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So strange. You grow up all your life being told how great democracy is, how we live under the rule and process of the law, how we are a tolerant and free society which values free thinking, which values the right to speech, however offending or off that speech may be.
As you grow up however, you kind of start realising that much of the above is sort of true in theory, but not true in practice, especially if the freedom of speech concerns a criticism of those who have more power than you. It is because power corrupts that many people had to die to ensure that we today live in relative freedom. It is because those in power have the means to subvert criticism and silence such criticism that it has been necessary for many to be shunned, called lunatics, heretics, traitors, or to die, so that truth can be spoken to power, so that truth can be spoken to power in order to preserve our liberty.
The right to free speech does not apply only to the dissemination of pictures of cats. A society and its adherence to its principles are tested and shown when power is seriously criticised, when power is or has the potential to be seriously undermined, not, when someone writes about lolcats because people even in North Korea can write about lolcats.
I am very amazed that people even consider an attack on wikileaks to be 'good', or that a real attack on the wikileaks founder would have been even better, because, they consider the leak to be a potential attack on their own percieved or real self interests, such as the image of their nation around the world, or that the world may find out that real life is so much more interesting that any fantasy book that can be written or any idealistic principle that can be formulated.
I consider it amazing that anyone may even think of supporting an attack by what may be a state actor, not because of any breach of law, but because it is embarrassing to such state actor.
We are not children any more, and if our principles are to die with the passing of our childhood, then we might need to consider the principles in the first place, their truth, their applicability, whether our generation of grown up adults wants to stand by them and continue supporting them. If we as the people wish to turn a blind eye to government censorship, to dirty tactics by governments through reputation damage by means of charges unsupported by evidence, if we are going to eat up the effective propaganda (PR I read somewhere began as an industry after the second world war and was based on the effectiveness of Hitler's tactics) and blindly state that such an attack is a good thing whether by anyone, let alone the government, simply because our perceived interest may potentially be damaged or undermined, not because of any reason of principle, not because we consider it to be an illegal activity not even based on reasonable moral arguments, but simply and only because it is a criticism which embarrasses, then something has gone badly wrong since the time I was born and now that I have grown up.
Truth is Power. Suppression of truth allows power to corrupt. That is why we have such principles of freedom of speech and such principles are not quantifiable simply by our embarrassment when criticised, or even more woringly, by the embarrassment of politicians.
There's a difference between truth and security of truth. One reveals to all, while the other protects by doing the opposite.
Managing information like this is not easy, and though it's easy to fault a government for hiding and/or obscuring the truth, there are some things that are better left unknown.
From what I understand, Wikileaks is willing to work with the government in order to hide the things that are truly dangerous...and not just secret because someone did something illegal/unethical
I don't like Assange. However my belief is that the kind of stuff he is leaking is similar to the kind of stuff that governments manage to figure out about each other through spying anyways. Therefore the risk of injury is not as big as the government would have you believe, but the risk of public embarrassment is huge.
And incidentally, if you really believe in the first amendment, his actions should be entirely legal. At this point he is part of the press, and the government has no right to limit his free speech, or the freedom of the press. OK, so I don't like him. But there is a well-known principal of constitutional law that the important precedents are set by people who are hard to like. Because if they were nice people, they wouldn't have been in court in the first place. But by defending the rights of least likable people, we defend everyone's rights.
If you want to compare it to something, compare to the publication of plans for making a hydrogen bomb. The government tried to sue to stop publication, and failed. Now you can find discussion of the subject on wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller-Ulam_design. Which matters more? The Constitution, or the release of information that could kill tens of millions of people? The actual ruling of the court was that the Constitution mattered more!
It's not as black and white as a first amendment issue. This isn't press, this is sensitive and classified information.
He could play a much greater role in change were he to use this information in a more strategic fashion than to recklessly publish 100% of it.
This isn't press, this is sensitive and classified information.
In what way, at this point, is Assange not part of the press?
Remember, a large part of the Constitution is meant to provide checks and balances to prevent government from being able to abuse its power. The proper Constitutional role of the press SHOULD be to inform the public on the actions of the government so that the public can get properly outraged about things they do not agree with.
Any of the state actors unhappy with this release have undoubtedly looked at the issue somewhat closely.
They'd know:
* a DDOS wouldn't change anything
* wikileaks has decent contingency plans, and are prepared for a lot beyond a simple denial of service
* It'd just get wikileaks in the news more in the run up to the release
Conclusion: Misguided amateur patriots or complete fabrication
On the Wikileaks Twitter feed:
"Now is a good time to download some "history insurance" https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5723136/WikiLeaks_insurance 1:04 AM Nov 26th via web"
Yes, you're right, even if the servers are down, they can leak the key via twitter etc. to this file.
it wasn't that long ago the fbi had hoover, i think you give bureaucrats too much credit
I think Assange underestimates the power that this information wields, and as a result is being reckless and potentially dangerous to those he's trying to "protect" under the guise of freedom.
This is a dangerous game to play, especially for someone with little experience doing so.
I don't know how I feel about the concept of Wikileaks itself, but I do feel uncomfortable that this man seems to enjoy playing God.
Replace one tyrant with another and you end up in the same place.
> I do feel uncomfortable that this man seems to enjoy playing God.
You can't help but wonder if he is playing out some international hacker of intrigue fantasy, but I think that even if he is, that mindset does more good for his cause than it does harm.
I'd like to hear why you think the latter portion of your statement is true.
The first part I can agree with, but I'm not sure how it helps...I think he's in over his head.
Before disparaging wikileaks and/or the person of Julian Assange for whatever shortcomings they've got it would be good to contrast this with the opposite, say a leak from inside the North Korean or Iranian regime.
Such a leak would be applauded and the perpetrator would be declared a hero by those exact same governments that would like wikileaks to go away.
Don't shoot the messenger.
And realize that whatever your government does it does so in your name too. If it can't stand the light of day because it is illegal or embarrassing then maybe it should not be done.
I suppose that's true if you consider the interests of Iran or North Korea to be just as valid as the interests of the western world. If the U.S. and Iran/North Korea were two equally evil governments fighting only for their own self-interest, that would be the case. However, as much as I am disappointed with the state of the U.S. right now, I think that what's good for America is much better for the Hacker News crowd than what's good for North Korea or Iran. While I don't support the way the U.S. government has been acting over the past decade or so, it still supports free speech, free markets, and democracy far more than its enemies.
Revealing private diplomatic information is not free expression, it is an attack on the country. It gives an information advantage to that country's adversaries and sours its relations with its allies. If wikileaks did the same to North Korea, the U.S. would celebrate it not because it represents free speech, but because it would weaken their government. There are some legitimate government secrets, and diplomatic cables are one of them.
The interests of Iran or North Korea are from the perspective of their leaders just as valid as our interests are to our leaders. All of them would condemn wikileaks for publishing their information, regardless of which country you'd be looking at. The same would go for China, Russia and pretty much every other nation in the world.
Which ones you would think are 'valid' and which are 'invalid' apparently depends on your own interests in the world, and not so much on the 'badness' of that particular government. I would welcome total openness from my government about stuff like this, I would hope for the citizens of those other countries to do the same.
This is not an attack on any country, and to sketch it as such is not an honest depiction of the facts, it is an attack at those that perpetrate illegal acts in the name of all of us.
That 'if you've got nothing to fear, you've got nothing to hide' thing works both ways.
Either we, the citizens of all those states have a right to privacy, or the government does not have a right to privacy either. A society without privacy will have zero privacy for everybody, and I think part of the anger and the backlash against all this is that the governments are slowly waking up to this and they don't like it much.
If your perspective changes depending on which nation you are from that's a fair indication that you are probably wrong, if only because no nation is 'absolutely better in all respects' than any other.
Many North Koreans would agree with that statement about the US (of course, they've all been brainwashed, right?).
Or we can just not like Mr. Assange for needlessly putting peoples lives in danger?
I don't know why but when I read the headline I chuckled. It is so apropos.
Whose life has been threatened by him? Please provide sources.
What if the reason it's kept out of the light of day is that it makes the already difficult job of people working in my nation's interest even more difficult?
Much of what's here is not in the least surprising, but having official confirmation just makes it that much more complicated for people out there trying to make things better.
Not all secrets are eeeevil, you know.
my nation is a different one from yours.
And that goes for a large number of people.
Not all secrets are evil, however I'm fairly sure that the fact that some secrets in fact are evil is what drives the feeding frenzy around wikileaks. If all that came to the surface would be an impeccably functioning diplomatic machinery with the highest standards for ethics I highly doubt this would get as much press and attention as it does.
Anyone knows what's the point of stalling those "leakage"? It's becoming quite annoying for me: all those newses about what it is going to be about or newses about DOS attack. Why can't they just publish it already? Or maybe they should setup wikileaksleaks.org for leaks about wiki leaks...
They don't publish them immediately because they want a worldwide simultaneous release with the New York Times, Der Speigel, and the Guardian.
Also called 'Embargo'.
It won't matter - the guy at the Guardian has already posted to twitter that they will publish the papers even if wikileaks go down.
Whoever is behind the attack should just DDOS all of the media sites that have the leaked information.
In seriousness though, the attack probably will moderate the damage slightly, as I imagine Wikileaks was going to publish all the raw documents on its site, whereas the other sites will probably just give summaries of the important points. Sure, Wikileaks will eventually come back up and have all the raw data available, but the peak viewing time was going to be today. If I were trying to minimize number of eyeballs viewing the raw documents, I'd take this approach.
I think the newspapers will link to full copies for perusal, but include highlights/excerpts in their articles.
The biggest problem the DDoS creates, in my eyes, is that anyone reading about the leaks will go to Wikileaks.org and find a dead page and then forget about it, thus minimising their exposure to the other doings of Wikileaks.
I'm pretty sure the raw data will be available as torrent :) No need for any website...
Assange is such an attention whore that I wouldn't put it past him to turn off all his servers and send out a press release saying "Look at me, I'm under attack!"
Let's wait and see. Besides, whore or not, the world is a better place due to wikileaks.
How so? What changes have actually happened because of the leaks that happened? We'd all forgotten within a week.
That remains rather unproven, but I don't feel like arguing about it.
I agree, I don't think the guy is really in it for altruistic reasons.
That being said, the US doesn't look so great in complaining about the consequences of released sensitive information. If it is so important and people's lives depend on it, then why not invest more in information assurance?
yes, an ad hominem, brilliant tactical response dude
I can't say I have a lot of pity for Wikileaks.
I feel -- and you guys are welcome to trash me on this and I'm sure you will -- that taxpayers have paid billions of dollars to our government to perform diplomacy. And diplomacy always involves the keeping of secrets. It did 500 years ago, and it will 500 years from now.
So no matter how much arm-waving you want to do about freedom and truth, nations still have to have secrets. And while I oppose the secrecy state that we've created, it's the taxpayers that have created it, not wikileaks. It's our monster to tame. Assange neither represents us nor has our best interests in mind.
Assange is no representative of freedom or honor in my book. In my book he's a low-life self-promoting pimp of anarchy, and I imagine what goes around will certainly come around to him.
If you want to leak a few documents about the Iraq war as part of informing the public that it's not going well, then fine, more power to you. Hell I'll contribute to your defense fund. The truth has to be free. But if you're going to dump all the state department cables from countries all over the planet on the internet, then you have attacked my country. And while I'm all with you and fully support getting to an open society, that doesn't even begin to forgive an act of war like this.
This discussion has gotten to absolutes -- people are arguing that everything needs to be open. Other people are arguing that everything must be secret. The truth is that neither position is going to work, and I have to say I'm pretty pissed at Assange at taking such a serious issue like openness and crapping all over it. He's done more harm to his own cause with this than his opponents could ever help to accomplish. For the next ten years we'll have story after story trickle out about what harm this has caused. It will make a nice backdrop to even further draconian security measures.
There is a space between anarchy and the security state. Let's find that spot and live there.
I feel like they are allowed to keep their secrets provided they don't make something secret just because it might make them look bad or because it's illegal.
Remember, everything they do...they do in our name.
> It's our monster to tame.
It is my feeling that this monster cannot be tamed, but must be slain, and the most horrible thing that could be constructed from its corpse must also be destroyed.
But everyone has their own opinion, and I'll agree that absolutist argument can poison the waters of common ground.
I also agree that somewhere indeterminable there's a line to be crossed.
But until I find that line I defer to my juvenile glee of seeing the American government submit to their own (ridiculous) privacy policy: If you don't have anything to hide, all your private, personal and professional life are belong to us.
Looks like the Guardian have gone live with this already...
"The US state department has said the release will put many lives at risk."
Yes, because the US government clearly has great concern for unnecessary loss of life :-/
It does. Especially under McChrystal there were numerous deaths of American soldiers due to the very restrictive ROEs.
Off topic, but I had to ask this: Am I the only one here that thinks that this upcoming leak will pose a threat to the national security and should be stopped?
Reports about brutal repression of Tibetan protesters would be a threat to Chinese national security. Should those be stopped? Or do you only support freeing damaging information about countries you don't like?
The national security of what country? I suspect it could improve the security and life of some affected countries. If there was no exploitation and shady operations that seriously harm others, there would not be such excitement in the US government.
Erm.. Well, seeing as you can't really have anything to base this on other than the US Government's say-so, I'm not sure what kind of discussion there is to have on the matter as of yet.
You trust these governments far more than I do, I will say that.
Not really, on freedom of speech grounds.
That said, I'm a bit torn on wikileaks as an organization. I think there needs to be an organization like wikileaks that serves as an outlet for whistleblowers, but I also think that wikileaks is falling too far down the path of self-aggrandizement for me to take them seriously.
For one, they've heavily promoted some releases that have turned out to contain very little truly new information. More importantly, their inclination to editorialize hurts their credibility in a massive way. The "Collateral Murder" video is case in point -- you not only have the title the video was released under, but the entire thing was annotated telling you exactly how you were supposed to interpret it. You're a helicopter pilot observing a combat zone and somebody traveling with a group of armed men pokes a cylindrical object around a corner in the direction of your forces - are you likely to think that object is A. a weapon or B. a pro-grade telephoto lens. According to the Colateral Murder video, it's ridiculous to think A.
Things like that make me somewhat distrustful of wikileaks since it makes it clear they have an agenda beyond the simple dissemination of information, and forces me to wonder whether they'd actually publish information contrary to that agenda if they were to receive it.
I'm pretty sure most companies have information they'd rather wasn't public. Most people do too. I don't see why governments would be any different.
There's a careful balance between transparency and secrecy.
Yes, you are the only one.
national security has a direct-line relationship to the bottom line of u.s. startups... we get to witness the dividing of those who will make an atom bomb, and those who will not.
(i.e. if your business depends on imperialism, you are an imperialist. now consider oil and hegemony)