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Wikileaks Now Hosted By the Swedish Pirate Party
oskii writes "During his visit to the the Swedish capital Stockholm, Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange has struck a deal with the local Pirate Party. The party, which participates in the national elections next month, will host several new Wikileaks servers to protect freedom of press and help the whistleblower site to carry out its operation."
While it's a nice publicity stunt for the Pirate Party (with the Swedish elections coming up in little more than a month), WikiLeaks may also gain from it. Swedish politicians may well be pressured by the US government, or by others depending on what WikiLeaks publishes in the future, to close down those servers like they did with The Pirate Bay. But now that they are hosted by the Pirate Party that would be seen as a direct attack on a political opponent, with the obvious effects on public opinion. That will likely make them think twice before ordering a shutdown, which probably wasn't the case with The Pirate Bay.
And yes, government representatives giving direct orders to police and prosecutors is illegal in Sweden. But in practice it happens all the time due to widespread patronage and cronyism and few legal checks against it.
Looks like the RIAA finally got that army of copyright enforcers they've been looking for.
By "go wrong" do you mean "embarrass the hell out of the US military"?
There is a war going on for your mind.
Sure, because Faux News is held so terribly accountable whenever they get something wrong.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Why would anyone ever have to be held accountable for telling the truth?
That's completely irrelevant. We're talking about politics, here. Conflation is the order of the day. The Piratbyran have associated themselves with an organization that every government hates. Talking heads will brand them security risks, and their agenda will be completely torpedoed.
he also needs to be held accountable if things go wrong
That is an empty, meaningless phrase. What do "held accountable" and "things go wrong" mean? What applicable law covers it? Is the Pentagon "held accountable" when "things go wrong" and Afghan citizens die like chickens? Or when friendly fire kills US and NATO troops?
If you don't want things to "go wrong," pressure your elected representatives to withdraw our forces from the profoundly corrupt interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don't shit on the very people who are trying to expose the scammers and the war criminals.
Correct. It would be much easier for a foreign government (lets say the U.S), to pressure ISPs within its borders to prevent access to the website and/or persecute those who host leaked information within their borders. That's not necessarily easy or without political repercussion, however, and would probably draw some negative press coverage. Given the sometimes inexorable spread of information, if the Pirate Party were to become elected within the Swedish Parliament, then it would ensure that most of the information on Wikileaks would be available in some form or another, even if foreign governments succeeded in the aforementioned pressure efforts - as long as they remained elected.
Because he violated operational security which lead to the two charges filed against him.
Misconduct charges were brought against him for "transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system" and "communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source".
Both are violations of the UCMJ.
When he became a soldier in the US Army he performed this oath
"I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
So he disobeyed the orders of the officers appointed over him and violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, why shouldn't his ass be sitting in a cell?
Because he violated his orders and actively breached security protocol. **IT DOES NOT MATTER** what he "leaked" or why, it just matters that he broke the law. And in breaking the law by providing classified (even if most of the content was "common knowledge") documents to the 'public', he also provided classified documents to the enemy, in this case the Taliban. And those documents contained the names of Afghan citizens who were "collaborating" with NATO. And that puts them in danger, and makes putting them in danger a lot easier for the Taliban.
You could say that he aided the Taliban. Sounds like about half of "giving aid and comfort" or "aiding and abetting". No, where have I seen that phrase before? Oh, yeah... the definition of treason. And last I checked, treason is a hanging crime. Not only that, but the very center of hell is reserved for traitors, turncoats and informers. So, assuming hell exists and it is as Dante wrote, then he'll likely have some time to discuss the morality of his actions with the people he outed to the Taliban who were subsequently offed.
At least, that's probably what the congressman in question was thinking.
You mean media whore....
.. he gets upset when he isn't getting enough attention.
A whistle blower would go through the data and make a something that at least resembles a case. He doesn't want to do any real work, like analyze the data, strip out names to protect innocent parties, or provide only truly relevant data. Instead, he prefers to vomit data and let other people make sense of it.
Assange suffers from attention deficit disorder
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Sorry, you must be new here.
The truth is not nearly as important as their truth, or my truth, as told to me, by me (and others).
Beyond self-deception, there are many who are drawn to the idea of being a sort of "information royalty." The idea that you know more than others, and deserve to know more, because you're special, is very attractive.
Then there's the reality of tactical and strategic advantages. Sometimes you're just better off knowing more than others (information asymmetry), and sometimes you're just better off with others dead. It's a matter of personal assessment. I'm not talking about morality here, just power. For most of us, killing someone else would be something that we would at least say is unthinkable. For some of us, punishing someone for telling the truth would be in the same boat. Both of these proportions may be significantly smaller than you or I would hope.
It's obvious to me that by aligning with a particular political party, Wikileaks is publicly announcing the abandonment of any semblance of editorial neutrality. Their Noble effort to bring additional transparency to the world is now forever tainted.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
For the same reasons we have to have laws restricting the dissemination of top secret truths. Some truth-tellings result in people dying.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Basically there's two possibilities:
1) Bradley Manning chose to leak the documents, knowing that he would be punished for the leak. In this case I can't feel sorry for him -- he knew what the consequences would be and made a choice. That's his right as an adult.
2) Bradley Manning was dumb enough to think that releasing the documents, which pretty well narrow down who and where he, the leaker, could be, under the alias 'bradass87' rendered him anonymous, and the U.S. government would never figure out who he was. In this case I can't feel sorry for him because it would mean he's one of the stupidest people alive.
So, either way I don't feel bad for him.
Now that we're on the subject, could you please cite credible reports showing that wikileaks did in fact result in "putting specific innocent people at greater risk?" I'm not nearly as interested in spin and rhetoric from politicians and the commercial news media.
It's more just falling in line with the party, and offering another level of protection for the site.
The reason that Sweden's Pirate Party got political support in the first place was because Americans pushed political pressure on the Swedish government to take action, thus causing the first raid on The Pirate Bay. When the public got wind of this, there was massive public outcry saying that they shouldn't allow American corporate interests (and American copyright law) dictate what the Swedish government did. So all of a sudden there was a ton of political support for people that opposed American-style copyright.
This is a political move not to equate wikileaks to the Pirate Party, but instead to show that the Pirate Party operates as a safe haven for information so it cannot be tampered with by foreign interests (most notably, the American government and American corporations, who seem to believe that they are the authorities to determine what copyright law SHOULD be rather than the constituents of these so-called democracies).
This just falls in line with what the party represents. I think that the Swedish people would sooner resent America for trying to impose its beliefs on their democratically elected governments than they would be worried of the consequences of staving those companies off. It's not like America is about to bomb them because they run filesharing sites. And if they did, then Sweden would have an entire international body of allies who would object.
Karma: Non-Heinous
So would you like to offer up the truth of your home address and some times when your family will be home alone?
There are truths that people shouldn't have to be prepared to defend their lives against, and there is no perfect security system.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
How can you "hide" behind freedom of the press? Do you only consider "press" to be the corporate propaganda mass-media drivel fed to you by Fox and Friends? If anything, Assange is much more of a reporter than anyone in the US media. He takes information, and he disseminates it freely to the public, without modifying it (except for removing names and the like). That's much more in line with what the "press" should be than the constant editorializing you get from Glenn Beck. We live in an open society (or rather, we purport to...), and with that comes danger. We claim to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the rest of the world, but then cover up our actions by burying them under the cloak of "National Security".
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
**IT DOES NOT MATTER** what he "leaked" or why, it just matters that he broke the law.
Geeze, get a grip! Of course it matters. I don't mean to Godwin this thread, but I just talked to my father about this sort of thing yesterday, and he brought up the example of people hiding Jews in their basements etc. during the nazi era in Germany. Imagine someone back then said the same thing:
**IT DOES NOT MATTER** why he hid those Jews from the nazis, it just matters that he broke the law.
Seriously, I don't think this needs any further comment.
"I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;..."
Its perhaps ironic that the only credible threats to the constitution reside near the top of the chain of command. Terrorists have never threatened our constitution. A succession of American senators, congressmen, and presidents have done all the damage.
"So he disobeyed the orders of the officers appointed over him and violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, why shouldn't his ass be sitting in a cell?"
No good deed goes unpunished.
First, it's Cheney. Second, it was Armitage and Novak.
Clearly, he means that if anyone dies in Afghanistan, it's Assange's fault.
Youve got it wrong. The Afghan informants blood is on US military that does an half assed job of protecting their informants. Do you seriously beleive this is the only leak of this and other sensitive information? Spies didnt suddenly become unemployed last month you know.
HTTP/1.1 400
**IT DOES NOT MATTER** what he "leaked"
You heard it here first people: if bsDaemon came across documents that showed the US Military was shoveling terrorist suspects into ovens, he'd ignore it and continue to do his job. Or maybe not that... maybe if he came across documents showing that we were burning women and children to death with phosphorous weapons, he'd just ignore it and continue to do his job. Okay, maybe not that...
Of course the line is drawn somewhere. To pretend otherwise is ***FUCKING INHUMAN*** and a good way to end up doing a lot of evil shit for the paltry reward of state loyalty.
I don't think you're allowed to call your opinion "humble" when its calling for anyone who's ever committed treason to be shot. Should Schindler have been shot? The thousands of families that hid Jews? The Quakers who ferried slaves to freedom? Oh wait, I guess we don't need to shoot THOSE people because God's on our side, right?
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
The Pirate Party believes that websites like The Pirate Bay and Wikileaks are legal and should remain up. Since they have the power to act on those beliefs directly (while also trying to change and/or clarify the laws to ensure their legality) they have chosen to do so by hosting the sites in such a way that it is almost impossible for them to be taken down. They are simply standing up for their beliefs in a very public and open way, it doesn't necessarily mean that they support the actually things these sites do. Imagine a police officer doing his duty to protect a KKK member from a violent mob, it hardly means that the police officer supports the KKK.
Because he's in the military. If an order is unlawful, he has a duty to disobey it. But, he'd better be right that the order, in this case, following operational security, is unlawful. He will have his day in court. If that order is found to not have been unlawful, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
IMO, it's not really for a 22 yr old E-4 to go about deciding which information should truly be secret and which shouldn't. That decision is way above his pay grade and a lot more than 1 guy decides what is secret and what isn't. If Manning didn't want to be in the Army and do wtf he's told, he shouldn't have joined.
Please do. If you find any Swedish secrets we would sure want to know.
Some thing we would like to know about is:
*) What did happen in the government during the tsunami in Thailand? Why do we need to keep these e-mails secret for 50 years?
*) What did happen to Raul Wallenberg?
*) Why is a big part of the Palme murder still classified?
*) Why can't we all see the old Stasi files handed over from Germany?
*) Did we really had submarines here during the cold war and where they US or Soviet?
**IT DOES NOT MATTER** what he "leaked" or why, it just matters that he broke the law.
Some people think that he broke the law. Some people think that he didn't. What matters is whether he is charged and convicted in a court of law. He may deny that he was the source of the leak. There may be insufficient evidence for a guilty verdict. He may admit to being the source of the leak, but be able to argue that the classification of the material itself violated Executive Order 13292 (Sec 1.7) ("in no case shall information be classified in order to conceal violations of law").
There have been similar precedents of not prosecuting or convicting whistleblowers. Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, and stated that the documents "demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates". "Deepthroat" leaked the details of Watergate to the press and was never prosecuted.
Hypothetically, if Obama were ordering intelligence operatives to wiretap every American citizen, would leaking this information be a crime of treason, punishable by death? How about publishing it?
The U.S. government has been leaking classified information of other countries for over hundred years. Make sure there isn't blood on your knuckles before you accuse someone of assault buddy.
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
the Afghan informants' blood is on your hands now!
More then 30.000 civilians, many of them kids, died in Afghanistan and many more are seriously wounded since the beginning of occupation. If anybody could handle THAT blood on his hands, Swedes will handle their tiny part you mentioned quite comfortably, I guess.
839*929
The attitude is not "I can do illegal stuff in your country because I'm not there" - the extradition treaties between Sweden and USA work just fine for such criminals.
The attitude is that "The stuff is not illegal, even if some other government has sold out and outlawed it." Swedish government and Swedish people have absolute sovereign rights to decide that doing X in their country is completely legal.
(Unless they have also voluntarily made an international treaty saying that they will do otherwise. Then they would be contradicting themselves and the treaty would be overriding. But in this or piratebay case no such obligations prevent Sweden from going whatever way they wish)