Wikileaks

[Sotha]

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.

 

Yikes! That sounds really bad. Tempted to change my vote too, but I think I'll still need to see what else is coming.

[Springheel]

I wish people were paying more attention to the actual information being released, and less to the individual who released them.

 

Look at the reports about Afghanistan, where the government admits that the Afghan government we spent so many lives to install is incredibly corrupt and is stealing billions of the aid dollars we're sending there, as an example.

 

I guess if I were in government I wouldn't want people to read that either.

[OrbWeaver]

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

 

You really thought there would be a change?

 

Leaks do not effect a change by themselves, the change only happens if the public are sufficiently outraged by their content to demand a change. Given how many unthinking, credulous believers who swallow every piece of propaganda the government feeds to them are currently joining in the chorus of condemnation for Wikileaks, I somewhat doubt the required level of outrage is going to materialise.

 

The public interest in actual free speech is long dead. People are quite happy with the "freedom" to choose what colour of boot stamps on their face for the next five years. Meanwhile, any speech that might actually offend or upset anyone is censored as being "terrorist" or "unpatriotic" or "immoral" or "obscene" or whatever other meaningless crap is in vogue, and the serfs willingly go back to the fields to work for their owners.

[demagogue]

Well my two general feelings are

 

(1) the most significant and long-lasting impact of this will be feed-back effects: foreign diplomats just aren't going to open up to US diplomats anymore, and far from making things more open, US agencies are going to retrench to being even *more* secretive, assuming every document can get leaked, so they won't take notes, will keep documents to a minimum, code them, make them eyes-only, and have a program to destroy more documents, etc. It's great to have a lot of this information available, but the feedback effects are going to be harsh and it's debateable if it was worth the cost.

 

(2) A lot of the information, most of it as I understood, was already generally known by researchers, and it just added local flavor and details to what people already generally knew was going on. And actually this additional stuff would be more useful IMO if it had just been kept in back archives for researchers to dig up like billions of "scandalous" public documents have always been (people just latched on to them being "secret" for its own sake, as if *now* they care so much about things they could have looked up at any time in the past and learned almost just as much). It was making a big hooplah about it and rousing up the wackos that I thought was excessive in this case. I've always been a fan of keeping stuff perfectly public and open but in backroom archives so you know pretty much only responsible researchers will get to it, and they'll use the information responsibly, and not harp on the gossipy trivial stuff. It's a sort of natural self-selection, since they're they ones with the actual initiative to go look this stuff up.

[Fidcal]

(1) the most significant and long-lasting impact of this will be feed-back effects: foreign diplomats just aren't going to open up to US diplomats anymore, and far from making things more open, US agencies are going to retrench to being even *more* secretive, assuming every document can get leaked, so they won't take notes, will keep documents to a minimum, code them, make them eyes-only, and have a program to destroy more documents, etc.

But will this be limited to the USA? Do we know that the US were more careless in their security than any other country? My belief is that these leaks could happen to any country. Since these leaks I would expect all government heads around the world to have summoned their advisors to investigate their own procedures before it happens to them. I would have.

[_Atti_]

If we lived in a normal world, i think everyone would react to these leaks like .. " Really?!, where is that guy..release all those documents you have, that was outrageous what you've uncovered so we got to know the rest of it..." instead it's just silence and humhum about putting him to jail..

[jdude]

I just heard on CBC radio that they released a whole bunch of cables with targets which would hut the US and Canada if attacked. For example there's pipe lines and dams and their locations. These would flood parts of the US on the boarder, entire Canadian cities etc or stop oil/gas transfer either way causing a huge catastrophe.

 

This is exposing vulnerabilities of civilian areas to everyone which could affect thousands of lives if someone decides to take advantage of this information. This is just negligent spreading of information imo. I don't approve of this at all now, there's been nothing good arising from this other than set back diplomacy and vulnerabilities so far.

I've switched from good to bad.

 

If somehow some huge atrocities of governments or corporations are revealed then great, maybe I'll change my view, but so far it's just name calling and bickering on cables with some other questionable content... If they wanted to do this right they should have gone through the content and shown only the important stuff that actually has real world implications. Why did they feel it necessary to release so much random stuff?

[OrbWeaver]

Even I am uneasy about the "list of terrorist targets" leak, although censorship doesn't solve problems in general, this does seem like a gift to anyone who was looking for somewhere to attack.

 

there's been nothing good arising from this other than set back diplomacy

 

I have to disagree with that, there have been some revelations of some quite disgusting behaviour by world governments, such as the US kidnapping an innocent German citizen in Germany, shipping him abroad for "interrogation", then pressurising the German government not to press charges against the agents responsible. If "diplomacy" like this is "set back" it will be a good thing.

[rich_is_bored]

It may not be all bad. Perhaps by exposing vulnerabilities we'll stop fighting a bunch of pointless wars abroad and focus on defending instead.

[Serpentine]

I just heard on CBC radio that they released a whole bunch of cables with targets which would hut the US and Canada if attacked. For example there's pipe lines and dams and their locations. These would flood parts of the US on the boarder, entire Canadian cities etc or stop oil/gas transfer either way causing a huge catastrophe.

 

http://cryptome.org/0003/ci-kr-spy.htm

 

The list is quite boring and really obvious for anyone that'd do some research beforehand. The only attacks that would benefit from this are on such massive scales that it wouldn't matter anyway.

[Sotha]

Recent developments:

• Assagne was arrested (turned himself in)
• Also WL has one more donation channel shut down and a swiss bank has closed a WL account.

I wonder if Assagne turned himself in because he is more safe in police custody? How long will it take until he ends up in US officials (or inofficials) hands?

[nbohr1more]

My cynicism has the words "Turned himself in" in extra heavy quotation...

[demagogue]

He's pre-arranged that all 250K documents get released if anything "happens" to him... not clear if he's talking about threats or also includes legal action against him too.

 

It's also hard to see the line between this being a smart insurance policy or straight-up blackmail. If he gets what he wants and isn't prosecuted, what's him to stop using the blackmail threat to change policies at his whim? The very fact he's the one making threats should give people pause about what his intentions are.

[Fidcal]

This is fascinating stuff.

 

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23904538-why-cant-they-plug-the-wikileaks.do

 

It's kind of worrying and heartwarming all at the same time. I like the idea of the internet being so robust - built to withstand nuclear war. The idea of one global organization that has no physical existence - it only exists in cyberspace so governments can't stop it. Even if they assassinated Assange.

[7upMan]

@Demagogue: Sorry, but the overly foul behaviour of the authorities in the US, UK and Sweden as well as the (supposed) pressure they put on companies with ties to WikiLeaks (banks and hosters) should have shown you well enough who the real enemy is. No, I may not find Assange overly sympathetic, but what would be the world without him? It would have a website less where all the ugly things are shown that governments and companies did and are continuing to do.

 

Demagogue, you shouldn't see only the Cablegate affair. There are *numerous* other country-specific files that may not be relevant to any US citizen, but who concern a person who's from that specific country. Like, there are some quite outrageous documents that are interesting maily to Germans.

 

Besides, would it be wrong that a single man has the power to make those uneasy who couldn't care less about laws and legality? OrbWeaver named one example, and it shows that Assange better had some serious blackmail potential so he won't suddenly die or be locked away for the rest of his life.

 

The question, I'd think, boils down to: Who's side are you for? The governments with their dirty ways of doing business, or the underdog who actually stood up to them? For my part, I know where I stand.

Edited December 7, 2010 by 7upMan

[jdude]

Even I am uneasy about the "list of terrorist targets" leak, although censorship doesn't solve problems in general, this does seem like a gift to anyone who was looking for somewhere to attack.

 

 

 

I have to disagree with that, there have been some revelations of some quite disgusting behaviour by world governments, such as the US kidnapping an innocent German citizen in Germany, shipping him abroad for "interrogation", then pressurising the German government not to press charges against the agents responsible. If "diplomacy" like this is "set back" it will be a good thing.

Woa, I haven't heard anything about that! I guess it's good and bad information, I still think they should have done a slightly better part of sifting through it before releasing it.

[Sotha]

An interesting turn:

• Both Mastercard and Visa have ceased to transfer donation money to wikileaks.
• A company from Iceland, Datacell, is suing Visa. Datacell claims Visa has yielded to politic pressure and is doing great harm to WL and Datacell.

 

I wonder who in the US goverment will get tarnished by a load of shit in the future, when the US gov reaction-to-WL documents get published?

 

Who gave the command to scare companies to inhibit other companies, which are related to WL?

[Fidcal]

But now cyber wars are starting up and hackers are fighting back! Is this a movie or what?

 

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23905204-credit-card-giants-crippled-by-hackers-in-revenge-attacks-over-wikileaks.do

[7upMan]

I just read that PayPal is giving in and has announced to transfer all the donations for WL, which they have already received, over to WL. They will not accept any additional donations, however. Still, if someone's willing to make a donation, transferring it to the Islandic bank that has the accounts of WL is the way to go.

 

@Fiscal: No, this is better. This is living history we can tell our grandchildren about!

 

 

Edited December 9, 2010 by 7upMan

[OrbWeaver]

I just read that PayPal is giving in and has announced to transfer all the donations for WL, which they have already received, over to WL.

 

In other words, they've decided NOT to steal the money that was donated to WL and doesn't belong to them in the first place. That's mighty big of them.

 

And just in case anybody is still in doubt as to whether anything "important" has been revealed, apparently an American contractor has been helping to sell children for sex in Afghanistan.

[sparhawk]

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..

 

Maybe you are not so far from it.

 

Some information on the "rape" case:

 

http://meedia.de/details-topstory/article/die-sex-protokolle-von-julian-assange_100032009.html?tx_ttnews[backPid]=23&cHash=e5bfcaa873 (German)

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1336291/Wikileaks-Julian-Assanges-2-night-stands-spark-worldwide-hunt.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/24/assange-wikileaks-swedish-prosecutors-charges

 

I read some articles that both of the woman are somehow linked to CIA contacts, but I can't find the links anymore.

 

On another realted funny aspect is this link:

 

Considering that amazon, mastercard and visa all shut down their business relations based on some flakey excuses, it's kind of ironic that amazon now offers the same files for sale and you can pay with, guess what?, mastercard and visa.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004EEOLIU?ie=UTF8&ref_=sr_1_2&s=books&qid=1291847557&sr=8-2&linkCode=shr&camp=3194&creative=21330&tag=matstmeuk-21

[Fidcal]

That is just friggin' amazin'. I'd like to see that picked up by the media.

[7upMan]

That is just friggin' amazin'. I'd like to see that picked up by the media.

 

I'm doing my best. 

[Fidcal]

It's already done...

 

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-amazon-uk-site-wikileaks-documents.html

 

And immediately, Amazon have changed the wording on their website to say it doesn't contain the actual leaks but a commentary about them.

[7upMan]

And the book is gone: http://www.amazon.co.uk/WikiLeaks-documents-foreign-conspiracies-CONTAIN/dp/B004EEOLIU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1291924497&sr=8-2