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

kind of amazing to see an actual int'l witchhunt unfold in real time, tho.

i have no doubt that he's engaged in "sexual misconduct" of SOME kind, ranging anywhere from "being a jerk" to actual rape, but to involve interpol AT ALL is sorta next level. is there anyone, anywhere, that thinks this is in any way business as usual?? crazy.

xp exactly

there are literally millions of wanted rapists skipping around the globe who do not have interpol red flags on em.

tmi dude

personally i still think that the (general) principles behind what wikileaks does are far more important than what the leaks have contained

It's that, plus the focus on Assange as figurehead, that undermines what's actually coming out in the leaks. The cables have hardly been earth-shattering, but with careful handling there are some really big stories in there, especially (for me) about how craven the UK has been -- and how heavy-handed the US has been with it. They all get lost in the noise about the process, though, which makes me start to wonder whether they actually do care about changing the behaviour of "those who use secrecy to commit unjust acts" or just like to break stuff because publication itself is the highest good. (A stance Cryptome has always taken all the way).

Can't wait for the redefinition of global history, though.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/12/02/when-it-comes-to-assange-r-pe-case-the-swedes-are-making-it-up-as-they-go-along/

this is written by Assange's former lawyer. Its very very disturbing. Surely the CIA or someone are behind this shitsmear campaign.

what's interesting to me is that cryptome has been doing exactly what wikileaks has been doing but for 15 years and no one's ever given a shit.

they are not headed by a Bond villain with delusions of GLOBAL HISTORY-CHANGNING grandeur

Is wikileaks down or something?

pretty much

true, true.

xp
mostly curious if WL has gotten ~better~ intel than cryptome, tho? like, the only people that know about cryptome are internet dorks, security types, and anarcho-libertarians, i think. i forget how i stumbled upon it, tbh (sometime in 99). but WL seemed fairly well-known before all these recent scandals, which maybe meant that they attracted the attn of ppl that weren't aware of cryptome, and that had "good stuff."

but it's okay because Julian Assange has given the encrypted documents and their passwords to 10,000 people and if "anything happens to him" they will all be released automatically! MAGIC!

this guy is such a fucking moron. sad to see defenders here, honestly.

you can get there with their IP address instead of a domain name

213 dot 251 dot 145 dot 96

yeah, the big DNS companies have pulled it. it's got mirrors, though, and it's still up on archive.org

sad to see defenders here, honestly.

― goat, camel, horse, and water buffalo (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 3, 2010 6:08 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

...defenders of Assange the dude? or WL the enterprise?

are they really separable at this point?

fwiw stet has elaborated my feelings about the matter well enough

are they really separable at this point?

― goat, camel, horse, and water buffalo (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 3, 2010 6:12 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yes? easily? i guess maybe not WL as it is functioning, but WL as an idea still seems pretty defensible.

so, basically what stet said, ha. (ie - in general, transparency is good. WL, specifically, is kinda whack)

yeah there's a dozen bob novak columns from a few years back defending the idea pretty much

Is basically the exact opposite of what I think. Well, the general principle of increased transparency I agree with, but the specific principles, from what I've seen, are some ideologue overload about how the US government is an authoritarian terrorist conspiracy and the only way to bring it down is to give information the freedom it wants.

Well, Russia is supposedly his next target, so yay for more authoritarian terrorist conspiracies.

yay for polonium-210

oof, russia, really?

somehow have the feeling that they would have no qualms about acing assange in a completely unambiguous fashion. just: iced. putin all shrugging "what're you gonna do about it?"

also just gonna post that cryptome missive why cuz its intersting

Wikileaks should stop the redactions of names in the diplomatic cables and war files and release untampered documents.

Name redactions are immensely deceptive -- like knee-jerk claiming there are valid grounds for some vital secrets -- they are used to hold hostages under guise of protection. Continue to obey or your name will be revealed. Redact or you will be pilloried in public. (Toot: The New York Times tried the "responsible redaction" scam on Cryptome with the CIA Mossadeq overthrow report.)

Dozens, perhaps hundreds of people are being put at risk by believing they are protected by the phony redaction scam Wikileaks has cowardly joined under pressure to conform to authoritative demands to be "responsible." Far better to tell the truth that the names are already loose so the victims know what the cabal of secretkeepers knows.

As if those who know the true names at redacting authoritatives, at Wikileaks and among the lawyers, editors and personnel at its new big media bedmates will never tell, will tightly control the original documents, will never be subject to betrayal or a burglary or a leak, will never have a trusted insider who acts to inform the world, will never write a tell-all best seller like Daniel Schmidt, will never aspire to be Time's Person of the Year, a Nobelist, a movie star, a sexual predator eager to cut a deal with the authorities.

Assange's craven desire to be an important world player is destructive to the Wikileaks initiative to engage many participants equally with preference for documents not personal fame. Fortunately, multiple wikis for leaking are now being set up unbound by Assange's lack of courage -- presuming that lack of courage is not contagious to the newcomers.

Never redact. No vital secrets. No deals with cheating dealers. No gulling of more Bradley Mannings.

yeah Russia will just ice this dude.

cautiously sympathetic to cryptome's stance, fwiw. that is, if you are in the business of leaking documents, just put them out there. if you're going to edit them down in any way, and go so far as to contact the documents' authors/owners, you may as well undertake the task of doing actual journalism. it could even be said that you ought to.

i mean, can you even consider a redacted document a ~leak~ really?

That's the conversation I've had with students this week: is their some responsibility for releasing documents even if you're not publishing them yourself?

do you mean responsibility for the fallout, or that someone holding incendiary documents has some responsibility to ~spread the word~?

The former but the latter too.

who knew that a broken condom would cause such a WikiLeak rite

http://www.millenniumfalcon.com/phpbb/images/smiles/mf_emoticon_downboomtish.gif

xps to alfred

welllllll, legally? ethically? morally? (talking fallout here)

don't actually know about the first one, and the last two are kinda between you and the little lord baby jesus, tbh.

i mean, isn't the assumption of responsibility part of the journalist's burden? it's scary to be a whistleblower, so you leak info to woodward and bernstein, and they protect your identity until they die, you know?

if, however, you go public with the info yourself (violating NDA/treason laws/whatever), you'd better be ready for whatever shitstorm you get caught in. like, i keep seeing stuff on the internet about poor bradley manning and why won't anyone stand up for him, and it's like, dude, you DID actually break real-live laws, so don't be surprised when you get prosecuted for it.

we've enshrined in law, iirc, the journalist's right to protect the identities of his informants, right? a journalist is not required to name his sources, even if those sources broke laws to obtain their information. seems pretty central to the whole concept of the fourth estate, if you ask me.

Those are precisely the conversation topics discussed on Tuesday. It's important they know early that it's not simply enough to discharge information and avoid the consequences. We endure this once a year when, for example, we get names of sexual assault victims. The students' first impulse is to publish it because They Have The Name (it's also not illegal in Florida if the name's released in the public record); we'd have to slow them down, force them to ask, You have the name, but so what? What do you gain from publishing it?

xp

if those sources are found out, however, they can and probably should bear the responsibility for their actions. that's, like, what the rule of law is for. making informant confidentiality sacrosanct is sort of a release valve for when information ought to be made public, but can't because of institutional constraints (an employee can't violate an NDA, a gov't official can't commit treason, etc).

the journalist as intermediary is in the position of determining the "ought" part, which is what makes their job so hard. something like cryptome removes the intermediary ~entirely~ and indiscriminately. assange's mistake (aside from, well, being himself) is that he seemed to be operating under the assumption that he was a cryptome, when he was, in fact, a "reporter," and a bad one at that.

we'd have to slow them down, force them to ask, You have the name, but so what? What do you gain from publishing it?

right. cryptome disposes with this reflection completely, which is at least bracing in its ideological simplicity (libertarians in brutally reductive shocker!). WL sorta does this (they ~have~ contacted the administration, after all), but in a hapless way that suggests that they don't actually give a shit.

We have said that sometimes circumstances will arise in which naming a victim is helpful, but it's up to you guys as journalists to assess the situation. It really is case by case.

anyway, i think i've settled on cryptome being OK, and good to have around.

that missive upthread makes it pretty clear that while they won't cough up their informants' identities, those informants should also not assume for a second that the responsibility for any fallout lies anywhere but on their own shoulders. so if it somehow comes out that they were the guy that sent a USB drive to cryptome, they should be ready for what follows.

or: by mechanistically publishing ANYTHING they are furnished with, cryptome relieves themselves of responsibility. and if you're gonna give them stuff to publish, you'd better ask yourself the questions alfred's students are considering before you do it.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/12/02/when-it-comes-to-assange-r-pe-case-the-swedes-are-making-it-up-as-they-go-along/

This is a very very interesting read, Trayce.

Though he's pretty patronizing of Sweden. I'm betting whatever laws are in question are in place to protect the rights of women, and on that front they have been way ahead of most of the world for a long time.

Certainly, but I'm always dubious of the idea that a woman can leverage any accusation into an actual criminal charge that easily (sex without a condom = rape? uh). But lets not turn this into a discussion on rape laws cos erk.

http://i56.tinypic.com/2em1mog.png

Good thing there's no other way for any one of the 2.5 million people with this kind of information access to leak it on the internet!

got this from digby: http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/common-sense/maybe-the-government-would-earn-more-of-our-trust-if-it-invaded-our-privacy-less-20101202

In Washington’s polarized political environment, Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on a few things: That the government, in the name of fighting terrorism, has the right to listen in on all of our phone conversations and read our e-mails, even if it has no compelling reason for doing so. That the government can use machines at the airport that basically conduct the equivalent of strip searches of every passenger. That the government, for as long as it wants, can withhold any information from the public that it decides is in the national interest and is classified. And that when someone reveals this information, they are reviled on all sides, with the press corps staying silent.

My own sense is that we should err on the side of telling the truth, even when it’s inconvenient or when it makes our lives—or the business of government—more complicated. And that people who tell the truth should at the very least not be denigrated.

is that what Assange is doing here tho, really? Does "telling the truth" = being kinda jerky?

truthfulness for its own sake is p. overrated

Gotta say that in an age of unprecedented loss of privacy, where citizens of the world have been continuously spied on by their gov'ts often without any reason in public and private, it feels nice - at a base, emotional level - to have the gov'ts get a taste of their own medicine.

Also, its important to remember that "Information wants to be free" has been a hacker M.O. since the 70s.

unprecedented? also 'turnabout is fairplay' historically a great justification, esp if it's the only justification. still amazed the left is so giddy over the (further) destruction of diplomacy as a tool/option in american foreign policy and that ilx didn't rally around karl rove and scooter libby back in the day (how long until an administration figures out how to manipulate this type of leakdump to sell a war? 2 years? 6?)(plus unlike w/ yellowcakegate plausible deniability is builtin). but hey at least 'they' got a taste of their own medicine! totally understand how this is all great if you're a libertarian; i guess i just had no idea there were so many libertarians on ilx (i mean i know morbs is a ron paul supporter).

also love how the other actual policy effect to come from this (besides yknow more american unilateralism) is increased secrecy. showed them!

it is amazing though to think that before 9/11 the govt wasn't able to perform wiretaps or strip search passengers at airports or classify information under the blanket of national security (remember how they used to broadcast sub movements right after they did the lotto drawing?). what a strange new world we live in.