Slashdot Mirror
WikiLeaks Sues the Guardian Over Leak
An anonymous reader writes "WikiLeaks complaining of a leak is hard to get one's head around. That it's suing The Guardian — its great ally — is even harder. That The Guardian did such a ridiculous thing to warrant litigation in the first place almost defies belief."
Update: 09/01 04:59 GMT by S : Changed the first link to point to the statement on WikiLeaks' website. The Guardian has denied the allegations, saying, "Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours."
There is no honor amongst thieves.
Either you support leaks or you do not. Selective leaking is simply propaganda dressed up to look pretty.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"...Free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. "
No this is a huge issue for Wikileaks. They got most of their documents from people on the inside who needed and WANTED the ASSURANCE that some of what they were handing wikileaks would be redacted, like operative names, and informant information. They wanted it to be a RESPONSIBLE release of information, one that doesn't have to be OK'd by the very people it would embarrass.
Now that wikileaks can't be trusted with keeping the UNREDACTED versions safe, they will lose a lot of sources.
FTFA:
Wikileaks complaining of a leak?
Yes, and damned well they should unless your moral views are very shallow.
How many US politicians are laughing at the Wikileaks/Guardian partnership exploding so spectacularly?
I'd say it's the CIA laughing. This is incredibly valuable for them. They lose some secrets, but they discredit the messenger (And anyone who tries to replace them) to prevent future leaks. If I was running the CIA, I'd certainly run a program to discredit Wikileaks. A few rape allegations here, an ideological schism in the organization alleging untrustworthiness, some unveiling of sources to make future sources afraid...
Does Wikileaks finally realise there's a need for secrecy/privacy in the world?
Finally? They've said that all along. That's why they were redacting the documents in the first place.
Does privacy/secrecy all boil down to where someone draws an arbitrary line in the sand?
Yes. The world is a fuzzy place and doesn't lend itself to simple morals where you can divide things into the dark side and the light side. At some point it just comes down to someone looking at the situation and doing what they feel is right.
Should a lack of privacy/secrecy be all or nothing?
Of course not. In general, I believe that the larger an entity is, the less privacy they deserve.
Is Wikileaks cementing views that it is or isn't an organisation of journalists who are guided by traditional journalistic ethics?
They publish the truth and protect sources who need protection. They've pretty much always been in that camp.
Assange is on record stating that he doesnt think there should be ANY secrets at all. A large number of slashdotters have reinforced that belief.
Why the hypocrisy all of a sudden?
Who in their right mind would think it okay to publish a password and publish the correct one? They could have published the same book with a fake password all the same, yet obviously it was the password.
As for it being temporary, it wasn't an access password, but a decryption password. And in the eyes of the law, why would what Wikileaks said even matter if non-disclosure was part of their arrangement?
Ah yes, the NYTimes - The Nixonian henchmen of today
Apparently, faced with hundreds of thousands of documents vividly highlighting stomach-turning war crimes and abuses -- death squads and widespread torture and civilian slaughter all as part of a war he admired for years and which his newspaper did more than any other single media outlet to enable -- John Burns and his NYT editors decided that the most pressing question from this leak is this: what's Julian Assange really like?
How exactly do you propose they change a password in a file has already been downloaded by thousands of people?
You can't take the sky from me.
On one hand, their anger is understandable. Even when your business is to reveal secrets, you need to also keep some secrets (ask any reporter with an anonymous source). It sounds hypocritical, but it really isn't. You can argue all you want about whether some military secrets endanger national security or the safety of civilians, but it should be clear that, for example, evidence of military or political wrong-doing is in the public interest, while access information to private computers or bank accounts is not (even if the person is guilty of wrong-doing). And on another level, a journalist publishing information given him by a confidential source is fulfilling his journalistic duty, while a journalist publishing information the source told him not to publish (which may possibly identify the source) is breaching trust.
On the other hand, taking this to court is completely fucking retarded. It kills any remaining relations with the newspaper, harms their relations with the other papers, hurts public opinion (because of the appearance of hypocrisy), draws public attention to the very matter they wanted to keep confidential (Streisand effect), and has no chance of stopping the damage.
Also, as the article says, what the hell was the point of publishing the passphrase in the first place?
To me it shows that the whole Wikileaks/Guardian set up was a gaggle of amateurs dabbling in information that they did not know how to handle.
Either this data is highly sensitive and needs great care in handling, which they demonstrated they were unable to do, or it isn't and there is no need for the encryption etc. Wikileak's claim that it is mostly not sensitive, should be public, and they are the self-appointing ones to set it free. This debacle demonstrates that they handled it like it was entirely sensitive, shouldn't be made public, and they are not the ones to be trusted to do it.
Their own actions make a nonsense of their claims.
This only confirms what kind of hypocrits the wikileaks guys are.. Leaking other people's secrets is ok, but if you leak theirs....
Using a firearm to defend others is ok, but it makes you a hypocrite if you protest others using a firearm to commit murder.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
If you'd have read anything about this incident, you'd already know this wasn't the case... you assume stupid shit man.