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

this thread is a little tl;dr but so apologies if this is old news, but i think this dude is kinda gangsta

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/assange-threatens-to-release-entire-cache-of-unfiltered-files/article1825922/

daaaaang

theres one way that he's right about this whole thing being revolutionary I guess---thousands of ppl ~already~ have the intel on their computers and cant get at it due to the encryption. you could fucking tweet the key probably, and the govt would have no way of knowing who has the shit on their hard drive.

pfc manning will never see the light of day again tho. :-/

I can agree that he isn't breaking any laws and I'm pretty much on his side with his arguments, I just wish he wasn't coming across in such a douchey way, it certainly doesn't help his cause.

He's been doing this shit for a very long time - he ran an ISP in melb in the 80s that hosted an anti-$cientology website of a friend of mines, and that's still there depite years of death threats, smear campaigns and attempted lawsuits.

the fact that he is operating within the law is basically why he's got my support at this point.

manning broke the law and should, legally, face the consequences (which, imo, are almost certainly going to be disproportionate to the crime). assange did not, and if we or Australia or whoever bend the rules to nail him then we'll basically be admitting that we were kidding about this whole democracy thing from the get go

pfc manning will never see the light of day again tho. :-/

I guess the next person who downloads a quarter of a million international gov't secrets should remember not to go onto chat rooms and blab about it in detail (including their motivations for doing it) to random ex-convict computer hacker strangers who just happen to be government informants connected at the hip for self-promotional reasons to a fellow ex-convict journalist. That must have been where he slipped up.

uh

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks

he ran an ISP in melb in the 80s that hosted an anti-$cientology website of a friend of mines

literally does not compute

hah true... it was probably a BBS.

1989 is still the 80s. Suburbia's been around as an ISP since at least 1987 or 88, afaik.

...I may have my dates rong.

Its been around a fuck of a long time is all I know.

I guess the next person who downloads a quarter of a million international gov't secrets should remember not to go onto chat rooms and blab about it in detail (including their motivations for doing it) to random ex-convict computer hacker strangers who just happen to be government informants connected at the hip for self-promotional reasons to a fellow ex-convict journalist. That must have been where he slipped up.

― Telephoneface (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, December 5, 2010 11:35 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

yes, exactly, that IS where he slipped up. dude i know you're all up on WL's dick or w/e, but the fact that manning was a g-d intelligence analyst in the fucking army means that it is actually against the rules that he knew about to leak classified documents. you can think he's a hero, you can think that the sentence he's facing is unjust or immoral, but you can't pretend that it's anything other than exactly what you'd expect to happen. that greenwald piece (tl;dr) suggests, very briefly, that he's a fall guy who likely couldn't have had access to that sort of intel (200k documents is a lot, tbh) and that this whooooooole thing is some elaborate way of dissuading future informants by making an example. maybe. but it seems like greenwald settles on manning being a hero, though, and the rest of that column is about lamo being a dick. fine. agreed. whatever.

the fact remains: if a private in the US army disseminates classified intel, he can be held accountable for his actions. those are the rules. so he got sold out by someone he thought was a journalist. monstrous, sure, but he's still accountable. how is this so hard to understand.

ok dad

jeez

can i get puddle of mudd mp3s on this thing

Fuck I meant 1998-99, I always skip 10 years when thinking baot interwebs startups. wtf me.

if only we lived in a world where the puddle of mudd mp3s that are tens of thousands of people's computers were unplayable thanks to 256bit encryption that could only be unlocked by a man who will soon be assassinated

sure if you break the rules youd be foolish to not acknowledge the possibility that you might get punished - and while its impossible that any government could function w/o the ability to regulate secrecy i feel like the u.s. government isnt at all holding up its end of the bargain as far as the spirit of the law - which is you keep secrets for reasons better than petty ass covering, you do it for the good of the country with you know a heavy heart

and im sure that this has been said up thread but all this oh noes hes endangering peoples lives w/his leaks rhetoric drives me bonkers - you know what really endangers people lives - waging war on them

smoking cigarettes too

otmfm xp

icey I agree w/you---I just think that peeps that are shocked and horrified that manning is going down are being naive. like wtf did u expect?? that's what's risky about whistleblowing! moreover, it's precisely that risk that makes him a hero to some right?

sure if you break the rules youd be foolish to not acknowledge the possibility that you might get punished - and while its impossible that any government could function w/o the ability to regulate secrecy i feel like the u.s. government isnt at all holding up its end of the bargain as far as the spirit of the law - which is you keep secrets for reasons better than petty ass covering, you do it for the good of the country with you know a heavy heart

― ice cr?m, Sunday, December 5, 2010 10:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and im sure that this has been said up thread but all this oh noes hes endangering peoples lives w/his leaks rhetoric drives me bonkers - you know what really endangers people lives - waging war on them

― ice cr?m, Sunday, December 5, 2010 10:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this is exactly how i feel - representatives from a government that has made every excuse to do to citizens of the world in the last nine years what wikileaks has just done to them calling foul. it's repugnant.

h8 war

icey otm

if we or Australia or whoever bend the rules to nail him then we'll basically be admitting that we were kidding about this whole democracy thing from the get go

well, that and the torture and the secret overseas prisons and the detention with no trial..

I had another thought about all this. Basically, the diplomatic cables database was accessible by something like 3,000,000 people. Being realistic, at least one of those must be in the pay of some evil foreign power, which means that non-US intelligence services almost certainly already have the juicy information from them. So all this flap is not about the enemies of America having the information, it's about members of the public knowing what their governments are getting up to.

No, gbx, my main thing is the whole circumstance seems really really sketchy surrounding Manning. Why on earth would you tell a random stranger you met in a chat room that you had tons of secret files you were about to leak? It's like robbing a bank, skipping town, getting lost, and telling your entire story to someone you stop to ask for directions, who just happens to be an undercover cop. Just all seems really fishy.

http://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA/status/9251635779866625

Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book "America by Heart" from being leaked,but US Govt can't stop Wikileaks' treasonous act?
9:25 AM Nov 29th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

If dude is really guilty, he should pay the price. Also Im not on Wikileaks's d**k. It just seems dumb to wholeheartedly take the gov'ts side when there are members of congress saying that we should execute an Australian for "treason" against the US.

all this flap is not about the enemies of America having the information, it's about members of the public knowing what their governments are getting up to.

THANK YOU. EXACTLY.

"as long as powerful people have information, then i personally don't need to know that information"

lol sarah palin really just does not understand anything ever

http://www.interpol.int/public/data/wanted/notices/data/2010/86/2010_52486.asp

who gives a good goddamn about sarah palin. seriously.

o come on u know u luv her

u betcha

http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/11726665294020608

RT @sarahpalinusa "I can see Julian Assange from my house" #wikileaks
about 6 hours ago via web

AB---yr analogy doesn't quite work. Lamo wasn't "a stranger who happens to be an undercover cop." He was a guy that Manning allegedly sought out, specifically, because he figured he might be sympathetic/impressed/helpful/whatever. At least that's the story, right? So, for me, it comes down to which is more plausible---govt spends two years setting up an elaborate hoax in which it deliberately feeds stuff to Manning, knowing that he's likely to blow the whistle, and then arranges things so that he's in a position to brag to Lamo. OR: Manning had nothing to do with it, and a gov't operative bragged to Lamo. Or...I dunno.

Seems way more plausible to me that a 22yo guy who had done something kinda major might eventually crack under the pressure of keeping it secret. I mean, criminals do this all the time. Cops routinely get leads because someone got drunk and started braggin in a bar or w/e, it's not at all uncommon.

Also, Vicar's point is a good one: the issue here really does seem to be tipping more towards gov't keeping things from the electorate, not from foreign powers (who, duh, have intelligence agencies of their very own).

glad she stopped people from blowing the whistle on her book ;)

wikileaks twitter on fire

xps, obv

and AB if you think i'm "whole-heartedly taking the government's side" then you evidently haven't read a single word i've written on this thread. tho, apologies if i've mischaracterized yr position w/r/t WL's dick.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/7bg5kc

this is sorta crazy

this dude is napster so hes going down, yet

Accepted, gbx. And yeah, I apologize for saying that about you as well. This whole thing seems to get polarized, lot of attacks on ppl in this thread (and all over the interwebs) for being in love w Wikileaks/Assange. We should be able to discuss official/media response wo instantly being labeled a Wikileaks/Ron Paul nut.

He was a guy that Manning allegedly sought out, specifically, because he figured he might be sympathetic/impressed/helpful/whatever. At least that's the story, right?

The story is that he contacted Lamo after he leaked the information to Wikileaks, and that he basically contacted him to boast about it. Also, according to Lamo, Manning found him by searching for the word "Wikileaks" on Twitter, which led him to a tweet Lamo had written that included the word "WikiLeaks." I don't have any theories about 'what really happened' or whatever, just saying the whole story sounded weird from the get go.

yes, exactly, that IS where he slipped up. dude i know you're all up on WL's dick or w/e, but the fact that manning was a g-d intelligence analyst in the fucking army means that it is actually against the rules that he knew about to leak classified documents. you can think he's a hero, you can think that the sentence he's facing is unjust or immoral, but you can't pretend that it's anything other than exactly what you'd expect to happen. that greenwald piece (tl;dr) suggests, very briefly, that he's a fall guy who likely couldn't have had access to that sort of intel (200k documents is a lot, tbh) and that this whooooooole thing is some elaborate way of dissuading future informants by making an example. maybe. but it seems like greenwald settles on manning being a hero, though, and the rest of that column is about lamo being a dick. fine. agreed. whatever.

the fact remains: if a private in the US army disseminates classified intel, he can be held accountable for his actions. those are the rules. so he got sold out by someone he thought was a journalist. monstrous, sure, but he's still accountable. how is this so hard to understand.

― kanellos (gbx), Monday, December 6, 2010 1:05 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark

heh i thought AB was being serious, because... that IS a thing that you shouldn't do if you leak a million secret documents, right?

agreed it might be weird, but its also hella incomplete, according to greenwald. i just think that the simpler explanation ("22yo cracks under pressure") is more plausible than the alternative ("US govt orchestrates a plan wherein, by intentionally 'leaking' secret documents and causing a furor, it can justify neutralizing WL as threat and dissuade future informants from going to the press"). the morbsian in me thinks that the conspiracy theory isn't actually ~that~ implausible, but the potential for it to backfire seems big enough that i highly doubt that what we're watching unfold is anything that was planned out in advance.

if there's any general lesson to be learned from these cables it's that united states intelligence agencies are totally incapable of engineering anything as clever as that

unless that's what they WANT you to believe