Wikileaks

[Sotha]

So.. Let's talk about politics, my other favorite smalltalk topic. Finns don't do much smalltalk.

 

So wikileaks has been publishing some secret and embarrassing documents, letting ordinary people see behind the curtains of US warfare, goverment and international politics.

 

What do you think? Will their actions lead to a destabilized world, or will there be a benefit that ordinary people know things the ruling elite thinks ordinary people should not know?

 

I've personally not yet formed a clear opinion. I have to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Discussions like this help people to see multiple point of views and thus form a better opinion.

 

Initial thoughts are that the ordinary people should know exactly what the people they elect to office are doing. Somehow I'm not surprized when it was shown that diplomats act as spies etc. Powerful individuals might be held in check by one additional watchdog. Maybe possibility of leaks reduce goverments spying on each other in the future? Or maybe international politics get more harsh?

 

I am rather worried will this kind of stuff end when a satellite smashes down from orbit 'accidentally' killing Julian Assagne or other wikileak key figures, and scaring others. Some people have people as enemies, some people have goverments as enemies..

 

I'll vote cautiously 'both.' Let's see if additional points of views make me change opinion. How exciting!

[OrbWeaver]

An alternative opinion: uninteresting and irrelevant.

[Sotha]

An alternative opinion: uninteresting and irrelevant.

 

 

Heh.. Have to agree that these would be much interesting.

• Files on North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and perhaps most significantly, Israel - its weaponry, war plans, assassination squads, foreign sources of funds, Mossad and its collaborators
• Files on weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological, chemical, radiological. Top secret files of the IAEA on nuclear non-proliferation contributed and deceptively withheld by a bevy of nations, ie, the CIA's Valerie Plame and related front companies
• Files of global WMD research laboratories and the status of reserve stocks of offensive and defensive weapons
• War plans of all nations, for and against one another
• Files of billionaire political meddlers
• Files of the major world banks and their attorneys
• Files of national tax agencies.

There were a lot of uninteresting tabloid-class information, but there might be something more interesting stuff. It might be too early to condemn the material as totally irrelevant.

[7upMan]

I think WikiLeaks is the last straw for democracy. After all, here you can read about things not even the most infuential magazines or newspapers dare(d) to write about. To actually read what the higher-ups said and did is extremely revealing and gives us a much better understanding as to how these supposedly democratic structures are really working. Without WikiLeaks we couldn't know this. I really hope that Julian Assange will have many decades to do his important work, whatever they may throw at him. 

[Melan]

Governments getting their hands into dirty affairs and diplomats being duplicitous? That's not a major revelation, although the particulars might be interesting.

 

Nonetheless, this sort of information, being tied to official diplomatic organs, amounts to political capital that may become useful leverage in someone's hands. Whose hands? To anarchists like Assange, it doesn't matter, only the principle of disclosure does. Dissemination, being effectively random, has effects that aren't precisely predictable. On the average, it is bound to be somewhat uncomfortable for the US, embarrasing for its allies (especially those who are allies against the popular will of their respective countries) and advantageous for random political interests who may benefit from a disruption of US diplomacy, however slight and momentary.

Edited November 29, 2010 by Melan

[Serpentine]

I just find it funny yet important.

 

Tho the media circus might be quite large and ignorant, it seems to be having the unwitting knock-on affect of making people aware that what they think might always remain secret can always see the light of day at a later stage. Something which people generally don't think of these days, freely giving of personal information and sensitive information without thinking and thinking that companies and governments are too big to fall or too important to do harm. A reminder, subconsciously and over time... maybe something society as a whole will benefit from. Blind faith is something that annoys me :/

 

A lot of people don't think that this stuff is relevant, seeing as a lot of this stuff is low profile and good 'ol Africa pops up a fair bit, as such it's constantly in the media over here. Radio and especially investigative journos seem to be looking at topics which previously would have been too hard or unknown to work on, no matter importance. For this alone I think it's good for this corner of the world. Academics also seem to be gaining good insight from the content of the leaks, while they are unable to credit it as a source I think research and understanding from this will be quite interesting in the coming years, instead of studying a concrete past with few visible details of reasoning and thought processes, even if a bit interpretive.

 

Cries of losses of life due to the leaks and such... that's just popcorn to add to the viewing of a media circus, none of which focuses on the leaked content itself.

[Fidcal]

I'm a don't know but voted both. The scale of this is something quite new evoking all kinds of thoughts for the future. One possibility is that it will all fade away eventually and those with secrets will be using more secure methods so this never happens again. Another possibility is the other extreme and never again will those in authority be quite sure of what they commit to communications.

 

Here are a couple more interesting comments...

 

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23902097-with-the-click-of-a-mouse-secrecy-is-no-longer-an-option.do

 

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23902098-trust-is-the-casualty-of-wikileaks-disclosures.do

[nbohr1more]

The "Internet II" is coming folks.

They will use this as an example and as justification to "lock-down and censor".

 

It's no coincidence that Intel (part of the DARPA group) has been trying to push for all application code to be signed and all CPU's to be uniquely identified and tied to a user...

Edited November 29, 2010 by nbohr1more

[OrbWeaver]

Cries of losses of life due to the leaks and such... that's just popcorn to add to the viewing of a media circus, none of which focuses on the leaked content itself.

 

Plus, they said that before, and it was thoroughly debunked (by the US DoD itself, no less). The more hysterically they shriek, the more ridiculous they sound.

 

The "Internet II" is coming folks.

They will use this as an example and as justification to "lock-down and censor".

 

They don't need Wikileaks for that. They just shout "Paedo-terrorists" and the sheep are practically falling over themselves begging for the interwebs to be censored. Censoring the internet to protect governments would be political suicide, and entirely pointless when they can do it "FOR THE CHILDREN" and nobody bats an eyelid.

[jdude]

I think it's nice to see that someone is trying to make governmental affairs more transparent, but so far I haven't seen anything, special... For example the Saudi King telling the US to bomb Iran, why does this matter and why would it be a surprise to anyone? I can't see any implications for things like this coming to light, but as people look through it we will see if anything better pops up

 

I'd assume that the US would have files on everyone and everything it comes into contact with and contingency plans for millions of situations so all these leaked files are really no surprise to me.

 

 

..It'd be funny to see what people would consider censoring on the internet. Would it include porn? I think that would be 90% of websites

[Fidcal]

It's not just the scandal and embarrassment as news fodder but the implications for the invasion of government privacy. All organizations need some privacy to function. Suppose you find a website publishing private memos from the company you work for? Maybe giving details of your salary? And how would we feel if it were our personal emails that were being published? Even if there was nothing too serious in them. Even the finest, most noble government ever needs privacy. They must have opinions about foreign leaders for example that they need to discuss but which would not be diplomatic to publicise.

 

I have mixed feelings about this. In the past maybe one document might get leaked or someone's social security number get copied. Now in the information age we have a quarter million documents ripped off and someone leaves his laptop on the train with 50,000 private details of the public's tax or medical records. The information age is multiplying efficiency but also multiplying risk.

[stumpy]

well the finacial people could now decide that america is a bad risk and dump all shares with american companies as fast as possible, and devalue the dollar till its completly worthless, Which would then have a cataclysmic knock on effect that could put the world back 300 years, lots of dead people due to lack of food or other reasons. The current ressesion would look kind of minor compared to what could happen.

[Fidcal]

I don't think this is limited to the USA. We are in a new information era. This might happen to any country, any organization.

[Melan]

The Torygraph delivers.

[Fidcal]

Intercepted memos between Telegraph editor and Brogan:

 

Brogan: "Shall I do my jealous outrage version then?"

Editor: "No, go for the blase. That way I think it will stir up more comment and sell more copy to our idiot readers who'll lap up anything."

Brogan: "Haha! Be ironic if those morons got to read our private stuff eh?"

[OrbWeaver]

You have to laugh at the Swedish prosecutors screaming "Rapist! Rapist!" at Assange while being done doggy-style by the US government. And people think the UK is the lap-dog of America.

[Sotha]

You have to laugh at the Swedish prosecutors screaming "Rapist! Rapist!" at Assange while being done doggy-style by the US government. And people think the UK is the lap-dog of America.

 

Heh.. I'd love to see some leaked documents on this topic.. It just might be that the victim has some connections to US intelligence agencies or something else..

[Fidcal]

Another sensible, interesting commentary:

 

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/markets/article-23902684-these-leaks-empower-us-all-whatever-the-critics-say.do

[Melan]

You have to laugh at the Swedish prosecutors screaming "Rapist! Rapist!" at Assange while being done doggy-style by the US government. And people think the UK is the lap-dog of America.

 

I was sure there'd be something, but this is just too transparent.

[OrbWeaver]

I was sure there'd be something, but this is just too transparent.

 

Exactly. It sounds like somebody needs to take them aside, and have a quiet word: "Look, the entire world can see what you are doing. Just stop, before you embarrass yourself any further."

 

In a way though, I think it's a good thing, because at the moment allegations of "OMG SEX CRIMES" are treated much like allegations of witchcraft in medieval society: guilt upon accusation, permanent damage to reputation even after innocence is proven and so on. A big, high-profile smear campaign might raise awareness and make people reconsider the next time it happens to somebody much less famous.

[demagogue]

Well I know leaks do cause trouble because I got security clearance (had to take a little course) and did FOIA stuff (freedom of information act). Under FOIA the gov't is required to release all documents when requested, and there are standards about what can and can't be released; basically, if it's "classified". If it compromises a negotiation position or interest it's sensitive, if it severely compromises an interest it's secret, if an individual is at risk of bodily harm or death it's top secret.

 

And then there's a lot of worry about little things like your golf buddy or girlfriend asking about your schedule and budget and dodgy groups can, have, and do use that to piece together all sorts of things about government projects. And now we have 10s of thousands of classified documents going out ("classified" just means it meets one of the 3 standards I just mentioned).

 

There's no question they're going to be used by people in back offices you'll never hear about and probably make the biggest mess compromising negotiations, basically like trying to play poker when everybody can see everybody else's hand.

 

My general feeling is that ambiguity more often works in favor of good negotiations and confidence building, *even when* you know the other side knows your secret. The fact that it's still nominally a secret gives you space to negotiate in. So I see these leaks making it more difficult for diplomats to work with each other. Whether the public is better off knowing this stuff... There are different ways you can take it. Generally better transparency leads to better behavior and builds the (intelligent) public trust. But the intelligent people that can actually use the info can often get a hold of it anyway, through FOIA or other channels.

 

But then the vast majority of the general public (at least the self-declared "politically interested" public) is ignorant, prejudiced, and malevolent. I remember so many letters going to my congressmen (when I was working there) were written by adults in crayon or all capital letters obviously written by a hand shaking with emotion, babbling in incoherent sentences about some absurd conspiracy theory... When we say the "general public", these are the people we're talking about. And for them propping this stuff up is just stoking their conspiracy theories. It was better when everyone understood you could just get this same information by just doing a FOIA request or doing a little research, rather than any batshit kook thinking they're entitled to it because the conspiracies must be true.

[nbohr1more]

I remember some time in the late 90's there was a series of mysterious deaths for a bunch of top tier Scientists. (So a smear campaign is a light sentence for someone offending the powerful in comparison...)

 

I agree however, simply an accusation of "Sex Crime" is too powerful a tool. Some bot-net infection could deposit "illegal photos" on my PC and I would be up for a Federal sentence for "hosting" them. Wikipedia was starting to get some of this heat because some Politicians were claiming the media sections had "child porn"... but then WikiLeaks drew attention away from them (for the moment).

 

The idea that an enforcement agency could plant a photo or even illustration (cartoon etc) in your possession (or maybe even just claim that you possessed it), and that would be enough "evidence" to jail you is a scandalous subversion of the "Presumed Innocence" mechanism for modern western justice systems.

 

When I saw a report on WikiLeaks on CNN this morning, you could actually sense some fear in the news anchor's voice when they brought-up the "Sex Crime" aspect of the story... as if they were under pressure to report it as a "real and serious investigation". It's a damn farce!

 

If your job is to keep secrets secret then own-up to your short-comings with regard to these leaks rather than trying to stop the press. Yeah, WikiLeaks is often irresponsible journalism but the hysteria is all about the fact that this is happening on the internet rather than on paper. Thomas Paine would probably be in the same boat if he had a Blog.

 

The war on real free expression and information continues.

[Ladro]

I changed my vote form "both" to "good" after knowing a little bit more about Wikileaks and Assange.

 

IMHO Wikileaks it's really good thing.

[Sotha]

Recent news are troubling for wikileaks(WL):

• Amazon won't host WL pages anymore.
• Interpol is looking for Assagne (alledged rape in Sweden).
• Paypal shut down WL donation accounts.

 

US goverment really wants to shut WL down. I wonder how far further they will go?

[plasticman]

...far enaugh for me to change my vote from "Don't care" to "Good".

 

I don't have much sympathy for Assange, his egomaniac nature spoils the purpose of Wikileaks to a certain degree. The news should be about WHAT is released not about the person who initiated the project. It is his own PR mistake that made him vulnarable (though I think he enjoys that kind of fame).

 

With Assange in the front line it has become too easy for interested parties to influence the public opinion by tying Wikileaks to the accusations he faces in Sweden. In this case I won't judge whatever happened or didn't happen there, if the US government influences the jurisdiction of another country etc.

 

What seems more obvious to me are the cases with Amazon and Paypal. It is surely no coincidence they kicked Wikileaks right now. Still this is nothing what makes me raise an eyebrow, it is more like throwing some drunken taffer out of your house party, nothing to worry about.

 

But things stopped being funny for me when I learned the US Departement still treats the leaked cables as classified and tells their own people not to read them. If a government starts acting in that spirit, it's not far away from questioning freedom of speech in general (they will find a different name for that of course).

 

From an outside view, this is truly not the change in Washington I was hoping for.