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

If we don't have the legal authority to prosecute him for espionage and to go after his alleged co-conspirator Pvt. Bradley Manning for treason and conspiracy, we should create it.

ah yes

If we don't have the legal authority, we should create it.

Also this is awesome:

Julian Assange is a cyber-terrorist. He should be punished to the full extent of the law -- not just for what he’s done but also to serve as a warning to those who would follow his example.

I'd love to see how that sentence would work. "Defendant is sentenced to eight years in the pokey for one count of cyber-terrorism, and an additional year to serve as a warning to those who would follow his example."

wanna cyber? ;)

murdoch news orgs a bigger threat to "our" democracy than WL is or could ever be.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703989004575653280626335258.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Dianne Feinstein: get under the espionage act of 1917

and a v cursory skimming of the wikipedia entry on brandenburg v. ohio would suggest that assange really just couldn't be successfully prosecuted.

the 'yelling fire in a theater' thing is one i've been thinking about, too, cuz, you know, it's only illegal to do that if there isn't actually a fire.

that opinion's been pretty neutered since it was written anyway

schenck, that is

the argument here - that i appear to have adopted as my own - is not about morality or ethics or anything like that. it's about artfulness.

Maybe this is what makes WL 'not journalists', certainly at least in the traditional sense. There's no peg, there's no art to it. Feels like their main operating procedure is just to degrade the value of classified info worldwide with little to no thought to stories and how they are framed. Maybe the failure of Collateral Murder to make a significant impact has soured them on that front.

little to no thought to stories and how they are framed.

One of the most interesting parts of this discussion, to me, is whether or not "framing the story" IS journalism, or is just a side-effect of the impossibility of being truly impartial. Cf the whole "tell me what makes people talk" burst of comments upthread.

thank you, kettle

I mean you fuckers who don't realize it's all over

Exactly. Just like shutting down Napster was the end of all illegal filesharing. (are you really calling people fuckers over something like this? Nice.)

tracer otm

Feinstein is a horror.

yeah over the years my opinion of her has shifted from she's okay to she's tolerable to agh fuck this woman

She and her hubby do very well off his national security contracts.

the fact remains that in america, any revelation IS allowed, if the person making it is a journalist. and since assange didn't steal the documents himself, nor pay for them, nor directly solicit them (we assume), and instead merely received them and them public, he is a de facto journalist.

― kanellos (gbx), Tuesday, December 7, 2010 1:19 AM (19 hours ago) Bookmark

aw hells yeah. wish we had the great media and high level of public discourse you have in america.

and awaaaaaaay we go...

Senator Joe Lieberman said that the New York Times may have committed a crime by accepting and publishing the State Department cables from WikiLeaks, and should be investigated for potential violations of the Espionage Act.

also, w/r/t yr snide reference to the NHS and health documents, and the protection of privacy: i should point out that, again, here in america, making someone's health information public is not illegal; tabloids do it all the time. the only ppl that are required to abide by HIPAA are practicing health professionals; not sure what the situation is in england. if the average joe finds out that an elected official has a heart condition, or that their neighbor had a sex change operation, they are allowed to tell whoever the fuck they want. that's just how it goes. (NB - unless of course they acquired that information by theft/surveillance/etc). moreover, that's how it ~should~ go, for reasons that ought to be clear to a rational person ("___ is allergic to shellfish," "___ just got out of chemo, fyi, and isn't feeling well enough to eat spicy food," etc). should doctors be able to go blabbing about people? no, of course not.

― kanellos (gbx), Tuesday, December 7, 2010 1:31 AM (19 hours ago) Bookmark

um dunno how to respond to this, mainly coz i dunno how to write a really weak "yaaaaay". "if the average joe finds out that an elected official has a heart condition, or that their neighbor had a sex change operation, they are allowed to tell whoever the fuck they want. that's just how it goes." great goin'. "should doctors be able to go blabbing about people? no, of course not." ok, but people who work for doctors...?

lol u have a queen

lol your guys extended tax cuts to the rich during a slump

our guys suck too tho

nrq anyone with access to that info is required to keep it confidential.

sort of like diplomatic cables

what's your point max

you first

bradley manning committed a crime, julian assange has not, unless you want to invent a crime for what he's done. there's clear precedent in the pentagon papers case (dunno the name of the ACTUAL supreme decision here) but it's hard to tell whether 'ellsberg' equates to 'manning' or 'assange' here. ppl like joe lieberman clearly don't really care, the PP's invovled the ACTUAL new york times anyway!.

weirdly wikileaks is a new middleman. in the past, leakers would go directly to one media outlet or another. if assange's vision happens, any leaker of anything just uploads it to this one space, and all media orgs and you and me can paw through it all

the 'make sense of it all' function is kind of left to whoever feels like it. except not really, cos the 'collateral murder' video assange/WL released was edited, annotated, titled, etc.

i was answering nrq's question? xp to max

so you're saying people should keep information unfree unless they feel really strongly about it?

bradley manning committed a crime, julian assange has not

p sure rape is a crime

OH SNAP

From Assange's article:

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?

Indeed.

so you're saying people should keep all information unfree no matter what?

see how fun this is?

xxxp

history mayne are you being obtuse on purpose?

you seem like a smart guy most of the time, but it's like you can't read or something

anway to answer your question: pretty much yeah? that's what whistleblower protections are for? whether a partic leak amounts to blowing a whistle is a judgment call and is another argument i guess

StanM, I was talking about America, civilization etc. WikiLeaks aint but a speed bump.

they're gonna kill that poor woman!

gbx: "should doctors be able to go blabbing about people? no, of course not."

ok, but people who work for doctors...?

― rip whiney g weingarten 03/11 never forget (history mayne), Tuesday, December 7, 2010 8:35 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nrq anyone with access to that info is required to keep it confidential.

― k3vin k., Tuesday, December 7, 2010 8:52 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

so you're saying people should keep information unfree unless they feel really strongly about it?

― rip whiney g weingarten 03/11 never forget (history mayne), Tuesday, December 7, 2010 9:09 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

or are you saying, fuck it, release everyone's medical records, welfare records, police records, 77 posts...?

xpost

woah, you are saying that? wow. hope you don't work delivering mail.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?

for the most part it's the latter

lol your guys extended tax cuts to the rich during a slump

― rip whiney g weingarten 03/11 never forget (history mayne), Tuesday, December 7, 2010 3:44 PM

queen trumps that, sry

check mate!!!

h-mayne we're talking about a few difft things at once.

there's a law in the US, HIPPA (uh the health information privacy and protection act, i think) which was made to address this issue in an american constitutional context.

describing this law and how it works is a little bit aside of talking about rights issues of which "government" data "the people" have a right to access and when and how it's reported etc

still waiting to hear max's point

don't think he had one tbh

nrq work on the analogies plz

xp to myself: but yeah big gov't health systems is a different angle on public action vs privacy vs secrecy stuff, way different from the national security state.

is your argument that something like WL presents an avenue by which right wing forces could embarrass the social safety net into destruction via revealing what its cruel or ridiculous paper trail is? well maybe, maybe not, maybe you know the rest...

er that last para was to history mayne

kevin, answer the question: which information is off-limits?

is your argument that something like WL presents an avenue by which right wing forces could embarrass the social safety net into destruction via revealing what its cruel or ridiculous paper trail is? well maybe, maybe not, maybe you know the rest...

― goole, Tuesday, December 7, 2010 9:26 PM (23 seconds ago) Bookmark

kind of -- the UK government has tacitly endorsed aspects of WL, and it is making more and more info about public services, erm, public, in order to discredit them.

but not entirely, no. i'm saying WL could do it using the same rationale it has now. (i wouldn't say WL is either right- or left-wing at this point, so it's interesting to me you assume 'left'.) moreover, there's no theoretical end to its activities. next it's doing a bank. great, because we all hate banks. but i would like to know where people would place a limit.

also, really, how hard is this to understand for the 1000th time: certain positions, both public and private, that ppl enter into willingly, strip them of certain rights to free speech. as an almost-medical professional, I can only discuss my patients with other ppl in very vague ways. I'm totally ok with that. as an intelligence analyst, manning wasn't allowed to discuss secret-level docs with ppl that did not share his clearance. the mailman is not allowed to give yr mail to other ppl on purpose. yr lawyer cant tell the press about what you've discussed, and so on. this is non controversial.

similarly non controversial is the fact that if someone comes to know confidential information by some accident (an unscrupulous lawyer slips an envelope under a journalists door, or a photographer catches a celebrity leaving a drug rehab center), they are free to make that information public, as they are not bound by the same constraints. ~even if the fallout is really shitty~