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Wikileaks Vows Release '7x the Size' of Iraq Leak
CWmike writes "WikiLeaks has promised to release a load of information seven times bigger than the Iraq War Logs, which raised the Internet group's profile around the world and caused some nations to take notice of the issue of leaks of top-secret documents online. In a note on Twitter, WikiLeaks said, 'Next release is 7x the size of the Iraq War Logs. Intense pressure over it for months,' and asked supporters to continue donating to the cause. WikiLeaks did not say what the new release of information would be about."
WikiLeaks did not say what the new release of information would be about."
Oh no!
Not my top secret award winning BBQ Ribs recipe!
They're releasing more (7x more?), but have all the earlier pages been read, cataloged, etc? Do these people think we're just going to be sitting around during the holidays reading about US military mistakes?
So with my admittedly meager research (reading Slashdot and other sites), I can't figure out if the Wikileaks people are good guys or bad guys. Which is it?
Wikileaks accepts donations by mail. If you're paranoid, and you should be, buy a postal money order with cash and drop it in a mailbox. No return address!
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
which raised the Internet group's profile around the world and caused some nations to take notice of the issue of leaks of top-secret documents online
Have any of the documents leaked been Top Secret? According the reports I've read, the highest level of classification in these leaks has been Secret.
Perhaps part of the problem making such a determination is the asymmetric nature of their leaks....It's more a function of the people involved in the leaks
No - it is more a function of how best to release the information to stop the organization. If you worked for the Taliban et al and were disgusted at their behaviour your best bet to stop that behaviour would be to secretly leak information to western governments who will then act to stop attacks. If you released it via Wikileaks your own organization would know that the information has been released and switch the attack to somewhere else and after an attack the information is public anyway.
Compare that to someone disgusted with the behaviour of a western government. The only people to whom these governments are somewhat accountable is their electorate. Hence, to stop the behaviour you are unhappy with the only choice you have is to leak the data publicly so that their electorate get to see it and demand an explanation and changes. So I would argue that the leaks might well be symmetric but that the terrorist leaks are more effective when kept secret and western government leaks more effective when made public.
Careful, it is important to discriminate the Aljazeeras on the internet.
There is "english.aljazeera.net", which is a more or less factual, reliable news source from an arab perspective (think arab CNN). This is the "real" Aljazeera with the global TV channel.
Then there is "aljazeera.com", which is a trashy islamist/extremist propaganda website disguised as a news outlet (think FoxNews).
Stop. Just stop now.
I'm sick and tired of rape jokes. Rape is not funny. Just don't.
The other day I overheard a 12 year old repeat a rape joke from family guy. It takes a lot to appall me but that did.
You've proved your point - the US is far from perfect.
Where "far from perfect" equals "war criminals". But this is really illustrative of the ultimate futility of what Wikileaks is doing. Most Americans don't give a shit if the military is committing atrocities, either out of sheer apathy or because they actually approve of murdering civilians who are the wrong color and religion. And of those who do care and disapprove, there are people like you, who are tired of being bothered by unpleasant facts.
At the end of the day, if it involves fewer than six million Jews, hardly anyone gives a shit. And quite likely no one would give a shit about those six million Jews if the survivors and their descendants didn't work overtime to make sure that people remembered. Do you know who the other half to two-thirds of the victims of the Holocaust were? Or that they even existed?
The fundamental misconception that Julian Assange and his supporters -- including, to some extent, myself -- have about the world is the same belief that Anne Frank might have been disabused of when she was murdered in the camps: that despite everything, people are basically good. The truth is that, despite everything, hardly anyone can be bothered to pay attention unless it's painfully obvious that it affects them. And people being murdered on the other side of the planet seldom falls into that category.
The next leak is going to be seven times as large? Great. It's still going to be outweighed by public apathy by several orders of magnitude.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I served in Iraq twice and found many of the documents I wrote on Wikileaks, just check for Haditha from August 2006 to April 2007 or Karmah from Jan 2008 to August 2008. I wrote most of those. The funny thing is that all of these documents already actually available in unclassified form from the Marine Corps Historical Society in Quantico Virginia. The unclassified version from the Historical Society have the names, places, and weapons capabilities redacted. Which are the exact same redactions made by Wikileaks. So my question to the media is why haven't you been taking advantage of these documents from the archive? Why is this news when Wikileaks releases them? I think most journalists simply are too lazy to go through archives and just latch on to a story when it has some entertainment value. For all of the low-level documents Mr. Assange released, he has broken very little new ground. That is probably because most of it was already available from the military.