Didn't you know? Outside of the United States lies a country called "Foreign", where the people speak International English and obey International Law;-)
You may as well say 'they could put the pyromaniac in prison, but that wouldn't prevent someone else from coming along and setting a fire.' Or 'we could plug the leak in the boat, but that wouldn't prevent another leak from occurring sometime later.'
The difference being, that if they nab Assange, there are several guys just behind him that will take over exactly where he stopped.
It's no different from supporting the war from behind the safety of your own keyboard in the first place. Deciding to go to war has gotten people killed. Withholding intelligence that could have prevented the Iraq war has gotten people killed. Hushing down misconduct by the military has gotten people killed. Whether we decide to expose dirty secrets, or to keep quiet about them, we risk someone's life.
Maybe the US government gets to decide what's classified in the USA, but Swedes didn't vote for the US government, nor are they obligated to follow US laws. If there are wrongdoings in Afghanistan, Swedes can expose them to the world, as long as they follow Swedish law.
I regret that your military will have a much harder time in Afghanistan, but if you start a war, it's your own responsibility to handle it without violating human rights. As a Swede myself, I see no reason that innocent Afghani civilians should suffer for the safety of US troops. I sympathise with your right to defend yourselves against terrorism, even with military means, but not at the expense of innocent third parties. A US soldier's life is not worth more than an Afghani civilian's life to me.
Wikileaks will never be effectively shut down, it will just find a host somewhere else. The only effective way to deal with the situation is to bite the bullet and do better in the next conflict.
Even if you bunched all the small errors on Iraq's side together, it still wasn't enough to justify the invasion. Not in the eyes of Congress, or the UN, or the rest of the world; only in the eyes of the Bush and Blair administrations. Bush got the war approved by Congress by claiming to have proof of hitherto unknown WMDs which could be used against the US itself - and which turned out to never have existed. It wasn't because of small amounts of leftover nerve gas or short-range missiles.
What we need to learn from this is: Never believe anyone who claims to have proof of something, but can't show them because they are secret.
Weasel talk, stewbacca. First you quoted and responded:
he was among the people most responsible for starting the Iraq War
That would be Saddam Hussein and his reluctance to abide by UN demands. How quickly we revise history.
Then you quoted and responded:
Right, the Iraq War was decided by the UN...
UN Resolution 1441...sound familiar? It should because it's the resolution that passed 15-0 that directly lead to armed conflict in Iraq.
You're most definitely taking a position, you just don't want to stand for it.
As for revising history... Congress approved the invasion of Iraq because the Bush administration claimed to have (classified) proof of large amounts of WMDs in Iraq. Not because the inspections were eight weeks late, or because Iraq failed to abide by the letter of the UN resolution. The actual reason Congress decided to invade Iraq, was the false intelligence provided by the Bush administration.
I suspect you're trolling, since you make provocative statements, then claim you don't take any position at all. But in any case, it's always good to remind ourselves of recent history.
In Sweden, "liberal" means you're to the right on the political spectrum. Three out of the four right-wing parties (Centre Party, People's Party and Moderates) are called "liberals" (the fourth party is the Christan Democrats). In fact, I think that's the norm in Europe.
"Objective" means sticking to facts, not taking the average of every politicians opinions and pretending that's reality.
A paper which just "stuck to the facts" would be almost unreadable. If you just want the facts, you don't need a newspaper; you only need news services like Reuters or Bloomberg. To be objective, a reporter has to refrain from making any analysis or evaluation of the facts (and even then they're not completely objective, since they always make a choice about what facts to believe and what facts to include in their reports).
When people say "I wish they just stuck to the facts!", it's usually because they think their own viewpoint is the objective one. They don't realise that they, too, are making a subjective interpretation of the facts.
What we want is not objectivity, but a balanced view, i.e. the reporter includes all the viewpoints that are deemed reasonable, without taking sides for any of them.
I can't think of any legal situation where that holds true. There are situations where an employee is legally obligated to assist their (former) employer, but that has nothing to do with "owning information".
Prison will hardly make him less of a dickhead. Most likely, he'll be even more bitter and convinced he's been unfairly treated when he gets out.
Locking him away for life would stop him from causing trouble, but would be unjust and expensive.
Psychological counseling might help, but there's no guarantee.
In any case, giving him a harsher sentence just because he's a dickhead won't help anyone. Sometimes you have to accept that there is no solution, and doing nothing causes the least damage.
You're using the State Departments own official propaganda as proof of what their priorities are?
From the article, you'd think they spend most of their efforts to cure AIDS and help poor children to an education. In reality, the money spent on foreign aid is less than 1% of the federal budget, while military spending amounts to 23%, a large part of which can be attributed to direct military interventions. (Wikipedia)
Still, that's not the point I was trying to make. USA:s knee-jerk response to terrorism is to capture and kill terrorists and invade countries on flimsy grounds, letting innocents get caught in the crossfire, and creating even more animosity towards themselves. That's what I mean by "short-sighted retributionism".
Keeping someone in prison is expensive, so giving someone a longer sentence just because they're a dickhead and offend the judge or jurors is irresponsible against the taxpayers.
He also had no right to go through their network and booby trap the systems so only he could gain administrative access to them, rendering the entire system useless to anyone who might be filling his position in the future.
Eh, it IS a sysadmin's job to make sure nobody can take over the network without the proper passwords. It is conceivable that he was overly paranoid when configuring the network, or that he was planning to blackmail the city of New York all along, but so far I've seen no evidence of this.
However, if the person who signs my paycheck comes to me and informs me of a shift in my responsibilities away from the network or is terminating my position and demands that I hand over security credentials so the person coming in after me can do the job, I'll hand it over.
You seem to have missed that Childs' had been instructed, in writing, to only hand over the passwords to authorised staff. If he had revealed the passwords to his closest superior (who was unauthorised), and the employer had been a dickhead, they could have charged Childs' with negligence.
On the other hand, it is quite possible that Childs' was being a dickhead himself and that the whole problem could have been avoided if he had been more flexible. But if we're going to condemn him, let's do it for the right reasons.
I suppose my boss could invite me out for lunch, fire me, and then keep my car, which is parked on company property and accessible via a locked gate with a keycard. My keycard would no longer work, and he'd be under no obligation to do anything for me, a non-employee. Heck, my iPod in my desk drawer. Gone.
No, your car and your iPod is physical property, and he would have to give you access to them in some way. However, if you stored personal information in your work computer with your employer's permission (like personal correspondence), I'm not sure the employer would be obligated to extract the information for you.
The flaw in that thinking lies in equating knowledge with property. There is an obligation to return property which has been placed in your care, because property normally has a specific owner, but there is in general no legal obligation to "return" secrets which has been entrusted upon you.
Of course, any sensible person would take reasonable steps to aid his employer in regaining control of the network, regardless of any legal obligation.
I agree that any person with some sense in their heads would try to cooperate with their employer. I'm not sure there is any legal obligation to turn over passwords, though. It depends on how the law is written in your country or state.
I seriously suspect you are trolling, sexconker, but let's analyse your statement just for the fun of it.
Knowledge is not property. There is no no law in the world which claims that the knowledge of something belongs to someone. Even the most draconian "intellectual property" laws in the world do not claim that it is illegal to, for example, tell the ending of a novel to your friend. "Copyright" is just what it sounds like: the exclusive right to manufacture copies of something. That right is the only thing you own when you own the copyright. You don't own the novel in itself. You don't own the information in it.
There are instances in which it is illegal to spread knowledge, for example, exposing military secrets, but that is not because the military "owns" the information. It is illegal because the information is classified and disseminating it would damage the country, regardless of who could be said to "own" it.
They lock the keys in the car and tell you to fuck off.
In my jurisdiction, this is not theft, because the car dealer does not appropriate the car for himself. However, it could still be illegal, on the grounds that the car dealer handles your property without your consent in a way which interferes with your own use of it.
However, information is not property, and having a secret password in your head doesn't mean you have your employer's property in your possession. Refusing to tell your employer the password is not legally equivalent to refusing to return the employer's property. It could be illegal to not tell the password, if the employer is legally obligated to be loyal to his employer or to follow its orders. It could also be breach of contract if he signed an employment agreement.
I don't agree. Not everyone voted for the government who was in power when crimes were perpetrated. Not everyone is eligible to vote. And even if they did vote for a government responsible for war crimes, they may have been misinformed, or forced to choose between two evils.
I do, however, believe that every citizen has a responsibility to do the best of the situation, and do their best not to support the crimes of their government.
Large parts of the world are critical to the USA because of their foreign policy.
Here in Europe, we have the left-wingers, who are critical of USA whatever they do, and the right-wingers, who love them whatever they do. But in the middle, we have a large number of people who judge USA by its actions.
For example, USA received almost no criticism in Europe when it invaded Afghanistan, because it had valid reason to do so. Afghanistan really did harbour terrorists who were directly involved in attacks against the USA, and the USA had support in the UN for going in. The invasion of Iraq, however, was heavily criticised, because it was obvious to most outside observers that both the talk about "weapons of mass destruction" and the talk about "aiding terrorism" was bull. It was obvious that President Bush was looking for excuses to invade.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't you know? Outside of the United States lies a country called "Foreign", where the people speak International English and obey International Law ;-)
You may as well say 'they could put the pyromaniac in prison, but that wouldn't prevent someone else from coming along and setting a fire.' Or 'we could plug the leak in the boat, but that wouldn't prevent another leak from occurring sometime later.'
The difference being, that if they nab Assange, there are several guys just behind him that will take over exactly where he stopped.
Please mod up parent :) I think it's an excellent way to explain why sites like Wikileaks are needed, even if they get it wrong sometimes.
There's a similar expression in English - "If the shoe fits".
It's no different from supporting the war from behind the safety of your own keyboard in the first place. Deciding to go to war has gotten people killed. Withholding intelligence that could have prevented the Iraq war has gotten people killed. Hushing down misconduct by the military has gotten people killed. Whether we decide to expose dirty secrets, or to keep quiet about them, we risk someone's life.
Maybe the US government gets to decide what's classified in the USA, but Swedes didn't vote for the US government, nor are they obligated to follow US laws. If there are wrongdoings in Afghanistan, Swedes can expose them to the world, as long as they follow Swedish law.
I regret that your military will have a much harder time in Afghanistan, but if you start a war, it's your own responsibility to handle it without violating human rights. As a Swede myself, I see no reason that innocent Afghani civilians should suffer for the safety of US troops. I sympathise with your right to defend yourselves against terrorism, even with military means, but not at the expense of innocent third parties. A US soldier's life is not worth more than an Afghani civilian's life to me.
Wikileaks will never be effectively shut down, it will just find a host somewhere else. The only effective way to deal with the situation is to bite the bullet and do better in the next conflict.
stewbacca,
Even if you bunched all the small errors on Iraq's side together, it still wasn't enough to justify the invasion. Not in the eyes of Congress, or the UN, or the rest of the world; only in the eyes of the Bush and Blair administrations. Bush got the war approved by Congress by claiming to have proof of hitherto unknown WMDs which could be used against the US itself - and which turned out to never have existed. It wasn't because of small amounts of leftover nerve gas or short-range missiles.
What we need to learn from this is: Never believe anyone who claims to have proof of something, but can't show them because they are secret.
Weasel talk, stewbacca. First you quoted and responded:
he was among the people most responsible for starting the Iraq War
That would be Saddam Hussein and his reluctance to abide by UN demands. How quickly we revise history.
Then you quoted and responded:
Right, the Iraq War was decided by the UN ...
UN Resolution 1441...sound familiar? It should because it's the resolution that passed 15-0 that directly lead to armed conflict in Iraq.
You're most definitely taking a position, you just don't want to stand for it.
As for revising history... Congress approved the invasion of Iraq because the Bush administration claimed to have (classified) proof of large amounts of WMDs in Iraq. Not because the inspections were eight weeks late, or because Iraq failed to abide by the letter of the UN resolution. The actual reason Congress decided to invade Iraq, was the false intelligence provided by the Bush administration.
I suspect you're trolling, since you make provocative statements, then claim you don't take any position at all. But in any case, it's always good to remind ourselves of recent history.
In Sweden, "liberal" means you're to the right on the political spectrum. Three out of the four right-wing parties (Centre Party, People's Party and Moderates) are called "liberals" (the fourth party is the Christan Democrats). In fact, I think that's the norm in Europe.
"Objective" means sticking to facts, not taking the average of every politicians opinions and pretending that's reality.
A paper which just "stuck to the facts" would be almost unreadable. If you just want the facts, you don't need a newspaper; you only need news services like Reuters or Bloomberg. To be objective, a reporter has to refrain from making any analysis or evaluation of the facts (and even then they're not completely objective, since they always make a choice about what facts to believe and what facts to include in their reports).
When people say "I wish they just stuck to the facts!", it's usually because they think their own viewpoint is the objective one. They don't realise that they, too, are making a subjective interpretation of the facts.
What we want is not objectivity, but a balanced view, i.e. the reporter includes all the viewpoints that are deemed reasonable, without taking sides for any of them.
True, maybe they could have found some fitting free music if they had tried harder.
How do you know they helped the US at all? Maybe they just did less damage than the stronger patent/copyright laws in other countries?
No, it's copyright which prevents them from putting music in it. The fees for music to a short film like this easily amount to thousands of dollars.
I can't think of any legal situation where that holds true. There are situations where an employee is legally obligated to assist their (former) employer, but that has nothing to do with "owning information".
Prison will hardly make him less of a dickhead. Most likely, he'll be even more bitter and convinced he's been unfairly treated when he gets out.
Locking him away for life would stop him from causing trouble, but would be unjust and expensive.
Psychological counseling might help, but there's no guarantee.
In any case, giving him a harsher sentence just because he's a dickhead won't help anyone. Sometimes you have to accept that there is no solution, and doing nothing causes the least damage.
You're using the State Departments own official propaganda as proof of what their priorities are?
From the article, you'd think they spend most of their efforts to cure AIDS and help poor children to an education. In reality, the money spent on foreign aid is less than 1% of the federal budget, while military spending amounts to 23%, a large part of which can be attributed to direct military interventions. (Wikipedia)
Still, that's not the point I was trying to make. USA:s knee-jerk response to terrorism is to capture and kill terrorists and invade countries on flimsy grounds, letting innocents get caught in the crossfire, and creating even more animosity towards themselves. That's what I mean by "short-sighted retributionism".
Ah, sorry, they were asylum seekers, not citizens.
Keeping someone in prison is expensive, so giving someone a longer sentence just because they're a dickhead and offend the judge or jurors is irresponsible against the taxpayers.
He also had no right to go through their network and booby trap the systems so only he could gain administrative access to them, rendering the entire system useless to anyone who might be filling his position in the future.
Eh, it IS a sysadmin's job to make sure nobody can take over the network without the proper passwords. It is conceivable that he was overly paranoid when configuring the network, or that he was planning to blackmail the city of New York all along, but so far I've seen no evidence of this.
However, if the person who signs my paycheck comes to me and informs me of a shift in my responsibilities away from the network or is terminating my position and demands that I hand over security credentials so the person coming in after me can do the job, I'll hand it over.
You seem to have missed that Childs' had been instructed, in writing, to only hand over the passwords to authorised staff. If he had revealed the passwords to his closest superior (who was unauthorised), and the employer had been a dickhead, they could have charged Childs' with negligence.
On the other hand, it is quite possible that Childs' was being a dickhead himself and that the whole problem could have been avoided if he had been more flexible. But if we're going to condemn him, let's do it for the right reasons.
I suppose my boss could invite me out for lunch, fire me, and then keep my car, which is parked on company property and accessible via a locked gate with a keycard. My keycard would no longer work, and he'd be under no obligation to do anything for me, a non-employee. Heck, my iPod in my desk drawer. Gone.
No, your car and your iPod is physical property, and he would have to give you access to them in some way. However, if you stored personal information in your work computer with your employer's permission (like personal correspondence), I'm not sure the employer would be obligated to extract the information for you.
The flaw in that thinking lies in equating knowledge with property. There is an obligation to return property which has been placed in your care, because property normally has a specific owner, but there is in general no legal obligation to "return" secrets which has been entrusted upon you.
Of course, any sensible person would take reasonable steps to aid his employer in regaining control of the network, regardless of any legal obligation.
I agree that any person with some sense in their heads would try to cooperate with their employer. I'm not sure there is any legal obligation to turn over passwords, though. It depends on how the law is written in your country or state.
I seriously suspect you are trolling, sexconker, but let's analyse your statement just for the fun of it.
Knowledge is not property. There is no no law in the world which claims that the knowledge of something belongs to someone. Even the most draconian "intellectual property" laws in the world do not claim that it is illegal to, for example, tell the ending of a novel to your friend. "Copyright" is just what it sounds like: the exclusive right to manufacture copies of something. That right is the only thing you own when you own the copyright. You don't own the novel in itself. You don't own the information in it.
There are instances in which it is illegal to spread knowledge, for example, exposing military secrets, but that is not because the military "owns" the information. It is illegal because the information is classified and disseminating it would damage the country, regardless of who could be said to "own" it.
They lock the keys in the car and tell you to fuck off.
In my jurisdiction, this is not theft, because the car dealer does not appropriate the car for himself. However, it could still be illegal, on the grounds that the car dealer handles your property without your consent in a way which interferes with your own use of it.
However, information is not property, and having a secret password in your head doesn't mean you have your employer's property in your possession. Refusing to tell your employer the password is not legally equivalent to refusing to return the employer's property. It could be illegal to not tell the password, if the employer is legally obligated to be loyal to his employer or to follow its orders. It could also be breach of contract if he signed an employment agreement.
I don't agree. Not everyone voted for the government who was in power when crimes were perpetrated. Not everyone is eligible to vote. And even if they did vote for a government responsible for war crimes, they may have been misinformed, or forced to choose between two evils.
I do, however, believe that every citizen has a responsibility to do the best of the situation, and do their best not to support the crimes of their government.
Large parts of the world are critical to the USA because of their foreign policy.
Here in Europe, we have the left-wingers, who are critical of USA whatever they do, and the right-wingers, who love them whatever they do. But in the middle, we have a large number of people who judge USA by its actions.
For example, USA received almost no criticism in Europe when it invaded Afghanistan, because it had valid reason to do so. Afghanistan really did harbour terrorists who were directly involved in attacks against the USA, and the USA had support in the UN for going in. The invasion of Iraq, however, was heavily criticised, because it was obvious to most outside observers that both the talk about "weapons of mass destruction" and the talk about "aiding terrorism" was bull. It was obvious that President Bush was looking for excuses to invade.