Slashdot Mirror
Secret Plan To Kill Wikileaks With FUD Leaked
An anonymous reader writes "Three information security consultancies with links to US spy agencies cooked up a dirty tricks campaign late last year to destroy Wikileaks by exploiting its perceived weaknesses, reads a presentation released by the whistleblowers' (pdf) organization that it claimed to be from the conspirators. Consultants at US defense contractors Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary proposed to lawyers for a desperate Bank of America an alliance that would work to discredit the whistleblowers' website using a divide and conquer approach. Since the plan was hatched, disgruntled volunteers mentioned in the PDF broke away from Wikileaks, financial institutions withdrew services, [Jacob ] Appelbaum was harassed by the US government, and Amazon denied service to Wikileaks' website."
Of course the motivation for infiltrating Anonymous was profit as Arron Barr said in an e-mail:
Step 1 : Gather all the data
Step 2 : ???
Step 3 : Profit
Sort of an amusing story and very easy to see where Mr. Barr made the error of becoming part of this event (demonstration or debacle depending on your views) and seeking media attention. Pretty clear he was in over his head and doing his own thing thinking he was dealing with three individuals who were two bit morons. It almost deserves the cheesy "hunters have become the hunted" movie tag line. Well, the soft hack of HBGary Federal appears to be providing more than enough material for this to be a focus of media attention, congratulations are in order for Mr. Barr and let's all wish him the best of luck with step three. He's gonna need it!
My work here is dung.
Oh so this was a secret plan was it?
Was it commissioned by the ministry for the bloody obvious?
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Looks like were at part 3 now.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
It would appear that a variety of groups, representing a de-facto merger of state and corporate power, are allied to destroy you.
On a scale from "1" to "highly ironic" how would you describe this confirmation of your assertion that the "representative" goverments actually pend a lot of time doing dirty deeds in the shadows?
Palantir Technologies? Really?
Was "Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall Inc" already taken?
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201106/6798/Data-intelligence-firms-proposed-a-systematic-attack-against-WikiLeaks
Can't say I'm surprised but the tactics and manipulation they discuss but I find it outrageous all the same.
However, the fact that they felt the need to present such a teach-yourself-how-to-destroy-wikileaks-in-21-days presentation in such a dumb manner is somewhat encouraging.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
How do we know that this isn't disinformation from the intelligence firms to make genuine future leaks look like they might be 'planted' to make competing governments and corporations look bad?
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
The sudden appearance of rape charges, schisms and turmoil within the organization, etc. were pretty obviously concerted efforts to discredit the organization and Assange. Didn't take a genius to see it all coming after his big leaks started, or to know who was behind it. I knew a discrediting campaign was coming down back before Assange even met his "rape victims" or faced a schism.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You can't win, .... If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine. -- Obiwan Kenobi
– WikiLeaks has since turned to Swedish internet
host Bahnhof AB, which is literally located in a
Cold War bomb shelter
Oh boy, that PDF is nothing more than a sales pitch written by someone who probably believes the hype of "cyber-warfare" as portrayed in movies, and is trying to excite some clueless bank executives into getting involved in the action as portrayed.
It does sound exciting with talk of "global networks, movement between countries", although in reality such movement would just be scp -r /var/www/wikileaks user@server-in-foreign-country:/var/www/.
Of course, as a sales presentation it's well done, I could imagine the bank executive getting excited that he could initiate a "cyber-hunt" to kill the organization.
Does not mean they were following some sinister plan.
Julian Assange has already proven he is hard to get along with and has his own agenda which may not prove compatible
with other people who want a wikileaks without Assange's anti-us agenda.
Wouldnt a better move be to prevent further leaks than to kill the messenger? Offing Wikileaks wont solve the problem at all.
Even better would be going to the source of the problem, America meddling in other states internal affairs through very shoddy practices. Killing politicians, supporting torturing dictators, pressuring, lying, stealing and toppling democratic states are not something a superpower should have to succumb to, thats for banana republics.
If this document is genuine, this company "Palantir" has suggested and supports activities that are not only criminal in Europa but also in the US. We're talking about libel and slander, "cyber-terrorist" attacks on foreign it business and infrastructure (servers hosted in Sweden, France), and so on.
I don't know whether the document itself gives enough grounds for a lawsuits, probably not, but if these guys do anything of what they suggest or even aid in it, and it can be traced back to them, I feel a lawsuit coming in 3...2...1...
By the way, how are the investigations of the DoS attacks against Wikileaks server going? Any news on that?
Talk about a role-reversal...the discreditors become the discredited. Alas, this is a great blow to the future of the Wikileaks conversation. Now all critics legitimate and otherwise can be lumped together as part of a coordinated effort against Wikileaks. It's now easier than ever to accuse someone who demands more self-scrutiny from WL and its supporters as a "shill" or "operative". And this time we have these 3 companies to blame.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
This is not America....
shalalalala
A little piece of you,
the little piece in me,
will die
(this is not a miracle)
For this is not America
Blossom fails to bloom this season,
promise not to stare,
too long
(this is not America)
For this is not the miracle
There was a time,
a storm that blew, so pure
For this could be the biggest sky
And I could have the faintest idea
For this is not America
shalalalala
shalalalala
shalalalala
This is not America (No)
This is not....
shalalalala
Snowman melting from the inside
Falcon spirals to,
the ground
(this could be the biggest sky)
So bloody red, tomorrow's clouds
A little piece of you,
the little piece in me
will die
(this could be a miracle)
For this is not America
There was a time,
a wind that blew, so young
For this could be the biggest sky
And I could have the faintest idea
For this is not America
shalalalala
shalalalala
shalalalala
This is not America (No)
This is not,
shalalalala
This is not America (No)
This is not,
shalalalala
This is not America (No)
This is not,
shalalalala
From Falcon and the Snowman.
Not really linked perhaps, but what else can you say when movie plots become really but to think of a movie based on reality?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
His programmer had doubts, saying that the scraping and linking work he was doing was of limited value and had no commercial prospects. As he wrote in an e-mail:
I'm a big tall mofo.
The plan was pitched to Bank of America on the 3rd. Amazon and EveryDNS already had withdrawn services so I think it's a stretch to try to insinuate that Paypal doing the same on the 4th is somehow related to a proposal submitted to a separate financial institution on the 3rd. It's also not entirely surprising that people pointed out to be weak links and ready to leave Wikileaks turned out to be weak leaks and decided to leave Wikileaks. This sounds like a case of some defense companies ever looking to scrape up some profits pointing out the blindingly obvious and now when a couple of the obvious things happen on their own people trying to attribute it to a successful implementation of said plot.
It's always nice to have a good conspiracy - but chronology is a bitch. Even before the plan was hatched, Paypal has canceled Wikileaks accounts twice, disgruntled volunteers were gruntling very publicly, Wikileaks had to change providers several times and Julian Assange reported harrassment from every government he had to deal with.
The interesting thing here is not the PDF, but the backstory - it may suggest the US Govt believes BoA is the target of the next Wikileaks leak.
The PDF appears to mostly be a "You can trust us to protect you against future leaks" sideshow. Presumably Palantir/etc want to build some smarts into BoA.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/02/09/security-firms-pitching-bank-of-america-proposed-targeting-glenn-greenwald/
If you've read anything that blogger Greenwald has written, you'd know how true this.
I'll say it again.
If US intelligence agencies and their actions, security, political connections and control of information are *REALLY* this bad, the US has a much bigger problem than a website.
If this is how a genuine intelligence agency acts and gets caught doing so by the equivalent of a back-bedroom UFO hunter, then the first ever *real* cyberwar will see them wiped off the planet.
The UK, in the middle of a war, infiltrated by spies, managed to capture, analyse, decrypt, monitor and intercept German communications for YEARS, to the extent that they could literally direct the enemy to move their defences to cover false "threats" while watching them do that. And most of exactly what happened took 50+ years to come out and we still don't know *all* of it.
The US, in peacetime (so no major distractions, counter-incentive, etc.), can't stop their own soldiers putting documents into the public domain, with HUGE fanfare, then "rubber-stamp" those documents as official by "hunting down" a civilian not really related to the leak, when the guy handed himself into a police station in an allied country and told the newspapers about it. If the US "anti-cyber-warfare" campaign is anywhere near as ineffective, you better hope nobody tech-savvy *bothers* to go to war with the US.
"Consultants at US defense contractors Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary proposed to lawyers for a desperate Bank of America an alliance that would work to discredit the whistleblowers' website using a divide and conquer approach."
I had to read this sentence several times before it made any sense. The first few times it sounded like the defense contractor consultants asked some lawyers to marry them in order to obtain the Bank of America, who was inexplicably desperate -- all of which would discredit Wikileaks.
I think what was attempting to be conveyed was the following:
"Consultants at US defense contractors Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary proposed an alliance with a desperate Bank of America which would work to discredit the whistleblowers' website using a divide and conquer approach."
Proverbs 21:19
Wait a minute. Isn't Wikileaks reporting a leaked report that there was a conspiracy against them a little bit like saying God exists, because the Bible says so?
Government and the control of society is about more then absolute evidence, it is about state of mind.
There are those in society who wish for private industry to have greater control of society without an elected body having the right to control them. So be it, but do we then just accept this without questioning what kind of mentality these self appointed power brokers posses?
This is not a criminal trial, it is a hiring process and during such a process I want to see from your past and current behavior how you are going to act in the future. So, if people propose banks like Bank of America should have LESS regulation and LESS government oversight shouldn't we first examine whether that is a good idea?
No, them telling us it is a good idea is NOT good enough fool. And THIS leak shows exactly what the mentality of the Bank of America is. No, not because there is proof they did this but because they EVEN considered it.
That requires some advanced thinking but basically goes that for some thought crimes are indeed crimes. Some people/institutions should NOT even be allowed to consider certain things.
The Kenedy assassination is a prime example of this. Was the CIA behind it or not? Doesn't really matter, it has been proven beyond a doubt that senior CIA officials had plans to assassinate the president of their own country. THAT is enough of a crime in itself. If the protector of democracy even dares thinking of killing a democratically elected leader the crime has been done.
The Bank of America by even being involved in this have shown that banks can not be trusted to be open and that private businesses will fall all over themselves to supply services to lie to the people. That means we have once again been shown that banks and private industry need strict government supervision.
That is what this leak shows.
Not some timeline of crime to be fought over in court to sentence some individuals but the whole sale condemnation of private business as being unworthy of trust.
But of course, you are a fool and trust the bank because merely considering lying isn't bad at all... no no, let them work without oversight I am sure that when something really bad happens they will tell us honestly...
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The more one attempts to discredit an institution or individual, the more weight it gives to the information or ideas that they have. And the more interested I am in hearing it.
Come on, folks. The cliques in high school have this figured out. The heads of our intelligence agencies must have been home schooled.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's hardly surprising that there is a market for plans in how to manipulate public perception. There's a whole industry that exists specifically for this. People who find themselves in that industry have to set aside their conscience to do the job and put food on the table. They rationalize it as a game or a competition or just business. Some are probably reading slashdot right now.
It's the sad nature of civilization that we are a huge crowd of people just trying to put one foot in front of the other. It's hard to imagine that our small push forward on the person in front of us is really contributing to the squeeze that is crushing people to death somewhere else in the crowd.
Did anyone read that presentation? It was pathetic. It was simply a miss-mash of infosec buzzwords and poorly formatted screenshots. It had no new or useful information. And man, those 'credentialing' slides at the end were simply atrocious. I'm in consulting and I can't believe that this kind of content actually sells work to the federal government. Remind me again why I'm pitching to private companies that actually expect some value?
Man, these people make me hate myself for sharing a job title.
What did you expect he'd get for attacking the government? A good conduct ribbon? Toss him in Gitmo, and throw the key away!
Don't forget that they made Julian Assange a pompous douchebag by drugging his food. A side effect, perhaps intended, is the paranoia that makes him think he'll be imprisoned at Guantanamo. They also slipped a defective condom into his wallet so they could trump up rape charges.
Except there are no legitimate critics of wikileaks, not anymore.
There *were* legitimate critics of wikileaks way back when they screwed up the redaction of the Afgan War Logs, Amnesty international even yelled at them, but after that criticism wikileaks has been sooo slow & careful about publication that nobody reasonable could complain. Afaik, all human rights groups are quite happy with wikileaks demonstrated willingness to respond to legitimate criticism and current self-scrutiny.
And all the rape charges already convinced anyone reasonable who might worry that wikileaks is more important than any collateral damage.
All that'll change here will be some American libertarians who're stupid enough to belief Fox news even half the time will now lump Fox news criticism of wikileaks into the half they recognize as bullshit, but honestly the rape charges already did that for the only such Fox news viewers I know.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
and journalistic techniques, such as having multiple sources confirm the same story.
I lol at the US sometimes. They voted for a negro without even noticing. I mean how to do you let THAT one get past you?
this aint the Greatest Generation...
I like how HBGary specialize in "Information Operations (INFOOPS)"
INF--OOPS! is right.
That's a dishonest rhetorical device; any "links" to US spy agencies are irrelevant here, the article clearly states that these were independent companies offering their services to another independent company.
Wow, also dishonest. The summary, and the article, are implying a causal relationship with a lot of handwaving, but with no evidence that X caused Y. How about this: "Since the plan was hatched, the frequency of shark attacks have risen, the Packers won the Superbowl, and the Northeastern United States suffered one of the worst snowstorms in decades."
He won against the British. The guy who shot him was upset about the conflict between India and Pakistan.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win, then someone shots you, then you bless them.
So these Evil Consultants are running a propaganda campaign about Wikileaks, and Anonymous leaks their "secret plans", including the plan to try to sell a disinformation plan to BofA... But can we trust all the incriminating pages in the leaked secret plans? Could Anonymous have planted a bit of extra content in the leaked material? Could the Evil Consultants themselves planted bogus material in the leak, and leaked it to Anonymous themselves?
Besides all the obvious propaganda campaigns against Wikileaks, and all the real or potentially real problems with it, if I wanted to interfere with them in the future, I'd start trying to leak bogus information, either through them if possible, or through competing BogusLeak services. If real secrets are going to get out, one of the few defenses is to start leaking lots of fake secrets so people don't trust the real ones. Time to start leaking the US Air Force Roswell UFO secrets, time for BofA to start leaking accusations that their mother was a hamster and their father smelt of elderberries.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Does anyone at Wikileaks ever check the leaks for validity?
Could someone make shit up and submit it and then Wikileaks releases it as fact?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I think this means too many cooks in the kitchen syndrome. You've got everybody and their dog running around doing their own thing, but nobody is accountable and nobody is in charge. This is how a great country becomes a fallen empire.
Despite his claims of transparency and change, Obama is running things just like Bush did.
Bush tried to shut people up who revealed his dirty doings, now Obama is doing the same with WikiLeaks.
Bush tortured Lindh, now Obama is torturing Manning.
I voted for Obama because I didn't want four more years of Bush. Can he at least _try_ to act like a Democrat?
We only have a WikiLeaks because Obama isn't delivering on the alleged transparency he promised at all. And what's coming out of WikiLeaks? Massive fraud, just like we had under Bush.
Way to go Obama.
"Since the plan was hatched, disgruntled volunteers mentioned in the PDF broke away from Wikileaks, financial institutions withdrew services, Apelbaum was harassed by the US Government and Amazon denied service to Wikileaks' website."
Wow. Looks like "after which, because of which" is alive and well at WikiLeaks. Complete, total proof that it happened, and why. The powers of darkness tremble before your late-adolescent fantasies....
Best five books to read to fully grasp my comments: Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker, Brothers, by David Talbot, JFK and the Unspeakable, by James Douglass, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics, by Richard Parker (paying close attention to the three chapters on the JFK administration, and the brilliant final chapter, and, The Rich and Super-Rich, by Ferndinand Lundberg.
for killing Alexander Humilton.
you get shot by your own countrymen.
So these Evil Consultants are running a propaganda campaign about Wikileaks, and Anonymous leaks their "secret plans", including the plan to try to sell a disinformation plan to BofA... But can we trust all the incriminating pages in the leaked secret plans? Could Anonymous have planted a bit of extra content in the leaked material? Could the Evil Consultants themselves planted bogus material in the leak, and leaked it to Anonymous themselves?
I would like to subscribe to your news letter, but only if it dramatically goes, "Dunt dunt DUUUUNNNT!", and tells me what happened in previous episodes when I open it.
Seriously?? I hope this presentation does not represent the best commercial security services you can get in the US. What a disappointment! And did you see the "massive" server log analysis of 2xx entries towards the end? What a joke! More likely this presentation file itself is a bait and is rigged so security officials can see where it travels. What better way to see where servers/friends/conspirators are and their available resources. Hope someone "scrubs" this file.
First Tunisia.
Then Egypt.
Information - and people - just want to be FREE.
Yemen, Pakistan, Jordan or Saudi Arabia is next.
The problem with FUD attacks on wikileaks is that the people doing the FUD don't get how fast information flies in the Twitter and Facebook age - and how we in America support Freedom and Democracy worldwide with the beating fire in our hearts.
But wikileaks is showing people what I knew when I had a SECRET clearance - most classified information is over-classified and highly boring.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
even a lot of fools here, who are supposed to be more cognitively apt and perceptive than the rest of the average population, have started to rail and rage against wikileaks, just because 'it was concentrated on america'. they were not able to smell anything fishy at all, despite all that cognitive power. couldnt see the forest, from the trees.
i think, the reason why it is inevitably concentrated on america and american affairs, is well pictured with the happenings described in the article.
Read radical news here
With a slightly perverse view of good hacking and bad hacking (US: good, China: bad) welling up, perhaps it's time for us to just say that electronic trespassing isn't trespassing at all. If it's the wild west for hackers, with no legal repercussions whatsoever for hacking someone else's systems, wouldn't the almighty invisible hand of the market dictate significantly-improved security?
At present, we use mediocre security, far less capable and strict than modern hardware could afford, because it, combined with the threat of legal action, appears sufficient to hold back the script kiddies (it isn't). This leaves us open to corporations and governments that have sufficient resources to, say, crack any of the limp-wristed protections that we have in place. This also makes the mere use of anonymization and encryption packages "probable cause" sufficient to trigger governmental abuse due to their relative rarity.
The weakness of A5/1 GSM encryption is well known, as is the intentional weakening of this encryption standard by the French government before its adoption. In a world where open-air and internet hacking were not only commonplace but also fair game, would people tolerate such weak systems? Would a rise in the tide of hacking(cracking, whatever, purists) raise all security boats?
Other illegal actions would still remain illegal, of course. Fraud, theft of real or intangible goods (but not mere copying of information), harassment, and every other crime that could be reasonably construed to apply to the information realm would still be applicable, but the mere act of using publicly presented systems and gathering publicly presented information would not be criminalized. And, yes, servers on the internet and wireless communications are publicly presented.
We're being hacked already. Maybe a level playing field will be a stronger one.
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. The following is for those folks who need a broadshot of how the software Palantir makes works.
Palantir is a tool owned by the company of the same name for data visualization. That in and of itself doesn't sound like such hot stuff until you see it in action. It was originally designed by PayPal (the same one that cut WL funds, yes) to deal with their concerns over being defrauded by the Russian mafia. If only to that end it's shockingly effective.
Best way to think of how it works is like a super pumped-up version of Maltego. You build a relatively small database, tell palantir where it is, and ask it to examine all possible links to a piece of data in that set. It can then within seconds depending on data available pull this either into a basic diagram, a geographic region, show flow of information (think money between accounts), and all sorts of other fascinating information on an extremely large scale that's hard to get otherwise. The more information you throw at it the better it works and it can run on common hardware (we're running an installation for several hundred gig databases on a few x86 machines).
The latest iteration of the software, Palantir Mobile, was designed for the battlefield where operators at a base could deliver information in real-time to squads. Such as rolling down the road and being able to SHOW the troops on a common phone where there were four reported IED attacks.
It works in seconds and is scary as shit when you think of how modest its requirements are. Personally I don't see it as a tool so much as a weapon. If we're in an information war then Palantir is, seriously, the all-seeing eye.
Lol are you talking about that retard with a enormous chip on his shoulder at cryptodome?
Fuck off shill.
Am I really the only person who immediately thought of this xkcd after reading TFS?
I hope Wikileaks has some bad ass dirty to clean capability.
I'd say sooner rather than later the mole in Bank of America is going to be busted.
Did Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary pirate a large amount of MPAA protected IP last summer? Should their internet connections be terminated immediately? Did they plan a weapon of mass raping for African conflicts and Swedish cities as a consultation job? Do they wash their hands after toilet?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't think his agenda is anti-US. It's just that since ww2 the US has been the bad guy in every major conflict. I doubt he has any racism or some other predisposition against the US.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I'm kind of sick of all these stupid plots by the US or other countries to undermine Wikileaks. Why can't they just pass off the site as being falsified information and ignore it the way they like to do with many other things that are controversial. By trying to quash the rumors and released documents with scheduled and repeated secretive attacks they are only making the dirty papers released look dirtier. They (the US Government that is) are only making our country look bad. Other countries don't hide what they are doing from the public eye, and when people say, "Hey!! What you are doing is WRONG!!" they just shrug their shoulders and say, "So?". But point one measly finger at the US and say the same thing and they come back with, "Shut up or we'll break all your F**kin fingers, murder your family, destroy your social life, and destroy your organization!!" Give it up US. Take a fu**ing chill pill. Relax. Shrug it off and move on with life. Sure some of the things you did were bad and horrible and the worst sh*t you could have possibly done, but no one is perfect, right?
Or, at least that is my take on things.
Mumble mumble mum....
Anything that destroys wikileaks is a good thing in my book.
Just this morning they released documents meant to destabilize the price of oil. F Wikileaks .. I say jail every one of those asshats.
he is anti government at best, wiki leaks has released documents on other countries, nothing as big as what got released in America however, but that indicates to me that he isn't just "anti American"
It's just that since ww2 the US has been the bad guy in every major conflict.
Korean War? Desert Storm?
If you'd said "does not prove", I'd agree with you. "Indicate", though, I think I could go along with it indicates it. I'd say it multiplies my belief about as: := (x * 1.1) := 1 - x := y / (y + z)
let P("they did it at the behest of the CIA") = x (N.B.: 0 x 1)
y
z
x
approx.
Causation? Can you even define the beast? Correlation is all that we ever have. Well, correlation and our model of how the universe works. And that's built by fitting against prior correlations. The language may be mathematical, but the process is pre-verbal, and probably pre-birth. Causation just means "My model simplifies this to x yields y, so I don't need to think about other variables." A very useful short-cut, but not one to put much trust in, if you have the time to check things out.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
now has a nice trojan installed in their system...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Does not mean they were following some sinister plan.
Julian Assange has already proven he is hard to get along with and has his own agenda which may not prove compatible
with other people who want a wikileaks without Assange's anti-us agenda.
Right. Assange has an anti-US agenda; That's why the vast majority of Wikileaks' leaks do NOT relate to US politics.
What you really should be writing is that some volunteers are scared of the consequences of exposing US corruption, and would prefer to leak only non-US material to protect their own asses.
you must be joking, it was absolutely obvious there was something happening. All those institutions fighting Wikileaks must have been orchestrated!
1. Take a couple of hackers
2. Don business suits.
3. Prepare an anti-wikileaks presentation
4. Pitch it to upcoming leak targets or perceived targets
5. Profit!
On second thought, nah, it'd never work. They'd never get past #2...
Anti-US... or Anti-wrongdoers-in-high-places-in-the-US? There's a BIG difference. I think the Chinese government is horrible because of the open contempt with which they treat their citizens. I don't hate Chinese people in general.
America does have problems, there are (too) many who want us to become a Christian Theocracy, not seeing it would become as abusive as any cult or "The Church" in the Middle Ages. We would likely start crusades after. If God Himself showed and demanded we stop, those in charge would call Him a trick of the Devil and continue on their way.
Unchecked power leads to abuse, period. That's why we have the 1st amendment and a system of checks and balances. Given that having a "party" of people who work together to accomplish one thing instead of each analyzing for themselves if something is right-or-wrong raises two huge concerns.
Concern 1:
Are there ANY real checks and balances when 1 (or 2) parties control all 3 branches? This is a blatant undermining of the government and is of questionable legal status.
Concern 2:
WHO decides what the Republican or the Democrat position is? NAFTA and CAFTA showed that the overwhelming will of the people doesn't factor into either.
Assange is no saint, but if you focus on that, you're falling for the distraction. Don't look at the incriminating evidence against us, he had a sex scandal! (Hardly a surprise given Monica sadly did more damage to Clinton's reputation than NAFTA, though I'm not sure if it was because we like to pretend to be Puritans or because we were embarrassed he didn't score someone better.)
Whoever has the leaks won't be a saint.
A: Someone fully on the up and up has too much to lose.
B: Even if they are a saint, incidents will be made up. Too much is at stake.