Moscow Has Eyes On WikiLeaks, Too

mark72005 writes "National-security officials say that the National Security Agency, the US government's eavesdropping agency, has already picked up tell-tale electronic evidence that WikiLeaks is under close surveillance by the Russian FSB, that country's domestic spy network, out of fear in Moscow that WikiLeaks is prepared to release damaging personal information about Kremlin leaders. 'We may not have been able to stop WikiLeaks so far, and it's been frustrating,' a US law-enforcement official tells The Daily Beast. 'The Russians play by different rules.'" Something tells me those rules might be in line with professor Tom Flanagan (an adviser to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper), who openly advocates assassinating Assange. Update: 12/03 00:56 GMT by S : Reader Red Flayer points out that Flanagan later recanted, saying, "It was a thoughtless, glib remark about a serious subject."

Comments

In Soviet Russia...

[bigspring]

... Wiki leaks you. I guess?

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Low Ranked Craig]

No. In Soviet Russia those who offend us ingest toxic radioactive metals

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[rainmouse]

'The Russianvs play by different rules'

All this outcry has done little except prove the exceedingly dubious moral fibre of very powerful elected political figures the world over. People who brag openly about transparency one day and murder to prevent it another day. I'm no longer convinced the Russian rules are really that different from our own.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[TheViciousOverWind]

It's somewhat sad that when China executes people who opposes the regime, the rest of the world cry "Murder!", but when someone releases information embarresing to them, the line is not as clear.

The way I see it. If the documents had been released by "real" journalists (what defines a real journalist anyway?) 10 at a time, there would be no talk about hanging said journalists. When thousands of documents is released at one time, we suddenly call for his head?

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[mrcaseyj]

The US better not kill Assange because then future leaks probably wouldn't be redacted and past leaks would probably be re-released unredacted. The names of confidential informants would be released directly into the open. Future leaks would still happen because this stuff wasn't leaked by Wikileaks, it was leaked by the army guy that stole them. He could have just emailed the documents to a thousand random email addresses and every newspaper in the world, including our enemies. He could have posted a torrent link on Slashdot and had it downloaded 10,000 times before the gov noticed it, by people here that have the expertise to distribute it reliably. Wikileaks is just publicizing and making convenient what would be out there anyway. The guy who actually leaked these things couldn't possibly have redacted them himself, and he couldn't have asked for help from the govt. So governments should encourage leaks to go through Wikileaks.

I don't know if Russia will kill him. He might be making himself hard to find.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[suzerain]

In my opinion, there's something conscious and subconscious going on here, with respect to the vitriolic calls for assassination, and so forth.

The conscious thing is simple: "we want to kill him because he released sensitive shit that's detrimental to us, either personally or strategically".

But I sense an unspoken outrage here, not so much at the content of the cables, but at the disruptive nature of what those in power see as a "flagrant violation of the rules". There have been countless examples of this throughout history...American revolutionaries employing guerrilla tactics against an enemy fighting an old-style war, to name but one.

Ultimately, I think the way this stuff goes down, in the old world, is that news outlets get ahold of a bunch of sensitive shit, and then they schedule lunch with the people on the ass-end of the offensive shit, and they say "look, do some stuff that helps us and we'll release A, B and C, but we'll gloss over D, E and F." And I think this happens largely because media are either for-profit concerns, or else funded by the governments. They can only go so far in exposing the truth.

Wikileaks, in the new world, has basically said "Fuck that. We're not going to play by the old rules. We're releasing all this stuff, but if you want you can help us redact some of it." They can only do that because they have little financial stake in the outcome of their actions. And I think that among the people used to the old system, this is an affront to the assumptions of people well-versed in these well-developed social and cultural mores. And furthermore, I think vast swaths of the public go along with the outrage simply because they really don't want to know "the truth". They'd rather accept some version of the truth that doesn't upset the apple cart, because they have more mundane concerns like putting their kids through school.

The lesson from all this, IMO, is that Wikileaks, basically, is the Internet (metaphorically because of what it represents). It's a game-changer. Since the mid-90's, when we saw this new communications medium emerge, this is what we all envisioned: information in control of the masses, citizen journalism, etc. and so on. It has finally emerged in the form of Wikileaks (and if they are destroyed, it will re-form under a different guise. The implication is this: the way the world works is going to change. This diplomatic cable leak will be remembered as a moment that the old-accepted rules started to be trampled on.

No matter what, it's going to be fascinating how it all shakes out. And, some people might die, lose their jobs, increase or decrease in terms of relevance. But ultimately life will go on. It always does.

One final comment related to the above poster: really, Wikileaks isn't leaking this information at all. The Guardian is. The New York Times is. Der Spiegel is. Le Monde is. Wikileaks just dumped the documents. But it's these news organizations that are making money off packaging all the supposedly damaging information into bite-sized chunks that the average consumer can digest. Yet, I haven't heard any calls for the assassination of the editor in chief of the New York Times.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[GameMaster]

Bull, even Holder had to choose his word wisely and talked about "filling the holes" in our present laws. The problem is that the "holes" he's talking about are there for a reason, it's called freedom of speech. Sure, they can go after the people that gave the documents to Wikileaks, assuming they can catch them, and those people have, most definitely, broken the law. However, Wikileaks is acting as a journalistic organization. You may not like their judgement (i.e. you may not agree with their politics) in what to publish or the quality of their attempts to redact sensitive information, but that doesn't make it a crime. You'll note, that the NY Times is helping Wikileaks release these documents and I believe I've heard that they are, also, helping to redact sensitive info from them. Where is all the political outcry to put a bullet in the heads of the Time's editorial staff? Hell, THEY'RE AMERICAN CITIZENS LIVING AND WORKING IN THE US! Holder could take a short car ride from DC to NYC and arrest them personally. He won't, because he knows that what their doing is legitimate expression of their freedom of speech rights as journalists and that they are a powerful enough organization to effectively defend themselves in court. Assange, on the other hand, is a much easier target to get away with smearing. THAT DOESN'T MAKE DOING SO RIGHT.

Of course, the other "holes" he's talking about are the fact that Assange is a foreign citizen who has been living in a non-extradition treaty country. Even if Holder and the rest of the government can rush absurd law changes into effect to cover their bruised egos it doesn't mean they have any legal jurisdiction over the man.

A side note to all of this, and one of the reasons I think they are going after him so hard to distract away from it, is that at least one of the documents he released may, actually, constitute evidence of Hillary Clinton commiting a serious federal crime. The understanding I've been given from some of the news reports is that, when we got together with the rest of the world to create the UN, we signed treaties that, explicitely, said diplomats assigned to the UN would never be used for espionage. IANAL, but my understanding is that according to US law (which I believe is, actually, in the body of the Constitution) when we sign a treaty with a foreign country(s) it become legally binding US law. If she really did, as the news reports have said, order UN diplomats to spy on foreign dignitaries (and, yes, only an idiot would think that telling them to steal credit card numbers is anything other than bald faced espionage) then that would seem to be an open-and-shut case of a crime being commited. I'm not saying this as a Republican/Conservative (in truth, while I'm not a huge fan of the Democrats, I tend to skew liberal in my beliefs and I HATE the Republican party). I'm pointing this out because, if it's true, I consider this kind of abuse of the law by a high ranking official a crime that should land them in Levenworth.

So?

[Vinegar Joe]

If you want to play James Bond, you better expect to get your hair mussed.

Re:So?

[Totenglocke]

Assange just needs to remember to only become shaken by their assassination attempts, not stirred.

Re:So?

[afidel]

What is the difference between wikileaks and the pentagon papers? Both used material that the government wanted to keep quite, was classified, and illegally leaked to the press. Yet one wins the Pulitzer and a generation later people are advocating for the others death?

Opportunity Knocks

[Ensign_Expendable]

Any Slashdoters out there who sell Polonium detectors could make a fast sale.

Tom Flanagan, Hilarious Idiot

[eldavojohn]

Prof Tom Flanagan said Barack Obama should "put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something" to rid the world of Mr Assange.

"Put out a contract?" Yeah, then maybe he should chew on a cigar while hanging out of a suicide door on a car as he fires two tommy guns from either arm? And then maybe he should cut off a horse's head and put it in Manning's jail bed? I'm sure after that contract is transmitted out to Kessel, Boba Fett will freeze Assange and deliver him to Sarah Palin. "Put out a contract?" He's the leader of the United States, not a gangster -- although I'm sure there'll be comments asking for the difference of the two.

Yeah put out a contract for drones. Obama should offer one billion dollars to the first drone to kill Assange. Well, you'd have to offer it to the drone before it detonates itself while targeting Assange ... or at least to the drone's family so the widow drone can send their little Predator to a nice drone school.

And this guy's an adviser to the Canadian PM? What kind of advice does he provide? "Well, sir, I think you should grow wings and save the internet or at least threaten to break its kneecaps if it doesn't shape up."

Re:Tom Flanagan, Hilarious Idiot

[Red Flayer]

It got buried down below, but I already made a post explaining that Flanagan recanted. The recantment was reported in lots of places yesterday, I saw it on the late news here in the NY metro area.

Flanagan explained it away as a "glib" response that doesn't actually represent what he feels to be the best course of action.

But, of course, you fed the troll editorialization. Don't worry, we all do it sometimes.

I just wish that Timothy and the other editors would fact-check their editorializations before they get into hot water.

Re:Tom Flanagan, Hilarious Idiot

[RJHelms]

And this guy's an adviser to the Canadian PM? What kind of advice does he provide? "Well, sir, I think you should grow wings and save the internet or at least threaten to break its kneecaps if it doesn't shape up."

Former adviser. Media outside of Canada likes to leave that part out, I guess because it makes it seem like our government is reacting to WikiLeaks.

No one in Canada takes him seriously, he just goes on CBC and says outrageous things. It's pretty amusing that he was taken seriously internationally.

Re:Tom Flanagan, Hilarious Idiot

[SJ]

The problem with this is the first statement is usually what you really meant to say. You shoot it out in the heat of the moment when all your mental filters are distracted. Flanagan may now say that he doesn't advocate hunting down another human and murdering them, but the fact that he said it in the first place shows that the thought is prominent in his subconscious.

Flanagan has recanted

[Red Flayer]

Summary is false. Flanagan does NOT currently openly advocate assassination of Assange. Flanagan recanted.

C'mon guys... I know it's too much to ask to have you guys fact-check the actual submissions... but you should seriously consider fact-checking your editorializations that succede them. Not only would it help ensure a better project, but would also help prevent getting your asses sued.

Re:Flanagan has recanted

[compro01]

"Recanted" in this case most likely means "Harper threw a fit when he heard what I said, so I'm taking it back before I get blackballed". There's a reason why he's a former head of staff and a former adviser, i.e. he's a political loose cannon if let near a camera or microphone and not the type of person Harper wants anywhere near him, lest his chances of ever getting a majority be destroyed.

subject goes here

[gTsiros]

if assange does anything that irritates russian intelligence (kgb fsb or whatever) the very next day he'll be an unfortunate victim of a very peculiar, uncommon and comically spectacular accident. russians aren't the half-assed weak-sauce fascists that the americans are.

Re:subject goes here

[bcmm]

Note that it is US officials that are saying he's pissing off Russia. It's looking a little bit as if they might be preparing to play by those Russian rules and hope someone else gets the blame.

Well getting rid of wikileaks is easy then

[gilbert644]

US has to have some sensitive embarrassing Russian intel so getting rid of wikileaks should be easy. Just upload it to wikileaks and have them publish and then just wait for wikileaks members to get sick from radiation poisoning.

Re:Assange

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Assange is a distraction and knows it. Chasing him wastes law enforcement resources and he knows that too. Wikileaks, the organization goes on while idiots chase their tails by chasing him. Moreover, if Wikileaks goes away, 10 more Wikileak clones will arise.

Governments, apparently, never learned the lesson of Napster. When Napster went, other free music sites were created. When those went, distributed torrent sites were created. When torrent sites go, another as yet unknown solution will occur.

With cameras, computers and the internet, almost nothing can be hidden anymore. Information leaks in the USA can't be stopped, except by regaining the respect and trust of the American people. In a wired world, the only way to do that is to play it straight, not lie and do what you say you'll do. As of yet, no political organization or movement in the USA is up to that task. When they appear, I'm sure they will be regarded as dangerous radicals by the mainstream media.

Re:Assange

[Anonymous Coward]

I get the impression that Assange is a hypocrite and egotistical douche.

He's not though. From the interviews I've seen he seems reasonable enough and even made sure to remove names from the Iraq docs. People always say he's an ass but I've never seen anyone actually justify it.

Re:Easy Answer

[Microlith]

But that would mean less power and money for them, and we can't have that. What gets me is how much the heads of other states are drooling over the prospect of the Russians assassinating people that work for Wikileaks. It's almost like they're too cowardly to take the next step into corruption that they so wish for, so are waiting for an already wholly corrupt government to do their dirty work for them.

No freedom of the Press?

[SirAstral]

I notice that a lot of people seems to conveniently forget their "Morals" when it's their neck on the chopping block. Julian has not mass murdered anyone yet he appears to be more hated than Saddam, Hitler, or Chavez right now.

Unless Julian himself did the work of taking these documents from officials by hacking or circumventing some security he should not be considered guilty of anything. The person's at fault are those that handed these documents over to him. They are the one's at fault.

I notice that our government officials are very good at making laws that "appear" to kosher with the constitution when they actually are NOT. Lets make it simple. If you don't like the first Amendment and its freedom of the press then you just make a law that says possession of "classified/government/secrect" information is illegal as heck. This way, you can maintain your image of supporting the Constitution while not having to fear it. You can classify the fact that they take a crap each morning as a security precaution and make it a capital offense if that information is given to the press!

Everyone has gone mad and we are feverishly giving our leaders far too much power!

Re:Assange

[melikamp]

When torrent sites go

Hahahahaha, everything you say is true. These clowns cannot even shut down http://thepiratebay.org/ after years and years of litigation and actually throwing individual people in jail. The media shitstorm around Wikileaks is getting more amusing every hour. Say what you want about Assange, but if his goal was to draw attention to factual info leaked into the wild by US government employees, then he succeeded beyond even his own wildest dreams.

Re:Truth? Let me tell you about TRUTH

[copponex]

This is the dumbest propaganda since Bristol crashed Dancing With The Stars.

The Constitution is founded upon the ideal that all men, regardless of rank or wealth, are equal in front of the eyes of the Law. That's what made it special. The fact that we expanded that to include all US Citizens, regardless of gender, land ownership, race, and religion is also special. The fact that we didn't resort to torture and extra-judicial murder in WWII was also special. That's why we were the Good Guys.

If you want some sort of yellow bellied compromise, that's okay too. Just realize the justification of murdering innocent people to preserve the State has been used by Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and every other corrupt government dating back to the beginning of time. This includes the country we fought to gain our independence.

Power for it's own sake is nothing new.

Re:Assange

[grcumb]

I support transparency, but I get the impression that Assange is a hypocrite and egotistical douche.

He may be a douche, but he is emphatically not a hypocrite. He's written several essays about what motivates him and why he's chosen the tactics that he has. You may not agree with his reasoning, but to his credit, he has been nothing if not consistent in his behaviour.

Wikileaks isn't the culprit

[MobyDisk]

Why is the focus on Wikileaks and it's leader? This is a great case of shooting the messenger. Bradley Manning was the solider who stole the information. How he disseminated it is not the point. Granted: Wikileaks posted the information, but if Wikileaks didn't exist they would have just posted it elsewhere. Do you think that if a dozen newspapers suddenly got this information in the mail, they wouldn't have posted it? I doubt it. And are the owners of the newspapers who posted the information being targeted by the federal government? I haven't heard anything about that.

Stopping Julian Assange isn't going to solve the problem. Better idea: infiltrate Wikileaks and corrupt the information before it arrives. Let them post garbage. Ruin their reputation.

Re:Truth? Let me tell you about TRUTH

[Totenglocke]

I'm going to assume from your comments that you're in the military. If so, then I have a cold, sad truth for you - you haven't done one goddamn thing to defend our freedom or the Constitution. In fact, you provide the muscle to the very people who take away our freedoms and piss on the Constitution. Despite the bullshit you're told in boot camp, you are NOT defending America or "serving your country". You are blindly serving the whims of corrupt politicians, without ever questioning to see if what they're telling you is the right thing to do or not. You are the very enemy you were told you were fighting against, because YOU are the threat the government uses to keep citizens cowed and following orders. Congratulations, you are a terrorist and you never had the good sense to realize it.

I'm well aware I'll probably get modded down since military worship is everywhere, but it doesn't matter. I'm not going to pretend like the armed thugs doing the ill will of corrupt politicians are somehow protecting us. The US Constitution specifically bans a standing army in a time of peace - makes you wonder why ever since WWII the US government has always found some bogus reason to perpetually be at war.

Re:Assange

[BasilBrush]

Fucking two women during overlapping periods doesn't make you an ass, unless you promised them something more than a fuck.

Backup copy in the bunker

[Animats]

Wikileaks is actually hosted in a data center in an underground bunker in a Swedish mountain. That was a good move. They actually need that level of protection.

The data center operator, Bahnhof, is fully behind Wikileaks in this. "The company's data center is "a kind of metaphor" for Bahnhof's commitment to resist any sort of intrusion, physical or legal. We're proud to have clients like these," he says. The Internet should be an open source for freedom of speech, and the role of an ISP is to be a neutral technological tool of access, not an instrument for collecting information from customers."

Wikileaks is not about the US

[joh]

This is the typical rubbish of someone who thinks Wikileaks aims at the US. It doesn't.

I'm pretty sure Rubin doesn't know that Assange won the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya. And Rubin doesn't know this because he doesn't care the fuck for who is murdered by whom in Kenya. Instead he thinks that Wikileaks is evil and out to destroy the US because it exposes what some US diplomats think about Putin. What an ignorant self-important wanker.

Re:Truth? Let me tell you about TRUTH

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh. I'm going to assume from your comments that you haven't seen the movie.

The context in the movie is that a military officer is offering excuses for giving the order -- an illegal order -- that resulted in the death of a soldier under his command. Exactly as you suggest, the speech sounds impressive but the rationale is deeply, deeply wrong. If you know the context, the point the original post is making by twisting that movie quote a little is pretty insightful.

Re:Truth? Let me tell you about TRUTH

[Maltheus]

I'm surprised you got modded up. I can't even argue this way with my liberal friends without being branded a monster. If you've taken an oath to defend the constitution, and go off and fight unconstitutional wars, then your are a hypocrite with no honor. If you're killing far more civilians than terrorists, then you have no sense of morality or justice. If the killing of those civilians leads to more desperate terrorists, then you're a direct threat to my life and should be put in prison.

I'm told time and time again, that even if I disagree with the war, that I should continue to support the troops. I have been told this by people who think Bush should hang for war crimes. But we don't have a draft and adults are responsible for their own actions. Claiming they are just following orders is an excuse that doesn't fly post-Nuremberg. These wars have lasted long enough that any soldier who wanted out, could have easily gotten out. I have no sympathy for any soldier who has remained (although I don't think the OP has any particular sympathy either, just quoting a movie).

Re:yes

[BasilBrush]

Wikileaks =/= Assange ...Again, see Polanski.

Again, note, Sweden =/= Switzerland. Apart from the first two letters of their names, they are very different countries.

I mean, Palin had more excuse for mixing up North Korea and South Korea. And she's a fucking idiot.

Yeah sure. LISTEN to the tape

[SmallFurryCreature]

LISTEN to the tape, this is NOT a case of wrong identification or a snap judgement made in the heat of battle. They shoot up clearly unarmed civilians in the act of evacuation wounded people and joke about it.

Any civilized country would have these soldiers in jail. The US does not. That is all you need to know about the US.