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The Paradox of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks
schnell writes "The New Statesman is publishing a new in-depth article that examines in detail the seemingly paradoxical nature of WikiLeaks' brave mission of public transparency with the private opaqueness of Julian Assange's leadership. On one hand, WikiLeaks created 'a transparency mechanism to hold governments and corporations to account' when nobody else could or would. On the other hand, WikiLeaks itself was 'guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion.' If WikiLeaks performs a public service exposing the secrets of others but censors its own secrets, does it really matter? Or are the ethics of the organization and its leader inseparable?"
Julian Assange may be a bit cocky, but keep in mind that a lot of this "Cult of Assange" shit and a lot of the infighting reports came from Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a person of VERY questionable motives and honesty--to say the least. His dubious book is the source of many of these reports.
Now personally, I've always strongly suspected that Domscheit-Berg was an intelligence plant at Wikileaks (working for the CIA, BND, or take your pick). He started to physically sabotage the organization pretty much from day one, acted a lot like an agent provocateur when he was there, destroyed some 3,500 unpublished whistleblower communications as he was leaving, immediately went on a campaign to discredit Wikileaks and Assange after he left, and then unsuccessfully tried to set up a leaks site himself that sounded suspiciously like a honeypot to me (send us your leaked documents and trust us to maybe release them to the press--or maybe just send some FBI agents to kick down your door). And apparently Assange suspected this too.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
People are people, so why should it be, you and I should know everything about each other? Good fences make good neighbors?
Corporations however, are either breaking your heart, or shaking your confidence daily, so you need to have loads of info on them.
Or was that my pretend girlfriend Cecilia that I was stalking? Either way, you totally understand what I am saying.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Wikileaks and all of the people working for it are OBVIOUSLY going to need to obfuscate details about themselves. Look at the absolutely living nightmare of a shitstorm that Assange has been dragged through. Look where he is now.
But no, hey, let's be transparent. How about all of the contacts at Wikileaks post their full contact information. SURELY nobody on earth has any axe to grind against them, and they will remain in perfect harmony and safety.
My problem with wikileaks is its heavy anti-american bias. It seems like he wants to embarrass the U.S. just for the sake of embarrassment, and not to make the world "a more just society".
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Anywhere you get news is going to have an agenda or be hypocritical to some extent (some obviously more than others). It's human nature. Take that into account when evaluating the information they give and look at sources from other perspectives as well before making informed decisions. If you wanted to disregarded news because the source was jaded in some way, you'd have to cut yourself off from media altogether.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Because Assange himself is a private person with lots of things to hide, he is able to think in terms of what it takes to get secrets out -- that is his obsession. Someone who spent all his life completely open, with nothing to hide, would not know the minds of secretive people and could not have made WikiLeaks.
We the people do seem to have spent a lot of time blindly supporting Wiki-leaks without much critical analysis going on of whether the function was being done right or even being done well.
Its rather too easy to just say that we are glad that they are sticking it to the man when they release stuff that causes governments serious embarrassment. But I dont see much discussion of the consequences to the behavior of Government in future as a result of un-redacted mass publishing of private information.
We wouldn't be too happy as individuals if the contents of our lives were copied and published online so why is Wikileaks so immune from criticism? Its high time there was more constructive criticism of Wiki-leaks and its role in the world.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
keep in mind that a lot of this "Cult of Assange" shit and a lot of the infighting reports came from Daniel Domscheit-Berg
I think most of the "Cult of Assenge" thing comes from open-minded and observant people like me who barely even know who this Daniel Domscheit-Berg is.
And speaking of "Cult of Assange" paranoia ...
Now personally, I've always strongly suspected that Domscheit-Berg was an intelligence plant at Wikileaks (working for the CIA, BND, or take your pick...
How often do you need to have your tin-foil hat refitted?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It's incredible how anti-Assange the US media is. They even try to create this pseudo-opinion of "I am really progressive and don't like war and all that, but Assange is just not right not to come clean about this."
This is nothing but an empire fighting using the media, and some "intellectuals" not quite realizing how serious the situation really is. Of course the US government wants him dead and we know the US government kills right and left with no considerations for anything.
guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose,
Oh, bullshit. The scale of obfuscation and misinformation exposed by Wikileaks is nothing like any internal problems it has had.
It is thoroughly depressing that people are suckered in by on-going ad hominem attempts to discredit WIkileaks. It's absolutely pathetic. Pay attention what the organisation was actually trying to do; understand how important it is for modern civilisation; and try not to be distracted by attempts to re-image this is some sort of Saturday evening celebrity deathmatch.
Jemima Khan featured in the story above.
Assange just wants to be 007. Clearly, Khan doesn't know what being a "Bond Girl" really means (bondage and all).
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/08/jemima-khan-turns-on-julian-assange-the-australian-l-ron-hubbard.html
Yeah, so I guess all sources must be given up, right? Otherwise it's "hypocrisy" to claim whistleblowing whilst hiding your sources from being blown.
What a load of bogshite.
Exposing secrets of powerful institutions that can manipulate the fate of humanity isn't in the same league as the secrets that organization may hold. Isn't even the same galaxy.
You can't take revenge and prosecute the powers that be. If you could, they wouldn't be powers and they wouldn't require whistleblowing. Wikileaks, on the otherhand, is very destructible.
More Twoson than Cupertino
An individual wanting greater transparency for governments and corporations believes in personal privacy! What a hypocrit! /s
He has an agenda. Which is fine. Except that he's not entirely open about it. It'd be more honest, but admittedly not as effective, if he just announced his intentions upfront and transparently. Are the folks he outs bad people? Probably. Doesn't mean he's a good guy. Half of the United States' foreign policy problems stem from a belief in "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Not by a landslide.
Everyone has an axe to grind. Figuring it out is sometimes easy, sometimes extremely convoluted. Assange has an ego the size of the Vatican.
So I don't expect them to be transparent to me. They don't claim to be a democracy.
This is but another attempt to slander Wikileaks and Assange. You'll have to do a lot better than that...
Wikileaks & Assange 124 - 0 US fascist corporatist cleptocrazy
diplomacy is strong arming other nations
diplomats talk bad about other government officials in private because most top government officials are workaholics who don't mind pissing off others
us is killing civilians in our wars
bankers aren't these glorious people who give you a mortgage with a smile. i know, i ride the train with a lot of them to work.
newsflash to nerds, real life is not star wars or star trek where everyone calls others by their official government/military title and says how awesome they are serving their government and dealing with others on a fair basis. go read some history in how real life really works
is not incompatible with personal privacy.
I don't think transparency is their goal.
Their goal is to push their political adgenda which is basically anti- anything big & powerful.
Transparency is just a cover.
The reality is we need transparency and accountability to control the big powers effectively.
However, realistically they also need some secrets to function effectively.
It isn't black and white like crypto, with a public algorithm and secret key where everyone (with a clue) is in agreement where the line is.
In the real world the division of what should and should not be shared is not as clear.
Can someone please buy the OP a dictionary?
The secrecy was designed to protect the volunteers that worked on his project. He was anonymous for a long time, before he was outed. He takes the safety of his volunteers seriously, even if he does work them pretty hard.
Mark Anthony Collins
"... of WikiLeaks' brave mission of ..."
Fucking morons, loose lips sink ships, and get people killed.
Is that what you stand for?
I prefer security, of my country that is, fuck all the others.
... since it's NOT public, not payed by MY TAXES.
Unlike governments.
Everyone has them, especially corporations and institutions.
While wikileaks might be secretive too, we didn't elect them, and they don't claim any power over us. The people wikileaks are trying to expose, are people we elected and claim power over us, be it government or corporate. I have to worries about abuses within the chain of wikileaks (and I don't hold them to any great high standard, they are an internet site like any others), but they are in the business of exposing undemocratic parts of democracy. There are a lot of governments (the American one in particular), that is hell bent on shooting the messenger. In this regard they are a lesser version of Vladamir Putin. They don't look at fixing the problem, they look at shooting the messenger. Even when they say 'make this problem go away' what they really mean is 'make the messenger go away'. In this case, our public whipping boy is Julian Assange.
Is Livestrong's anti-cancer mission any less worthy now that Lance Armstrong is de-famed?
How DARE he meddle with the crimes of the USA!!!!
We'd have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those nosy kids!
(PS if you've ever had sex in the mornining then you're as much a rapist as you paint JA).
WikiLeaks is a private organization. They can be as secretive as they want. They're not governments. Or do all you people who demand government transparency broadcast every little aspect of your private lives?
I didn't think so.
It doesn't matter whether the person telling the truth is a secret person, or tells compulsive lies or not.
When they do tell the truth, it is still truth and when they tell lies, they are still lies.
So, how does one tell truth from lies, falsehood, duplicity?
Same age old question has been asked for years. Trust? Proof? Faith?
What is Trust when it comes to in an age where information is all digital and can be manipulated in microseconds and Public figures lie as a career?
What is Proof when for the same reasons evidence can be easily tampered to convince an uneducated online public that the lies are facts?
It all comes down to faith in the end. Faith is the belief in something you cannot prove with your senses.
Question is.... Do you have faith in Wikileaks, and what their mission is? Do you have faith that they will not tamper with the evidence? Do you have faith that the information exposed will be used for the betterment of society, and not to weaken our nation further by distraction from what is truly important?
There was a prominent article a few years back from an ex-intelligence guy warning Assange that he would be the victim of kompromat (most frequently a sexual honeypot). That subsequently Assange happened to be accused of rape by a woman who was thrown out of Cuba on charges of working with the CIA may be mere coincidence (a valid roll on a million-sided die) but regardless, Assange wasn't able to put his organization over his hormones, which calls into question the appropriateness of his leadership.
Meanwhile, Daniel Ellsberg, the last generation's Assange, is calling for Obama's impeachment.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So...is that the fancy new word for "hypocrite"?
-Styopa
presumably you're referring to the Scandinavian women volunteers...
on as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion.' If WikiLeaks performs a public service exposing the secrets of others but censors its own secrets, does it really matter?
No, it doesn't matter. The situations are not parallel. Wikileaks isn't an elected government. They don't and can't "censor" information about themselves or anyone. They keep secrets, same as any reporter does, in particular to keep sources confidential to protect them. No matter how big a jerk Assange is, it's irrelevant to anyone except those who work with him. And clearly Assange could not "censor" stories about himself. "Cultish"? Bollocks. No one was setting themselves on fire on his command.
You mean the ones that never filed charges or couldn't be bothered to actually fight their alleged "abuse"?
while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion.
Expected by whom? Who cares what you claim someone expects? I support Wikileaks, and I think Assange is megalomaniacal, and I think they should be more forthcoming with their material and process. An unsubstantiated claim that someone expects something does not imply that supporters of Wikileaks are blinkered, cultish, devotees. This is a shallow and transparent attempt to manipulate people's perception and make them question their support of Wikileaks.
the seemingly paradoxical nature of WikiLeaks' ... mission ... to hold governments and corporations to account ... On the other hand, WikiLeaks itself was 'guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation
The tactics of the two sides are similar, but Wikileaks is trying to help society. The bad guys instigated the use of these tactics, and are harming society. Supporting the former over the latter is only paradoxical to the willfully blind.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
You cannot start a war without support from someone.
Nobody is dirty but the accountability of a goverment is much more important than the accountability of Wikileaks.
I'm glad someone wrote up an article about this. I'm actually for the kind of transparency he's promoting; and I think his work has shown that governments cannot and should not be allowed to hide from the truth. He's a brave new pioneer into the kind of work the 'free press' should be doing - but do not because of their limitations (should all reporters know basic hacking techniques in the future - question for another time). WRT the article, referring to his org as a cult is a bit much (but I'm sure there's elements in there as there always are), but here's the real problem with his organization:
His organization has and gets very secret information. This information is often so powerful/secret/damning that could potentially bring down banks, companies, individuals, or maybe even countries or at least their regimes. There are a number of problems with a sole person with this much power.
How do we know if he's not 'cherry-picking' information and just releasing what he wants to cause the reaction he wants? Does he fact-check anything he releases at all? We know news organizations Fox/NPR/et al can do exactly this to sway public opinion. Just because he's releasing information doesn't mean he's releasing ALL the information that would paint a full picture. It doesn't tell us if he's at all modified or tampered with that information. Unless the person who's accused comes out with counter-proof (if there is even a way if the leaked info was purely made up anyway), there is no way to know without a LOT of fact checking of likely terribly secret stuff. But the damage would be done by then. At best it turns into a credibility war; and with no transparency on either side - who are we to believe?
With information so central and key to financial and government systems, what is to keep Assange and co from going rouge and extorting or holding companies, countries or people for blackmail? "Just leave me alone Obama or I'll dump all that stuff about those drone strike kills you ordered". "Ok Goldman, give me 5 million dollars/year and a Lear jet or I leak how you knew about the housing collapse and fed into it" He very well could have information right now that could upset major governments and/or financial institutions, bankrupt huge corporations, and plunge the world into chaos/worse recession. With as somewhat unstable as he seems at times - do you really trust one man bouncing from country to country - living in hotel rooms - to make decisions to 'do the right thing' at all times?
These are all the exact same problems that news organizations have. They must fact check, and release information in a way that promotes truth in our organizations without destroying the very things we need to survive in a modern world. He has none of these burdens.
Between his abuse of women and lack of ear for national police, I dont think he has got it all together.
"WikiLeaks itself was 'guilty of the same obfuscation"
The article misses the point of the premise for more government transparency. The main idea is that the more damage a particular entity can do, the more transparency there should be. If a government can decide whom to kill, there should be a full disclosure of the protocol and a way to correct any errors. If such entity is an organization (say that supplies drinking water), there should be an equal transparency for the same reason that any misstep can do a lot of harm.
This universal principle does not get limited to a case of government vs. citizens. For example, if we as people grant special powers to a policeman to detain anyone while on the job, there should be rigorous checks and disclosures in place at the time when that policeman has those special powers. On the other hand, when he goes home and has no such privileges, his privacy should be protected just as anyone’s else.
Wikileaks is not about disclosing “everything about everyone,” but rather about preventing the abuse of power, which is very much a basic requirement for a healthy and just society.
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
On the other hand, WikiLeaks itself was 'guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion.'
Back in the day we used to have investigative journalists. We didn't get to know what color underwear Walter Cronkite war, or whether Dan Rather burped after a big meal -- somehow we trudged on.
I did not realize that when I went to WikiLeaks to get some INFORMATION I should know as part of a transparent Democracy (because otherwise, how am I an informed citizen?) -- that I was being "slavish". I'm surprised I'm also not part of a cult and heralding Assange as the next Jesus -- isn't that how these straw man arguments go?
I don't give a rats ass about Julian Assange -- he has no real power in this world to abuse. He is beside the point.
Al Gore can make a speech about global warming -- and the environment will change based on science in action -- not whether Al Gore has integrity, or we should worship him. He could be a crook -- it doesn't matter. He's been telling the truth AFAIK, but we don't "sink or swim" on sea level rise based on the messenger.
Screw everyone who thinks that we have to hold people accountable for bringing us information. Debate the damn information -- or shut the fuck up. Anyone who wants to conflate the purpose of WikiLeaks with some bedroom gazing of it's founder or maybe the Janitor can kiss my damn ass. That goes for any subject in the future; debate the science, debate the value, debate the information. You debate the "personality" and we know you are an a-hole.
The "begging of the question" here truly pisses me off.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
But you're close.
The way I see it: transparancy should work top-down (the people affected by whatever activity is being performed, should know about that axctivity, whetether it involves mass-surveillance or dumping of toxic waste near a populated area).
Privacy should work bottom-up: how I spend my days as a private person is nobody's business.
Since WL does publish leaks about Russia:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2028283,00.html
Remind me, why do you insist on claiming they don't publish leaks about russia?
And afterward, went out, bought and made him breakfast and tweeted about the great shag she'd had.
You REALLY need to find a woman.
they claim nobody has been harmed by the leaks from Wikileaks.
Yet you assert otherwise.
How do you know?
sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill. Amazing what depths the halls of power will plumb when threatened with the exposure of their own corruption and stinking hipocracy.
However, mind that what you want to watch is the Wikileaks organization, not the Wikileaks leader, for openness.
For instant Godwinization, if what you are worried about is the SS, why are you worried about whether Himmler wears boxers or briefs? (Or whether he beds his wife vs unmarried women of loose morals?)
"China is not militaristic and expansionist (in relative terms) despite all the noise"
Yeah, let's just ask India, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines. You should be ashamed of your self-inflicted cretinism.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
One doesn't have to be deep inside gov to see how investigators and prosecutors use their legal discretionary powers politically-- often not by their own choice because a higher up is pushing for some action. Ever hear of a circumstantial case that was instigated by a "anonymous phone tip"?? Want to fuck up somebody's life? listen to the news wire or police radio and pick something connected to your target then phone in an anon tip. Don't do it frequently and keep a common theme.
Oh and don't forget the big open secret of law enforcement: a HUGE number of cases are unsolved and that is not counting the false confessions and plea bargains that make up the majority of "solved" cases. The are TONS of cold cases being put into the computer every day and it won't be long until political targets can be put into the system and a whole list of cold cases can be correlated to them. It is done manually with serious effort today and is hard to catch - but it happens more than people realize and it will INCREASE significantly.
Assange would be charged with a crime that was essentially struck down by their courts years before - which must have been why the 1st prosecutor (a woman) dropped it quickly, the 2nd one is running with it. BTW, struck down laws are still on the books and can be used; the courts will reject it but that doesn't mean you can't fuck with somebody. They will never convict him of rape or even charge him with it - they'll use trumped up stuff and once in jail they'll hold him just long enough for the USA to grab him without seeing the light of day (because he might get away.)
The no brainer should be the fact both the UK and USA openly talked about how it would be ok to raid the embassy when they both strongly defended them consistently probably forever...until last year. If there wasn't such a backlash over their statements that embassy would have been attacked already. Hypocrisy has no meaning in the USA.
Will never have the power to challenge our government. Anyone who does, or even can, has a short life expectancy. The USA government does what it wants when it wants under the color of democracy and waves the national security flag anytime it wants to blatantly side step it or the constitution. As bad as we think a country like North Korea is, the USA is many times worse.
Julian Assange isn't a violent monopoly of force.
I'm not usually a vocabulary Nazi, but this time the title is way off. It's not a paradox (seemingly contradictory phenomena without rational explanation).
The word is HYPOCRISY. And Assange is the biggest hypocrite to walk the face of the earth in the 21st century. This isn't some unexplainable phenomenon. It's simply Assange roundly failing to practice what he preaches, the self-indulgent douche bag.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
"while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion."
There is zero hypocrisy in valuing personal privacy while wanting transparency in government, and only dumbfucking concern trolls would claim otherwise.
Case in point: let's say Barack Obama gets his jollies off when Michelle spanks him while wearing a Nixon mask. I don't need or want to know that information, as it's NMFB. And Obama would not be a hypocrite for wanting to keep that private, he's a hypocrite for blocking more FOIA requests than Bush after promising transparency in government.
Are they using secrecy to coverup massive lawbreaking and corruption on their part? No? Then what the fuck are you talkin bout, Willis? Right now, the only people who have gone to jail for Bush's warrantless wiretapping and torture programs is the whisteblowers who revealed them. Unless Wikileaks is pulling that kind of shit - like say if the currently less-than-credible rape allegations against Assange are true and Wikileaks has spent money to cover it up - then you can blow this false equivalency right up your ass, concern troll.
The government does not have a right to privacy. Persons do in specific circumstances. Persons have the right to liberty. Governments do not. The act of keeping the government to task can be justified even by criminal acts, however the government can prosecute those acts. It is lossy.
However the citizen is the sovereign in this country. It cedes some partial rights of sovereignty by delegation for specific purposes like enforcing borders, military actions and other acts generally beyond the scope of civil society. The government itself is not sovereign and never was. That fact is insufficiently reflected in "legal precedent".
JJ
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/02/09/0054212/dhs-can-seize-your-electronics-within-100-miof-us-border-says-dhs
"According to legal precedent, the Fourth Amendment — the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures — does not apply along the border."
What if the cult of Julian Assange is an elaborate Chinese Box operation. A kind of Turkish Gambit to draw attention away from the real actors behind Wikileaks?
Because I'm not te kind of person I'm preaching at.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Because if it's Julian or Daniel or whomever it's corrupt. The only way it could work is by community elected committee. X amount of people are selected for the Anonymous committee. They decide what happens to the data and censor what needs to be censored. The problem is how do we select these people? They shouldn't select themselves and they shouldn't want the job. It would have to be just like jury selection.
Wikileak is dead. Openleaks is dead. The idea of the model for Wikileaks is obsolete. The idea for Openleaks as a model is obsolete but it was a better design than Wikileaks. Ultimately neither are workable. A workable idea would be to take the dumb pipe model of Openleaks and combine it with a decentralized Anonymous live Grand Jury type model. The problem is this would put a new layer of secrecy and could be a problem in itself but there is no transparent way to do this. Transparency is impossible. Centralization is dumb.
Certain information has to remain secret or lives are lost. Certain information has to remain secret or more harm than good. And certain information has to remain secret because there is no one to give it to at the time. Disclosure doesn't work too well when there is no one in the world responsible enough to disclose to.
And just giving it to the media is irresponsible. Giving it to the world itself is irresponsible too may be irresponsible if it leads to WW3. Julian Assange's Cablegate was irresponsible. It does not protect the community. This leak brings World War 3 even closer to our doorsteps because it makes governments even more paranoid of each other. So that was not a good leak. A good leak reveals government abuse of community. Cablegate did not reveal any such abuse. Also a good leak does not target one specific government but all governments and all authority at once. Cablegate only seemed to cause damage to the US government so what good was that?
So you hate the USA? But you just empowered the other governments instead?
Wikileaks and all of the people working for it are OBVIOUSLY going to need to obfuscate details about themselves. Look at the absolutely living nightmare of a shitstorm that Assange has been dragged through. Look where he is now.
But no, hey, let's be transparent. How about all of the contacts at Wikileaks post their full contact information. SURELY nobody on earth has any axe to grind against them, and they will remain in perfect harmony and safety.
When you put one man at the head of something important like Wikileaks you get centralized corruption. Centralized corruption can only be solved through decentralization and anonymity. And do not take this as a promotion as Anonymous. They in their current form are content to being script kiddies and followers.
Anonymity means no recognized group. It means an Anonymous jury of peers selected by a transparent process. People can be selected from the community to serve on a sort of grand jury for these sorts of situations. The problem is we aren't doing that with Wikileaks. In fact, Julian Assange isn't even an American citizen but is in the position to decide the fate of US citizens, troops, and US intelligence assets? One man should not be in that position because no one man can be trusted to be in that position, and if he's a foreign man with no ties to the US government at all deciding the fate of those who live and die by the decisions of the US government well then you see the problem with it.
Julian Assange is a foreign national. He should not be in a position to decide which intelligence asset lives or dies due to redaction or not. He should not even have that sort of information leaked to him in the first place. He should not be deciding the fate of US troops either. If there is to be a process for combating corruption it should not be the Wikileaks model where one man from one country decides the fate of all men from all countries. Instead it should be local and at least a few people (men/women/minorities etc) from your community, should decide. It should be people who actually understand.
Julian Assange may mean well and have good intentions but he doesn't understand every culture on the earth, he doesn't understand every language or every situation, he doesn't even truly understand the US situation correctly. Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo combined understand the US situation each from their own perspective. Ask yourself why Wikileaks put one man in charge of everything? Is that something that is done in a secure organization? When can you ever trust an organization with centralized authority? If you are an anti-authoritarian why would you trust an organization set up in such a way where Julian Assange is king of Wikileaks and does not have to accept any kind of democratic process or input?
I'm not saying he actually was like that because I don't know him. But the way his organization was organized it certainly put him in a position to be like that if he were ever corrupted. For that reason I never trusted him or Wikileaks after WIkileaks put his face as the logo and made it about him. When it became Wikileaks presented by Julian Assange, I knew something was wrong intuitively with the organization.
And that one point happens to be a man named Julian Assange. All men are weak. All information systems set up like that ultimately fail. This is obvious to anyone who studies information security. The internet was designed so it did not have a single point of failure. There are principles behind the internet itself and Wikileaks did not follow even that. I cannot take the organization too seriously when it wasn't really designed all that well.
Think about it like this. A circle of information cannot be divided or stopped as easily as a chain or a point. A point you can stop by simply stopping that one man. So they stop Julian Assange and because he was Wikileaks they have stopped Wikileaks. Wikileaks is dead. If Wikileaks were designed in such a way so that there wasn;t just one Wikileaks, that couldn't happen.
The other problem is the mission of Wikileaks was originally to discover corruption. All corruption is local. Wikileaks is global but seemed to exclusively focus on the US government in the last few years. Why? Corruption is all over the world in all kinds of organizations, corporate, government, church, even in organizations similar to wikileaks. So why focus only on the USA for the past 5 years? Tactically it was stupid for Wikileaks to do that. The USA was the one government with the resources to take it down and they gave them the motivation to do it with Cablegate.
A government "of the people, by the people and for the people" SHOULD be transparent. A private organization or a private life should NOT be transparent.
Who wrote this propaganda?
The other problem is the mission of Wikileaks was originally to discover corruption. All corruption is local. Wikileaks is global but seemed to exclusively focus on the US government in the last few years. Why? Corruption is all over the world in all kinds of organizations, corporate, government, church, even in organizations similar to wikileaks. So why focus only on the USA for the past 5 years? Tactically it was stupid for Wikileaks to do that. The USA was the one government with the resources to take it down and they gave them the motivation to do it with Cablegate.
It hardly matters to me and to most people in the world if John Doe is cheating on his electric bill. Corruption is as relevant to people as its ability to affect them. US dirty policies affect the world as a whole significantly and so does US corruption, considerably more than corruption in any other institution. Wikileaks does publish embarrassing documents of other nations showing corruption, but given what I just explained it is no surprise that US is in the hot spot.
The rest of your post is complete nonsense and doesn't even deserve an answer.
The other problem is the mission of Wikileaks was originally to discover corruption. All corruption is local. Wikileaks is global but seemed to exclusively focus on the US government in the last few years. Why? Corruption is all over the world in all kinds of organizations, corporate, government, church, even in organizations similar to wikileaks. So why focus only on the USA for the past 5 years? Tactically it was stupid for Wikileaks to do that. The USA was the one government with the resources to take it down and they gave them the motivation to do it with Cablegate.
It hardly matters to me and to most people in the world if John Doe is cheating on his electric bill. Corruption is as relevant to people as its ability to affect them. US dirty policies affect the world as a whole significantly and so does US corruption, considerably more than corruption in any other institution. Wikileaks does publish embarrassing documents of other nations showing corruption, but given what I just explained it is no surprise that US is in the hot spot.
That isn't necessarily true. Corruption is not only relevant if it affects them. It's relevant when it can easily be stopped. A lot of corruption could have been stopped by Wikileaks but they chose to go after the US government. It was a stupid decision. The US government is too big to fail.
You live in fantasy land. Please, enlighten us with one example of corruption that could be easily stopped if wikileaks had leaked its information, and even if there was such a thing, it would be something so insignificant that I, and most people, would rather have every journalistic resource possible focused elsewhere,
Let's keep, it simple, Wikileaks exposing information versus keeping their own internal operations secret is different because the information Wikileaks exposes impacts millions of lives and is often regarding world lawmakers and militia breaking laws whereas keeping their own internal secrets is to protect themselves from being held for some indefinite period without trial, without recourse by these same law breakers. The fact that exposing law makers as law breakers is illegal is in itself the issue here.
Well, isn't this more or less the case with journalism in general and not very specific to wikileaks: they expose others while protecting them selves and their own sources.
Corruption is the problem everywhere, not just in government and not just in the US government. I'm actually more concerned about the corruption workplaces and churches, and while the government is a workplace it's not the only workplace.