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."
Sorry, it's been redacted.
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.
The supposed password, as it appears on page 148 of the pdf version of the book, is ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#
Supposedly applies to "cables.csv" but not to the insurance.aes torrent released last year by Wikileaks.
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?
The point of leaking is to expose malfeasance.
Not necessarily. Leaking is also a tool of embarrassment, harassment, political manipulation, etc. When leaking selectively, one side and not the other, the point may be entirely political.
Your post basically answers itself. They did change their position on the issue because they got a lot of heat for not redacting the cables. That is why for the past year (with the Cablegate cables) they have been working with news organisations to carefully redact them before releasing, and releasing them in small batches a few at a time. That has consistently been WL's position for the past year. Complaining that The Guardian released the cables that were supposedly sent to them for the sole purpose of redacting them is not inconsistent with their recent position.
(I have often said that one is not a hypocrite for changing one's beliefs, only for simultaneously saying one thing and doing another.)
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.
Assange is on record stating that he doesnt think there should be ANY secrets at all
Let me see if I can dumb it down for you:
1. Chicken is yummy
2. Chicken hatch other baby chicken
3. You eat all yummy chicken -> No baby chicken -> You die of starvation X-(
4. You save some chicken -> Yummy chicken year around
The goal of complete openness is not achievable while fighting against large conspiracies, just like the goal of complete non-violence is infeasible when fighting for peace against a violent aggressor. Recognizing this, Wikileaks maintains the least secrecy necessary in order to maximize the total quantity of leaked information. Leaking more than this level is detrimental to their long term goal. In their quest for openness Wikileaks is willing to settle for a practical goal, and if it turns out they can't protect sources that practical goal is compromised. And what practical results those were ! They played a major role, maybe a decisive one in starting the Arab Spring.
The position of The Guardian who leaked the password for the widely disseminated Cablegate file under the pretence that "a password isn't harmful by itself" is laughable. Here Wikileaks recognized it's inability to correctly disseminate the large volume of data, and brought in traditional media, only to be betrayed and embarrassed by their sheer negligence or malevolence.
ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#
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.
That's just false.
Assange advocates for public knowledge and control about the things that governments and enterprises are doing. He also advocates for personal privacy.
Please, read what Assange says before writing nonsense about his believes.
Have you bothered looking at wikileaks from before, say, 2010? Assange has no qualms about releasing private personal information, such as hacked emails, from people he doesn't like.