Interview With the Man Behind WikiLeaks 489
An anonymous reader writes "Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, explains why he feels it is right to encourage the leaking of secret information. He maintains that the more money an organisation spends on trying to conceal information, the more good it is likely to do if leaked. For Assange, leaked intelligence reveals the true state of governments, their human rights abuses, and their activities, it's what the 'history of journalism is.' On the media's role in making information available to the public, Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information [classified documents] than the rest of the world press combined.'"
Re:Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:3, Informative)
A couple more interviews (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know how much of the content at the links below is repeated in TFA, but I thought these were good:
Apologies to those outside the UK or otherwise without access as the second interview is on iPlayer.
(Incidentally, the Guardian also had access to the Afghanistan data, as was mentioned in a previous /. article. Since I have the tabs open, I'll repeat some key links from that here:)
Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:1, Informative)
BTW, his source for the recent leak is a 22yrs old US soldier.
Re:Why the press does a bad job (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why the press does a bad job (Score:5, Informative)
From The Fourth Estate [wikipedia.org]:
Re:Democracy (Score:3, Informative)
He is much more polite and diplomatic, and doesn't go mouthing off about "crusades" and "axis of evil", which idiots mistake for him being a moderate; but when it comes to using force, spying, and arguing for the US's right to do those things, there is virtually no change.
More likely, they either only have access to reports up to that time(source got cut off, reassigned, KIA, etc.) or are only releasing the older stuff, as it is informative without being as compromising of present-day activity(the same reason they are holding back 15K CIA-related documents)...
Re:Glory Hound (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
That being said, the entire nuclear command and control system was designed when concerns about soviet spies were rampant. It was, naturally, designed to withstand a certain level of information leakage without compromising security. The idea that a leak on the scale of what Wikileaks does would somehow compromise our nuclear weapons system is a bit far-fetched; by the time Wikileaks even got around to publishing launch codes and missile locations, the information would be completely out of date and worthless (launch codes are changed daily, and missiles are periodically shuffled between silos; also, we open a certain fraction of our silos, chosen by the Russians, for Russian airplanes to photograph, as part of an agreement of assurances that we are not exceeding a certain number of nuclear weapons).
Re:some amount of secrecy is warranted (Score:5, Informative)
move the war into Pakistan directly
I agree we're not doing any good in Afghanistan, but Pakistan is a real mess; US influenced puppet government, strong anti-US sentiment from a lot of the population, 650,000 active troops [wikipedia.org], and they have nukes. Pakistan scares the shit out of me.
Re:A self righteous self important prick (Score:3, Informative)
Re:some amount of secrecy is warranted (Score:3, Informative)
Afghanistan is unwinnable as long as that porous border allows Taliban, al Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence to cross unhindered.
You mean Vietnam is unwinnable as long as the porous border allows NVA and Vietcong to cross into Cambodia unhindered..
Oh, wait.. you didn't.. Damn..
Re:Blood on his hands (Score:5, Informative)
Basically it was to get rid of a bad guy, stabilize the region (which is a strategically important region), and intimidate other bad guys. To a degree these goals were effective, they got rid of the 'bad guy,' and they were able to intimidate Syria (another regional 'bad guy') to get out of Lebanon (for a while anyway). Whether it helps to stabilize the region remains to be seen. Iraq has democracy now, for better or for worse. Personally, while I think these are good goals, there were better ways to achieve them, and the end wasn't worth the cost. The administration led by the PNAC was an arrogant bunch.
They weren't hiding any of this if you were paying attention. The marketing speak became about terrorism when they tried to sell it to the American public, and it became about WMD when they tried to sell it to the United Nations. It is also worth remember that, while we didn't find any WMD, pretty near every country who investigated at the time, including US Democrats who voted to authorize the war, believed Saddam had WMD. It is also possible that Saddam himself thought he had WMD; at the time his administration was kind of falling apart and there was a lot of corruption, so people could have been telling him things that weren't true.
Re:Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:5, Informative)
They really are - MSNBC reports "this dude said A". And that's it.
The Daily Show reports "this dude said A today, but last month he was saying not A! Further, his entire political position is premised on not A! So when he says A today, he's full of shit".
And that's the sort of analysis we want to hear. The fact that it's also hilarious is a bonus.
Re:Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sorry, what? I may be feeding a troll here, but I have to interject. NPR and Pacifica are government propaganda?
First of all, those two stations aren't anything alike. Pacifica is straightforward in its left-wing bias, whereas NPR is about as balanced a news show as you'll find these days. They frequently interview government officials and ask them questions they'd rather not be asked. They did it when Republicans were in power, and they're doing it now.
You're right there's a lot of garbage to filter. Unfortunately last week's Breitbart/Sherrod adventure showed us what happens when news outlets try to lower the BS filter a bit.
Re:Blood on his hands (Score:4, Informative)
It is also worth remember that, while we didn't find any WMD, pretty near every country who investigated at the time, including US Democrats who voted to authorize the war, believed Saddam had WMD.
Maybe the governments of "every country" believed that, but at least here (the Netherlands) there was quit a bit of scepticism in the population. This was mostly based on the reports by UN inspector Hans Blix. Although he was unable to prove there were no WMD (due to lack of cooperation of the Iraq government) he didn't report any evidence for the existence of WMD either. I remember one of his press conferences where he let out some of his frustrations, saying that if the US had such irrefutable proof of the existence of WMD, they should share it with him.
Re:The rest of the world media has bills to pay (Score:3, Informative)
Think about it, if journalists asked real questions, guys like Bush and Blair would have been as embarrased as when they meet a private citizen who manages to corner them. Brits might remember Blair being totally unable to counter woman questioning him on public health care. Brown the same. What NO report mentioned is that not a SINGLE ONE OF THE PRESS CORE asked those questions. If you are reporter and you haven't had a poltician cry, then suck. And this is the same around the world.
Sorry this is incorrect. The BBC in particular programs like the Newsnight ask the tough questions. Have a look at one famous example [google.com] (Paxman [wikipedia.org] Vs. Howard). The Politicians do not get an easy ride in the UK.
Re:WikiLeaks probably has their own agenda (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:4, Informative)
one off video clips that can out of context contradict
Actually, The Daily Show has two basic deliveries. They have the obvious joke whereby they do occasionally do what you claim. But when they do this, its always obvious its a joke for a joke's sake. But by far, they use a one off and/or readily repeated video clip, absolutely within context, to make their joke, which is by far why they tend to be so funny - because its true. The base of much of their humor is the fact that their humor is not only true but highlights blatant hypocrisy. Whereby, they then go for the dick joke.
If you believe the former form of humor is the rule rather than the exception, its really says far less about The Daily Show and more about the fact that you're not as nearly informed about the news as you believe yourself to be.
Additionally, they have started providing UNEDITED interviews and cited material so its absolutely clear their clips are factually within context. The reason they started doing this is because several "news organizations" who hypocritically lied, claiming The Daily Show frequently uses non-contextual clips, exactly as you asserted. In turn, The Daily Show had a nice segment showing all of the clips and proving their jokes were in fact, completely within context. They've then continued to provide clips to allow people to easily research for themselves that their "trusted new source", is in fact, frequently full of shit, and lying to them on an almost daily basis.
I hope you'll understand that contrary to your assertion, The Daily Show, as sad a fact as this is, actually is a very reputable source for news and full disclosure.
Hawaiian government overthrown by rich outsiders (Score:5, Informative)
Effectively wrong on many levels -- for starters, the ones "electing" weren't local Hawaiians, but rather the rich oligarchs from the mainland US and Europe.
Oh, dear. Have you ever heard the term banana republic? That mostly applied to Central America and the tactics of fruit companies there, but the basic mechanics were very much at work in Hawaii as well, only for pineapples instead of bananas. (Hint -- Dole Fruit started in Hawaii, and the founder's cousin appointed himself head of the forcibly instated "Republic of Hawaii".) Rich white businessmen forcibly stripped the Hawaiian monarchy of power and relegated locals to an undercaste position.
Read up on Hawaiian history next time before posting stuff like this. Hawaii was very much overrun by capitalist white folks bent on enforcing their will, locals be damned -- or better yet, de facto enslaved to work the fruit plantations.
Try this [wikipedia.org] and this [wikipedia.org] for starters.
Cheers,
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
And he specifically said all the information is seven months old, and so it doesn't give any info that can directly affect any current mission.
Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:3, Informative)
No, he takes people's money to wage war on other people's behalf. He's a politician.