seek-pentagon-help-on-war-logs-20100804-11flb.html
Frankly, and this isn't a troll, a serious [CITATION NEEDED] needs to be fulfilled. You claim there is a list of innocents, provide it or stop posting about its existence.
Basically, put up, or shut up. This is complicated enough as it is. We don't need misinformation being thrown around.
By the way, RWB/RSF is a French NGO to begin with.
Yeah, nice try. RWB is a US neocon propaganda front, and If you had read the references you would have seen this:
After years of trying to hide it, Robert Menard, Paris-based Secretary-General of Reporters Sans Frontieres or RWB, confessed that the RWB budget was primarily funded by “US organizations strictly linked to US foreign policy.” [6] Those US organizations behind RWB include the Open Society Foundation of billionaire speculator George Soros, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Congress’ National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Also included is the Center for Free Cuba, whose trustee, Otto Reich, was forced to resign from the George W. Bush administration after exposure of his role in a CIA-backed coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez. [7] As one researcher found after months of trying to get a reply from NED about their funding of Reporters Without Borders, which included a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute. The IRI is one of four subsidiaries of NED. [8] The NED, as I detail in my book, Full Spectrum Dominance:Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, was created by the US Congress during the Reagan administration on the initiative of then-CIA Director Bill Casey to replace the CIA's civil society covert action programs, which had been exposed by the Church committee in the mid-1970s. As Allen Weinstein, the man who drafted the legislation creating the NED admitted years later, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [9]
So, stooge of the US neocon right, to be more specific.
RSF/RWB opposes Cuba's (and China's, Iran's, ...) attitudes towards reporters (i.e. jailing, torturing, murdering). If that's a political agenda, if that's a bad thing, if that makes you a stooge of the US gov, then I'm afraid I'm a stooge too.
So?! every reporter outside any of these regimes condemns them. It is what RWB do to set themselves apart that makes them very special. Take their reporting on Georgia (country) leading up to the elections, largely acknowledged now to be US orchestrated coup, followed up with a neocon war. Oh, and now Georgia is a US puppet state, the Pipelines from Georgia to Afghanistan can't be privatized quick enough - bringing the plan together to profit from this dirty war long after it is over.
Yes, RWB is one of the worst pro war propaganda fronts out there - they are just supposed to be clandestine about it.
If I stole all your banking and credit information and wanted to leak it to the Internet would you realistically entertain me asking you for help redacting information before I leaked it?
The correct analogy would be, "look you help us redact your credit card info by removing the numerals that allow other people to use if for un-intended means". So yes, I would take the proposal.
I'm not sure how it's dodging the question; I thought my response was kinda obvious.
Look: it's not a choice between "leak the documents" and "don't leak the documents". The only options you're being offered are "leak the documents without your input" and "leak the documents with your input".
If the release of my personal documents might lead to the potential death of hundreds of civilians and there was no way for me to stop the leak outright, then yes of course I would assist in the redaction process. I like to think that any human being with an ounce of empathy would choose potentially saving lives over having an "I won't help you evar!" hissy fit.
But honestly, I bet you anything the Pentagon has already analyzed the documents and located the majority of the places where civilian identities might have been compromised - after all, where do you think they got that "hundreds of civilians" statistic? They just decided that the potential loss of those civilians was acceptable, because every body can be used as a round against Wikileaks.
They had to kill those informants to save them.
They both should, IMO. I don't understand what sort of deal he's made with the Obama administration that's kept him out of jail.
Its been said before, but its worth saying again since this keeps coming up. Let's try again.
The Pentagon and/or US government will *NEVER* help you "vet" a classified document you are trying to release against their will. Not EVER. EVER EVER EVER. Why is that so hard to understand? If they do, they become complacent in its release. Its never happened in the past, and its never going to. This was a fucking cop out by the attention mongerer to push blame away from himself and garner further attention, and nothing more.
I can't believe this argument; I really can't. "I'm trying to release this classified document against their will, and they won't help me to do it! It's THEIR fault, not mine!"
Bullshit. Pure Bullshit.
Strawman? Since when is personal documents which are a privacy issue the same thing as war documents which is a secrecy issue?
The "only 3 names" canard is based on someone literally grepping the records for the word "informant" and then looking for names nearby. However, there are many more names in there, and if you actually READ the records, many of them name people passing information to US forces without them being called "informant" in the text.
If you think the Taliban are going to be using grep, think again, and please stop with this misinformation already.
Yeah, they failed to even try to be reasonable. He gave them a chance.
How long until this self righteous assange goes on trial for murder over his wanton disregard over the lives of innocents? He effectively released a hit list and made it freely available to one of the most violent organizations on the planet. At a minimum that's manslaughter in most countries.
Oh, I figure about two weeks after Shrub goes on trial for doing the same thing - except he didn't have a "list", and he gave it to the MOST violent organization on the planet. I'm sure it will be very heartwarming to the million or so dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You forgot C) This stuff doesn't really make a difference anyway. It's 90,000 pages of nothing. The collateral murder thing was news... it told us stuff we didn't know. All these documents did was reveal ground level Afghan informants to the world. The only people that gained useful information from this leak were the Taliban.
By the way, RWB/RSF is a French NGO to begin with.
Yeah, nice try. RWB is a US neocon propaganda front, and If you had read the references you would have seen this:
After years of trying to hide it, Robert Menard, Paris-based Secretary-General of Reporters Sans Frontieres or RWB
How does that disprove what I said? Last time I checked, Paris was in France.
confessed that the RWB budget was primarily funded by “US organizations strictly linked to US foreign policy.” [6] Those US organizations behind RWB include the Open Society Foundation of billionaire speculator George Soros, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Congress’ National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Also included is the Center for Free Cuba, whose trustee, Otto Reich, was forced to resign from the George W. Bush administration after exposure of his role in a CIA-backed coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez. [7] As one researcher found after months of trying to get a reply from NED about their funding of Reporters Without Borders, which included a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute. The IRI is one of four subsidiaries of NED. [8] The NED, as I detail in my book, Full Spectrum Dominance:Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, was created by the US Congress during the Reagan administration on the initiative of then-CIA Director Bill Casey to replace the CIA's civil society covert action programs, which had been exposed by the Church committee in the mid-1970s. As Allen Weinstein, the man who drafted the legislation creating the NED admitted years later, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [9]
So, stooge of the US neocon right, to be more specific.
Some of those organizations are left leaning, some are right leaning. And I wouldn't say Soros is a neocon at all.
RSF/RWB opposes Cuba's (and China's, Iran's, ...) attitudes towards reporters (i.e. jailing, torturing, murdering). If that's a political agenda, if that's a bad thing, if that makes you a stooge of the US gov, then I'm afraid I'm a stooge too.
So?! every reporter outside any of these regimes condemns them. It is what RWB do to set themselves apart that makes them very special. Take their reporting on Georgia (country) leading up to the elections, largely acknowledged now to be US orchestrated coup, followed up with a neocon war. Oh, and now Georgia is a US puppet state, the Pipelines from Georgia to Afghanistan can't be privatized quick enough - bringing the plan together to profit from this dirty war long after it is over.
Yes, RWB is one of the worst pro war propaganda fronts out there - they are just supposed to be clandestine about it.
The issue with Georgia is more complex than that. I suggest you read more about the events that led to the war in the Summer 2008.
If you look at what the author did, you will see that he merely grepped for the word "informant" in the text. This is stupid, because there are many other records that name people who passed information to the US military who are NOT literally called "informants", but are referred to by their village, position, etc.
Grepping and pattern matching is no substitution for understanding natural text, as anyone who has done natural language processing would tell you.
FTFY
Dear God, not just you but also a sibling Anon both failed to read past the first line. I can understand not R-ing TFA, and sometimes even skipping TFS, but not even RTFC you're responding to? That's a new level of lazy.
Sorry mate, you are right :) I was lazy. It was just that I saw seeing so many comment heading the same way, that I tough yours would be also. But it was my fault. Sorry again.
I'd hardly call that reasonable. It was a nice try; worth giving a shot. But I can't find fault in the US Government's refusal to assist in Wikileaks' actions. And I hardly find that as an excuse to ignore Wikileaks' responsibility in the actions they take.
I get that Wikileaks feels that they have a moral imperative to take these actions. But a part of taking that stance is accepting the responsibility of those actions.
We now have the privilege of mostly being sorted into two rather neat piles:
Authoritarians
or
Decent human beings.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yesterday I watched “The Most Dangerous Man In America” a documentary about Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon Papers. Its interesting how true Ellsberg's thoughts about government secrecy are, and how little has changed since 1972.
And for the record, I'm pro-responsible-leaking. I don't like that wikileaks rushed to publish this information and did a shitty job of redacting information that puts people at risk, but I don't fundamentally begrudge their right to report the information, so long as its done in a responsible & ethical fashion.
The world is never black and white.
Qxe4
Reporting involves analysis (and, hopefully, a basic understanding of what one is writing about). Assange isn't reporting. He's puking up someone else's documents on a Web page. Hopefully, they never hand out Pulitzers for that kind of thing.
"Lawful" doesn't preclude "Good".
Emotions! In your brain!
A quote from Göring comes to mind:
Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
"Die endgueltige Teilung Deutschlands - das ist unser Auftrag." - Chlodwig Poth
He likes the shock value. He is the type to put something out there because it is dangerous.
If someone like him walks up to you asking what is the most dangerous info, you should tell him to fu*k off. While he is looking over the file, you now have some time to plan for what you are going to do to save the lives that are at risk from the leak.
I agree that Julian Assange isn't reporting. He's doing something much better than that: providing authentic, raw data. That way noone is dependent on one report's interpretation, biases and preconceptions, instead we're getting hundreds of different analyses and lots of results from datamining the information.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
You're a fool for throwing in Serbia. That's actually a success story. ( I know, because I live next to it. )
Greetings from Hungary
It's secret
The casus belli for the 1999 was much weaker than the casus belli for Operation Iraqi Freedom, yet Bush has been getting hammered on it for 7 years now.
Umm, the Clinton administration escalated and carried out just as many acts of war as the Bush administration did, yet for pointing that out we are "hung up on Clinton"?
Somalia escalation in 1993
Branch Davidian assault in 1993
Haitian invasion and occupation
Numerous strikes on Iraq
Strikes on Afghanistan
Bosnia
Strikes on the Sudan
Serbia
Desert Fox
I get that Wikileaks feels that they have a moral imperative to take these actions. But a part of taking that stance is accepting the responsibility of those actions.
That's pretty much how I feel about it. It's one thing for WikiLeaks to claim the right -- or even the responsibility -- to publish the documents. (I personally find it reprehensible, but at least they have the right to argue that way.) But to turn around and disclaim responsibility for what happens because of their decision is ludicrous. Its no one's responsibility but theirs to make sure that what gets published doesn't get anyone killed. If they're not sure about it, they shouldn't publish any of it. That's the responsible thing to do. They can't just whine about no one helping them redact the material, and then publish it all anyway. (Well, they obviously can, but it's a profoundly stupid position to take.)
Psst.. you don't need names to out people. If you release enough information to narrow down who can have reported/produced that information, you've effectively outed them.
I can't mod this up right now, but for what it's worth: +1*10^350
No, he doesn't have the right to say whatever he likes. He gave up those rights when accepting his position and security clearance. Think of it like a contract or NDA. He accepted the contract, then he broke it.
The information isn't required to be entirely harmless. It only has to be a lot more helpful than harmful. I personally wouldn't wish to take the moral burden of causing unintended deaths or injuries and if it would happen (didn't yet, as far as we know) Assange would have to bear that burden.
But why is it that noone talks about the number of lives that the release of these documents will save? The US military now knows it can't just cover up a cowboy operation that went bad, because if it's bad enough someone will leak it sooner or later. The only option the military has is to be more careful. The US military and political leadership can't pretend everything is going fine with the war. They got jolted out of the denial phase pretty quickly. Obama's reaction was that "and THIS is why we're changing things on the ground, see?". John Kerry started discussing the Pakistan problem seriously.
In the long run, this leak might have been the best thing to have happened even for the US political leadership and military, cutting down on the time needed to change direction on how the war is handled. Of course, some of this is conjecture, but if it's allowed to play games with hypothetical informant deaths, then surely discussing the hypothetical/possible good effects of the war logs is fair game aswell?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Who says that reporting raw data is necessarily better? In fact, I would argue that raw data is much worse, precisely because it's not screened for sensitive information that could get people killed. (And by the way: The fact that Assange says he hasn't heard of anyone getting killed because of the information means precisely nothing, even if you assume he's telling the truth.)
Sacrifice is made for many reasons and the most significant ones need not occur in battle. Being a soldier means you risk more than just death. You also risk political consequences such as being a political pawn not just a battlefield pawn and are frequently exploited. A soldier ordered to break the law must be punished either for breaking it or for disobeying orders. Its not a good situation to put oneself in; however, to some degree the volunteers are aware of this when they sign up.
In the USA's professed system, the press has just as much of a right to indirectly cause a soldiers death as a general or a bunch of politicians.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
He asked the US military to help him figure out what was dangerous to the US armed forces, and they refused and started trying to hunt him down and discredit him.
Um, I'm pretty sure "what was dangerous to the US armed forces" is CLASSIFIED and would come with some hefty jail time if it were disclosed by someone with a security clearance. Please stop using this idiotic argument. It only makes you look completely ignorant of how the military works.
He knows he's not an expert, but he's trying to at least make the best attempt he's capable of as a layman. Would you rather he didn't even try?
Um, yes? He has no idea if there is anything in the big bucket of documents that is really worth anything to anyone, so he just figures that the responsible thing to do is to throw it all out there and let the bodies fall where they may. I had no problem with Wikileaks when they were exposing things that were being covered up, though I wasn't fond of their editorializing, but this time we got to see what they are really about - shameless self-promotion via disclosure of whatever they can get their hands on, regardless of its actual value. At the macro level, nothing new was learned. On the micro level, nothing of significance to the general public was learned. What was the point of releasing this stuff again?
Now, if your position actually is that only the military has any right to determine what's classified and what's not, I think you're missing the point:
Whoa there buddy. I'm pretty sure that there are very specific guidelines governing exactly who can classify/declassify information, what information is to be classified at what level, and how it is to be done. This is not a matter of opinion, it is an absolute fact. If you think there is even a position to take on the matter, then YOU are missing the point.
The military can and does use classification as a way of hiding things that are embarrassing rather than actually dangerous.
And here we have the typical tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist position. Do you really believe that there is a document out there that says "anything showing us with our pants down is to be classified at level X, anything showing us without pants is to be classified at level Y," and so on? And nobody would think of leaking THAT to Wikileaks? Come on, it's not like something like that would be institutionalized or that any Joe Schmoe would get to decide on his own what to classify or not classify. Did you ever stop to think that maybe you can't understand what might or might not be dangerous because you don't know how the military operates? You might want to check your sig.
The US government has become increasingly secretive, dishonest, and obsessed with power over the years and the monster has grown so large it's difficult to imagine it can be stopped. Wikileaks has done more for democracy in America than any media outlet in recent memory and I commend their heroism as they're honestly risking their lives.
My favorite is Rumsfeld's quote: "The Gulf War in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.”
Yeah, too bad they didn't talk to the guy who said this 18 months after the first gulf war:
"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today, we'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home."
That Cheney guy sure knew Iraq...
He's an Australian, and Australia has troops in Afghanistan. But thats not what people are talking about when they're clamoring for a missile strike on his percieved location.
Yes, and if someone pukes out raw NSA intercept streams that show us the real name and address of the Anonymous Coward we're responding to, that would be a good thing. Even if he gets loses his job. Because information "wants to be free" - never mind the world we live in.
Neal Stephenson in "diamond age" argues through a character, that as moral relativism took hold, the natural desire to point the finger became more difficult. "I'm not wrong, I just have a different value system" became a valid defense against any accusers. To allow for the blame game to continue we elevated hypocrisy from a relatively minor vice, to the single most serious (and perhaps only) moral violation a person could commit. I agree with the character in the story, that a person who has a value system I agree with, but who often fails, is far more noble in my eyes, than someone who is completely consistent with a value system I hate.
I'm not sure that applies to this case because the question of motivation. But the underlying assertion that actions I perform, that I claim to be "good" are less good because I inconsistently perform them, is an assertion I vehemently disagree with.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Are you seriously saying you would help someone who took your personal documents in redacting them so they could leak them on the Internet?
If they were willing to take out my SSN, and just leave the embarrassing fact that I let my dog poop on my neighbour's sidewalk - then yeah, sure. It beats the alternative.
If someone was going to upload my harddrive to the internet, and offered me the chance, you bet I'd spend a couple days going through it and marking off which documents had my social security, porn folder, etc. The absurd thing would be NOT to do that, if you know they're going to release it even if you refuse.
I used blockquote for the above, when blackquote didn't work. It strikes me that there are more conjunctions of black and white in this world than are dreamed of in your philosophy. One that springs readily to mind is whether life is A) cheap, or B) precious.
You can boil this down another way. America is morally superior to other nations because A) Americans are better people (minus a few bad Islamic apples since deported to Guantanamo), or B) Americans have a better political system of checks and balances.
The right wing seems to implicitly believe proposition (A). From this view, disclosure serves no real purpose and potentially compromises human lives (mostly the cheap variety), national interests (bought and paid for), and the influence and careers of Pentagon demagogists.
Neither Milgram's authority experiment nor Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment provided any scientific backing for this view. But no matter, the right wing fringe discounts science to begin with. Moral superiority is a faith-based enterprise.
On the matter of checks and balances, there are differences in opinion on whether it was good enough to have written them down back in 1787, or whether you actually have to live by what you proclaim in order for the virtuous halo to take effect. Checks and balances prove annoyingly inconvenient. Who knew? In any case, American congress has lately taken the path of honour in the breach. There's oil at stake, among other things.
If Wikileaks helps to end a war that has outlived its political mission and degenerated into war-machine profiteering (that never happens) then ultimately it will save more lives than it compromises. Of course, if you're firmly welded to "life is precious" the one person who dies in violence as a result of Wikileaks outweighs a thousand intangible lives saved. Life is most precious when discussing the fate of a single individual.
I don't have a strong opinion on Wikileaks one way or the other. Whether his disclosure has a salutary effect on the future of Afghanistan depends on information unavailable to the thinking public. See also "checks and balances". Generally I believe that systemic secrecy is corrosive to moral wisdom. It has to stop somewhere. Is this the best mechanism? One would like to hope not.
Against that hope, I sure haven't spotted much American vigour lately in the department of ethical self-disclosure. Both sides agree on one thing: ethical disclosure is an expensive undertaking and doesn't play well on TV. I nearly drowned in my own spittle when BP first announced the leak rate as 1000 bpd. Don't blame BP. They were merely aping recent American political norms.
Agreed, but the Pentagon could have also redacted some things and seen how things went. All I'm saying is that there is some middle ground, and the Pentagon ignored it.
If they're going to do it anyway. Not the OP, but by agreeing, I have the opportunity to add disinformation by redacting other than what would be strictly true, thereby diverting my enemy's attention from the more dangerous bits. Unless of course allowing them to leak the lot allows me to achieve something even better.
Um, I'm pretty sure "what was dangerous to the US armed forces" is CLASSIFIED and would come with some hefty jail time if it were disclosed by someone with a security clearance. Please stop using this idiotic argument. It only makes you look completely ignorant of how the military works.
Well, clearly he wasn't asking for any information he didn't already have. He asked for help redacting it. One can't yell at him for not being competent to properly redact a document when they had a part in denying him this competence in the first place.
I'm pretty sure that there are very specific guidelines governing exactly who can classify/declassify information, what information is to be classified at what level, and how it is to be done. This is not a matter of opinion, it is an absolute fact.
It is a fact that US law issues the guidelines you describe. Whether US law should be the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong in this case seems to be very much in debate - particularly when the person doing the publication isn't within its jurisdiction. Sure, the US can ban publishing classified information, just as I can ban wearing the color blue. The only difference is the US government has more guns than I do, so generally speaking it is prudent to listen to what they say. Moral right/wrong is related to civil law, but not with 100% correspondence. I would ask in this case whether this guy has done more good for society, or ill.
Do you really believe that there is a document out there that says "anything showing us with our pants down is to be classified at level X, anything showing us without pants is to be classified at level Y," and so on?
Clearly not. By your logic then, the matter is settled. Clearly nobody in the military would possibly misuse the law without written orders to do so. This is also why lobbying isn't a problem either - clearly there are no written policies granting exceptions to bribery laws, so our elected officials would never accept them. I suppose you'll be claiming that there were no written policies that the CIA and the President should lie about WMD in Iraq either? Guess we need to keep looking...
If the intention was nothing more than to make this information known, we would know the information and never have heard the name Julian Assange. There are countless ways he could have made it happen. But his objective was clearly more than just making information known. He also wanted it to be clear that it was he who made that information known. And there is where his problems begin, assuming he considers them problems.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Everybody who is currently serving in the US Military, either enlisted or re-enlisted after June 2003.
After it was already known that the government lied to make the case for going to war.
After a whole lot of things happened that shouldn't have happened.
Before the term was up for those who had enlisted before June 2003, I had a different opinion about people serving in the US Military. Completely different after.
Well, clearly he wasn't asking for any information he didn't already have. He asked for help redacting it. One can't yell at him for not being competent to properly redact a document when they had a part in denying him this competence in the first place.
He asked for something that was impossible. When you make an impossible request, you don't get to complain when you don't get any help and you don't get to blame the other guy when your actions have unintended consequences.
I would ask in this case whether this guy has done more good for society, or ill.
Based on the comments here, I would say that he has caused more confusion than anything else. Assange has brought the fog of war into the homes of people who are ill-equipped to deal with it.
Clearly nobody in the military would possibly misuse the law without written orders to do so. This is also why lobbying isn't a problem either - clearly there are no written policies granting exceptions to bribery laws, so our elected officials would never accept them. I suppose you'll be claiming that there were no written policies that the CIA and the President should lie about WMD in Iraq either? Guess we need to keep looking...
The assertion was that "The military can and does use classification as a way of hiding things that are embarrassing rather than actually dangerous." "The military," not individuals. Individuals who hide their misdeeds by misclassifying documents deserve no protections from exposure, but people who write off the entire system based on paranoid conspiracies have no credibility. It is easy to always assume the worst in someone's motivations when you have no understanding of the situation. Only people who are incapable of seeing anything beyond their narrow worldview can claim to have cornered the market on absolute truth. There are a hell of a lot of them hanging around here.
According to Assange the release of the documents was delayed by several months while Wikileaks was in talks with the Pentagon to receive assistance in redacting the documents to conceal the identities of individuals who would be at risk. The story is that the Pentagon continued stalling and attempting to negotiate the removal of certain documents from the release. Wikileaks concluded that the Pentagon was not acting in good faith and was attempting to stall the release or prevent it completely on the theory that Wikileaks couldn't adequately redact the documents on their own and wouldn't release them if they couldn't redact them.
Whether that is true or not is a question that has not been proven either way. However the Pentagon has admitted to being aware that Wikileaks was in possession of the documents well in advance of the release and had communicated with them.
Personally I think that the known facts and general modus operandi of the involved parties would suggest that Wikileaks is relating the truth or at least the most accurate version of events.
He's doing something much better than that: providing authentic, raw data
No. He and his source are both politically motivated, and have an agenda. The material isn't "raw," it was chosen by the leaker and then picked over by Assange. He is deciding what to redact and what not to, and he is decideing what - within that data - he says he thinks will endanger anyone, and he's using his "expert" analytical skills to choose what military intel and reports it's appropriate to air while people's lives are at stake. He's not reporting, or providing raw data. He's clumsily grinding an axe, and happy to have other people die so that he can stay in the spotlight. What a colossal douchebag.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The information isn't required to be entirely harmless. It only has to be a lot more helpful than harmful. I personally wouldn't wish to take the moral burden of causing unintended deaths or injuries and if it would happen (didn't yet, as far as we know) Assange would have to bear that burden.
You kind of lost me with the first sentence there. "The information isn't required to be entirely harmless" for what, exactly? Are you saying that espionage is protected speech?
But why is it that noone talks about the number of lives that the release of these documents will save?
Obviously, I can't speak about the motives of others, but I think that it's reasonable to assume that the dangers involved in revealing this kind of information far outweigh the hypothetical benefits. You might want to read this article about the Taliban's reaction to the leaked documents. It's a certainty that lives were put at risk by what this asshat did. At best, it's only a possibility that the length of the war will be shortened by the WikiLeaks documents. With the exception of the operational details the reports contain, a lot of this information was known by the press (and the members of the public who've been paying attention) already. It's been known (or at least suspected) for some time that Pakistan and Iran both have dogs in the fight in Afghanistan. The fact that this is mentioned in the reports shouldn't come as a real surprise to anyone.
I think the release of the information by WikiLeaks was grossly irresponsible, and Assange should be arrested by Iceland and deported to the U.S. to face trial for espionage. The person in the Army who leaked the information should face treason charges (when he/she is found) and if found guilty, be executed. If there turns out to be a Hell, may they both burn there eternally.
I am still wondering about the legality of hosting these files on my own website (either from home or through a commercial webhost).
Anyone know?
But he is an Australian, and Australia has troops in Afghanistan too.
Found in fifteen minutes of browsing:
Names of surrendered Taliban
More surrendered
More
More
Names a suspected double agent
More could probably be found with a bit more looking.
Let me rephrase your question.
Are you seriously saying you wouldn't jump at the chance to minimize the damage of documents which are going to be leaked, given the opportunity to do so?
This is like someone who has obtained the documents to steal your identity, coming to you and going, "Look, I'm going to publish these, if you want to redact some sections which reduces the impact of them, I'm more than happy". Then you turning around and saying "Fuck off".
You wouldn't jump at the opportunity to limit damage? No, you'd pout and winge like a child? Perhaps stomp your feet? That is the logical choice now, isn't it.
Luckily in this case, as has been mentioned previously, they WERE sufficiently redacted.
To tie this into my example, after you saying "Fuck off" the person who obtained your documents then goes "Fine, well I'll redact them to the best of my ability, for you then, at my own expense".
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
He asked for official help in redacting, and they rejected the request. If anyone gets killed because of this, it's because of the US military and their unwillingness to protect the people in those documents.
Learn to love Alaska
You've got it backwards. They are really about the hardline feudal politics of a crowded refugee camp and they justify it with extremist religious fantasies. It's no more the will of God (Allah is God in Arabic) than it is to cut up the genitals of little girls where God is used for the excuse for that in some countries.
They value the ability to hurt others more than they value anything in religeon - whoever has the might is right. Their attitudes to rape show that clearly. A religious society would consider the rapist to be wrong but where "might is right" is the attitude then the unprotected woman is at fault. Like many extremist groups religeon is just the excuse to find a weasel way to make wrong appear to be right.
I consider group (A) to have a Republican or Democratic mindset and
(B) to be Royalists that think the state should never be questioned.
Of course reality is not quite so simple because we are talking about real documents and not general terms, but think about it for a moment guys and consider what it would be like to never allow anything like this out.
Open letter from RWB secretary general to Wikileaks founder
This is a good read, and pretty much sums up how I feel about it. Wikileaks has done a lot of good in the past, and can do a lot of good in the future, but they can't dodge the responsibility for their own actions.
Just throwing random stuff out there doesn't have anywhere near the impact nor the importance as the "collateral murder" video had. That stuff is good to expose; operational details and names of Afghan civilians who picked a side aren't.
When groups like Amnesty and Reporters Without Borders start warning you, it's really time to stop and consider whether what you're doing is really helping or hurting freedom.
Those articles sound like they're mostly about how RSF is unfair to oppressive regimes. As far as I remember, the US isn't at the top of their list of countries that respect a free press. If it's really a neocon front, I'd expect it to claim the US is better than European countries.
My favorite feature of this round of Wikileaks is how it divides us. We now have the privilege of mostly being sorted into two rather neat piles:
A) This stuff should never have been secret, and anyone who would hide it is un-American
or
B) These secrets are property of the government, and anyone who would divulge them is un-American
There's a lot of room in between those two. There's a huge difference between exposing current operational details and exposing details that have no current operational relevance anymore. Consider publishing the plans for Operation Overlord on Juni 3 1944, and publishing them on June 3 1946.
The tendency of military information remaining secret indefinitely (or for 30 years, which amounts to the same thing) is stupid, but exposing them while the operation is happening, means you're picking sides in the conflict. Did Assange really intend to side with the Taliban? I'd rather see him remain neutral and only publish for the sake of accountability (which is good!), rather than actively endangering the missions and the people involved (which is bad!).
I hope that makes my position in this matter clear.
I don't think a lot of people here are upset about exposing military and political decisions and procedures. What upsets people (me at least) is endangering the lives of civilians and soldiers on the ground.
I guess that from my point of view, that is located in Europe, being un-American is not really the thing I care most when I am forming opinions.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
No it's not. There's a huge difference between: "this is secret and should never be exposed" and "this should be exposed in a responsible manner".
Reporters w/o Borders is a blatant propaganda front for the US Government.
Really? That's pretty funny. I remember when RWB published their last press freedom index, and people - here on Slashdot, no less - complained that the USA were #24 or so instead of #1, and that this proved (since everyone *knows* the USA are the best and freest country in the world) that RWB was an organization from bourgeouis "Old Europe", specifically France, and we all know those cheese-eating surrender monkeys hate our guts, right.
Of course it was totally silly, BTW, and people just believed it because it allowed them to continue clinging to the opinion they already formed. But reading your comment, I can't help but wonder if the same isn't true here.
It's not their personal documents. The documents are military property and not personal. Nice way to dodge the answer.
The US blocked weapons inspections from the UN. Did you know that?
The UN requested that they be allowed to send investigators with official sanction to check chemical factories for production of WMDs. But the US vetoed it because the US could likewise be investigated and the US official position was that this would be used for industrial espionage and therefore could not be allowed.
Then when Iraq was being investigated, there were delays (though they were allowed in: remember Hans Blix saying that they'd found nothing?) and the US then insisted the UN get the investigators out of Iraq.
Then, using that the investigators had been removed, asserted this was Saddam breaking the treaty about WMDs and invaded.
So to sum up:
1) the UN wanted power to investigate with armed backing if necessary ANY signatory for WMD production
2) The US vetoed it
3) The USE complained that WMD investigators had no armed backing investigating Iraq (see #2)
4) The investigators were removed at US insistence
5) The US said that since there were no investigators, they had to invade
and you think that the UN should do the same to NK?
An organisation that has in the past been accused of being a CIA front criticizes wikileaks.
Colour me supprised.
And funded by the Saudis. Whose ruling family has in it one Osama Bin Laden whose parents were in the US and flown out by special jet on 11/9 by his good friend GW Bush. Said Osama bin Laden being purported to be the mastermind for that attack that killed 3000 people, many, BUT NOT ALL (tourists, remember), of whom were Americans and whom the Taliban had asserted they would turn over to the US or international court if they were presented with evidence that Osama Bin Laden was the man responsible.
And the Al Quaeda which the CIA founded and trained years earlier.
That Al Quaeda?
Espionage perhaps?
You can't claim that a group is both a neocon propaganda group *and* funded by George Soros. Soros gave millions of dollars to the Democratic party during the 2004 election and stated that removing Bush from office was his central focus in life.
That has nothing to do with WL. The proposition posed was: if Saudi/Israeli/NK or Arab West Bank insiders OFFERED WL info, Wikileaks would take it.
Whether anyone listed there would offer is irrelevant to whether WL would take it.
Just because Angelina Jolie would not offer me her body for a weekend of hot steamy sex doesn't mean I wouldn't jump at the chance.
Hell, that likely has a death sentence for ME rather than Angelina unlike your case, where the insider is liable to be killed.
Since yesterday! Get with the program!
It's not about the military's activities being scrutinized or not. It's about properly issuing the information in a form that doesn't endanger civilian and military lives or give away military tactics, strengths, and locations (which ultimately protect lives).
Nobody's asked why these documents aren't released by the military and some assume they're hiding something. The answer might be as simple as the military is under tight budgetary scrutiny and they can't afford it. There is no reason why Obama can't make them public. He hasn't either. If anyone wants to blame the military, they also need to blame the president. That's the guy who makes the final decision.
So you'd go so far as to say that it is un-American to use such a word?
No, I wouldn't. America is geography so the concept of "un-American" applying to a person's behaviour is incoherent. I suppose my 'u' in behaviour gives away that I am "un-American". :-)
I wasn't singling you out for using the term; my hackles raise every time I encounter it and yours happened to be the post in front of me when I decided to speak out.
As for the choice? Gov'ts are ephemeral and can only form from principles (for good or ill), so I would think that basing one's decision on principles would be more productive.
"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" -- Kurt Vonnegut
When groups like Amnesty and Reporters Without Borders start warning you, it's really time to stop and consider whether what you're doing is really helping or hurting freedom.
I went to amnesty.org and searched for wikileaks. The most recent hit was from 26th July, regarding the original release by wikileaks with Amnesty calling for NATO to provide a clear and unified system for accounting for civilian casualties in Afghanistan. They go on: "The leaked documents support Amnesty International's concern ..."
If you could cite the warning from Amnesty to Julian Assange it would help, thanks, else I'll continue to believe what I read on Amnesty's site to be a true reflection of what Amnesty actually has to say on the matter.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
He likes the shock value. He is the type to put something out there because it is dangerous.
Several people have commented on his values and motivations. Do any of you actually *know* any of this?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Just watched "9th Company" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417397/
The phrase: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." comes to mind.
Also: "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." as I am sure all the military brass were thinking that with all their advanced weaponry that this would now be a cake walk against such primitive savages. I wonder what they think about a determined foe with the ability to make simple IED's now?
FYI, George Soros is a liberal, much hated by conservatives.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It was on Slashdot last Monday.
Well, at least you agree Marxism is wrong.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It worked well for President Wilson in WWI.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I think GP was referring to the founders of the organization - check the references. It looks like Soros was only a minimal contributor to RWB.
And on Tuesday, an Amnesty offical is quoted as saying 'that while other human rights groups had also sent a joint letter to WikiLeaks, Amnesty was not among its signatories.'
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Nancy Pelosi used the word to describe opponents of the health care bill. It's alive and well.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Neither - I'm not American. I guess that fits your original statement that we "mostly" fit into one of two piles. I guess then, that those not in the "mostly" camp land in some other pile.
So I'll pick pile C) please Bob. Or D) ... depending on what the other piles actually are.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Yes, just as I was pointing out how the Dubya whiners are doing the same thing by whining "But Bush did it too!!!" whenever Obama attempts to outdo Dubya in stupid when it comes to foreign and domestic policy. Just because Clinton did something doesn't excuse Dubya same as just because Dubya did something doesn't excuse Obama's latest braindead policy.
And PVT Manning committed treason.
I think you'll find he didn't, article three of your constitution is extremely clear on that point.
He asked for official help in redacting, and they rejected the request. If anyone gets killed because of this, it's because of the US military and their unwillingness to protect the people in those documents.
Sorry, but it's Assante's responsibility. He is the one (or at least he represents the organization) that wants to release documents. The Pentagon didn't give the documents to him, and the person that did so was acting against explicit orders from the Pentagon.
So, Assange and his friends are responsible for the aftermath. However, I don't think he is losing much sleep over it, since he was recently quoted:
He expressed some ambivalence about the need to protect Afghans who have helped the U.S. military. "We are not obligated to protect other people's sources," including sources of "spy organizations or militaries," unless it is from "unjust retribution," he said, adding that the Afghan public "should know about" people who have engaged in "genuinely traitorous" acts.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704407804575425900461793766.html
So, cooperating with the US military to fight terrorists within Afghanistan may be a "genuinely traitorous act". I think it's starting to become clear whose side that Assange is really on.
because ignorant replies like yours show you missed the point completely like the mods did.
It comes down to this, as other organizations have pointed out, there are many innocents in this conflict and people are willingly putting them at risk to score points, worse, when the risk is realized and those innocents are dead they will blame those who withheld the information in the first part.
Hence, it is very obvious how ignorant the self righteous here are. They have nothing to lose and freely scream their arrogance and ignorance from the safety of the computers.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Sorry, but it's Assante's responsibility.
Irrelevant. List others who share responsibility doesn't absolve anyone else of their responsibility. The US military had the opportunity to protect the people listed in those documents and refused. That makes them responsible.
Learn to love Alaska
The two of them deserve Nobel Peace Prizes to recognize them for the heroes they are.
What abuses would those be? To my knowledge the worst information in the documents is the fact that there's a war on. They were only secrets because the whole class of such summary field reports is classified by default and there is no routine process for declassifying them.
We are told "if you don't have anything to hide, why can't we read all your emails, watch every move you make, make you go through the naked body scanners and save the images to look at later, listen in on all your phone calls, put video cameras in your house, search you and your possesions without warrents, stop you ask you for "your papers", etc..?"
Why should we NOT be able to say the EXACT same thing!? If they don't have anything to hide why can't we see these reports? What is it they are trying to hide?
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Damn a troll for the truth see what happened since 9/11
He asked for something that was impossible.
How is it impossible? The US government might have been unwilling to do it, but it clearly was possible (otherwise he couldn't have (imperfectly) redacted the documents himself.
Assange has brought the fog of war into the homes of people who are ill-equipped to deal with it.
Oh brother... Why don't we go ahead and ban voting booths while we're at it - clearly the US population is ill-equipped to properly select its leaders.
"The military," not individuals.
Uh, the military is nothing more than a collection of a few million individuals. You can't have a conversation with "the military" if you want to be that pedantic.
Only people who are incapable of seeing anything beyond their narrow worldview can claim to have cornered the market on absolute truth.
All the more reason to minimize the number of secrets the government keeps. I never claimed I solely had the right to judge the right and wrong of this situation. I fully appreciate the need for operational security, but perhaps if the government were more open about stuff that didn't genuinely need secrecy people would be less likely to leak stuff like this.
Will someone please kill Julian and get it over with? I mean really.