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

Hey Tom! Been waiting fr your take on this :)

(as someone who is ex-dealing with classified old school myself, I find this shit p interesting)

"I think this will produce some myopic policy flim flam in the short term"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40916433/ns/us_news-wikileaks_in_security/

"Office of Management and Budget suggests that agencies use psychiatrists and sociologists to measure the 'relative happiness' of workers or their 'despondence and grumpiness' as a way to assess their trustworthiness. The memo was sent this week to senior officials at all agencies that use classified material."

7000-word Vanity Fair piece on The Guardian's dealings with WikiLeaks

Not really the place for it, but a man appeared on the local news the other day called "Tom Bott".

Its interesting Control z's link starts with "the Obama administration" rather than "the US government".

I don't know if journalists really say "the Obama administration" more than they said "the Bush administration"!

Oh wasn't suggesting they were! Just find it an interesting angle.

presumably "the X administration" is heard/emphasized more in the u.s. not for politically motivated reasons but because it's not a westminster system, so you need to distinguish the executive from the legislature

Yep

the vf piece digested http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/06/assange_guardian_wikileaks_leak/

Assange is such a pompous arse.

Nevermind him or what an evil man we're supposed to think he is. What's in the leaks is all that matters.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/08/us-twitter-hand-icelandic-wikileaks-messages

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/07/twitter/subpoena.pdf

good overview & updates here too:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/07/twitter/index.html

Nevermind him or what an evil man we're supposed to think he is. What's in the leaks is all that matters.

― StanM

Correct - there will continue to be a deluge of ad hominem attacks on Assange and his supporters. Distraction from the content of the leaks is the sole intent.

feel like it would be harder to distract people from the content of the leaks if anyone made a strong case for what we should do with the leak information. instead there's always this unspoken action i feel like we're expected to take (esp wrt greenwald's posts on this -- 'they just want to distract you from the important issues') but i understand the problem. the question of how to effect change / or move to action are always a trickier question than getting angry. the natural consequence of information is always a call to action, and without that action the information just dies. would be interested in seeing greenwald be more of an activist but a) maybe he's not so interested in that (tho he is playing an important role in Manning's defense so maybe he is and b) he would probably have to move back to the US for an extended period of time.

serious question; I've read many of the leaks, many articles that illuminate particular leaks, etc, etc. I believe that the leaks are accurate and in some cases very interesting. now what? if there's nothing else to do after reading them, maybe we should talk about the ad hominems. it's about as productive as just ignoring the wikileaks entirely. at least it keeps the story alive (even in a bastardized even less useful form)

some typos. i'm tired.

The leaks and the ridiculous knee jerk reaction to their appearance only make me suspect this is a unique, one time only, chance us nobodies will ever get to find out how some stuff really works. Sometimes the tin foil hatters were right after all, who would have guessed, eh? (attention tin foil hatters: I said sometimes. Don't use this as another one of your TheySaidGalileoWasWrongToo arguments)

The only effects they will have is that a couple of people will end up in jail for 300,000 years (x years for every document), that security will be tightened up to the extreme for this kind of communication from now on, that there will be even more restrictions on freedom on the internet for everyone and not one thing will change about the way international diplomacy/economic backroom dealings are done.

idk that the tin foil hatters were right. every terrible thing this has revealed displays incompetence and dumbassery (with maybe the exception of hilary spygate revelation) than grand conspiracy. if anything it makes it sound conspiracies are a terrible way to understand politics

Another nice Grenwald peice:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/10/fear/index.html

that security will be tightened up to the extreme for this kind of communication from now on, that there will be even more restrictions on freedom on the internet for everyone and not one thing will change about the way international diplomacy/economic backroom dealings are done

I completely disagree.
"security" in the bureaucratic sense will be ratcheted up for official business communiques, which just means that more and more bureaucrats will begin moving to idiosyncratic side channels to discuss their business because the provided apparatus will just become more and more inconvenient compared to the relative degree of secrecy and progressively weaker arguments for that secrecy's absolute necessity in every exchange.

restrictions on internet liberties become generally more impossible to enforce every day, so that's just silly.

the way that international diplomacy and "backroom dealings" are done is going to change a lot, as per my first paragraph, although the degree to which it is affected and/or how quickly is dependent on how prolific wikileaks is - both in terms of how many more incorrigible bean spillers wikileaks can attract before it inevitably fades into irrelevance, and how many committed copycats spring up, of whatever stripe or purported mission.

generally, I like to think the whole "diplomatic wire" system will eventually be replaced by a taxpayer-funded uglification of Yammer, which embassy and consulate employees will constantly update from their taxpayer-purchased red rubber tablets that literally do nothing else, not even flashlight apps.

http://mumbrella.com.au/murdoch-features-in-wikileaks-cables-38214

Wikileaks’ next target could be major media organisations, its leader Julian Assange has hinted.

In an interview due to be published by New Statesman magazine, Assange says of the leaked diplomatic cables: “”There are 504 US embassy cables on one broadcasting organisation and there are cables on Murdoch and News Corp.”

FUCK yes.

OK, now I'm excited.

Love to see who's gonna touch THESE ones.

The only time I have bought bottled water is when I'm caught out somewhere and it is incredibly hot and I'm dying of thirst (I dont drink soft drinks or juice). Cities need more water-bubbler fountains. Keep them cleaned as a public service - install a little filter into each one. Have em on every street corner, in parks alongside the running track.

Wonder what WikiLeaks has on Aquafina?

Oops, hahaa wrong thread. Sorry!

This is a pretty good piece on the Tsvangirai mess, also very illuminating (for me, anyway) about what's been going on in Zimbabwe recently:

In this particular case, the argument that (A) because the cable hurts Tsvangirai and helps Mugabe, (B) Wikileaks is therefore bad for democracy, and therefore (C) bad for Zimbabweans, is a set of propositions linked together by a lot of un-argued claims. For example, you’d never guess from reading Albon or Richardson that it’s not at all clear that Tsvangirai would win a free and fair election, were one to be held, and particularly unlikely to mount a real challenge in the kind that actually will be held.

http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/wikileaks-in-zimbabwe-and-in-the-media/

That whole situation is so fucked up, but really it's hard to see how wikileaks could have any effect on dictatorships other than marginally strengthening the dictator's position. You've got (a) a dictator who's so evil that anything leaked on her/him is merely very much in character and (b) a democratic freedom movement that has everything to lose by copping the wrong leak at the wrong time. Result is a dictator whose position doesn't change at all and an opposition that looks flaky and hypocritical.

The fact in Zimbabwe is that Tsvangirai has always faced an uphill battle because, in addition to all the Zanu-PF propaganda and fear-mongering and such, Mugabe is still a hero to many of the people purely because of his role 30 years ago in defeating the colonials. They're the same people who genuinely believe the British are destroying Zim with sanctions. I don't really see what significant damage wikileaks could do in this case.

Prepared to be proved wrong, of course.

That whole situation is so fucked up, but really it's hard to see how wikileaks could have any effect on dictatorships other than marginally strengthening the dictator's position.

i hear the government in belarus is quaking in its boots over the next leak

Breaking news:
Tonight at 8pm GMT the Guardian will release confidential documents relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

wonder if this means they've patched things up

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12263095

I'm guessing it's this?

Not wikileaks, afaik?

Yeah, that's why I was wondering. Just seemed odd, the timing.

Bill Keller says things:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html

"bollocks" in the NYT was the main surprise for me in that article

Ok, seriously... this is truly bizarre.

The records on Assange's alleged rape case have 'wiki'-leaked...

Xeroxed condoms? Police not being able to get a dna-sample from it? o_O

Saving the condoms seems suspect. I mean wasn't the original story that W and A only decided to go to the policy weeks/days later after comparing stories? Did they actually save the condoms for all that time?

kept 'em in their hope chests

interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.html?_r=2&hp

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/11/campaigns/index.html

Yeah I've been tracking that for the past few days. Shady as hell all around. Hoglund e-mails have been released now as well.

good links, hope this particular element of the story gets more play

We might see more tomorrow depending. This starting to break wider on a Friday afternoon wasn't good for arcs (plus, let's face it, Egypt was always going to get more attention).

A good summary of this nonsense here:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/the-ridiculous-plan-to-attack-wikileaks.ars

just ran into this attack story! shiiit

http://www.salon.com/about/inside_salon/2011/02/11/threats_against_glenn_greenwald_wikileaks/

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/02/14/palantir_wikileaks

wild stuff

Starting to get a little more attention:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/14/AR2011021406281.html

Big ol' updates:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/anonymous-speaks-the-inside-story-of-the-hbgary-hack.ars