GP got a +5 interesting mod for making up a story and claiming that "this is how diplomacy works". A rational person can't believe that U.S. diplomats are taking part in widespread corruption and then documenting it in official files that go to their superiors and the Library of Congress.
There are "HUMINT requirements" and other unreleasable information so far on the UK Guardian page. These allow our operations and our agents to be targeted by adversarial counterintelligence..
From the Guardian:"WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department's fears, it also initially intends to post only limited cable extracts, and to redact identities." So how would the documents allow others to target the agents ?
The same way bits of information an little tips from anonymous callers help to narrow an impossible murder case down to just a few suspects.
Do you think US "HUMINT requirements" were a secret for any self-respecting foreign espionage agency?
I still fail to see anything that is really damaging to US, except for damage to public opinion (which is low enough already).
"Believing you are being spied on" and "knowing you are being spied on and exactly what information they are looking for" are two completely different things.
I'm not neutral. I enjoy the U.S. strategic superiority over North Korea and other nations who would like to have ultimate strategic superiority over us. Wikileaks did not do an overall public good by releasing today's documents.
There are "HUMINT requirements" and other unreleasable information so far on the UK Guardian page. These allow our operations and our agents to be targeted by adversarial counterintelligence. This may be good for some democratic countries because ally countries always spy on other ally countries, but it's also bad because our mutual adversaries are also able to limit the extent of the U.S.' espionage. That limits the amount of information the U.S. is able to share with you about your adversaries as well, because the U.S. was unable to collect it.
I think the current status quo, Pax Americana, is the least disruptive and most beneficial to all parties involved. It's not perfect and eventually there will be something better, but for many years to come there are no alternatives on the table that are equal or better. I do not believe the strategic position of the U.S. should be degraded in this way.
Bradley Manning, the disgruntled private who was demoted from the rank of Sergeant prior to leaking this information, should be given the harshest penalty possible (excessive prison sentence) for the sole purpose of discouraging this type of behavior in the future. An honest whistle-blower who reveals true wrongdoing will lose their job when found out, but they won't be prosecuted for releasing the information. However, deciding to release all classified information you can get your hands on is not whistle-blowing. It is nothing short of displaying a reckless disregard for any consequences.
The Iraq and Afghan dumps were only "a little harmful" and barely worthy of classification. These cables, on the other hand, are strategically damaging the U.S., its interests, and its allies. Wikileaks should be exposing corruption, wrongdoing, and illegality. It shouldn't take what appears to all outside observers as a vendetta against the U.S.
I have glanced at a few of the documents on The Guardian, and I can categorically say that these documents should not have been released. This should a huge level of irresponsibility on the part of WikiLeaks for releasing the entire database rather than incriminating files. The files are all SECRET rather than TOP SECRET, but there are very sensitive official files in here that have no business seeing the light of day within their classification timeframe, such as HUMINT documents.
Several years ago I supported WikiLeaks and what they stood for, even donating, but after this latest continuation of their anti-American campaign I cannot support them any longer. These documents are far too strategically damaging to the U.S. and its public/not-so-public allies to have been revealed in bulk.
Keep in mind that the only source of information regarding the alleged DDOS is the Wikileaks Twitter page. Wikileaks also went down the last times they released this information.
It's a new idea of a global rapid response ( or sth like this ) - the idea is to drop a 16Ton weight ( actually a small stone would do ) on the tents of the bad guys somewhere in the desert without the need of tracking them with drones (which require servicing and airspace over enemy terrain.
I thought rods from god was a good idea until I did the calculations... turns out dropping a 16-ton weight at 4km/sec is the same as about 30 tons of TNT. So it's like dropping a 16-ton TNT bomb except twice the power. Not really worth it...
The payload capacity is too small to use for detailed ground observations. We can already scramble a drone in a short time frame if we have actionable intelligence that needs a quick look before a satellite flies over. It is most likely intended to be used for inspection of satellites (think Transformers 2:)), refueling them, performing simple repairs, and experimenting with spaced based operations.
Planes, etc. are sometimes not fast enough. Remember the day Clinton was supposed to have his impeachment trial, but it was delayed? That was when they missed Bin Laden because it took over and hour for cruise missiles to reach the target locations from the launching naval vessels.
I believe that, besides covert installation of satellites, this will be used as an observation platform more mobile than hydrazine-limited satellites. Imagine if you could dip down to 50km, take pictures, and boost back up way more often than any satellite could possible do, because you don't have to conserve all propellent for a five-year-lifespan. You can also replace the optics on a much more regular basis than a satellite could.
Some nations might have developed cool things like ballistic trajectory hypervelocity antiship missiles and other things, but I'm glad the United States is generally on the forefront of cutting edge strategic capabilities. I don't want Pax Americana to end, because I don't see any better alternatives humanity is capable of handling right now.
It's not about the energy that goes into its creation. It's about the low mass required to create an enormous blast. You thought 200kg of fissile material was "hardly anything" considering it makes a blast equal to 20,000,000 tons of TNT? Well, 1kg of antimatter gives a 20 megaton blast damage. That's two orders of magnitude difference.
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.
In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.
Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were made in the United States of America and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.
The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines.
Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.
We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.
Seriously? You've never heard of submarine-launched ballistic missiles? They're a VERY important part of our strategic nuclear defense. Even if an adversary kills the entire civilian and military leadership and destroys all of our nuclear silos in a surprise "first strike", we have SLBM submarines patrolling the oceans in secret locations that can launch a devastating "second strike". This deters adversaries from trying to launch a "first strike" when they think they have the upper hand.
If the Charlie Chaplin movie already had the time traveling as an extra in the background (since it happened decades ago), why would the time traveler need to travel back in time to put himself in the movie?
Soldiers are not just soldiers, they are what they are trained to be, those that fail the training are unsuitable and are discharged. You can train a honourable army that operates upon a basis of integrity and a resistance to killing, with a preference for capturing. The US instead appears to have abandoned honour and integrity and gone for an unbalanced desire to destroy and kill, creating a psychopathic military not by accident but as a desired goal and then going on to release those unstable service personnel back into the civilian population many of whom go on to be law en'FORCE'ment officers with a history police brutality.
The US military apparently have a secret history of using brutality, torture and random slaughter to subjugate troublesome populations all artfully hidden by propaganda distributed by a willing accomplice in mass media, where slaughter is reported like a sports score and any hint of scandal apart from the random scapegoat is hidden and not discussed.
It is now pretty clear why the US government wanted to hide the last of the documents, it should also be pretty clear to the rest of the democratic world why the documents had to get out and why the rest of humanity was entitled to know exactly why kind of threat is presented by the US military.
Slashdot Mirror
GP got a +5 interesting mod for making up a story and claiming that "this is how diplomacy works". A rational person can't believe that U.S. diplomats are taking part in widespread corruption and then documenting it in official files that go to their superiors and the Library of Congress.
Please don't moderate these people any higher.
There are "HUMINT requirements" and other unreleasable information so far on the UK Guardian page. These allow our operations and our agents to be targeted by adversarial counterintelligence..
From the Guardian :"WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department's fears, it also initially intends to post only limited cable extracts, and to redact identities." So how would the documents allow others to target the agents ?
The same way bits of information an little tips from anonymous callers help to narrow an impossible murder case down to just a few suspects.
GGP got modded up highly for saying I was a Pentagon astroturfer... Really? This passes for an insightful comment nowadays?
Do you think US "HUMINT requirements" were a secret for any self-respecting foreign espionage agency?
I still fail to see anything that is really damaging to US, except for damage to public opinion (which is low enough already).
"Believing you are being spied on" and "knowing you are being spied on and exactly what information they are looking for" are two completely different things.
I'm not neutral. I enjoy the U.S. strategic superiority over North Korea and other nations who would like to have ultimate strategic superiority over us. Wikileaks did not do an overall public good by releasing today's documents.
There are "HUMINT requirements" and other unreleasable information so far on the UK Guardian page. These allow our operations and our agents to be targeted by adversarial counterintelligence. This may be good for some democratic countries because ally countries always spy on other ally countries, but it's also bad because our mutual adversaries are also able to limit the extent of the U.S.' espionage. That limits the amount of information the U.S. is able to share with you about your adversaries as well, because the U.S. was unable to collect it.
I think the current status quo, Pax Americana, is the least disruptive and most beneficial to all parties involved. It's not perfect and eventually there will be something better, but for many years to come there are no alternatives on the table that are equal or better. I do not believe the strategic position of the U.S. should be degraded in this way.
Oh, neat. I hadn't considered that at all. That's actually pretty amazing, but you'll have to have some seriously accurate targeting capabilities.
Bradley Manning, the disgruntled private who was demoted from the rank of Sergeant prior to leaking this information, should be given the harshest penalty possible (excessive prison sentence) for the sole purpose of discouraging this type of behavior in the future. An honest whistle-blower who reveals true wrongdoing will lose their job when found out, but they won't be prosecuted for releasing the information. However, deciding to release all classified information you can get your hands on is not whistle-blowing. It is nothing short of displaying a reckless disregard for any consequences.
The Iraq and Afghan dumps were only "a little harmful" and barely worthy of classification. These cables, on the other hand, are strategically damaging the U.S., its interests, and its allies. Wikileaks should be exposing corruption, wrongdoing, and illegality. It shouldn't take what appears to all outside observers as a vendetta against the U.S.
I have glanced at a few of the documents on The Guardian, and I can categorically say that these documents should not have been released. This should a huge level of irresponsibility on the part of WikiLeaks for releasing the entire database rather than incriminating files. The files are all SECRET rather than TOP SECRET, but there are very sensitive official files in here that have no business seeing the light of day within their classification timeframe, such as HUMINT documents.
Several years ago I supported WikiLeaks and what they stood for, even donating, but after this latest continuation of their anti-American campaign I cannot support them any longer. These documents are far too strategically damaging to the U.S. and its public/not-so-public allies to have been revealed in bulk.
Keep in mind that the only source of information regarding the alleged DDOS is the Wikileaks Twitter page. Wikileaks also went down the last times they released this information.
Woah nelly... I wonder if SIGINT spy satellites can do this? Powerful transceiver should mean readable RFIDs...
It's a new idea of a global rapid response ( or sth like this ) - the idea is to drop a 16Ton weight ( actually a small stone would do ) on the tents of the bad guys somewhere in the desert without the need of tracking them with drones (which require servicing and airspace over enemy terrain.
I thought rods from god was a good idea until I did the calculations... turns out dropping a 16-ton weight at 4km/sec is the same as about 30 tons of TNT. So it's like dropping a 16-ton TNT bomb except twice the power. Not really worth it...
The payload capacity is too small to use for detailed ground observations. We can already scramble a drone in a short time frame if we have actionable intelligence that needs a quick look before a satellite flies over. It is most likely intended to be used for inspection of satellites (think Transformers 2 :)), refueling them, performing simple repairs, and experimenting with spaced based operations.
Planes, etc. are sometimes not fast enough. Remember the day Clinton was supposed to have his impeachment trial, but it was delayed? That was when they missed Bin Laden because it took over and hour for cruise missiles to reach the target locations from the launching naval vessels.
Highly classified spaceship carrying highly classified cargo returns to earth semi-unclassifiedly.
I believe that, besides covert installation of satellites, this will be used as an observation platform more mobile than hydrazine-limited satellites. Imagine if you could dip down to 50km, take pictures, and boost back up way more often than any satellite could possible do, because you don't have to conserve all propellent for a five-year-lifespan. You can also replace the optics on a much more regular basis than a satellite could.
Some nations might have developed cool things like ballistic trajectory hypervelocity antiship missiles and other things, but I'm glad the United States is generally on the forefront of cutting edge strategic capabilities. I don't want Pax Americana to end, because I don't see any better alternatives humanity is capable of handling right now.
Or maybe there's just one. Who knows.
I really doubt the story. It has some holes.
It's not about the energy that goes into its creation. It's about the low mass required to create an enormous blast. You thought 200kg of fissile material was "hardly anything" considering it makes a blast equal to 20,000,000 tons of TNT? Well, 1kg of antimatter gives a 20 megaton blast damage. That's two orders of magnitude difference.
Red-shifting is the analogy to light "slowing down". Blue-shifting is when light "speeds up".
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.
In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.
Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were made in the United States of America and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.
The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines.
Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.
We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.
You will never get anything done because nobody wants to know what the full costs are upfront.
Seriously? You've never heard of submarine-launched ballistic missiles? They're a VERY important part of our strategic nuclear defense. Even if an adversary kills the entire civilian and military leadership and destroys all of our nuclear silos in a surprise "first strike", we have SLBM submarines patrolling the oceans in secret locations that can launch a devastating "second strike". This deters adversaries from trying to launch a "first strike" when they think they have the upper hand.
one war in 1959-1959
What? You mean 1950-1953 for the Korean War. And that's after 40 years of Japanese domination from 1905 to 1945.
If the Charlie Chaplin movie already had the time traveling as an extra in the background (since it happened decades ago), why would the time traveler need to travel back in time to put himself in the movie?
Soldiers are not just soldiers, they are what they are trained to be, those that fail the training are unsuitable and are discharged. You can train a honourable army that operates upon a basis of integrity and a resistance to killing, with a preference for capturing. The US instead appears to have abandoned honour and integrity and gone for an unbalanced desire to destroy and kill, creating a psychopathic military not by accident but as a desired goal and then going on to release those unstable service personnel back into the civilian population many of whom go on to be law en'FORCE'ment officers with a history police brutality.
The US military apparently have a secret history of using brutality, torture and random slaughter to subjugate troublesome populations all artfully hidden by propaganda distributed by a willing accomplice in mass media, where slaughter is reported like a sports score and any hint of scandal apart from the random scapegoat is hidden and not discussed.
It is now pretty clear why the US government wanted to hide the last of the documents, it should also be pretty clear to the rest of the democratic world why the documents had to get out and why the rest of humanity was entitled to know exactly why kind of threat is presented by the US military.
What the fuck? I mean, just what the fuck?