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

i wonder what wikileaks man's pubes look like

Amis's horrorism doesn't not have enough of the Mummy lighting shit on fire with his heat vision tho

wonder what amis' pubes look like

http://rightwingnews.com/2010/07/the-cia-should-kill-julian-assange

Holy shit – I thought I'd seen it all. That site is a cloaca.

agree we should kill him, but not for any sense of "he deserves it." He has proven himself our enemy who has done damage to us, ergo, we should kill him. That's all the justification I need.

that url looks like an onion creation. er maybe collegehumor.com creation

lol that site is awesome

was there anything politically damaging yet to come out of this recent 'facebook leak'?

From Admiral Mike Mullen's Twitter:

@thejointstaff Meant what I said: Mr. Assange & his source might already have on their hands the blood of our troops or that of our Afghan partners.

ok what the fuck is going on here, with aerosmith's post?

there's an obvious case for leaking, but i think this

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/wikileaks+damage+already+done+says+human+rights+group/3727677

and what ismael posted sort of doesn't really merit a lol censorship post?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/30/wikileaks-data-suspected-army-source

So we've gone from "This is isn't anything new/This won't change anything" to "Wikileaks could have blood on its hands" in less than a week. Wonder if Wikileaks is on their way to being named an enemy combatant.

Doesn't even have to be under the targeted assassination regime iirc

xp, just pointing out the obvious but you can release information that doesn't give readers a new window into the war and still be responsible for people's deaths by including specific intel that gives away informants names and troop information, obv obv obv.

guns don't kill people, wikileaks do

I don't know if you're being facetious, but I think it's okay if people voice concern that apparently WikiLeaks did not redact all the names of sources in the WikiLeaks documents and those sources are, at least acc to Zabihullah Mujahid, going to be killed.

:) I was being a little facetious

So we've gone from "This is isn't anything new/This won't change anything" to "Wikileaks could have blood on its hands" in less than a week. Wonder if Wikileaks is on their way to being named an enemy combatant.

Ismael on this thread has always been clear about his concern for the safety of the sources.

Thanks. I did start out mostly concerned about the implications for military/policing operations there, because who'd talk on the basis of anything other than 100% confidentiality? At least you can make a coherent argument against that, or that openness is more important, even if I'd consider that naive.

It was only when I read details of a few specific leaks that I realised that actual individuals might be traceable and got gravely concerned. Whatever your position on transparency of govt activities, I don't see how you can be in favour of publishing in that sort of detail and maintain normal human sympathy.

Not for one fucking minute did I think WL would actually be publishing people's names and addresses. I'm horrified by how this is panning out.

TONY JONES: Well, not according to the Pentagon. They're accusing you of revealing the identities of Afghan informants and putting their lives at risk. Afghan's president, Karzai, agrees with that he says 'the breach is extremely irresponsible and shocking.' Your response to those comments.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Well we have yet to see clear evidence of that. I mean the London Times is also making this allegation today and in a quite disingenuous way, for example they mention some informers' names they say they had found and with a headline Afghan informer already dead, but when you actually read the story what you see is in fact that individual that they're mentioning died two years ago.

So there's a little bit of media manipulation occurring here. In terms of the Afghan government, it's in their interests to sort of play up the irresponsible, irresponsibility of the United States that they say has been involved in sort of collecting and permitting this data to release, be released.

Now we contacted the White House as a group before we released this material and asked them to help assist in going through it to make sure that no innocent names came out, and the White House did not accept that request.

http://jotman.blogspot.com/2010/07/white-house-or-wikileaks-to-blame-for.html

We have no reason to doubt that Julian Assange was telling the truth about the request.

Really? None?

I can think of a dozen reasons why to distrust his account (motive - it passes the responsibility for any leak, his account which suggests he was himself trying to cut down on names + stuff and never mentioned collaboration with the White House before, a good reason not to want to speak to the WH; because they were considering trying him under espionage laws, etc, etc) but the primary reason to distrust it is since when would the White House give up an opportunity to censor classified information? If I believe anything about executive power, I believe that the moment someone called to say, "I have a leak, do you want to look over it and tell me what I shouldn't leak," they'll be all over that.

those really aren't reasons not to take his word on that imo - reason not to take his word on it would be "evidence that he is lying"

Well, let's say he's no more trustworthy than any other public figure (which Assage is now, whether he likes it or not).

Skepticism is good all the time imo. This doesn't pass the smell test. You'd have to believe that the government either a) didn't think a single document in those 90,000 documents (including the 15,000 he himself is sitting on) wouldn't be a risk to anyone, or b) that they felt any risk in all those documents (including the 15,000 he's sitting on) were worth making this guy look like an asshole, or c) that they thought that he'd somehow censor the most dangerous documents all on his own, and only allow a few dangerous documents out that would make him look like an asshole.

I mean, all three possibilities are pretty insane. I think it's more likely Assange felt he could weed out any problems on his own, got in over his head, and now wants to blame the White House for not working with him.

Mind you, if he said, "I wanted to speak to the WH, but because their position on me has been so antagonistic I didn't feel comfortable doing so," I'd be way more receptive to sympathizing -- or at least understanding his POV. But claiming he actually asked the WH to help and they totally ignored him sounds like absolute bunk.

not to me - bureaucracies not returning calls that turn out to be important isn't exactly an unheard-of situation, is it?

Here's more of the interview, btw:

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah that's right. Not, of course we did not offer them a chance to veto any material, but rather we told them that we were going through a harm minimisation process and offered them the chance to point out names of informers or other innocents who might be harmed and they did not respond to that request which was mediated through the New York Times who was our, acting as the contact for the four media groups involved in this.

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2968342.htm

I feel very confident in saying that the NYT did not agree to act as a liaison between between Julian Assange at the White House.

I can completely imagination a brokered negotiation like that going like this: "We need complete yea-or-nea power before we agree to look at what you've got, because if we don't have that and we look at what you've got, people will be able to legitimately claim that we gave our OK to the release of the information." "Well, I'm not going to give you blanket ability to censor, I have the right to publish it; if you would like to look at it and work with me to censor names that might be placed in harm's way, that's what I can do." "We refuse to look at it unless we are given blanket ability to censor/redact" - seems like ass-covering 101

He's not even saying that's what happened tho. He's claiming the NYT was representing him at the WH.

So we've gone from "This is isn't anything new/This won't change anything" to "Wikileaks could have blood on its hands" in less than a week. Wonder if Wikileaks is on their way to being named an enemy combatant.

― Beach Pomade (Adam Bruneau), Friday, July 30, 2010 4:15 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

this is a complete non sequitur. it's still true that wikileaks didn't uncover much that was really new. they did reveal more detail &c &c -- anyway, that's something to debate which is kind of completely fuckin' separate from the question whether they put lives in danger.

i really wonder what the NYT told assange, what the NYT told the WH (if anything), and what the WH told the NYT in response, and what the NYT told assange about that!

there are a few steps there that assange may not really know anything about, even if he's been told one thing or another about it.

this whole affair seems fucking stupid and counterproductive imho

well he's claiming several things - I'm not addressing whether the NYT had been talking to him and with the White House, whatever, I don't know. I'm talking about the claim that he had offered the material to the WH. I can conceive of several scenarios in which that would happen and they would refuse to look at it or even answer him in any way once they knew what he was claiming to have, depending on the wording with which he approached them. them having any interaction with him means they run the risk of people reporting "WH complicit in leak." that's clear, isn't it?

yeah they wouldn't even touch it or talk to him, no doubt!

forgive the analogy, but it would be as if a thief came back to you and said, ok, which of your wife's earrings would you like back? it'd be harder to claim you were robbed afterward...

are you being sarcastic - I have a broken sarcasm detector

no

Smithy, imho I think that is silly. It only makes sense if there really are no stakes to this information getting out. First of all, you'd have to think that the government bargaining over leaked items would sound like complicit behavior -- which makes no sense! Of course the government wants to minimize the damage from leaks, that's self-evident, I'd think. Second, you'd have to believe that not only are they afraid meeting with him would look like complicit behavior, but that they think the political fallout from that appearance is worse than compromising informants in Afghanistan, soldiers, the probability of working with anyone ever again (because who would want to work with the US government in Afghanistan if their information is going to be leaked)... essentially this would be one of the most short-sighted decisions in the history of executive power. Unless you believe Obama secretly wants to undermine the war and is just using this as an excuse to do that.

Not to mention, and this comes from my gut, reading the interview it's really hard to see him as a trustworthy figure. He sounds very confused (actually shades of Tommy Wiseau ran through my mind while reading the interview).

TONY JONES: So, how many of the reports that you put on Wikileaks went onto the site without you actually knowing the detail of what was in them?

JULIAN ASSANGE: It's fair to say that only two per cent have been read in precise detail and the rest have been hived off using these classification systems.

Now, I presume what your question is getting to is what, how did we split off the 15,000 that we have not yet released because we think they need further review to understand whether there might be innocent informers' names in there.

So after reviewing several different types of material we saw that it was really these threat reports and then some other classifications that contained information about informers, so those were all hived off.

Mordy OTM

hived off? what kind of phrase is that?

How about the CIA memo a year or two ago about how to take down Wikileaks? Why wouldn't they want to let WL shoot themselves in the foot in order to get them out of the way?

First of all, you'd have to think that the government bargaining over leaked items would sound like complicit behavior -- which makes no sense!

You honestly think that if the government had bargained with this guy over this stuff, Fox News et al wouldn't take that info and run all the way down the field with it?

Adam, can you link me to an article or copy of that CIA memo? I don't remember seeing it.

every GOP candidate this fall would have (succesfully) used "the Obama administration negotiated with the very people who leaked classified information" - right now, it's WikiLeaks putting soldiers in harm's way. Any cooperation from the admin, of any kind, would have meant "Obama in bed with the guy who leaked sensitive info." NAGL in an election year. obv this is just guessing at how this dude's story might be true (though we'll know soon enough; the NYT should confirm or deny their engagement with him, I'd think, and since he's claiming everyone was in on the process, it should be clear enough) but "our position is we do not return this guy's phone calls no matter what" does not seem like an unlikely scenario to me

And Smithy, again, you'd have to believe that a political calculation re: Fox News would trump completely undermining any credibility the US might have among US-sympathetic individuals and communities in Afghanistan. After this, you'd have to be willing to put your life at risk to ever speak to the military in Afghanistan again. This severely undermines US actions in Afghanistan -- putting aside whether that is or isn't a good thing, certainly the Obama administration doesn't think that's a good thing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barrett-brown/cia-state-department-appa_b_512050.html

Apparently that memo was leaked by (lol) Wikileaks. Sounds fishy, yes, and skepticism in the case WL is definitely healthy. But it seems like there's a lot more skepticism towards WL than the US Gov't in these matters.

That's not fair. I'm not believing a US account over a Wikileaks account.

From March NYTimes

To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.

The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/us/18wiki.html?_r=1