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

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~

(i wouldn't say WL is either right- or left-wing at this point, so it's interesting to me you assume 'left'.)

i didn't say 'left'! the anti-war angle on the recent and high-flying WL datadumps kinda speaks for itself tho. is that even entirely 'left wing'

so, if WL comes into possession of a list of everyone in the NHS who has cancer, and publishes it, they are legally allowed to do so (well, in America), as long as they did not steal the info. do I think they should? no! of course not!

xps on iphone

similarly non controversial

ha, ha, nice try

so, if WL comes into possession of a list of everyone in the NHS who has cancer, and publishes it, they are legally allowed to do so (well, in America), as long as they did not steal the info. do I think they should? no! of course not!

xps on iphone

― kanellos (gbx), Tuesday, December 7, 2010 9:38 PM (27 seconds ago) Bookmark

this is incredibly specious, good day

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

off limits to whom? to belabor the point: v v little information is of limits to the US press, if any at all.

i meant, you are finding hawkish forces wanting to destroy assange, and dovish ppl saying, well know let's not be hasty.

if the objects of a dump were the institutions of the safety net i'd assume the parties would be reversed, all i'm saying. i'd assume anyone motivated to make such a dump TO wikileaks would have a right-wing agenda.

didn't realize this was about "what's legal"

give a shit

xp

off-limits ethically ffs

history mayne, it actually IS non controversial in the US, or at least was until all this. as to how my argument was specious, well, I dunno

what you haven't offered and appear unwilling to offer is a way to reconcile a free press with yr vague assertion that some stuff just shouldn't ever be made public ever (by said press). even a sketch would be handy, for real. because otherwise you're faced with the impossible task of imagining kinds of info that may not even exist yet. its a legislative nightmare.

didn't realize this was about "what's legal"

give a shit

xp

off-limits ethically ffs

― rip whiney g weingarten 03/11 never forget (history mayne), Tuesday, December 7, 2010 3:41 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

are you fucking kidding me

of course we're talking legally, and have been. when did you move the goal posts

are

think i said earlier that what is going on is a redefinition of 'the public interest'; theoretically it's limitless, i guess

personally i don't think that releasing state dept memos about diplomacy with the baltic states vis a vis their policy towards russia is cleanly defensible on public interest grounds, unless you believe there's wrongdoing

wonder where the pro-WL crew draw the line is all

xp

why the fuck would i care about the legality of it you mook?

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/12/152465.htm

had this debate today on my FB page, mostly with a former boss/retired journalist. he just basically believed that somebody should do something to curb wikileaks, and i had to keep asking him, who should do what, and how are you going to do it so that you don't also end up indicting the NYT, the BBC, whoever the hell else? he has some idea that WL should be held "liable" if their disclosures lead to anything bad happening to anyone anywhere, which needless to say would be a hugely dangerous precedent. but i was surprised that a guy who worked in newspapers for 40-some years was saying this. i've been less surprised by not at all heartened by the number of my mostly-liberal friends who have no idea what the pentagon papers case actually established as u.s. law on all this stuff. there are a lot of people who just assume that what WL is doing is illegal. which of course makes it that much easier for somebody like lieberman to actually try to make it illegal.

but not at all heartened, i mean...

ha, check the facebook page for that event linked at the bottom
xposts

oh a v for vendetta face guy commented, you don't say

lmao

HM--the reason the legality of it all is pretty important (over here, at least), is because Lieberman et al are trying to make it illegal. which, as tipsy points out, sets a dangerous precedent.

so you may not care about it, but as an American concerned about my civil rights, I do. and srsly dude, why is yr default "unpleasant and insulting"? nagl

freedom isn't free

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-saudi-arab-invasion-lebanon

so you may not care about it, but as an American concerned about my civil rights, I do. and srsly dude, why is yr default "unpleasant and insulting"? nagl

gbx OTM (even tho I'm much less sympathetic to WL as an institution than he is) - dial it back hm.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101202184039AAFQSfV

fwiw, I'm still wary of WL as an institution that just indiscriminately publishes anything it gets; I'm not sure I'm that comfortable with the "lights on all the time" cryptomish philosophy that underpins it. otoh, I can't fathom a way to meaningfully distinguish it from journalism. I'm sorta left going "that's kinda how it is now" and have to hope that the assanges of the world are ethical actors, and that legally-bound gatekeepers don't go ham and start spilling everything they know all the time. I'm ambivalent about the former, and optimistic about the latter---the people we trust with sensitive information have always had the opportunity to violate that trust, and I'm not sure that the existence of wikileaks will do much to provoke a meaningful change in how seriously these gatekeepers take their positions.

I'm still wary of WL as an institution that just indiscriminately publishes anything it gets; I'm not sure I'm that comfortable with the "lights on all the time" cryptomish philosophy that underpins it.

Except none of this is the case. They've gone to the US gov't and a bunch of huge international media companies first, then when they put up the original documents they keep the redactions NYT, Guardian, etc. have made. The misinformation surrounding this is pretty thick. For instance, a lot of people think they've leaked all 250,000 docs.

Looks like 4chan is on the offensive for wikileaks

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/4chan-rushes-to-wikileaks-defense-forces-swiss-banking-site-offline.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

now i have no idea what side im on

lol jk fuck the feds :D