Human Rights Groups Join Criticism of WikiLeaks 578
e065c8515d206cb0e190 writes "Several human rights organizations contacted WikiLeaks and pressed them to do a better job at hiding information that endangers civilians within their leaked documents. From the article: 'The letter from five human-rights groups sparked a tense exchange in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange issued a tart challenge for the organizations to help with the massive task of removing names from thousands of documents, according to several of the organizations that signed the letter. The exchange shows how WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange risk being isolated from some of their most natural allies in the wake of the documents' publication. ... An [Amnesty International] official replied to say that while the group has limited resources, it wouldn't rule out the idea of helping, according to people familiar with the reply. The official suggested that Mr. Assange and the human-rights groups hold a conference call to discuss the matter.'"
nice (Score:5, Informative)
Mr. Assange then replied: "I'm very busy and have no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses. If Amnesty does nothing I shall issue a press release highlighting its refusal," according to people familiar with the exchange.
Kind of comes off as a narcissistic jerk here.
Re:nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. Assange should show a little respect for an organization that have educated and mobilized so many people around the world with real life consequences for human rights. Guess he's too busy talking about himself to every journalist he can find.
Re:nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, you either have a: freedom of the press, or b: you give it up for "safety of civilians". There isn't an imbetween.
Right. Guess we've just hallucinated the last hundred years or so.
Only fools see such issues as black and white. The statement you've just made sounds every bit as retarded as Bush and his "You're either with us or against us" nonsense. Mature adults understand that life is a series of compromises rather than a list of ultimatums.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Only fools see such issues as black and white.
Wheras only smart people see the world in terms of fools and smart people :-P
Re:nice (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe you might want to look at what the real issue is here.
That's exactly what I was doing.
Of course, YOUR idea of "the real issue" is every bit as silly as the actual issue (which I discussed). The idea that governments should just freely give out all classified information in order to avoid having it leaked is only surpassed in foolishness by the idea that freedom of the press and protection of civilians are incompatible.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, you either have a: freedom of the press, or b: you give it up for "safety of civilians". There isn't an imbetween.
Wow, talk about false dilemma! You have a serious lack of imagination if you cannot think of any way the press could responsibly report on the actual conduct of the war without endangering operational details and local friendlies? Let's try this:
American troops swept into this village in NW Afghanistan today after receiving information about a Taliban arms cache. Three insurgents were killed, as was a civilian caught in the crossfire.
versus
The 23rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne (strength 120 men, two APCs, 10 HMMVs), based in gridsquare* 423-12 sent a single platoon (strength 18 men, 4 HHMVs) swept into the village of Almar after receiving a tip from local tribal elder Khalifa Abdullah. Three insurgents were killed after they called in Apache support that is 16 minutes away from the airbase at 412-22 in Herat, as well as one civilian. The soldiers seized 12 AK-47s and 4 RPG-7s and an IED kit that was reverse-engineered and so now they are jamming the particular RF bands used to trigger it.
Do you see the difference? There's just no need for that kind of detail, especially where it's irrelevant to reporting the actual story. I will be the first to say that I don't trust the Army not to overclassify the hell out of the operation and generally apply a coating of whitewash. The logic that means that therefore it's OK to release sensitive operational details, however, escapes me entirely.
*I read the Wikileaks documents, most of them had 10-digit grids. I have no idea how anyone could consider that having locations down to the centimeter is at all relevant to the journalistic story. The events happened, the American public absolutely deserves to get the clean truth. I'm not disputing that bit.
Re:Valis dilemma (Score:4, Insightful)
And they could have answered "we only redacted the names of specific Afghani civilians, because revealing those names does not serve any greater purpose, and these people would face grave danger." You really think that shows they lack credibility? I think it adds moral credibility.
Re:nice (Score:5, Informative)
They *did* redact documents as best they could.
They even asked the pentagon for help redacting the documents of info which could reveal someone indirectly.
They barn door was open, the pigs had fled and yet wikileaks turned around and offered the pentagon the chance to keep the choice cuts that weren't obviously scandalous.
The pentagon ignored the offer.
Re:nice (Score:5, Interesting)
Small correction: Wikileaks didn't steal the documents, someone else did then sent them a copy.
Second, they're since they're not american they have as much duty to help keep american top secret info secret as you have to protect chinas top secret tank plans if someone sent you a copy.
Publishing secret documents which show embarasing info is what any half decent news agency should endeavour to do.
Just because they've been labelled secret does not change that.
They new york times and the guardian were *also* handling those stolen documents yet I haven't heard anything about them being threatened to try to get them to delete all their copies of them.
indeed the guardian newspaper mirrored the documents on their own site, should the US go after them as well for helping publish US secrets?
Re:nice (Score:5, Insightful)
There "journalistic integrity" is right up there with the best of yellow journalism of the late 1800s yearly 1900s. Those that get offended by that statement and defend them don't realize that it is simply because they agree with the agenda of Wikileaks and that they are convinced that what they are trying to deal with a "bigger problem" aka that the ends justify the means.
Hmmm...in my mind you've got Wikileaks and the MSM (main stream media) organizations reversed here. The MSM organizations have shifted to producing the best of what's historically been known as yellow journalism. They print sensationalized crap that has been poorly research with almost zero fact checking simple because they think that's the way to get people to look. In most cases it's simple press releases from the main players in the story. As an example, stories about file sharing and digital piracy read like press releases from the RIAA with absolutely no challenge of even the most blatantly false propaganda they spew. The MSM also tends more and more strongly to having an editorial slant in what they're producing as news stories.
I really don't see an "agenda" for wikileaks. Nor are they a journalistic organization in the traditional sense. They're providing a function that the MSM use to provide. It's a secure place for people to distribute secret information about things that they feel are wrong. Wikileaks publishes the raw material. They don't report on it or editorialize. They simple make it public and let others do the that. In my mind that's a very important function. That is the purpose of a free press. It helps keeps those in power accountability for their actions. They make an effort to publish the material in a manner that doesn't directly harm anyone. In this case they offered to let the fricking Pentagon redact the documents but the idiots refused. Who's fault is that? I find it hard to blame wikileaks.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's easy for anyone to criticize any project. How do you propose to identify those who have useful skills and are genuinely trying to help a particular project?
Re:nice (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a terrible analogy. People's lives aren't at stake if an OSS project comes out with shitty documentation. If Wikileaks lacked the manpower to properly scrub names from the documents, they shouldn't have released them.
Re:nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Does an Afghan civilian prefer to die from a US missile or a Taliban bullet? How can wikileaks estimate the number of deaths in each alternative?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:nice (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds like you think the US Army doesn't learn from its mistakes unless the mistakes are visibly published in the news? Trust me that the military punishes its own. If we were allowed to kill each other, i'm sure it would happen quite often.
I think outsiders looking in, is good. As long as they are only looking and not touching. It's the one reason why i detest ICRC.. though for personal reasons really. It was august in iraq and my squad was guarding a large detainee compound (did this job for 3 months, a nice break from fighting but very frustrating). ICRC was inspecting things, making sure the detainees were being treated properly. I caught two of the ICRC people passing our water supply through the fence. I asked them to stop and why they were doing this? They said the detainees were thirsty and needed water. I laughed and explained to the two that the detainees have plumbing and a clean water supply, they also received 16x 40lb bags of ice each morning that they put into provided water coolers. I had neither of those things, i had a palette of bottled water dropped off by a forklift each week that sat in the sun. So, i left the two ICRC people and continued my rounds. Came back maybe five minutes later and ALL of the water we had was GONE. Fucking ICRC literally gave away all my water.. i had almost nothing to drink for the rest of the day. I was angry, "WHY DID YOU GIVE AWAY MY WATER!" They were stupid with fear i think because they couldn't answer me. But they can go back to their airconditioned buildings and think they were saving the world. I went back to my tent with a plywood floor and cleaned my rifle so i could get through another day. I should point out that it was easily over 120F degrees. I was drinking 10x 1.5liter bottles of water during the 12hr work shifts.. and still peeing an odd orange-brown color.
I have more ICRC stories, if anyone is interested in hearing about people so blinded by the idea that the entire US Army was made up of those idiots in that Abu Ghraib travesty. I sometimes type these rants and always delete them.. but maybe someone will find this interesting.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
heya,
Well said, and ever so witty =). Lol, however, a better way to think about it, and one that's a little more honest is, would the Afghanistan's prefer to:
1. Live under the Taliban, and suffer the consequences there (random killings and maimings for various implied crimes against Islam's, a gutted education and medical system, and rampant abuse of women's right)
2. Live under the current situation, and suffer the consequences there (a US military that is apparently hamstrung by it's own regulations and mo
Re:nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at how happy the Iraqi's were to hand Saddam Hussein. Now personally, I'm not a fan of the death penalty, and I think he should have just sat in a small cell somehow, thinking about all the horrible things he, his sons, and his commanders inflicted on his own people (and all the neighboring countries). But look, I have a feeling that the Iraqi's probably hated Saddam even more than we do, just like the Afghan's seem to hate the Taliban even more than we do - and probably with good reason.
Cheers, Victor
Aside from everything else that was wrong with the Iraq war, this was one of the biggest for myself - Saddam Hussein, regardless of who he was or what he had done, should not have been subjected to that particular court.
Both Chief Judges in the case were ethnic Kurds, so there is an immediate uncertainty of bias, but the second Chief Judge (Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman, and the one who presided over the courts verdict) was from Halabja and suffered loss of family and friends during the 1998 gas attacks ordered by Hussein, which strengthens the uncertainty of bias.
You do not *ever* subject someone to a court of their victims - for a court to be legitimate, it should be completely independent of both victim and accused.
Re:nice (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really. Wikileaks may be a much more life-and-death situation than writing OSS code, but the notion of "You want to help? Then help!" is pretty apt..
I worry that the multi-million dollar "human rights" organizations sometimes get too cozy with the people who are in power. I'm not saying Amnesty International is necessarily guilty of this, but there were lots of "human rights organizations" running around Yugoslavia in the late 90s that were playing both sides of the fence, getting their mission mixed up with the very complex political situation and passing intelligence on to the people who deal in intelligence, sometimes at the cost of human lives. I saw this with my own all-American eyes, and it's one reason why some people in the Balkans came to resent some of the aid groups..
The US is also not above putting enormous pressure on the NGOs and human rights groups, demanding collusion for access. It can get very murky.
The "mission" in Afghanistan is such a cocked-up mess that there's nothing clear about any of it. You're not going to help a country by invading it, playing unprotected civilians against the enemy, while playing footsie with Pakistan, whose intelligence service is in league with the Taliban (after taking billions from the US in military aid). Remember, the Taliban are the guys we armed to the teeth a while back to fight the Russians, who are now our friends. And we originally went there to get rid of Al Qaeda, the enemy, who were funded by Saudi Arabia, our friends, who got rich because we just couldn't bring ourselves to try to get off oil back in the '80s.
It's all complicated shadows, and I don't see blaming Wikileaks for throwing a little light on the subject. This is what Jefferson was talking about when he said "avoid foreign entanglements".
Re:nice (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, I started to think you were on to something then you went and spoke about shit you obviously have no clue about.
The US did not fund the Taliban to fight the Russians. The Taliban was not even around during that conflict. The Taliban didn't emerge until after the Russian afghan war was over and the collapse of the soviet union. Now would be right to say out inaction allowed them to become powerful in the region as after the Russian pulled out, the US bailed too for fear that our involvement publicly would cause Russia to either return or to attack us as a last ditch effort. This caused the area to be broken into territories controlled by war lords and made trade or transportation and travel in the area almost impossible as the feuding between the warlords interrupted anything resembling a economic stability or public safety if you weren't from their clan. Finally, the war lords formed an alliance but elements still broke away and pirated cargo from supply shipments and stuff.
With all this Chaos, along comes a group calling itself the Taliban who started out as armed security guards being hired to protect shipments but the Afghan government. They got the job done and started getting shipments through, opened trade up, and made it safe to travel . Then they ended up getting into the government and imposing their views onto the people. The Taliban was not heard of until the mid 1990's. Now it's possible that some Taliban members were the same mujaheddin members, but the organization itself did not/does not resemble anything in play when the US aided the Afghan rebels.
The start of the either with us or against us attitude comes from our attempts to get Al Qeada and the Taliban gave them state protection. Our only option to get Al Qaeda was to violate their sovereignty so the call was made to oust the Taliban government in the process. And no, it wasn't funded by Saudi Arabia, it was funded by elements inside Saudi Arabia. Saying that the country is responsible for the people breaking their own laws is like saying the Federal government of the US and the entire US funded my efforts to piss on Buckingham Palace when I was in England- and of course I used my own money to go over, I used my own money to get drunk, and I used my own money to take the taxi ride in which I somehow thought it would be a good idea or a funny idea. The US government had absolutely nothing to do with it.
So lets get back to reality here, mkay?
Re:nice (Score:5, Informative)
You're right that the Taliban formed after the Russians gave up on Afghanistan.
However, the US was arming the people who became the Taliban, the mujaheddin. They just weren't called the Taliban yet. WHen the vacuum came the guys we armed stepped up (with the arms the US gave them) and took over as the Taliban.
So yes, the Taliban was armed by the US and we did it (at the time) as a counter to Russia.
Re:nice (Score:4, Insightful)
It's still a bullshit response.
One doesn't need to know how to find a solution in order to identify a problem. It's rather how the human species gets from point A to B. Fundamentally, this is why criticism is generally valid, and "the typical OSS response" is so reviled by developers and non-developers alike. It's a response that's aggressive, unhelpful, and, frankly, quite rude. No person is going to be inclined to help someone who is so rude. I understand that application support is tiresome and draining on developers who often answer the same question over and over or make the same argument over and over. It sucks, but reacting rudely is simply the worst possible choice. You alienate rather than build a community. It's anathema to the basic ideals behind OSS.
Re:nice (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a lot of words. I've seen those before, many times. They are often used in the stead of, "pragmatic".
When your time is valuable and accounted for, get back to me on why you aren't working in a 3rd world country to save the lives of other people. It's quite rude to be so self-centered about your limited efforts in this lifetime.
Re: (Score:2)
Kind of comes off as a narcissistic jerk here.
He *IS* a narcissistic jerk. And, pro or con, I predict an appointment at Gitmo.
I predict a nasty reception for the US in the future if they start detaining Australian citizens without even attempting to have them arrested, charged and extradited. Its one thing if you pick them up in Afghanistan, quite another if you abduct them from a country officially allied to the US.
The USA can assassinate US Citizens. (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you really believe that any law would stand in the way of military objectives? Look at US law. Look at the fact that a US citizen is currently on the governments hitlist. The US government has the capability to capture or kill anybody anywhere in the world if they become an armed combatant.
I don't think that will happen to Julian Assange, but lets not pretend like the US government wouldn't do it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, first of all, yes, if he thinks that he is wrong to think that Amnesty International is distancing itself because of US pressure he is astoundingly ignorant of AI and its relationship to the US.
But what I meant by narcissism is his demanding not that AI work with him to rectify the problem, but rather that he dictates what they will do, and if they don't accept unconditionally his demand they are "covering their ass." Refusing to take a phone call because he's too busy? Doing what, giving interviews? He exhibits an unfortunately common hacker stereotype; the neurotic moralizer who is convinced of his own moral superiority to everyone else.
If that's the case, then perhaps you could explain the merits of declining to support an organisation on the grounds that you don't like one of its members because you find him rude?
Oh, you've gleaned my lack of support of Wikileaks because I called Assange a narcissistic jerk? Overextrapolating a bit there, eh?
The sad part? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate the need for wikileaks, if not wikileaks directly.
Freedom of the press was supposed to be a balance between this and the traditional media. However, with the major news outlets falling over themselves to appease different market segments, real news gets lost in the translations. Real information is not reported when it should be, letting situations like Iraq happen.
Re:The sad part? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Except the names of those sources that are surly now on someone's "death list". In fact, nothing at all other than the possibility of these sources being murdered has come of the "leak" at all.
Yeah, and since they are foreigners, it's not like they are real people, right?
The ironic thing is that this has the potential to result in more civilians getting killed than the civilians the leaker and wikileaks were ostensibly protecting by airing the US military's dirty laundry.
Re: (Score:2)
Except the names of those sources that are surly now on someone's "death list". In fact, nothing at all other than the possibility of these sources being murdered has come of the "leak" at all.
And hey, that's really nothing at all, right?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The possibility of these sources being murdered? How about the actual fact of at least one Afghan tribal elder -- Khalifa Abdullah -- who was murdered because one E3 did not appreciate the actual risk to real life human beings from releasing these documents.
I am quite sympathetic to the argument that the documents needed be redacted. The American public needs to know about the nature and results of the operations. They do not, however, need to know exactly which grid-square they took place on, the compositi
Re:The sad part? (Score:5, Informative)
The possibility of these sources being murdered? How about the actual fact of at least one Afghan tribal elder -- Khalifa Abdullah -- who was murdered because one E3 did not appreciate the actual risk to real life human beings from releasing these documents.
Interesting. Searching google with the terms: "site:wikileaks.org abdullah" [google.com] returns about a page of results. I see some references to a gentleman in Canada, some about one in Somalia, some references to King Abdullah (didn't bother to see whether it was Saudi Arabia or Jordan, since it's clearly not relevant,) the Foreign Minister of Turkey... ...not a single result was from the Afghan files.
The Taliban have been ramping up assassinations in Kandahar for months. Correlation is not causation. If you want to pin a dead civilian on Wikileaks, you might want to start with one that's actually mentioned.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Searching google with the terms: "site:wikileaks.org abdullah" [google.com] returns about a page of results. [...] ...not a single result was from the Afghan files.
Unless I'm mistaken, the Afghan files are all distributed in compressed 7-Zip archives, which might account for Google not indexing them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/robots.txt has Disallow: /
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
From the Newsweek [newsweek.com] article you refer to:
Locals have long known that the Taliban deals harshly with those it suspects of working against it: the ruthless guerrillas have assassinated scores, if not hundreds, of tribal elders and Afghans of all ages for their alleged cooperation with the coalition. In one particularly gruesome case a few months ago, according to the intelligence officer, the Taliban discovered that a group of recent high-school graduates in Ghazni province had been feeding information to the Americans.
I wouldn't exactly say these guys were safe had the documents not been leaked. Safe*r*, true, but certainly not safe.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Tens of thousands of people are dead, and it is your opinion that only 1 of those deaths represents the 'sad part'?
The hope is that balances of power, like Wikileaks, like our own journalists and news media should be doing, will prevent, or at least deter us from entering into such conflicts and rogue actions again in the future. If it even just slightly aids in the process of maintaining peace, it will save far more lives than this limited exposure will cost.
Also, if you are looking for a target to blame,
Re:The sad part? (Score:4, Interesting)
So...
An illegitimate secret must be maintained to protect warlords in a warzone.
Afghanistan is a warzone, whoever killed Khalifia Abdullah knew who the fuck he was and what the fuck he was doing long before it made it onto Wikileaks. Now thanks to Wikileaks all of us know why.
Would the world be a better place if everyone just shut the fuck up about the Mai Lai massacre and said "I have no idea where all these bodies came from"?
Phillip Agee. (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Agee [wikipedia.org]
Re:The sad part? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, thus far these leaks of U.S. "secrets" have revealed *NOTHING* that anyone with eyes and common sense did not already know. Except the names of those sources that are surly now on someone's "death list". In fact, nothing at all other than the possibility of these sources being murdered has come of the "leak" at all.
Oh, shit! Who are you working for these days? The same guys who did the whole "babies on the floor" thing for the first Iraq War? Oh, no, brilliant stuff. You guys are on top of your game, too, though.
When I saw that some asshole who didn't play by the rules was going to reveal the fact that the Taliban are using missiles we gave them back in the 80s to try and shoot our copters down, I was thinking "Uh oh - disaster!" And then when the documents revealed that accounts given by the military were wrong and that many more civilians died, I thought it would be a real shit storm. Don't even get me started on Task Force 373 extrajudicially executing people. Or the fact that many of the military operations are now classified and under the direct control of the CIA. You'd think in a place like the US that would generate a little buzz. Even the fact that the Taliban is growing stronger every day, despite official reports to the contrary seemed like a huge turd on top of a shit sandwich.
But you guys wrap all that up with "No Big Deal," and feed it to all the media outlets who depend on you for access to government officials? Fucking. Brilliant. They don't even have to pretend to have reported on those things before. They just say, basically, the emperor has clothes, and then Joe Sixpack nods his little beer storage unit up and down and switches back to WWE. I know, and now they're all uppity about this Australian guy possibly getting innocent people killed when we're laying civs out left and right - with secret police and secret budgets! God bless the US of Amnesia.
Anyway, I gotta get going. No, some more disinformation work with energy execs, and then later we have to pretty up the apologetics about the net neutrality crap.
Keep up the good work! See you at the Press Corps dinner.
Re:The sad part? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right, it's their fault for siding with the western capitalist pigdogs over the greater glory of Islamic Justice!
Seriously, I expect your kinds of responses from the fascist theocratic assholes whom we're currently fighting, but it's rather sickening to see such behavior from a supposedly educated, enlightened, and tolerant citizen of the free world. I guess every society has it's collaborators.
You are an idiot. (Score:2)
I highly suggest you read up on the spying business before you make a comment. You assume people in these situations have much choice in the matter as of who to associate with, as if there are human rights and as if there isn't torture going on, or bombs dropping on them, or the fact that they are starving. In some cases the only group capable of helping them is the USA. There literally is nobody else. The Taliban is not going to give these people a better life. The Taliban wont give them freedom. The Talib
Re:The sad part? (Score:5, Informative)
And a point that isn't made enough: people complain that wikileaks didn't do a good enough job of redacting the info themselves yet wikileaks requested help redacting sensitive info from the pentagon(they would after all have all the knowledge required to pick out what could potentially reveal their sources in a roundabout manner after all) but they got no reply other than attempts to shut them up entirely.
In an ideal world wikileaks would not be necessary.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone please mod this up if it's true.
Re:The sad part? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is, but nobodies listening.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is very true and there is a very large very powerful misinformation campaign going on against Wikileaks right now. Amnesty International does do good work, but they also bend over backwards to various governments requests in order to get anything that they would deem "more important". They've done it in the past, and I fscking HATE to be crying conspiracy but this just stinks too much.
Re:The sad part? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would anyone want to mode it up? I mean his premise is that because the pentagon didn't validate leaked secretes by combing though them and saying what was sensitive and what wasn't, it's now their fault?
The entire validation effort could have been an effort to gather information on which piece of information was important which this ass at Wikileaks could have used once again to his name in the paper by saying not only do we have the leaked shit, but we have what the pentagon doesn't want you to know. And for that matter, For all we know, this could be a secrete Taliban/Al Qeada sympathizer who is just attempting to narrow down what was important to the US in order to save the enemy the time it took to comb though it themselves.
So why would the pentagon want to help spread the crap that shouldn't be public at all at this stage? I mean this guy is giving the enemy information right now and blaming it on "I don't have enough time before I release this crap and get my name in the papers again" then suggesting to people who ask him to not release it until after he gets the time because it's getting people killed, that they would have to do it themselves if they wanted it done.
Someone mod him down or save your mods for something else entirely. Perhaps for something that has some merit.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You have to be joking. That anyone would expect the Pentagon to abet the compromise of its own classified material is as assine as the idea that civilians don't die in wars and that the enemy is always given a trial prior to actions on the battlefield.
Mr. Assange had a clear choice and clearly he's made it. This choice was whether or not sacrificing the lives of others for your own political objectives is moral course of action. Clearly and without hesitation Mr. Assange made the choice that yes, his pol
Re:The sad part? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a false premise. Whether you agree with the actions of the Pentagon or not, they didn't offer the documents for release: these documents were stolen from them and then released by other people that put their interests above the lives of others. No matter whether this is a Just War being conducted as honorably as is possible in war or if this war is merely cruel and arbitrary: there is zero culpability on the part of the Pentagon in this matter. The choice to proceed with the publication, and to do so when other might well die, was WikiLeaks alone. They were not forced to publish the documents and they were not forced to do so without first protecting those that they endangered: they exercised free will.
Man up and admit that you would gladly sacrifice a few lives for your ideals to dominate, even if to do so was not to risk your own. I realize the reality of your philosophical view, and that of WikiLeaks/Assange, brings you down to the level of those you chastise: that you, too, believe that to kill and be killed is alright so long as the cause is the politically correct cause.
The reality is that you're no damn different than those that you would call 'murderer', save for political outlook.
Re:The sad part? (Score:5, Insightful)
So true. This one time when I tried to rob a bank, I asked the cops for help so that I could do it safely without hurting anyone. But the fucking pigs just wanted to stop me. Clearly it wasn't my fault that people died.
why mod up dishonest idiocy? (Score:3, Insightful)
So true. This one time when I tried to rob a bank, I asked the cops for help so that I could do it safely without hurting anyone. But the fucking pigs just wanted to stop me. Clearly it wasn't my fault that people died.
"This one time when I wanted to reveal that the cops had shot up a bunch of hostages I asked the cop to tell me who were the robbers and who were the hostages so I could blur out the innocent faces in the video, but the cops refused to help and when I revealed their deadly mishap they said more hostages would be shot because of me."
This is the honest version of your allegory. The way you say it you've conflated Wikileaks and the Taliban, because you're biased against wikileaks and are actively trying to sme
Torn (Score:2, Interesting)
Wikileaks and Assange own this (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikileaks and Julian Assange own this now. The good, and the ill, from publishing that information are on them. And it looks pretty ill to me.
According to Newsweek, a man named Khalifa Abdullah was killed [newsweek.com] after the release of these documents. So that's one man dead already. The Taliban has vowed [channel4.com] to hunt down and kill anyone who is a "spy", and they are using the Wikileaks information to do it, so there will be more. Some of the people listed in Wikileaks have disappeared [wtop.com], hopefully into hiding rather than dead.
Julian Assange's stance on this is callous [registan.net]. He "insisted that any risk to informants' lives was outweighed by the overall importance of publishing the information." Okay, at least one man is dead now. What is that "overall importance"? I sure don't see it.
I'm also not buying his idea [wsj.com] that this is really the US military's fault, together with Amnesty International, for not helping him redact the critical info. Much of the info is years old. What was the big rush? If Wikileaks didn't have enough volunteers to vet the info carefully, why rush ahead and publish it anyway?
If I were Julian Assange, I wouldn't be sleeping well at night.
steveha
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There was no 'big rush', the documents were in the hands of reporters for months prior to public release for fuck sake.
And why aren't you buying that it's not the US military's fault? They were given a pretty simple choice; help us redact or risk sensitive information falling through. A simple choice. No rush.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There was no 'big rush', the documents were in the hands of reporters for months prior to public release for fuck sake.
And why aren't you buying that it's not the US military's fault? They were given a pretty simple choice; help us redact or risk sensitive information falling through. A simple choice. No rush.
So, you're basically saying that Assange told the military something along the lines of "if you don't redact this information, I will release it anyway, and these innocent people mentioned in these papers will likely be killed."
To say it more concisely, what Assange was saying was essentially "if you don't comply with my demands, these innocent people will die." Wow. He should be shot with Bin Laden.
Re:Wikileaks and Assange own this (Score:5, Interesting)
As a USMC Iraq combat vet, who has for the past few months been studying the Afghan situation extensively, I can say that this is a good thing. Anybody who is actually involved knows that the Paki, and more specifically ISI, have been a problem for us since the early 80's, and not much has changed. The Paki's have and will continue to say "What? Not us!" but they are full of shit. The fact that the politicians are relatively good at hiding this fact undermines the general public's knowledge about the situation, and therefore it is a major part of controlling public opinion about our war. The facts are that we send money to ISI (often bypassing paki authorities completely) who then have (sometimes rogue) officers directly funding everything from afghan warlords, to Al Queda, to Paki Talibs, and on down the line. The fact of the matter is that Pakistan has absolutely no interest in really getting rid of their extremists, on either border, because Islamabad has so much fear of India, the militants are a tool they plan to use if needed. They will only do enough to keep our money flowing to them, but not enough to truly alienate the extremists. Its enormously complicated, with factors such as Iran and Russia playing into the equation. Regardless, I just hope that Assange did a good enough job purging of intel that could jeopardize people, but when so much is being hid, this kind of knowledge should be made public, albeit perhaps a bit with a bit more ambiguous information. But the real interest here is that that at the moment, as do many of the officers and enlisted I have talked to who are active in "Ganny" agree that we should not be there. First, not only does history show us that attempted conquer after attempted conquer, (including Russia, the British, and Rome as the most cited examples) Afghanistan is not a place that has ever been receptive to foreign rule. Second, our objectives are far too abstract. I often hear conflicting statements from politicians, some say we are there to prevent a safe haven for terrorists, but if that is the case, there are more AQ in places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, UAE, and especially Pakistan than there are in Afghanistan. Not to mention the amount of funding flowing from third parties with interest in AQ and AQ like organizations that we do little about. We even fund the militant talibs with protection money for convoys! Others say we are there to help prevent Pakistan being overrun with terrorists (who we are afraid will attempt to take control of Paki's nukes), but if that is the case, why are we not forcing ISI and Paki to help destroy these enemies? It is because, as I said before, they don't want to! Others say we are there to help restore the people of Afghanistan to a "Representative Government" but I have multiple problems with this. One, the culture is not conductive to such things, there is far too much fighting between Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras, Pashtuns, Foreign Arabs, et al. If they don't even claim to be Afghan, but rather claim their ethnicity, how can they unite to rule themselves? Sure we could do it for them, but we would be there for another 150+ years. Not something I think we are willing to do. The other question this brings up, is, "Where do you stop in your effort to "liberate" peoples from oppression?" I have been places I might consider worse than Iraq or Afghanistan (usually in Africa). So should we be "liberating" the people of Darfur(in Sudan), Somalia (I thought we learned our lesson there, apparently not with recent events) etc? I have said it before, and I will say it again, tactically, our military is pretty much capable of anything you throw at them. It is strategically that we have failed, and I blame this on a handful of issues. A few of these being, a blatant disrespect for learning histories lessons, the infiltration of the military system with political "control/influence", and the lack of ranks above 0-6 not having the balls to tell truth to power, because once you get stars on, your are no longer military, you are a politician (With a few exc
Re:Wikileaks and Assange own this (Score:4, Interesting)
From the Newsweek article you linked to:
While it is unknown whether any of the men were indeed named in the WikiLeaks documents, it’s clear the Taliban believes they have been cooperating with Western forces and the Afghan government.
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Ok so that's one man dead already related to these documents.
The documents show 50-100 dead civilians on average every month.
Which outweighs which.
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Sadly that sort of thing has been happening every week so it's a bit of a stretch to blame it on redacted wikileaks documents. It's a fair bet that the killers don't even have net access and that it's completely unrelated to the idea that they read something, put two and two together until they knew who it would be, and then planned the murder.
We're mostly seeing a cloud of pretend patriotism bullshit, gues
Full circle (Score:2)
So we go to war, supposedly to "protect our freedoms," having soldiers willing to lay down their lives. We then censor all those said fatally defended freedoms. A journalist then decides to express their lost freedom by ousting the underhanded and barbaric activities of our own government. Another group whose sole premise is to advocate the rights of humans, ignores the whole barbarism bit and advocates censorship.
Yes, bad shit happens in war. Being willing to help cover it up makes them accessory to all th
war, or no war? (Score:2, Informative)
These groups have correctly identified a life-or-death issue affecting real human beings. Nevertheless, they're failing to see the forest for the trees. The reason these people need to hide their identities for fear of being murdered is that there's a war going on around them. The real issue is this: should there be a war in Afghanistan, or should there not be a war in Afghanistan? There was more justification for invading Afghanistan than there was for invading Iraq, but that ain't saying much, considering
taking some responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Civilians (Score:2)
Their compassion for all human life -- as long as it's civilian life -- is touching.
</sarcasm>
Opinion unsupported by facts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Greetings and Salutations.
I have read a number of the opinions posted here, and, my first reaction is "Have any of these people actually even LOOKED at the documents posted on Wikileaks?"
I have read quite a number of the documents available on line, and there are a few things that have popped out at me.
1) the only names that I have run across in the documents have been known taliban, insurgents and supporters of the insurgency.
2) A huge percentage of the reports are recording general suspicious activity picked up by routine patrols both on the ground and in the air.
3) There have been some interesting notes about aerial vehicles being shot at with missiles positively identified as stingers ( a little fact that has been, shall we say, downplayed, by the official military sources).
4) On the other hand, there are quite a number of reports of Afghan nationals (so far, all un-named) with war-related injuries being flown out for medical attention. Pretty much all the ones I have read have apparently been civilians caught up by accident.
Now, there may be some military usage in the times and dates and such listed with each event, but, I suspect that any decent intelligence service will already
HAVE the time and location details listed in the reports.
I was also interested to see the number of times when fairly suspicious behavior, or serious weapons of war were observed, yet, no action was taken to kill the enemy, or, destroy the weapons (tanks, howitzers, etc).
Overall, it seems to me that the biggest issue with Wikileaks is that they have dumped out a bunch of information, concealed by our government, that shows that some of the positive spin put on the situation in Afghanistan is a bit thinner than they would have us believe.
Pleasant Dreams
dave mundt
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Who vets the reporters for the new york times or any other news agency?
There's a long tradition of documents getting leaked to news agencies over the years.
As a general rule the moment state secrets reach a reporter/news agency based in another country who are citizens of another country they cease to be secrets and the system supposed to keep them safe has failed utterly in every way.
The FBI and CIA. (Score:4, Interesting)
Who vets the reporters for the new york times or any other news agency?
There's a long tradition of documents getting leaked to news agencies over the years.
As a general rule the moment state secrets reach a reporter/news agency based in another country who are citizens of another country they cease to be secrets and the system supposed to keep them safe has failed utterly in every way.
When classified documents get released to the New York Times the FBI and CIA get involved. The FBI has files on every American, especially journalists who work for the New York Times. The CIA probably has files on them too. They know who is loyal to the USA and who might be attached to foreign intelligence. The fact that we have domestic counter intelligence agencies that exist specifically to determine who the foreign spies are is why you don't see classified documents with the identities of sources included in them.
The last time classified documents of these sort were released, it was the covert action quarterly. For all who don't know what CAQ was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CovertAction_Quarterly [wikipedia.org] , it was controlled by Philip Agee. Phillip Agee was a CIA agent who may have become a double agent for the KGB. He went on to release the identities of CIA officers through the CAQ publication.
The fact is the US Government considered him to be a traitor. In Julian Assanges case he was from Australia so it's not exactly the same, but if his publication released the identities of sources or released information which assisted the Taliban in determining the sources, if Julian Assange does not want to be looked at in history as being another Philip Agee he has to do everything within his power to protect the sources. There are lives at stake, and if lives have been lost he's just the same as Phillip Agee, Robert Hansen, or any of those others.
Re:Web of Trust. Access Controle. (Score:5, Insightful)
The correct answer, and ideal situation, would be for the Pentagon to be redacting the personal information and releasing these documents themselves in the first place. Instead, they choose to classify documents in order to manipulate public opinion. Manipulating public opinion blinds voters to the reality of the situation. If voters don't have the complete picture, they can't make an informed vote and we have a de-facto totalitarian state. Military personnel intentionally trying to manipulate public opinion by hiding information (as they've admitted that they do) should be considered an act of treason. Wikileaks is doing what they can because the Pentagon refuses to do their job.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You may complain about government bloat, but I would rather see them hire the number of people needed to get the job done right. An informed public is the bedrock of a qualified electorate. If that's what it takes to make sure that people can make an informed vote and not be manipulated by the people in power, then do what needs to be done and stop scrimping.
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This.
Though I support the idea of them plugging *some* leaks. If they have a week or two to get any operatives that may still be working out of harms way then that would be a good thing.
The paranoia in the US may have some foundation in reality but its been taken to an extreme. Hell, the US has far more operatives than any other country. They have more operatives in Canada than Canada has operatives. The CSUS IT branch specifically warns new hires(who don't know anything important anyways) against anyone th
Re:Free Speech (Score:4, Insightful)
More importantly, wasn't Obama supposed to have the most transparent administration?
To be fair, all the information comes from 2006 or earlier; way before Obama came into power.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time that people understand that information wants to be free. And we the people should want information to be free.
One of the secrets released was that the Taliban are quite a bit more violent and willing to kill innocents than has been reported. It has sums of civilian casualties created by the NATO (US) forces and the Taliban. Yeah, these guys are scum bags.
More importantly, wasn't Obama supposed to have the most transparent administration?
But most importantly, government secrets in the open are inherently good for the People. Why is there not an understanding of this? 9/11 did not teach us how bad the terrorists were. We already knew that. Instead, we should have learned that government cannot, under any circumstances, be trusted.
Information wants to be free is a ridiculous quote coming from a person who does not understand the concept of the GPL. Information is power, in some cases the power over life and death. In some cases information released about you, can help your enemies plan to kill you. Personal information like names and identities have to be protected. The fact that these documents stored the names of informants is ridiculous in itself because all names in these sorts of documents should be replaced by code names, code words, etc. Redacting the names is not good enough. Also locations have to be changed so as to confuse the enemy. Anything which can allow the enemy to determine anything has to be changed.
Only a government or spy agency has the tools and skills necessary to deal with this. One man, Julian Assange, cannot possibly be qualified to do this type of work. If he is qualified then qualified through what experience? The point is that the global community is losing trust in Julian Assange. Unless Julian Assange can be trusted Wikileaks cannot be trusted. If Julian Assange cannot handle the task of declassifying the documents through a strict secure process, then he needs to find someone or some entity with the expertise to do just this.
Re:Free Speech (Score:5, Informative)
I believe that it's, actually, a quote often taken out of context. My understanding is that the quote goes something like "Information wants to be free but, at the same time, information wants to be private". I don't think the original writer intended it to be a total endorsement of all information being free.
Re:Free Speech (Score:4, Informative)
Fix, source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free [wikipedia.org]
Re:Free Speech (Score:4, Insightful)
t's time that people understand that information wants to be free. And we the people should want information to be free. O
Great - go ahead and start by posting your SSN, home address, and full medical history. Then we'll talk about how much information "wants to be free"
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Or just join Facebook and keep the "default" privacy settings.
Re:Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, see, and here's the thing... information, just like any other inanimate object, doesn't want anything. it simply *is*, and personifying it is akin to using the passive voice to try and sound authoritative when you're really just pushing your own opinion.
There is no real reason that everyone should be able to know everything all the time. First off, that's on its face impossible, and when less hyperbolic is merely impractical. Plus, the facts of the matter are:
- Most people aren't interested in actually knowing what's going on
- Most people aren't clued in to understand even if they suddenly develop an interest
- Facts without context aren't particularly helpful
- Some things shouldn't be known by some people (particularly the proverbial "them"; the outsider. the "not us")
Would it be nice if citizens had more information about the workings of their government? yes. and on domestic policy that's totally fine. However, documents dealing with the prosecution of a war are different, and putting them on the internet is completely irresponsible. This should be perfectly evident by the fact that the Taliban have stated their intention, and probably have already started, killing Afghan civilians who are mentioned as helping NATO forces.
So, now we have a situation where people who were helping us are going to get killed for helping us. That makes our job over there harder as we won't have those sources, and people are going to be a lot less willing to cooperate in the future because what if another pissed off nerd who never should have joined the army decides he's going to go all Deep Throat and leaks those names onto the internet, thinking he's doing something noble?
Well, you know, I think I'm OK with *NOT* having that information if it means there is less chance that those people are going to be killed and that the job that my friends over there are doing is going to become harder than it already was.
Information wants to be free my ass. This isn't a math formula and isn't a basic, universal truth about the universe. Some stuff needs to be secret. Loose lips sink ships and all that jazz.
Re:Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. But all those soldiers that are dying over there in the war are expected, right? We can just ignore all of those deaths [icasualties.org], and just focus on the informants.
The information was leaked because it is critical that the voters know what they're supporting over there. Otherwise, we could be told that "everything is rosy!" and given the government control over media, we'd be none the wiser [finalcall.com].
Do you really want to be in that position?
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It's time that people understand that information wants to be free. And we the people should want information to be free.
If you think Julian Assange wants information to be free, can somebody please explain to me why I received this take-down request from him ten years ago?
This was to remove a transcript of his court case, and yes, I did remove it. (Note, I don't own mindrape.org any more.)
Return-path: <proff@suburbia.net>
Envelope-to: caffeine@flare.taz.wox.org
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There was a simple solution to this... Let the US government go through the documents redacting sensitive names and locations.
Unfortunately they refused putting those afghans in danger.
Logistics. (Score:2)
The logistics of how do you allow the US government to do it difficult. First problem is finding a trusted rep of the US government. I suppose Julian Assange could have sent a copy to Adrian Lamo via PGP who could have sent it to the people who could properly take out the information which needed to be removed and then send it back to Adrian who sends it to Julian all via PGP.
Let's not pretend like this system is easy to implement or that the web of trust cannot be compromised. It would not be easy, but I a
Re: (Score:2)
The logistics of this would be no problem for an organization such as the US military... They do much more complicated stuff all the time
And btw, you mean 'the US military shouldn't have refused', rather than 'that Julian Assange should not have released these documents without doing the right thing', right?
Re:Info sec, trust, access control. (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a simple solution to this... Let the US government go through the documents redacting sensitive names and locations.
Unfortunately they refused putting those afghans in danger.
That's the same line of thinking that says "Well you didn't shovel your walk -- so it's YOUR fault I slipped and fell.". Nobody made Assange post the documents. His actions are his own responsibility; no matter what fingers are pointed or what excuses are given, he is the one that published them.
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If I ran into Assange right now, I'd kill him with my own bare hands. He's a traitor.
And you'd be a simple murderer.
BTW, he's not from the US (and easy to assume you are since that is one of the few western country where they pull the traitor card so freely) so he can't really be a traitor against you/your country.
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No, once someone is famous murdering them is called assassination. The difference is we'd likely learn the GP's middle name, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Assange isn't a traitor because he isn't a US Citizen. Manning was a traitor. That said Assange should put more thought into the released information. There is a need for a safe way for people to blow the whistle on corruption. However, nothing to date in the Manning releases seem to show anything but normal operations. And the raw volume of data does expose people and put them in danger. The real WTF here is how a relatively junior ranking officer got such wide access. The Video of the reporter being kille
Re: (Score:2)
There are Australian troops in Afghanistan and Assange is most certainly an Aussie last time I checked. He has put their lives in danger as surely as he has put the US troops in danger there. The Taliban won't differentiate. He is indeed a traitor by any measure of the word.
Wikileaks is a good yet naive concept. (Score:2, Insightful)
Wikileaks can only work as a concept in the same way that the UN works as a concept. You get all the governments of the world to agree to support Wikileaks with technological support, experience, advisory support, financial support, and so on. This would allow Wikileaks to work. The problem is that no government on planet earth is going to support Wikileaks releasing the names of informants. Once Wikileaks passed that phase it became a foreign intelligence instrument itself because now it's actually assisti
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't get it. Truth is important, but this isn't a political game in our safe Western political environment. The release of these documents (and especially the piles of needless and real details) has caused incalculable damage to the Free World's ability to get cooperation out of locals. At least one informant has already died because someone thought it would be cool to dump classified military operations on the net.
If you were living under Islamic rule, and you were part of the local underground aiding
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huh? today is 10/8/9..
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually today is 10/8/10.
Silly little Americans, stuck in yesterday.
Signed +8 GMT
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:HAPPY 8/9/10 to you !! (Score:4, Insightful)
I prefer 2010.09.08 (yyyy.mm.dd)...P.S. I'm an "American".
I'm guessing you were also educated in the public school system?
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Remember that the ongoing theory (possibly confirmed) is that Manning (are whoever leaked the documents and blamed it on it was) was the provider of not only these documents, but rumor has it that some of it went towards the latest WAPO article about the intel community, and I likely predict that by summer's end Assange will have at least one or two more of these style releases from documents provided by Manning. Also, often some of the HUMINT level stuff tends to get "leaked" into SIPR during operations in
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because he basically received stolen property from a guy who should be tried for treason. He then put it up for all the world to see in the form he received it in. The fact that names weren't redacted prior to him receiving the documents is immaterial because he never should have had them in the first place.
This isn't evidence of illegal dumping or insider trading. People are going to die because of this.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So, Julian, there's this thing called the inter (Score:4, Insightful)
Which thousands of people do you trust to do this without exposing the data themselves?
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Have you tried to help them do so? Do you have any ideas of how they could? I'm curious how you propose that they do so.
Nonprofits have limited manpower, and more importantly limited power. Amnesty International isn't going to be able to stop the US government from going to war. No chance that they can. However, here they saw an situation that they can attempt to improve, and are doing their best to bring attention to it. That's admirable in my book, far more admirable than bitching about it on the In