I would like to see how this guy would react if it was an American citizen leaking information about random_enemy_country. Should the federal authorities of said country have the right to violate foreign soil?
Wikileaks Must Be Stopped
21–30 of 211 posts
Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, then propose another way. If there's a gate, there's a gatekeeper. There is no doubt in my mind that I would rather have Julian Assange and the Wikileaks staff be that gatekeeper than the U.S. government and military, who have a track record of keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own misconduct.
U.S. government and military, who have a track record of keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own misconduct. This is true. However Assande and Wikileaks have put over a hundred peoples lives directly in danger through their leaks as well as potentially thousands more. Which effectively puts them all the way on the other end of the spectrum. Your saying that putting 100's of peoples lives at risk in…
>This is true. However Assande and Wikileaks have put over a hundred peoples lives directly in danger through their leaks as well as potentially thousands more.
Some examples of this would be great.
Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped
#23I am struck by four things. 1) Wikileaks is really pissing people off. I don't mean the nicey, lets-go-protest-down-at-the-student-union kind of protest. I mean people who are not normally angry with anybody else in the world talking about throwing him in jail and/or killing him. Devil or Angel, that's a whole heap of pissing off he's accomplished. 2) Assange has more power than many 3-star generals, yet he's just so…
1) I'd hardly refer to many or any of the people calling for his head as "people who are not normally angry with anybody else in the world". Most of these people are professional anti-something, whether that something is a group, government, philosophy or what have you. And generally they are as unhinged in that regard as they are in regards to Wikileaks.
2- Many of the rest of us unfortunately have to live with the decisions of 3+ star generals. I'm not sure why Assange is any more of a threat than they are - indeed, in my view it is quite the opposite: the generals are responsible for more death than a deranged Assange could dream of if he were to dream of such a thing.
3- There is zero chance the Wikileaks will gain access to and release all secret information. So fear of anarchy is nothing more than a trope. Considering the amount of information marked as secret by the gov't that actually appears to show the gov't in a negative light vs. information of genuine safety for human life, this Wikileaks release is but a drop in the bucket. This emphasizes the canard of "anarchy".
4- Perhaps the gov't should think long and hard about what it elects to withhold from the public. Assange is not responsible for gov't openness. If the gov't decides to increase the amount of information it withholds, perhaps you should think long and hard about who you are voting for.
Assange's personality is essentially meaningless. He's not running for public office.
Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped
#24"The United States has the capability and the authority to monitor his communications and disrupt his operations." So, a member of the American Enterprise Institute is privy to the US Government's electronic spying capabilities? And, he's complaining about the release of intelligence-related secrets? I don't actually think he knows for sure that Wikileaks' communications are monitorable, but the statement is laughabl…
It would turn into an encrypted Wack-a-mole, evolving the state of the art for information dissemination. The author clearly believes that the DoD has magic computers, or the equivalent of a digital nuke.
Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped
#25I am struck by four things. 1) Wikileaks is really pissing people off. I don't mean the nicey, lets-go-protest-down-at-the-student-union kind of protest. I mean people who are not normally angry with anybody else in the world talking about throwing him in jail and/or killing him. Devil or Angel, that's a whole heap of pissing off he's accomplished. 2) Assange has more power than many 3-star generals, yet he's just so…
The history of the US government with respect to keeping secrets is really appalling. See the history of the original "state secrets" Supreme Court decision:
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a030953states...
Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped
#26As a European this comments really pisses me off "In other words, we do not need permission to apprehend Assange or his co-conspirators anywhere in the world." The political hatred the US has gotten from around the world stems largely from the idea that the US can do whatever it pleases wherever it pleases.
Also
"The United States has the capability and the authority to monitor his communications and disrupt his operations. " Julian Assange is a good hacker, he made the first free portscanner (precursor to Nmap), co-invented Rubberhose deniable encryption and wrote the Usenet caching software NNTPCache. I highly doubt the United States is monitoring his activity.
Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped
#27[deleted]
Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, then propose another way. If there's a gate, there's a gatekeeper. There is no doubt in my mind that I would rather have Julian Assange and the Wikileaks staff be that gatekeeper than the U.S. government and military, who have a track record of keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own misconduct.
U.S. government and military, who have a track record of keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own misconduct. This is true. However Assande and Wikileaks have put over a hundred peoples lives directly in danger through their leaks as well as potentially thousands more. Which effectively puts them all the way on the other end of the spectrum. Your saying that putting 100's of peoples lives at risk in…
Yes, that's definitely what I mean to say.
In my short lifetime, hundreds of thousands of people, many of them civilians, have died in Iraq. Tens of thousands, many being civilians, have died in Afghanistan; we continue to kill several civilians per day. We have spent God knows how much money to date on both combined. They have completely undermined our moral standing in the world. Those are not potential costs. Those are the real costs of our military's actions, and I honestly can't imagine how anyone could defend them as being justifiable or reasonable. Nothing we even dreamed of accomplishing is worth that much.
That seems to me like a really big destructive force, and barely anything stands in opposition to it. It's a lot bigger than 100 Afghan informants who are at risk of retribution. If anything can put the fear of God into the people responsible for making these decisions, it's worth a huge price, and I think that shining a huge light on the military's actual actions is a pretty good start.
Wikileaks fucked up badly, in my opinion, by not redacting identifying details from the documents. They will indeed have some blood on their hands if retribution arrives. However, it seems to me like the benefit of Wikileaks' continued operation dwarfs the cost of their fuckups.
I hate to put people on the spot with "well, what would YOU do." But Daniel's post implies that there is some wise oversight that can expose just the right secrets, without exposing the dangerous ones. I don't think that's realistic, unless he has some particular scheme in mind. I think the choice is between total control and some degree of anarchy, and I would take as much anarchy as I could get on that spectrum.
Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped
#29I am struck by four things. 1) Wikileaks is really pissing people off. I don't mean the nicey, lets-go-protest-down-at-the-student-union kind of protest. I mean people who are not normally angry with anybody else in the world talking about throwing him in jail and/or killing him. Devil or Angel, that's a whole heap of pissing off he's accomplished. 2) Assange has more power than many 3-star generals, yet he's just so…
>1) Wikileaks is really pissing people off This is because what they're doing is effective. Ineffective things don't piss people off and trigger military disinfo campaigns. The author of the WPO blog article is an AEI member, a player in the neocon agenda: not some random pundit. >2) Assange has more power than many 3-star generals I'm fine with that. Assange isn't killing people. 3-star generals are. >3) Anarchy is…
"I'm fine with that. Assange isn't killing people. 3-star generals are."
Yes he is. The information he released in the latest round of "secrets" gave away informants to people that can (and will) kill them.
If he gave information about locations of jews to the Nazis, would we say it was freedom of information?
"Government can function with much less secrecy than it currently does. WL is serving a public need in challenging a growing regime of secrecy that blossomed under Bush and that Obama has failed to reign in."
That's because Obama knows the importance of secrets.
"I'll take a self-promoter over a murderer any day."
Wikileaks failed to remove actual names. I don't see a difference.
Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped
#30I'm far more threatened by Mr. Thiessen's implication that surveillance should be the sole domain of government than I am of Assange's attempts to thwart such secrecy.
Governments should not have unchecked powers of surveillance. We all know the myriad ways that can go wrong. Somebody has to be watching these people and that's just what WL is doing.
Don't trust anyone to have your best interests at heart.