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.'"
Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in March (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:4, Insightful)
I was wondering what happened to that.
I guess some people harbour angry feelings towards him for releasing that military video - something along the lines of loose lips might sink ships. I think more good than harm came from releasing the video, but I can see where it strikes a nerve with some people.
I mean if your kid happened to be in the military - and it would appear that the military is hiding something your kids may or may not be doing - it would make you feel uneasy, to say the least. Most parents would still side with their kids though.
Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:5, Insightful)
he's a media whore with shady beginnings
Anyone would become a "media whore" in a situation where being one could make the difference between staying alive or getting shot in a dark alley with noone caring about it...
Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember elementary school, and as I recall it there weren't that many innocent people being murdered. Comparing tattling in the schoolyard to uncovering potential war crimes is just ridiculous. When serious wrongs are being done then yes I do like tattle tails, narcs, informants, snitches, or whatever you would call them. What I don't like are complicit cowards.
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Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah he really gets off on drawing attention to militaries killing innocent civilians. What a self-centered jerk.
Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:5, Insightful)
We already *know* that the Chinese government abuses human rights. China abuses human rights. Teenage boys wear hoods. Bears shit in the woods.
On the other hand, the United States claims to be whiter than white, and claims to value freedom and all the rest. Therefore, it is much more significant when you can prove the US government is saying one thing, but in reality is sending people for torture, lying to the electorate, doing things at the behest of energy company executives etcetera.
Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:4, Insightful)
'A media whore with shady beginnings' ? Hardly..
He's got open-source projects under his belt with rubberhose (which, at the time was pretty cool), and boring stuff like NNTP caching. He's did a fair amount of work in the security / privacy computer sciences.
And if you think about it, his impact on the world with wikileaks has been greater than essentially everything he did before it. And he's remained true to his ideals consistently, he didn't just hop on the web2.0 'lets start a wiki' thing out of no-where. It's an extension of his political and ethical belief system.
Haters gonna hate..
Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between the countries you name and the US, as human rights violators, is that the US is clearly the biggest violator of human rights all the while claiming to be the enforcer of human rights laws globally.
We covertly support war criminals and dictators when politically advantageous, Saddam was one such person that comes to mind. We've also supported and sold weapons to the islamic leadership of Iran even though publicly we recognize them as adversaries.
We've started wars and invaded countries promoting ourselves as heroes and saviors and then kill civilians using depleted uranium weapons before pillaging all wealth from those countries.
The headlines today state that our pentagon has misplaced and cannot account for $8.7B of Iraq's reconstruction money. I wonder who's pockets were lined with that.
It's good there is something like WikiLeaks out there that is willing to risk themselves and their lives to expose just what hypocrites, liars and assholes the American leadership really is. Every American should hang their heads in shame over what we've allowed ourselves to become. Global assholes!
Here at home, we've had political leadership for at least 30 years now, that no longer fear the people. We are being ass-raped by our government and are unwilling to do anything about it, like go to DC and kill everyone there.
We now have the government we deserve
Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar (Score:4, Insightful)
" Where are his efforts to find the Taliban documents showing their human rights violations?"
Where are his efforts to find proof that water is wet?
"And where are the documents showing the amount of effort the US soldiers put in distributing contributions from US citizens, including medical, school, and sport supplies? Putting themselves in harms way to protect civilians during firefights? Or the extrodinary efforts they take to try to limit civilian casualties."
Front and centre at every press conference and event where the military want to make themselves look good.
They're already making every effort to get that information front and centre.
Wikileaks job is to show the other half of the story.
"And where are the documents showing the Taliban's indiscriminate placing of IEDs and the number innocent lives they have taken?? Hmmm??? "
Actually the recent leak had quite a lot of info about the civilian deaths caused by IED's.
Nice to know you've been too lazy to actually read anything before posting.
A journalist uncovers information which needs to be heard.
if a journalist discovers a company selling hotdogs made of rat meat they shouldn't have to spend an equal portion of their time talking about how really the companies products are quite good and affordable in some parody of being "unbiased".
"it's a data dump that any 12 year old with access to the Internet could do if they got the data."
get back to me when you find some 12 year olds who regularly get their hands on data which makes front pages worldwide.
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I believe you are mistaken. Journalists have agendas just like all other people on the planet; Assange is at least not pretending to be uninterested.
This whole "journalists should be unbiased" bullshit is something the mainstream media came up with in order
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Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikileaks and the Daily Show are some of the very few examples of real journalism we can find today, I hope they team up and become a hilarious force of journalistic good.
Re:Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, The Daily Show is great, but it's not really journalism - they don't break any stories, send reporters out into the field, etc. It's more editorial or commentary on the news. All of the new clips they show on the program come from other news sources.
Re:Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, The Daily Show is great, but it's not really journalism - they don't break any stories, send reporters out into the field, etc. It's more editorial or commentary on the news. All of the new clips they show on the program come from other news sources.
They're the only one bothering to do background research, they're the only ones exposing contradictions and bullshit, sure they only comment on news already told, but their analysis is head and shoulders above any of the "real" news shows. And those shows also mostly only retweet news.
I stand by my attack on news organizations: They all suck and a comedy show is better at their job than they are.
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I will say that the exposing hypocrisy in media is one thing the Daily Show does really well.
It sometimes amazes me in this age of data mining that there is not a database of every statement every major public figure has made on every issue kept by major new organizations. It should be nothing more than a couple minutes of searching to pull up every statement Obama, for example, has made on Iraq, making it ridiculously easy to point out if he changes his message.
The segments where The Daily Show has public
Re:Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the show but it isn't really news.
And yet it's more "news" than the news shows. I'll say again: A show that, by everyone's admission isn't a news show, is a better news show than any news show. That, off course, is more of a commentary on news shows than on the Daily Show.
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: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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of their material covers what other news sources have reported.
They do occasionally send "reporter|comedians" to the field.
The best examples of this are their coverage of conventions during national elections.
They do interview actual persons of interest.
Consider how far "real" journalism has fallen (most of it is also editorial and commentary).
The comedy news isn't that far behind.
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Re:Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:5, Insightful)
they don't break any stories, send reporters out into the field
Actually, they do send out people in the field from time to time, and then I don't mean "put them in front of a blue or green screen". See e.g. Jason Jones' excellent Behind the Veil [thedailyshow.com] series that was recorded in Iran.
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Did you see the week when Jason Jones happened to be in Tehran right about when the protests started? I don't know of any other American TV news show that had a reporter on the ground then. It was obviously just luck, but still interesting. The Iranian government thought it was real enough to arrest and interrogate one of Jason's interviewees.
I think these guys are at least at the same level of journalism as Gretchen Carlson or Rachel Maddow. They don't break stories, they just comment on them. But at least
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Don't get me wrong, The Daily Show is great, but it's not really journalism - they don't break any stories, send reporters out into the field, etc.
I disagree. I agree the daily show isn't really news about the world, rather its news about the news itself.
They do break story's... if they had traditional headlines it would be:
Fox news coverage of event X is rampantly partisan.
CNN's coverage Y is inept.
Glenn Beck contradicts himself on Z.
John McCain said this 2 years ago, and the opposite today, and nobody is
Re:Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Daily Show isn't an example of journalism, it is an example of editorialism. They are just upfront about it as opposed to the more mainstream "news" organisations like CNN or Fox News.
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The Daily Show isn't an example of journalism, it is an example of editorialism.
I'd say they do both. Obviously they editorialize. But, as an example, when McCain says "I never said I was a maverick" (to pick a silly, obvious example), and they dig up a bunch of clips where he says "I'm a maverick", how is that anything but journalism? They take claims, do research, and present the results. Sounds pretty "journalism-y" to me. Heck, the show is basically founded on doing the same thing with the media at
Re:Team up with the Daily Show! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Shirley (Score:5, Funny)
Surely that should be 'balls of steal'.
Re:Shirley (Score:5, Funny)
It should.
And don't call me Shirley.
Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
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).
Blood on his hands (Score:5, Interesting)
Julian Assange also admits someday he's probably going to have "blood on his hands." He has put himself in a tough situation. But I'm betting the increased daylight will do more good than bad.
Re:Blood on his hands (Score:5, Insightful)
There's some context to think about. The US entered WWII as a direct result of American soil being attacked. It was pretty clear that fighting back was a matter of national security. In that context it would be easy to make the case that a leaker of battlefield secrets was treasonous.
Since then we've only waged elective wars, generally for purposes that leave many of us scratching our heads in confusion. Who knows what the hell we invaded Iraq for. Our strategy there and in Afghanistan seems to be to drive around in Hummers until somebody shoots us, then chase 'em down and shoot 'em back. How that benefits our national security is a mystery to me. Maybe some of these leaked documents can clarify it.
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: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:Blood on his hands (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
That's not quite my recollection. Most every country was confident that he didn't have them and saw through what the US was doing (there was a unprecedented open ovation in the security council to the French rebuttal to Colin Powell's "evidence"). But nevertheless, the UN faced a catastrophic crisis of credibility. If the US had gone to war without UN sanction, it would have been essentially the same situation as when Iraq invaded Kuwait - except with Iraq as the invaded instead of the invader. At that point, by all law and precident, if the US invaded Iraq, the rest of the world should have been required to unite to expel them by force. Obviously, the world was in no mood to wage war against the sole remaining superpower. So the UN, in an unwinnable position, did a diplomatic two-step to save what little face they could: they gave the US the token authority to do what they were going to do anyway.
The UN appeased the US.
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We'd rather vote on American Idol than in a presidential election.
I hate American Idol as much as the last slashdotter, but let's be fair to the couch potatoes here.
At least voting on Idol has some chance of actually accomplishing something.
Re:Blood on his hands (Score:5, Insightful)
The taliban still need to be destroyed. Afghanistan still needs massive amounts of reconstruction. For all the resources that have been applied, more still need to be applied. We are not in Afghanistan to prop up a fledgling democracy, we are not there to promote human rights. We are there to destroy a fundamentalist movement, and more effort needs to be spent in order to succeed.
Or we can let Afghanistan fall, again. They'll harbour enemies of the west, again.
When Afghanistan was a part of the Cold War, we were involved in a war-by-proxy with the Soviets. But as soon as that was over, we sort of forgot all about Afghanistan and left them to their own devices. So a group of fundamentalists from Pakistan invaded and took over. Eventually they became the last haven for a particular group of extremists who went on to finally succeed in an attack on US soil. If we had paid a bit more attention to propping up a fledgling democracy and human rights earlier, we would be less concerned about destroying a fundamentalist movement today.
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,
I admire him but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I admire whistleblowers. But there is sometimes a fine line between heroism and stupidity. And whistleblowers almost always pay a hefty price for what they do. Best case scenario they either lose their job outright or are shuffled off into a corner somewhere, never to be trusted or promoted again. Worst case scenario, they end up in jail or dead. The "thanks" are usually short-lived, the stain of being an employee/contractor/soldier who can't be trusted lasts forever.
I hope this guy and his whistleblowers continue to keep fighting and that Wikileaks is around for a long time. But, make no mistake about it, the powers-that-be will fight it. And the more Wikileaks releases, the farther those powers will be willing to go to silence the site.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that the site has all of this press, it will be a LOT harder for "the powers that be" to do anything about it. If they close the site, a new one opens within hours or days. If they manipulate the site contents then they get called out by a thousand other news agencies and websites. About the only thing a government can do is to attempt to strong arm them or reduce everyone's freedom of speech.
Re:I admire him but... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I've heard that argument, and it's not to be dismissed casually. But I haven't seen any actual evidence that this leak included the specifics of the names of villagers helping us or the names of CIA agents or anything so damaging (I haven't read the documents myself, so if this is really the case, I would concede the point). Documents can certainly be redacted for that sort of thing wi
Why the press does a bad job (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why the press does a bad job (Score:5, Interesting)
I sometimes wonder if perhaps government needs another wing,
an executive, a legislature, a judiciary and another wing(investigative?) with the job of (but not monopoly on)letting everyone know what the hell the other 3 are up to with as much protection from the other brances as they have from each other and as much power to root around in the others buisness as any wing of government.
it used to be that the citizens were good enough at that job but nowdays with the way the weak ones are getting stamped on for trying and the rich and powerful don't give a damn I think it would be better.
Re:Why the press does a bad job (Score:5, Informative)
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He wouldn't be fired for pointing out corruption.
He'd be fired under some trivial pretext the same way people aren't fired for complaining about labour law violations, they just get let go the next time they fail to park exactly straight in the staff carpark or turn up 30 seconds late.
Re:Why the press does a bad job (Score:5, Informative)
From The Fourth Estate [wikipedia.org]:
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Here's hoping citizen journalism can kick some spark back into the industry.
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And outdated, misleading and a probably always untrue concept. The media has never been a check on the powers of government except in the rarest of instances. If you examine history, you will find that the media has always been the most powerful enabler of government corruption, abuses and injustices. The Afghan and Iraq wars are the perfect example of this. Ordinary people didn't want the war; experts knew there were no weapons; everyone knew it was all about oil. And yet the media--TV, radio and print--dr
Re:Why the press does a bad job (Score:5, Interesting)
I sometimes wonder if perhaps government needs another wing,
an executive, a legislature, a judiciary and another wing(investigative?) with the job of (but not monopoly on)letting everyone know what the hell the other 3 are up to
I'm often surprised (and impressed) by how well the CBC here in Canada and the BBC in the UK objectively report on government actions and policies. Both of them are government-owned entities, but they seem to provide a much more critical lens on that very government than the private commercial news broadcasters do. It's really counter-intuitive.
Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I need -facts- to back up my election choices. I need to know stuff like the Afghan War Diary, otherwise how will I know if its worth continuing the Afghan war? It seems my only two options in the mainstream media is either DESTROY ALL TERRORISTS WITH NUKES!!!!! and EVERY SOLDIER WHO GOES TO AFGHANISTAN KILLS 324234 CHILDREN!!!! and none of them deal with the facts.
Re:Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
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He is much more polite and diplomatic, and doesn't go mouthing off about "crusades" and "axis of evil", which idiots mistake fo
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Small, independent, nothing to lose (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.'"
In some specific regards he's right. He and his staff take on some personal risks of reprisals, but I think the reason he is doing what other sources of Journalism aren't, is that he *can*. Unfortunately, most of the world media is either State-controlled, or owned by for-profit corporations, which means in the first case that they aren't allowed to report such things, by the government which controls them, or in the second case, aren't as willing to take the risks, because it might hurt profits.
I think only a a relatively small, non-profit, or possibly, privately owned, organization can actually engage in such risky journalism, because they have basically nothing to lose (well, some of the staff could lose their personal property and/or go to jail).
some amount of secrecy is warranted (Score:5, Insightful)
Same with these documents. Even a casual remark in a report about a helpful shop owner can put that person on a Taliban hit list.
The perspective espoused by WikiLeaks is irresponsible and naive.
Seth
Re:some amount of secrecy is warranted (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet the Afghan leaks in particular, why not having a lot of out and out surprises, have better informed the public of this singular fact; that Pakistan, or powerful elements within it, are our enemies, and that we're fighting the wrong war. Afghanistan is unwinnable as long as that porous border allows Taliban, al Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence to cross unhindered.
Democracies require information, and the public is the absolute boss. These leaks reveal that the US specifically, but no doubt NATO in general, have botched the show. Of course they dont' want that revealed, because it's damaging to the interests of all the paper tigers that have so screwed it up.
What needs to happen is either to abandon Afghanistan or move the war into Pakistan directly.
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.
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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..
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One who has nuclear weapons to boot? The nuclear weapons are not bad because I think that the Pakistani gov't were use them against us, but who would take control of them once the gov't is destabilized by a war with America. That's what scares me the most about our current de-facto war with Pakistan. How long before a group, fed up with their gov't inabi
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This is sounding an awful lot like "Pakistan is to Afghanistan as Laos is to Vietnam."
Or alternately, a second Domino Theory, stating that "If one ignores the advice of top generals and starts a war in one south Asian country, like a domino you'll fall into a war in a neighboring south Asian country."
Re:some amount of secrecy is warranted (Score:5, Insightful)
As one of the people who works with Wikileaks recently said, the people in Iraq and Afghanistan know what is happening in the war. They see the civilian deaths all the time. Why, then, does the US government want to keep the American public in the dark about civilian deaths in the wars that we are fighting?
Extreme secrecy on the part of the government demands the sort of extreme response that Wikileaks represents. Until we can trust the government, Wikileaks is doing vital and necessary work to preserve the right of the people to know what their government is up to, which is absolutely necessary for a democracy to work.
Re:some amount of secrecy is warranted (Score:4, Insightful)
That's really your whole post.
Although, was there a time when people _did_ trust the government? Not during the Whiskey Rebellion. Not when the IRS was created. Not during the Nixon adminsitration.
Is there some kind of average or poll whereby "the common man" says "I generally trust the government", and has that sentiment drifted overtime? Or have elements of society _always_ been distrustrful of government?
I'd assert that I am certianly much less trusting of government than I was when I was a kid growing up in a republican household. I've subsequently had too many examples of encounters with the "justice" system leaving me with a distinct feeling of injustice. And too many situations where "my" government not only isn't representing me, but isn't even listening to me, and isn't even following its _own_ laws and rules (but which it expects me to shut up about and follow blindly).
The culture of fear about the government is so bad now that people aren't doing basic useful things like _filling out the census_. But why should they? This information has been used for evil in the past -- when people trusted the government. The federal government has said that anyone with a Ron Paul bumper sticker is a possible terrorist. The government certainly doesn't trust Americans. It doesn't feel the need to protect their rights, and it doesn't feel the need to follow the laws binding its treatment of Americans on American soil.
It seems that at nearly ever level of governance, from the top on down to the local policeman, there is a sense of "us" and "them", where the politicians and other agents of the state hold the populace in contempt, and the populace holds the ruling class in equal (or greater) contempt.
The ruling class asserts its power ("legitimate" initiation of violence) nearly every day. The populace does so very, very rarely. There are more of "us", but we act infrequently.
I think it will come to ahead soon. It doesn't matter how many elected officials we replace, the CIA will still have the same people in it. Your local police department will still have the same cops taking bribes and curb-checking you for trying to video them. There aren't enough good people running for office to fill in the vacuum even if we could vote out all the bad ones.
Re:some amount of secrecy is warranted (Score:5, Interesting)
Why, then, does the US government want to keep the American public in the dark about civilian deaths in the wars that we are fighting?
That's easy. The lessons that the military learned from Vietnam:
1. Never show anything on TV that would indicate that US soldiers are suffering and dying. That includes flag-draped coffins, military funerals, wounded vets, etc.
2. Never show anything on TV that would indicate that US soldiers are killing civilians. This is best done by carefully controlling the situations that reporters can see (see "embedded" reporters).
3. Never institute a draft, so that wealthy college kids aren't affected, only poor and powerless kids.
4. Never let on to the public how expensive the war is.
This is an exact outgrowth of the "stab-in-the-back" theory of why we lost Vietnam - that the war was winnable except that those darn commie peacenik hippies convinced the politicians to end it. Notice how the entire process is to avoid letting the public know what it is that their money and blood is going towards.
The rest of the world media has bills to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone recently linked an image comparing the CNN homepage with Al Jazeera Home page. The difference is extreme. One is a gossip rag, the other a, highly biased, news source.
But CNN probably makes more money, or used to anyway.
Remember the story about Ballmer being a bad CEO despite raising revenue and profits? That is because in the United Corporations of America, making a profit isn't enough you always go to be growing your profits and growing the amount by which your profits grow. Raise your profits for 10 years in a row by 25% and you are doing badly, it should be year 1: 25%, year 2: 40%, year 3: 60% etc etc. Impossible? Yes it is, but is what the stock market wants, what employees payed in stock options want.
So everything in the UCA is constantly squeezed, cost cutting here, cost cutting there. Spend a little less, earn a little more until you are left with... well it the iPhone 4. Made with slave labour, broken by design. And no this isn't just about Apple. Dell is even better at it. Sold broken PC's, broke anti-trust laws everything to increase the bottom line year after year.
And then you apply it to news. And news isn't cheap or efficient or effective. And you won't notice when it is gone until it is far to late. Until you get to a state that "politicians" refuse to speak to journalists and have them barred from events and only ask questions submitted in advance and then only those they like. Sarah Palin anyone? If you think she is bad, the exact same thing has been going on for a long time. Ask the wrong questions and forget about getting invited to the special events. So no reporter at a white house press briefing asks hard questions, at least not without prior approval.
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.
In Holland we have tv news for children. If you compare that show from ten years ago with the adult news, you will find that the adult news now is softer then the children news from way back.
But who is to blame? Big business intrests? Perhaps, but we the public let them. We let the likes of Murdoch own every newssource. We don't refuse to watch fluf pieces on the news and now the fluff has become the news.
And don't blame it on the right either. The left is just as guilty of it. The right has fluff pieces that ignore global warming and corporate corruption. The left has fluff pieces that ignore problems with immigration and culture clashes.
Fluff is not just Idols, it is news that doesn't upset you.
If you read a news source and you agree with it, then you are reading fluff. And we like it. See how quickly people resort to flamebait and troll to silence troubling thoughts on slashdot.
There was another piece, that people seek communities in games that give them the least amount of stress. Well, that is also how we seek out news. Be REALLY honest with yourself, how often do you purposefully seek out news from a source critical to your own world views?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The rest of the world media has bills to pay (Score:5, Interesting)
Fluff is not just Idols, it is news that doesn't upset you.
To paraphrase a great 19th century British newspaperman: news is what someone is trying to censor. Everything else is entertainment.
Re: (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.
Assange's character (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact this guy is the man of the hour over the Afghan leaks that caused such a hubbub two days ago does not mean he isn't flawed despite unduly positive portrayals on Slashdot and elsewhere.
A big criticism of Julian Assange is his constant courting of the media to the point of being a prolific PR man - Slashdot did a post on him some months ago with the grandoise assertion that he was an 'Interational Man of Mystery'.
Truth is that his past, which is hardly whiter than white given all the suspected hacking he has done, makes him out to be much less of a virtuous crusader and more an occasionally maverick human being like quite a few people who once embarked on black hat attempts are. I agree with Wikileaks and enjoy the prospect that authority will be questioned a lot more as a result...but Assange isn't angel or particularly 'moral' .
The only thing which seperates him from older, more seasoned leaking website owners is that he is talented at courting PR and media, is decent at public speaking, and functions well as the recognisable 'face' of Wikileaks - nobody else in the leaking business has talent in the important matter of image, promotion and driving attention to his site. Were Assange lacking in that, Wikileaks would be nowhere near as famous/infamous as it is at the moment.
I Got Lost in Your Post (Score:3, Insightful)
So... if I get this straight... his past is definitevely not whiter than white be
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:)
Good Stuff (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.
Consider, also, *what* is classified (Score:5, Insightful)
We know, for a fact, that there's a *lot* of material being classified that has *ZERO* relation to national security, and every relation to embarrassing or revealing criminal malfeasance by those doing the classifying.
Let's see the documents that Cheney and Bush used to justify invading and conquering Iraq. Let's see the ones explaining the real reasons that the US did *not* use our troops to take Tora Bora.
mark "and where's the war crimes tribunals?"
There is a need for classified material. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is a need for classified material. (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree.. If Deepthroat had not leaked info about Watergate to the press, there would have been many things different today.. (well, at least it wouldn't have taken so long for the campaigns to be run by crooks again)
Leaks are how the people learn about how the government is corrupt, and change happens.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's simply impossible for anyone outside of the government to second guess what must be kept secret, and what must not.
And self defense is for police and soldiers.... If you've got nothing to hide you have nothing to fear..... Free speech doesn't mean we can't retaliate against you for promoting unpopular opinions or jail you to keep from expressing those opinions..... do I need to go on?
Julian Assange is not in a position to make these judgments. He simply does not have the complete picture. All leaking bits and pieces can do is create a less than complete picture. He is not doing U.S. citizens a service.
And having NO picture except the official propaganda is the better alternative to an "incomplete" picture?
Conversely, if we cannot trust our government to make this decision, we need to do something about our government.
Exactly but be careful how you word that statement speaking it publicly. You're bordering on a 1-20 year prison sentence under both
Terrorists (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Terrorists (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps we should do something about that...
WikiLeaks probably has their own agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
The trap we can fall into with WikiLeaks in my opinion is that they themselves can craft a leak to suit their own political agenda. If they are the ones responsible for redacting certain information in information they are going to post, it wouldn't be very hard to redact or edit certain parts to make documents sound very different than the original.
What they are doing is great in principle but they are in a position of "power" that is easy to abuse. I'm not suggesting they should stop but we as readers need to take what they post with a grain of salt and do as much fact checking as we can.
Re:WikiLeaks probably has their own agenda (Score:4, Insightful)
Agenda behind everything (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Wikileaks plays an important role in information being free (as in information)
My concern is that with the things that he releases, and especially what he chooses to focus on, that he has an agenda and that he is using what is otherwise noble to press that agenda.
the open flow of information (Score:3, Insightful)
benefits open societies and hurts closed ones
i jut wish that there were a way wikileaks could get more secrets from closed societies in a way that was less deadly
But you can't trust wikileaks either (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets says Pres Obama said, "I'm going to release 70,000 war documents about Afghanistan." And such documents detailed mostly happy things about the war in Afghanistan. We'd have CNN, Foxnews etc saying how the documents were released strategically to paint a light picture of a grim war.
Yet somehow, when a third party receives documents and ADMITTEDLY filters through them, absolutely no one is questioning the political motivation of such third party.
I'd like to believe in Wikileaks, but I don't trust the man's agenda, and neither should you. It's merely business as usual, and should be taken as 'another piece of the whole truth'.
This is quite amazing. (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't believe that all these raging rednecks are so blinded with rage, that they still can't understand that WikiLeaks was probably played (quite well) by yanks. I wouldn't be surprised if WikiLeaks was actually a CIA operation. It would be beautiful if it was.
Think about it - what, exactly, has Wikileaks ever released, that has ANY value to anyone, except as entertainment for the sheep^H^H^H^H^masses?
The biggest WikiLeaks achievement, so far, is to 'reveal' how Pakistan is not really a friend of US. Who benefits from this the most? Certainly not the sheep. Or Pakistan. But US govt, since they'll now have instant 'popular support' in any action (non-military, of course) against Pakistan. They could have not done this with normal media manipulation, in such a short time, even if they were fully dedicated to it.
Everyone talks about WikiLeaks, but noone ever mentions Cryptome. Cryptome is the place where real information is released, where real sensitive data can be found, and Cryptome owner is a real living legend, considering how much effort and work he has put in it.
So, why are all these rednecks not making empty threats against John Young?
Oh, it's because you wouldn't know what good information (or logic, for that matter) is, even if it hit you in the head.
Re:Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Without solid facts like this we end up having the Afghan War debated on two sides, the leftist side of EVERY SOLDIER KILLS CHILDREN and the right-wing side of LETS NUKE ALL OF AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ, KOREA, AND CANADA!!! Rather than a sane cost-to-benefit ratio.
Why is it that the mainstream media doesn't use -facts- to prove their points. Things like "For every day of war we spend XXXXX dollars, we kill XX civilians, XX terrorists, and destroy XXXX worth of infrastructure" would be a great way for people to know if they want to continue this war. Without that though we have the two extremes, extreme pacifism and extreme militarism.
Re:Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that the mainstream media doesn't use -facts- to prove their points. Things like "For every day of war we spend XXXXX dollars, we kill XX civilians, XX terrorists, and destroy XXXX worth of infrastructure" would be a great way for people to know if they want to continue this war. Without that though we have the two extremes, extreme pacifism and extreme militarism.
What about how much we spend building infrastructure and how many civilians we liberate from oppressive regimes?
Or are those facts too biased to be mentioned?
It could just be oversight on your part :) But it seems that the prevailing view about the war is that the only stats that really count are deaths and destruction... nothing about the entire military engineers that are building ... say ... roads. Girls' schools that were not allowed previously. Some people view those facts as propaganda for "excusing" the war in some way. I say that leaving out those facts is propaganda for dismissing the war as entirely bad and thus should not be continued.
Unfortunately, as soon as someone SUPPORTS a war, people automatically assume that they support killing innocent civilians ... and as soon as someone DOES NOT SUPPORT the war, people assume they do not support the "troops" or think they agree with the oppressive regimes/governments.
In other words, everybody seems to think everybody else either supports everything that goes on or does not support everything that goes on, and misrepresents facts in order to "prove" that the other person does this.
Citing only death and destruction as figures to decide on the war is biased towards ending the war. Citing only good things that happen (rebuilding or even building things that weren't there to begin with, for example) and hiding the other is biased towards continuing the war.
Re:A self righteous self important prick (Score:5, Insightful)
And before you say this guy doesn't leak anything of importance from other regimes, there has been many leaks of censorship lists and other nasty documents from China and other dictatorships, its just that things like that don't make headlines here in the west.
How do you expect us to elect good leaders if we don't know what they do? By the media which ignores facts? By some magical-ness that lets you look at a candidate and see if hes a good choice? By commercials which lie?
The knowledge of just about everything the government does is essential to maintaining a free country. Otherwise how the hell do I know who to vote for?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A self righteous self important prick (Score:4, Insightful)
"Who the hell is this guy to decide for a democratically elected government what should remain secret or not?"
Someone who values freedom of information and accountability over murky special interests and the protection of political elites?
"Who the hell is this guy to decide for a democratically elected government what should remain secret or not?"
Someone who has obviously spent a little more time than you have on thinking about the implications of his points of view. Democracy depends crucially on the availabilty of information that makes it possible for the voters to hold their elected leaders accountable. No accountability means no democracy. In a world where more and more of the big media corporations have become extremely fixated on profit and are being more and more limited in their role by various laws and other means (secret gag orders in the UK, libel shopping, exclusion from important events if you are overly critical, embedding of journalists with troups on strict rules about what they can and cannot report on, etc) we have a desperate need for organizations that find ways to get past those limitations of traditional journalism and get people the information they need.
Your argument regarding North Korea, Zimbabwe and Congo is fatally flawed since a whisleblower site depends on people providing them with info and they have no control over those sources. Furthermore if you type any of those country names in the Wikileaks search box you will find loads of documents as well as links to news articles regarding those countries.
Re:I still say (Score:4, Insightful)
These things were all pre-Obama all quite old. It is -essential- that people get the facts without them being obscured. Without it, democracy can no longer work.
Without facts, explain to me how democracy can work?
Re:I still say (Score:5, Insightful)
Secrecy is entrusted to the government on the assumption that it will only be used when truly needed.
However the same power can be and is abused to subvert the freedom of its own people, as misappropriation for personal gain by powerful people and used to cover up ineffective, improper, illegal or immoral activity.
Whistle blowers object to these abuses and fight against it in the only way possible, by removing the shroud of secrecy and revealing these violations of trust to the public.
Mistakes may be made, but revealing the abuse of trust by the government is vital to the continuation of freedom and democracy.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Glory Hound (Score:4, Insightful)
Further, I'm guessing that wikileaks has a much, much easier time in places where it has embedded sympathizers, and in places with languages that they have people who speak. There is no evidence that wikileaks has any spies of its own, just that they operate a convenient system for whistleblowers to make drops. How many whistleblowers with big caches of digital documents(and internet connections) do you fancy there are in North Korea?
Re:Glory Hound (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to say, before any of those, "embattled news source."
If you are someone who hates Wikileaks and has a lot of media time, it's fairly easy to plant seeds of destruction.
"Our question today: did Wikileaks deliberately publish false evidence about [such and such]? Now, I'm not saying they did, but why is no one else asking these questions?"
"What, if any, are Wikileaks' ties to the Taliban? They have a lot of informants on that side of the world. You wonder where they get their donations, their storie
Re:He's not a journalist! Please! (Score:5, Insightful)
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Countries [wikileaks.org]
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Russia [wikileaks.org]
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Cuba [wikileaks.org]
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Venezuela [wikileaks.org]
Wow, you really did your homework on that one. I mean, I've never even visited Wikileaks before today, and I found these links in less than 30 seconds. The only people "locked in on the US" here are the US media, who have another circus when new US government documents are posted in Wikileaks. So basically you blame this guy for the US media's reaction to some US whistle-blower publishing something on his web site, which strikes me as more than a little sheep-ish.
If there really are fewer documents from these countries, it's because being a whistle-blower in one of those countries is a good way to commit suicide. Actually, it may be an excruciatingly painful way to do it, but I think you get the picture.
I don't think the guy in charge of Wikileaks is a journalist, either. I think he's in it for the fame, and for the money that generally comes with it. But that doesn't make your statements any less ridiculous.