I'm the least fascist person you've ever encountered. And the least communist. But I know the difference between what should and shouldn't be secret, and Assange doesn't.
If he's lucky, they'll give him time served for that, but it's likely to be a sliver of his sentence.
Security systems are built on trusting the people doing the work. What he did broke that trust, and it broke a law he was reminded of every time he entered a secured area. He was trained in how to deal with improperly classified information, and instead of doing that he tossed it over the wall to someone he didn't even know, and along with it tossed a pile of properly classified information.
People making a hero of him are ignorant of the law and naive about the need for security.
My only beef with Assange is that he's a dangerous hypocrite who doesn't know how to follow the law when it's put in place to do exactly what he pretends he wants done.
Assange solicited the files. He's not the NY Times, which doesn't do such things, he's a spy runner, coordinating with sources before and after they provide the information.
And this: "while I agree that not every revolutionary is making the right choice, I do fully support their right to make it", shows that you don't have a sense of morality, you're beholden to some mechanical process of revolution. Under that rule, you would have to support the right of the 9/11 attackers to do what they did.
Until Assange decided to screw with the good guys he was just another dork with a keyboard. Now he's got real trouble and doesn't like it. Tough shit for him. The law won't care about the howling of his half-informed sympathizers. The people he's put in danger deserve justice.
HP tech: Welp, your new machine is ready to fly. Customer BOFH: Bitchin! HP tech: One thing, though. Customer BOFH: Yuh? HP tech: I need you to create me a root-access account so I can log in on service calls. Customer BOFH: Oh, no sweat. What username? HP tech: 'admin'. All lowercase. Customer BOFH: Makes perfect sense. (Types.) Wow this thing's fast. Here, enter your password. HP tech: (Types '!admin' twice) Done.
Their moral duty as human beings comes first, though. Were there ever a scenario where telling the secret is the right thing to do, it should be done without hesitation, by a moral person.
We all have capabilities any of us have (generally) and can do lots of things that we restrict to those who have better knowledge and more authority. The reason for this is that if you don't do it that way, people of no moral bearing will use this as an excuse to commit damaging acts, possibly even foment atrocities.
Like the 1300 people that Assange got killed in Kenya.
You may think that releasing the information is right for you. The people responsible for redacting it will almost certainly differ on certain points.
There is a right way to release it, and Assange isn't doing that.
George and the boys back in the 1770's. They did the RIGHT THING, and were guilty of HIGH TREASON.
Two ways to look at that:
1. The law gave them no choice; that's why it's tyranny. Assange had a choice that would accomplish his goals legally or illegally, and he chose illegally. That's not defiance in the face of tyranny, it's lazy ego-tripping.
2. If it weren't for the fact that George and the boys were willing to put their asses on the line, quite spectacularly in many instances, it would not today be considered the "RIGHT THING". Assange so far has run away from talking to a Swedish cop about whether he wore a rubber. He is not George Washington, and I wish people would stop sullying real heroes by comparing this twit to them. Let him sit out a winter in a field in Pennsylvania and take a few lead balls through his hat and then we'll see.
The right to revolt relies on the fact that there is no other course of action AND the fact that what you're doing is actually right. Otherwise you're going to have to agree that the Soviets were right, Mao was right, the government of Myanmar was right, Hitler was right, and so on. Just fighting people in power doesn't make you a righteous revolutionary.
The law that eventually submits him to capital punishment at the hands of the US government is probably being penned as we speak.
It was written in 1917, actually.
That has nothing to do with who is 'right' and who is 'wrong'. Something can easily be illegal and right at the same time, especially when the law is imperfect or just plain wrong.
That's what happened in the early 70s with the NY Times and the Pentagon Papers. The courts found the President's attempt to keep the information secret too broad, and that applying such a broad proscription to a newspaper was not in keeping with the 1st Amendment. Since then the rules have changed and are no longer very broad; and Assange is not "the press" in any case. So, even if it were the NY Times, if they publish legally classified information they may be found guilty; and someone like Assange could be found guilty of publishing illegally classified information.
It isn't Assange that puts these people in peril. It is the secret itself.
Abso-fucking-lutely false. The secret is being kept because releasing it would put them in peril; that is the definition of a legal secret. The person who releases it puts them in peril. Even the people who steal it but keep it secret don't put anyone in peril.
In a world with evil empires committing heinous acts under immoral secrecy, someone needs to leak the facts to the people.
I agree. But in this "evil empire" of America, we have rules that make it such that the people currently in the government have not only a right but a duty to do that, and a procedure for doing it such that the secrets that should be kept are kept. If we did not have that, anyone who circumvented the rules would only be doing the right thing the only way it could be done. But because we have it anyone who circumvents the rules is rightfully a criminal.
Firearms exist because firearms exist. Your rationalization for the massive proliferation of firearms exists because you think it makes you safer, when it doesn't.
If two governments cannot have differing jurisdictions and laws, then two people cannot have differing opinions either.
False. You and I have differing opinions. Is that because our laws are different?
I have [secret passwords] because the organizations operating them are lazy.
The bank is lazy for giving you the ability to do your banking without talking to a teller while keeping other people from draining your account using your PIN. Got it. Where should the men in the white coats find you?
your view on a human's right to select his own laws is defective
It's not a human's right; I was using the royal "I" there. If there is a situation where people should live under two sets of laws, then the differences in the laws are irrational. The law should not regulate culture, it should regulate safety. And it's not about snapping fingers. It's about all of the people coming together and determining what the law should be, and changing it from time to time as they discover it's wrong. Drawing lines between them and saying "you do it your way, we'll do it ours" is the opposite of that. It denies one side or the other their humanity entirely. Or both, when each side decides its way can't include features of the other side's way, because the line must be maintained.
I'm not confusing these things,
You are, by believing that Assange is not guilty of crimes simply because some of the things released are things we should have been told about already. It is possible for Assange to do good things, but it is factual that he is also doing bad things. The good things do not excuse the bad things. Most people believe that because it's legal to kill in self-defense that the law has a balance to it. It does not. It's legal to kill in self-defense because (and only if) that is the only way to stop the person attacking you. It is not legal to get people killed by releasing their names as spies just because you may be stopping others in the same spy ring from killing someone else. That is the defense Assange attempts to erect for his culpability in putting lives at risk. Even moreso, it's not legal to put people in mortal peril just to release information without going through the proper procedure. That is the defense you're making of Assange's actions.
It is fairly difficult to get an entire stack that has been audited.
But not impossible.
The question stands: has anyone ever checked on security and Emacs?
As for his canards about rights and freedoms, there's virtually nothing on most people's computers that hasn't already been run through someone else's computer, meaning that it's already attached codocils to their rights. None of your banking information is really private as long as the bank can see it; phone records; email; all that billing stuff: it all goes through someone else who has to observe it to process it and by now applies a TOS that grants them rights that obviate the user's.
If you want to keep something out of other people's hands, don't attach it to the network at all.
And don't use Emacs to read it. You don't know where that's sending it.
Cars aren't designed to kill. They're designed to prevent people from being killed in a very dangerous situation. When they aren't designed to prevent people from being killed in a very dangerous situation, we punish their designers, builders, and salesmen. What then should we do with a device that is designed specifically and with maximal facility to kill?
No, it isn't a double standard. It's the paradox of sovereignty.
Either my law is the law I want everywhere, or I should accept your law. But accepting two different sets of law for the same species of human being is irrational.
And I am fit to judge. I vote.
I believe in a government without any secrets.
Then you will lose every war brought by every enemy.
Secrets are necessary to security. Same reason you have passwords on your online accounts and hide your PIN when you're at the ATM. Without secrecy, everything you have will be stolen by people who don't have any concern for your rights or feelings.
Not all things need to be secret, and, AS I SAID, the law spells out what is not to be made secret. And, AS I SAID, the fact that the released information included some things that shouldn't have been secret does not mitigate the crime of releasing all of the information, nor even the crime of improperly releasing the illegally classified information.
Don't confuse the principle of self-defense for a blanket vacation of the principle that two wrongs don't make a right. And don't confuse a rule against making crimes secret for a blanket vacation of the need to keep some things secret.
Assange suborns treasons. That's fine when they're committed by Chinese dissidents, but it's not fine when they're committed by American soldiers.
That's not a double standard. American law is good. Chinese law is bad.
American law, in particular, contains language that makes hiding illegalities behind the cloak of Secrecy illegal in itself, and makes illegal retaliating against people who work to get those Secrets made un-secret. Through authorized means of declassification, not by throwing the secrets into the wind.
Manning is a criminal. Assange is a criminal. Moore is not a criminal, but he may not understand the law in this case. While it is good that some of the things revealed have been revealed, it is not legal that they have been revealed this way.
Which is aside from everything, because Moore bailed Assange out for Assange's douchebag sexual practices, not for anything to do with Wikileaks, though Assange himself tried to play that lie against the Swedish police.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. You're getting Carson Kressley.
I just told you the truth.
I'm the least fascist person you've ever encountered. And the least communist. But I know the difference between what should and shouldn't be secret, and Assange doesn't.
If he's lucky, they'll give him time served for that, but it's likely to be a sliver of his sentence.
Security systems are built on trusting the people doing the work. What he did broke that trust, and it broke a law he was reminded of every time he entered a secured area. He was trained in how to deal with improperly classified information, and instead of doing that he tossed it over the wall to someone he didn't even know, and along with it tossed a pile of properly classified information.
People making a hero of him are ignorant of the law and naive about the need for security.
is not justification for the bad Wikileaks does.
There are better ways to do it.
Why? Did you put this article up on your Gopher server?
My only beef with Assange is that he's a dangerous hypocrite who doesn't know how to follow the law when it's put in place to do exactly what he pretends he wants done.
Assange solicited the files. He's not the NY Times, which doesn't do such things, he's a spy runner, coordinating with sources before and after they provide the information.
And this: "while I agree that not every revolutionary is making the right choice, I do fully support their right to make it", shows that you don't have a sense of morality, you're beholden to some mechanical process of revolution. Under that rule, you would have to support the right of the 9/11 attackers to do what they did.
Until Assange decided to screw with the good guys he was just another dork with a keyboard. Now he's got real trouble and doesn't like it. Tough shit for him. The law won't care about the howling of his half-informed sympathizers. The people he's put in danger deserve justice.
HP tech: Welp, your new machine is ready to fly.
Customer BOFH: Bitchin!
HP tech: One thing, though.
Customer BOFH: Yuh?
HP tech: I need you to create me a root-access account so I can log in on service calls.
Customer BOFH: Oh, no sweat. What username?
HP tech: 'admin'. All lowercase.
Customer BOFH: Makes perfect sense. (Types.) Wow this thing's fast. Here, enter your password.
HP tech: (Types '!admin' twice) Done.
Repeat for every customer...
Their moral duty as human beings comes first, though. Were there ever a scenario where telling the secret is the right thing to do, it should be done without hesitation, by a moral person.
We all have capabilities any of us have (generally) and can do lots of things that we restrict to those who have better knowledge and more authority. The reason for this is that if you don't do it that way, people of no moral bearing will use this as an excuse to commit damaging acts, possibly even foment atrocities.
Like the 1300 people that Assange got killed in Kenya.
You may think that releasing the information is right for you. The people responsible for redacting it will almost certainly differ on certain points.
There is a right way to release it, and Assange isn't doing that.
George and the boys back in the 1770's. They did the RIGHT THING, and were guilty of HIGH TREASON.
Two ways to look at that:
1. The law gave them no choice; that's why it's tyranny. Assange had a choice that would accomplish his goals legally or illegally, and he chose illegally. That's not defiance in the face of tyranny, it's lazy ego-tripping.
2. If it weren't for the fact that George and the boys were willing to put their asses on the line, quite spectacularly in many instances, it would not today be considered the "RIGHT THING". Assange so far has run away from talking to a Swedish cop about whether he wore a rubber. He is not George Washington, and I wish people would stop sullying real heroes by comparing this twit to them. Let him sit out a winter in a field in Pennsylvania and take a few lead balls through his hat and then we'll see.
The right to revolt relies on the fact that there is no other course of action AND the fact that what you're doing is actually right. Otherwise you're going to have to agree that the Soviets were right, Mao was right, the government of Myanmar was right, Hitler was right, and so on. Just fighting people in power doesn't make you a righteous revolutionary.
"Everyone"
Haha. No. It didn't then and it doesn't now. Fool.
Anyone who uses strawman arguments seriously should be denied a gun and the vote.
The law that eventually submits him to capital punishment at the hands of the US government is probably being penned as we speak.
It was written in 1917, actually.
That has nothing to do with who is 'right' and who is 'wrong'. Something can easily be illegal and right at the same time, especially when the law is imperfect or just plain wrong.
That's what happened in the early 70s with the NY Times and the Pentagon Papers. The courts found the President's attempt to keep the information secret too broad, and that applying such a broad proscription to a newspaper was not in keeping with the 1st Amendment. Since then the rules have changed and are no longer very broad; and Assange is not "the press" in any case. So, even if it were the NY Times, if they publish legally classified information they may be found guilty; and someone like Assange could be found guilty of publishing illegally classified information.
It isn't Assange that puts these people in peril. It is the secret itself.
Abso-fucking-lutely false. The secret is being kept because releasing it would put them in peril; that is the definition of a legal secret. The person who releases it puts them in peril. Even the people who steal it but keep it secret don't put anyone in peril.
In a world with evil empires committing heinous acts under immoral secrecy, someone needs to leak the facts to the people.
I agree. But in this "evil empire" of America, we have rules that make it such that the people currently in the government have not only a right but a duty to do that, and a procedure for doing it such that the secrets that should be kept are kept. If we did not have that, anyone who circumvented the rules would only be doing the right thing the only way it could be done. But because we have it anyone who circumvents the rules is rightfully a criminal.
You're on your own when dealing with your wife.
So you're saying that there are no situations in which someone may need to be killed?
No. But with guns it rarely works out that way.
Your strawman about stopping a rape with a gun is matched with my strawman about your toddler shooting you with your own gun, your toddler shooting another toddler with your gun, your toddler shooting herself with your own gun...(man these toddlers are dangerous; good thing we got guns to protect ourselves from them, huh)...you shooting your toddler and yourself with your own gun, you taking the law into your own hands, etc.
Firearms exist because firearms exist. Your rationalization for the massive proliferation of firearms exists because you think it makes you safer, when it doesn't.
They're instrumental in the killing of those roosters.
That doesn't make them non-instrumental in the killing of those people.
If two governments cannot have differing jurisdictions and laws, then two people cannot have differing opinions either.
False. You and I have differing opinions. Is that because our laws are different?
I have [secret passwords] because the organizations operating them are lazy.
The bank is lazy for giving you the ability to do your banking without talking to a teller while keeping other people from draining your account using your PIN. Got it. Where should the men in the white coats find you?
your view on a human's right to select his own laws is defective
It's not a human's right; I was using the royal "I" there. If there is a situation where people should live under two sets of laws, then the differences in the laws are irrational. The law should not regulate culture, it should regulate safety. And it's not about snapping fingers. It's about all of the people coming together and determining what the law should be, and changing it from time to time as they discover it's wrong. Drawing lines between them and saying "you do it your way, we'll do it ours" is the opposite of that. It denies one side or the other their humanity entirely. Or both, when each side decides its way can't include features of the other side's way, because the line must be maintained.
I'm not confusing these things,
You are, by believing that Assange is not guilty of crimes simply because some of the things released are things we should have been told about already. It is possible for Assange to do good things, but it is factual that he is also doing bad things. The good things do not excuse the bad things. Most people believe that because it's legal to kill in self-defense that the law has a balance to it. It does not. It's legal to kill in self-defense because (and only if) that is the only way to stop the person attacking you. It is not legal to get people killed by releasing their names as spies just because you may be stopping others in the same spy ring from killing someone else. That is the defense Assange attempts to erect for his culpability in putting lives at risk. Even moreso, it's not legal to put people in mortal peril just to release information without going through the proper procedure. That is the defense you're making of Assange's actions.
It's wrong. Stop it.
most of Moore's "facts" which he presents in his movies turn out to be no more than elaborate fabrications.
that's false
It is fairly difficult to get an entire stack that has been audited.
But not impossible.
The question stands: has anyone ever checked on security and Emacs?
As for his canards about rights and freedoms, there's virtually nothing on most people's computers that hasn't already been run through someone else's computer, meaning that it's already attached codocils to their rights. None of your banking information is really private as long as the bank can see it; phone records; email; all that billing stuff: it all goes through someone else who has to observe it to process it and by now applies a TOS that grants them rights that obviate the user's.
If you want to keep something out of other people's hands, don't attach it to the network at all.
And don't use Emacs to read it. You don't know where that's sending it.
So you're saying they blamed the technology.
Makes sense. The GOP isn't big on blaming the soldiers or themselves.
What sort of "evil genius" does it take to say "let bin Laden get out of the country, then we'll start looking at Iraq like Wolfiwoot wants."?
Cars aren't designed to kill. They're designed to prevent people from being killed in a very dangerous situation. When they aren't designed to prevent people from being killed in a very dangerous situation, we punish their designers, builders, and salesmen. What then should we do with a device that is designed specifically and with maximal facility to kill?
No, it isn't a double standard. It's the paradox of sovereignty.
Either my law is the law I want everywhere, or I should accept your law. But accepting two different sets of law for the same species of human being is irrational.
And I am fit to judge. I vote.
I believe in a government without any secrets.
Then you will lose every war brought by every enemy.
Secrets are necessary to security. Same reason you have passwords on your online accounts and hide your PIN when you're at the ATM. Without secrecy, everything you have will be stolen by people who don't have any concern for your rights or feelings.
Not all things need to be secret, and, AS I SAID, the law spells out what is not to be made secret. And, AS I SAID, the fact that the released information included some things that shouldn't have been secret does not mitigate the crime of releasing all of the information, nor even the crime of improperly releasing the illegally classified information.
Don't confuse the principle of self-defense for a blanket vacation of the principle that two wrongs don't make a right. And don't confuse a rule against making crimes secret for a blanket vacation of the need to keep some things secret.
So you're saying W has admitted he pulled his punches in going for bin Laden? Because it's the first I've heard of it.
Or are you saying that they blamed the technology?
Selling a tool that has only the purpose of killing things means you're facilitating killing things.
Put pictures of stags' heads on the box, though, and you can pretend they're for huntin' and stuff.
No, I use a lot of software that isn't overly complex and has been security audited.
I'm just wondering if RMS made Emacs clean before running his mouth about the cloud.
The truth is a good thing.
So are secrets, when their secrecy is legal.
Assange suborns treasons. That's fine when they're committed by Chinese dissidents, but it's not fine when they're committed by American soldiers.
That's not a double standard. American law is good. Chinese law is bad.
American law, in particular, contains language that makes hiding illegalities behind the cloak of Secrecy illegal in itself, and makes illegal retaliating against people who work to get those Secrets made un-secret. Through authorized means of declassification, not by throwing the secrets into the wind.
Manning is a criminal. Assange is a criminal. Moore is not a criminal, but he may not understand the law in this case. While it is good that some of the things revealed have been revealed, it is not legal that they have been revealed this way.
Which is aside from everything, because Moore bailed Assange out for Assange's douchebag sexual practices, not for anything to do with Wikileaks, though Assange himself tried to play that lie against the Swedish police.