Um, I Think It's Time for a Thread on WikiLeaks

These leaks are not specifically about the war(s) at all, and most seem to simply be a broad swath of the everyday normal secrets that a security state keeps from all but its most trusted hundreds of thousands of people who have the right clearance. Which is the point: Assange is completely right that our government has conspiratorial functions. What else would you call the fact that a small percentage of our governing class governs and acts in our name according to information which is freely shared amongst them but which cannot be shared amongst their constituency?

this seems pretty retarded to me. secrecy in itself is not conspiratorial. *some stuff* the US government does *is* conspiratorial. but arguing that there should be *no secrets ever* is like really. hold on tight coz this will blow your mind: DOESN'T ASSANGE ACT IN SECRET??!!??!

history mayne OTM. for god's sake, let's say a diplomat talking to foreign leader expresses distrust or dislike of another foreign leader. this might be done to curry favor or create a false sense of shared goals/problems, but it also might be nothing more than real talk. the point is, it's exactly the kind of thing that can't take place out in the open, where the stakes are high and there's no point in offending powerful people without reason. this is not "conspiracy" in any meaningful sense. it's simply the division between public and private applied to the human beings that compose governments.

if diplomats and political leaders feel that they can't communicate privately without risk of exposure, they will simply begin doing more and more of their business off the record, thus truly conspiring to keep secrets. this isn't to say that conspiracies, deceit and corruption don't exist in governments, but attempting to destroy all privacy in government hardly seems the best way to fight against its worst abuses. i'd much rather see those who find real evidence of wrongdoing leak that.

that particular irony has already been noted

xp

assange pic reminds me of
http://camaholic.net/emma.gif

stop it

stop stop stop

delete pic forever

wtf!?!

holy lol

who is the dude

down boy

OMG they're onto us, I'm getting virus warnings on this thread! emma.gif apparently

richard dawkins

nfw

WAY

nsfw

omg @ pic

it cannot be unseen

who is the girl

julian assange

am resisting the overwhelming temptation to spam it all over the boards

also I am super mad I am not modding anymore as this would be choice #1 for the next subversive substitution against jjjusten

i have adjusted to the image-damage by deciding that dawkins is v pretty

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=40

oops: Richard Dawkins: pretty?

Ha at the idea Assange reportedly has some sort of super-top secret dangerous dossier of damaging info he could or may have released if arrested or, um, killed. Not only does such a threat make him out to be a standard bad guy extortionist, but it's just hilarious if he actually thinks he's sitting on something so huge that it would elicit some reaction that all manner of bad shit reported on over the past few years somehow didn't manage, considering all the collective shrugging that's (cynically) met all the post-Bush/economic meltdown revelations. OMG, the banks are crooks! The politicians crooked! War kills innocent people!!! We torture!!! The result of these (non-leaked) revelations? Nothing.

What he's sitting on is all the angry, sad, drunk, or horny emails everyone's ever written but never actually sent. He's gonna blow the lid off the WORLD! No more secrets, people.

The man is playing God, I tell you. Playing GOD!!!

him releasing the u.s. compiled list of vulnerable targets is p :-/

NYT:

In a video interview with the BBC, Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesman for WikiLeaks, asserted that a leaked American cable, listing infrastructure and facilities outside the United States that are considered critical America's national security and economic health proves that U.S. diplomats have been acting as spies.

Mr. Hrafnsson dismissed criticism that WikiLeaks had aided terrorists by publishing the cable with the list as "a rather lame attempt to spin and draw attention from the real issue here, which is that, in this cable, you can see that the diplomats around the world are asked to gather information about the vulnerabilities of these sites and that seems to go contrary to a very recent declaration by the U.S. State Department that diplomats are not spying."

The cable, however, merely lists factories and installations without making any reference to their vulnerability to attacks and there is no evidence in it that the diplomats did anything other than gather information that was publicly available. That sounds closer to journalism than spying.

I'd better throw out all my Lonely Planets because they contain information about infrastructure and facilities that could be vital to US interests and I don't want to be seen helping THE SPIES -- or wait, are Lonely Planet's brave adventurers the real heroes here, leaking information to the public that the US Government won't dare to do? I'm confused.

Do have to say that it's strange how impressive everyone is taking the extradition requests for this guy re: those Swedish charges vs. the foot dragging on Roman Polanski earlier. Just shows what happens when you piss off every world leader, I guess.

some slight differences in those cases lol

guys bear in mind that these sites weren't collected because they were "vulnerable," they were collected because they were of interest to the State Dept (and the US govt's economic interests as well as it's "security" interests). i could very easily make a list of places like that for the state of MN because, you know, that shit is fucking obvious. i could even make a list of Bad Places For Terrorists To Terrorize and that would be obvious, too. Schools! Overpasses! Power plants!

getting butthurt about this is hand-wringing of the highest order. also, keep in mind: a lot of these "interesting sites" are...not controlled by America! a factory that the state dept is interested in might just have US investors or make shit that goes into US goods---don't think for a minute that we're concerned about protecting these things because we're looking out for US citizens going about their daily business.

moreover, to the snarks pointing out that cablegate, in general, is merely uncovering stuff that is 90% business-as-usual, not at all scandalous, and certainly not worth the crackdown it's likely to elicit from the gov't: think long and hard about what taking that stance means. if yr all "way to go, assange, you just provoked the US govt to crack down over some bullshit" maybe you should be more concerned about the fact that the US govt is poised to crack down....over some bullshit? like, for real, the response these boring yeah what else is new cables is getting from nutjobs like palin and lieberman and harper et al is astonishingly violent and pretty alarming imo

of course the reaction is preposterous and overblown - that's exactly what you can expect from the US gov't, witness the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, Gitmo, etc. That Assange provoked this reaction basically over trivial bullshit speaks volumes about his character/competency. He's an idiot.

like oh good you leaked stuff most people already knew/took for granted and in return we got a gov't crackdown! way to go! Really picking your battles there!

Greenwald is mostly otm:

Just to underscore the climate of lawless initmidation that has been created: before WikiLeaks was on many people's radars (i.e., before the Apache video release), I wrote about the war being waged on them by the Pentagon, interviewed Assange, and urged people to donate money to them. In response, numerous people asked -- both in comments and via email -- whether they would be in danger, could incur legal liability for providing material support to Terrorism or some other crime, if they donated to WikiLeaks. Those were American citizens expressing that fear over an organization which had never been remotely charged with any wrongdoing.

Similarly, I met several weeks ago with an individual who once worked closely with WikiLeaks, but since stopped because he feared that his country -- which has a very broad extradition treaty with the U.S. -- would arrest him and turn him over to the Americans upon request. He knew he had violated no laws, but given that he's a foreigner, he feared -- justifiably -- that he could easily be held by the United States without charges, denied all sorts of basic rights under the Patriot Act, and otherwise be subject to a system of "justice" which recognizes few limits or liberties, especially when dealing with foreigners accused of aiding Terrorists.

All the oppressive, lawless policies of the last decade -- lawless detention, Guantanamo, disappearing people to CIA black sites, rendition, the torture regime, denial of habeas corpus, drones, assassinations, private mercenary forces, etc. -- were designed, first and foremost, to instill exactly this fear, to deter any challenge. Many of these policies continue, and that climate of fear thus endures (see this comment from today as but one of many examples). As the treatment just thus far of WikiLeaks and Assange demonstrates, that reaction -- though paralyzing and counter-productive -- is not irrational. And one thing is for sure: there is nothing the U.S. Government could do -- no matter how lawless or heinous -- which (with rare exception) would provoke the objections of the American establishment media.

yeah pretty much

we're at a point now where it's hard (for me, anyway) to conceive of a future in which "individual privacy rights" exist in the way that that they were defined during most of the 20th century. it seems much more reasonable to say, "that which can be known will be known, and that which is known will be shared."

but this annihilation of the private will likely begin to affect governments and large organizations, too.

― phish in your sleazebag (contenderizer), Monday, December 6, 2010 2:24 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

That Assange provoked this reaction basically over trivial bullshit speaks volumes about his character/competency.

Yes, fearmongering and intimidation by the US government "over trivial bullshit" speaks volumes about Assange!

well i thnk what he means is that assange probably knew this would happen and blew his chance to provoke the govt over some other, more "important" ish

He knowingly annoyed more than 51 world leaders.

I'm just saying the trade-off isn't worth it. If he'd leaked something that was of like actual factual SHOCKING VALUE it's conceivable that the ramifications of that would offset the expected gov't reaction. That didn't happen.

instead Assange wanted to play self-righteous martyr

well we've still got ufos to look forward to

has Assange been such a peacock? Serious question.

he may get to do more than "play" martyr pretty soon, btw

his actions in some ways resemble those of various civl rights movements throughout the ages, it could be enlightening to examine them as such

its just lunch, its just a garment, its just info, nbd

has Assange been such a peacock? Serious question.

I think claiming you're going to CHANGE THE COURSE OF GLOBAL HISTORY is pretty presumptuous

his actions in some ways resemble those of various civl rights movements throughout the ages, it could be enlightening to examine them as such

if you mean the provoking a disproportionate reaction to elicit sympathy from the public at large, I'm not sure if this dude is really eliciting much sympathy...

he certainly is