Wikileaks

[Shryke]

Yeah, I was about to say "Wasn't Bank of America rumored to be the bank Wikileaks is about to dump a bunch of info on?"

[Cantabile]

In a month or two the only way to support Wikileaks will be delivering them untraceable bills in person, I bet. I remember reading that their operating costs were pretty substantial...hopefully wealthy private supporters will be enough to keep it up and running.

[Tempra]

In a month or two the only way to support Wikileaks will be delivering them untraceable bills in person, I bet. I remember reading that their operating costs were pretty substantial...hopefully wealthy private supporters will be enough to keep it up and running.

Eh, there are plenty of Non-American banks (and probably American banks) that will be happy to have wikileaks supporters use their services. I wouldn't be too worried.

[Shryke]

Yeah. This isn't the tip of an iceberg, it's Bank of America hitting back at Wikileaks in the only way it can before it, apparently anyway, gets embarrassed.

[Yoadm]

This is a total nerd out, but:

- He's not getting paid to do Wikileaks, he has no home, so I don't see how he's greedy

- He is arrogant, but I don't see that as being neutral. Lawful Good people are also arrogant.

- He is an anarchist, which is chaotic, but not neutral

- Crushing bastards, especially government bastards, is chaotic, not neutral

So, fail.

Plus, the question at the bottom is absolutely brilliant.

He is crushing everyone. He publishes everything, not only info exposing supposed corruption but information that puts people's lives at risk, that risks very positive policies world wide just because some of them have to remain confidential to protect specific people or programs. I would call him chaotic neutral at the very best.

[Old Nan]

There's no such thing as a "worldwide" positive policy.

[Yoadm]

There's no such thing as a "worldwide" positive policy.

No, but there are positive policies. A moderate government in Yemen is generally more positive than a fanatical islamist government. To protect the former, anti-al-qaeda operations by the US in Yemen are termed by that government as 'government action', to prevent the opposition from gaining strength. What good was it to expose this, apart from strengthening islamist movements in Yemen?

[Old Nan]

A different kind of good, obviously.

[Cantabile]

He is crushing everyone. He publishes everything, not only info exposing supposed corruption but information that puts people's lives at risk, that risks very positive policies world wide just because some of them have to remain confidential to protect specific people or programs. I would call him chaotic neutral at the very best.

Whose lives have been put at risk? I keep hearing media spout this off as part of their "ASSANGE IS A TERRORIST!" bullshit, yet no one seems to be able to actually mention who is at risk. Throughout every Wikileaks dump we have heard that excuse, yet the military and government itself have said multiple times that there is no risk to its personnel. When actual deaths occur that can be linked directly to Wikileaks releases, then that will hold some weight. Until then it's nothing more than fear-mongering.

[Shryke]

Whose lives have been put at risk? I keep hearing media spout this off as part of their "ASSANGE IS A TERRORIST!" bullshit, yet no one seems to be able to actually mention who is at risk. Throughout every Wikileaks dump we have heard that excuse, yet the military and government itself have said multiple times that there is no risk to its personnel. When actual deaths occur that can be linked directly to Wikileaks releases, then that will hold some weight. Until then it's nothing more than fear-mongering.

No, they've said there's been no provable harm done that they know of.

They've consistently maintained, even in the letter you are referencing, that Wikileak's actions put alot of people helping the US at risk.

Do we have to go over the difference between risk and harm again?

[Cantabile]

Driving to work everyday poses a greater risk to people than Wikileaks' releases have. If the government, or media sources spouting the fear-mongering, can specifically name cases where people have been put at risk, and demonstrate that the risk is substantial, then I'll buy it.

And since Wikileaks has been at this for quite a while, and there's still no documented "harm" that's come from it, clearly the risks aren't very high.

[Yoadm]

Whose lives have been put at risk? I keep hearing media spout this off as part of their "ASSANGE IS A TERRORIST!" bullshit, yet no one seems to be able to actually mention who is at risk. Throughout every Wikileaks dump we have heard that excuse, yet the military and government itself have said multiple times that there is no risk to its personnel. When actual deaths occur that can be linked directly to Wikileaks releases, then that will hold some weight. Until then it's nothing more than fear-mongering.

I didn't call him a terrorist, but for instance in a scenario where publishing transcripts where US diplomats speak of the names and info of informants, naturally puts their lives at risk. Publishing that the Yemeni government hushes up the US fight against al-qaeda in order to prevent the strengthening of Islamist movements is dangerous as well, because it gives them ammo. Thing is, Julian doesnt publish specific stuff, he publishes everything. Not a terrorist, a hooligan, but one that does real damage.

[Shryke]

Driving to work everyday poses a greater risk to people than Wikileaks' releases have. If the government, or media sources spouting the fear-mongering, can specifically name cases where people have been put at risk, and demonstrate that the risk is substantial, then I'll buy it.

Which people are you talking about?

Because the names of people aiding and cooperating with US or Coalition armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are certainly being put at risk.

And since Wikileaks has been at this for quite a while, and there's still no documented "harm" that's come from it, clearly the risks aren't very high.

I've been driving for years and never gotten into a serious car wreck, so clearly the risks aren't that high.

[Cantabile]

Which people are you talking about?

Because the names of people aiding and cooperating with US or Coalition armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are certainly being put at risk.

I've been driving for years and never gotten into a serious car wreck, so clearly the risks aren't that high.

Can you cite any examples of names that have been released, and explain how the specific information released will put them at risk? Plenty of names have been leaked through the Cablegates release, and all the war documents, yet as you yourself said the government can not link any harm to the releases. Risks always exist, but if there's not been a single person harmed due to it so far, then that's a pretty trivial point to bring up in an argument against the releases.

[Shryke]

Can you cite any examples of names that have been released, and explain how the specific information released will put them at risk? Plenty of names have been leaked through the Cablegates release, and all the war documents, yet as you yourself said the government can not link any harm to the releases. Risks always exist, but if there's not been a single person harmed due to it so far, then that's a pretty trivial point to bring up in an argument against the releases.

It's not trivial. Again, you are confusing risk and harm.

Running red lights is always a risk, even if no harm comes from it when I, hypothetically, did it last night.

Unless you are claiming no harm has ever come from leaking the names of informants?

[felice]

No, but there are positive policies. A moderate government in Yemen is generally more positive than a fanatical islamist government. To protect the former, anti-al-qaeda operations by the US in Yemen are termed by that government as 'government action', to prevent the opposition from gaining strength. What good was it to expose this, apart from strengthening islamist movements in Yemen?

Hmmm... while I'm no fan of fanatical islam, I can't say the idea of a government that secretly allows foreign troops to come in and shoot up the locals appeals much either, and if the Yemen voters decide they prefer the former... We are supposed to approve of informed democracy, right? And if the US doesn't want to strengthen islamist movements, it shouldn't take actions liable to provoke support for them (which applies to pretty much the entire "War on Terror").

[afterroots]

Richard Morgan's latest blog post takes a look at the situation in terms of risk vs reward

imagine for a moment that you know a man who beats his wife.

Beats his wife, has beaten her for years. Puts her in hospital on a regular basis. Breaks bones, lacerates flesh, damages internal organs. He has never been prosecuted for these offences because he is a powerful man locally, and you both live within a culture which takes such things for granted.

Then imagine that you meet him one day down the local pub and find he is complaining bitterly that one of his wife’s female friends has started talking badly about him around town. “That bitch,” he cries into his fifteenth pint. “Doesn’t she get that she’s poisoning our marriage; that she’s going to put our happy home at risk.”

Congratulations – you have now reached approximately the state of disbelief I’m in as I listen to the US state and its asshole apologists whine about how Wiki-leaks is putting lives at risk.

I’m sorry, US State Department, British Foreign Office, can we just back up a bit here? I need to clarify terms a little. Putting lives at risk, you say?

What, you mean in the same way that conducting an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation in search of weapons of mass destruction for which there was no evidence put lives at risk (when it wasn’t merely snuffing said lives out by the thousand)? You mean in the same way that incompetent bombing of Afghan villages, wedding parties and miscellaneous shepherds put lives at risk? The way in which scooping up a random assortment of human beings and detaining them against every law there is for years at a time put lives at risk? The way in which grabbing citizens with names you don’t like off the streets of Canada, Germany and Italy and flying them out to fuckwit totalitarian regimes for interrogation put lives at risk? The way acting as paymaster and approving sponsor for an unending succession of bloody-handed despots across the geo-political landscape for the last several decades put lives at risk? The way training up the best and the brightest of the world’s torturers and political murderers for the last half century put lives at risk? Putting lives at risk in that sense, you mean?

Fuck you, buddy.

Has Wiki-leaks put lives at risk. Doubtful. But let’s for a moment give the asshole cheerleaders for the Orwellian state their day in court. Let’s suppose the leaks have endangered some lives somewhere.

So – fucking – what?

Our much vaunted British legal system and its US outgrowth both function on the assumption that it is better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man be punished. There is a cost attached to this – but we pay that price, because we understand what we’re buying. What we are buying is civilisation.

Winston Churchill – not a man I’m given to quoting very much – understood this concept of cost and sacrifice in relation to civilisation very well. He once said:

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

Can anybody question that we have now arrived at that unhealthy state of affairs? Can anyone doubt that the American state (and its sad little UK lackey) have over the last decade provided us with a new high in corrupt, brutal and incompetent geo-political governance? Is there anybody still standing out there that actually thinks these people have shown themselves to be trustworthy? Is there anyone out that thinks these people need lower levels of performance monitoring and review?

Even if Wiki-leaks were to cost lives – it would still be a vital tool in the battle against an encroaching totalitarianism that we’re paying far, far too little attention to. The lives lost would be, to paraphrase Churchill, painful but necessary – a painful but necessary cost in a battle for the fragile edifice of law, human rights and civilisation that we have managed to cobble together in this corner of the world, and which our current political establishment is hellbent on tearing down. And I, as a citizen, would certainly rather die in the defence of that edifice than for any of Bush and Blair’s murderous misadventures in the Middle East overt the last decade, or the rather shabby continuation our current leaders enforce under the pretence of change. And while I can’t speak for British or American servicemen or -women, having met a few, I suspect that they, who have signed up to protect their country against all enemies, foreign or domestic, who have accepted that they may have to give their lives in that cause, would not quibble if their death came as the price for defeating a vicious, insidious and corrupt domestic foe rather than a nebulous, poorly defined and largely illusory foreign one.

So let me repeat – even if Wiki-leaks were to put lives at risk, it would still be a vital service to our civilisation.

But of course, as we all already know – Wiki-leaks does not put lives at risk. Those assholes are lying in their teeth about that, just as they lie in their teeth about every other misbegotten blood-spattered corrupt and obscene thing they do in your name.

http://www.richardkmorgan.com/news/680/you-believe-this-shit/

[Yoadm]

Hmmm... while I'm no fan of fanatical islam, I can't say the idea of a government that secretly allows foreign troops to come in and shoot up the locals appeals much either, and if the Yemen voters decide they prefer the former... We are supposed to approve of informed democracy, right? And if the US doesn't want to strengthen islamist movements, it shouldn't take actions liable to provoke support for them (which applies to pretty much the entire "War on Terror").

Seriousely? Not is ideal and we are not living in an ideal world. The US targetted Al-qaeda cells, at the behest of the Yemeni government, which did not have the power to do so itself. To prevent it being portrayed as a 'doll to the wests strings' or whatever, it kept it hushed. Sometimes, and I know it may sound incredible, publishing EVERYTHING is not allways a positive thing.

[Horza]

US mulling charges against Assange: Biden

US vice-president Joe Biden says the US Justice Department is exploring a legal pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

But Mr Biden stopped short of elaborating on just how the administration could act against the head of the organisation whose release of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables has enraged Washington.

"I'm not going to comment on that process," he said.

When asked whether he thought Mr Assange was a high-tech terrorist or a whistleblower akin to those who released the Pentagon Papers - a series of top-secret documents revealing US military policy in Vietnam - Mr Biden was clear: "I would argue that it's closer to being a high-tech terrorist."

but:

A report by congressional researchers found the Espionage Act and other US laws could be used to prosecute the 39-year-old Australian hacker, but there is no known precedent for prosecuting publishers in such a case.

and:

Media reports suggested that US prosecutors are trying to build a case against Mr Assange on the grounds that he encouraged US Army Private Bradley Manning, currently in US custody, to steal American cables from a government computer and pass them to WikiLeaks.

Mr Assange has denied knowing Manning.

Mr Biden appeared to leave the door open for charges against Mr Assange.

"If he conspired to get these classified documents with a member of the US military, that's fundamentally different than if somebody drops [documents] on your lap here, [saying] 'You're a press person, here is classified material.'"

In a legal case, the United States would seek to show Mr Assange's responsibility for damage to national security, but legal experts have said the path to prosecution is strewn with legal complications, including constitutional free speech protections.

None of this however stopped our own Prime Minister declaring that Assange had committed 'an illegal act', before being forced to backtrack. So much for the presumption of innocence.

It took the Foreign Minister to point out that he hadn't committed any crime under Australian law and that there was no evidence he'd done anything other than recieve classified documents from a poorly-protected US database. Something the PM might have taken into account, but hey, they only recieved word this dump was in the offing in June.

[MinDonner]

Richard Morgan's latest blog post takes a look at the situation in terms of risk vs reward

<OMG IT'S JUST LIKE WIFE-BEATING>

http://www.richardkmorgan.com/news/680/you-believe-this-shit/

Gee, I love it when progressive guys try to appropriate feminist analogies while refusing to let their hero even get tried for a rape he's been accused of.