US slams 'criminals' behind WikiLeaks

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Antediluvian as Feck
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Wikileaks seems to have upset a certain group of people, mainly those that don't wont to know about all of the dirty activities they seem to be engaged with on a daily basis... http://wikileaks.org/

Code: 
The Obama administration has denounced the leaking of mountains of classified material by WikiLeaks, calling it a serious crime and an attack on the whole world.

Secretary of state Hillary Clinton says the US "deeply regrets" Monday's embarrassing release of more than 250,000 state department cables.

But she says "there is nothing brave about sabotaging the peaceful relations between nations".

"I will not comment on or confirm what are alleged to be stolen state department cables," Ms Clinton said.

"But I can say that the United States deeply regrets the disclosure of any information that was intended to be confidential, including private discussions between counterparts or our diplomats' personal assessments and observations."

Ms Clinton has vowed to prevent future leaks and find those responsible for the current crisis.

"This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community," she said.

"I would also add that to the American people and to our friends and partners, I want you to know that we are taking aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information."

Ms Clinton's comments came as the White House ordered tighter security to prevent future leaks.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs said president Barack Obama was decidedly "not pleased" by the WikiLeaks release, adding those responsible were "criminals" who had committed a serious offence.

I wonder what will become of this, would the U.S bring charges against the people running the site - Wikileaks, or will those people just have a lot of unexplained terminal accidents. :look:
 
Whoever leaked those documents is most definitely a criminal - leaking those state documents is a serious offense.

And yes, I fully expect them to go after Wikileaks and the people who run Wikileaks with everything they've got. Including making life hell for them (though assassinations would be a bit much).
 
i don't know how to think of Wikileaks, the libertarian/pseudo-anarchist in me sees this as a blow against big gov't, its secrecy and close to abuse of power, but the realist in me sees that this could potentially be harmful to the US and my saftey. :?
 
I love the way Hillary Clinton condemns the behavior of Wikileaks, but not the fact she asked American diplomatic staff to spy on the U.N's top diplomatic officials, by stealing their DNA, finger prints, credit card numbers, etc... :clap:

Code: 
Hillary Clinton ordered diplomats to spy on UN: WikiLeaks docs

A classified directive signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered US diplomats to spy on the highest-ranking officials in the United Nations, according to documents obtained from the latest WikiLeaks document dump.

The targets of the spying reportedly included UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, as well as the ambassadors of the permanent members of the UN Security Council — China, Russia, France and the UK.

Even as its servers were under a denial-of-service attack Sunday, making it virtually impossible to reach its Web site, the whistleblower group WikiLeaks began releasing the first batch of US government documents — many of them State Department cables — expected to cause embarrassment or even a straining of relations among the US’s diplomatic partners.

RawStory

Code: 
WikiLeaks: US diplomats ‘have been spying on UN leadership’

American diplomats have been running a spying campaign against the United Nations leadership and representatives of permanent members of its security council, including Britain, according to documents released by WikiLeaks.

28 Nov 2010

A classified directive under the name of Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, in July 2009 called for email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers, credit card details and frequent-flyer numbers for UN personnel.

Technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General, such as passwords and encryption keys involved in UN communications were sought.

It also demanded “biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives” from Britain, China, Russia and France. Similar instructions were issued by Condoleezza Rice, Mrs Clinton’s predecessor in the Bush administration.

The Telegraph

Lets attack the leak, but not the behaviour...
 
The conspiracist in me thinks were it genuinely super secret files wiki leak folks would have been jailed for a number of "charges", before they even had a chance to publish.

Assassinations wouldn't work as they would only create martyrs. its much better to descredit/make your enemies villified by the general public at large. What government cannot do vigilantes sure can.
 
Sander said:
Whoever leaked those documents is most definitely a criminal - leaking those state documents is a serious offense.

And yes, I fully expect them to go after Wikileaks and the people who run Wikileaks with everything they've got. Including making life hell for them (though assassinations would be a bit much).
Click to expand...

I agree, the leak should be charged with whatever laws apply, but what do you think of the group as it is - without looking through the spyglass of the law? Nessessary evil? Or a threat to all governments and officials? Or both?

@DarkCorp; The same conspiracist in me thinks that the accusations against Julian Assange is very suspicious. My governments handling of the case has been really poor.
 
afaik, wikileaks is not in violation of federal laws/statutes as they are "conditional" laws/protections.

what that means is you have to agree to hold the information confidential to be liable for it.

afaik, wikileaks is not really in violation of any laws, but the people who provided the information to wikileaks can be found guilty of tons of things up to and including high crimes.

while normally you will hear people call it treason, in all actuality high crimes is worse than treason. and much harder to prove.

think of treason as akin to manslaughter, and high crimes as murder 1.
 
I imagine wikileaks as a naive but spirited organisation. Kind of a "I am going to put out the truth for the sake of it being the truth and any truth should not be hidden" organisation. I really do not believe they have any care or have given any thought to the potential blowback of what their leaks may cause.
 
dark, i agree with that a lot

if information is classified or concealed from public distribution, then it is that way for a reason

while some of this information may not be that important in the grand scheme of things, it is not good for it to get out. yes, lots of these things are common knowledge for those "in the game", nobody admits it. and it is pretty embarassing having that information being publically released.

the real question is, what kind of information would wikileaks not release?

would wikileaks publish information of US spies in foreign countries and their identities? would they release design documentation of federal/military networks?

because information like that could cause people to die. while it seems like they havent really released any detailed information ( that i know of ), do they have limits on what they would publish?

to me that is the biggest thing. from what i have heard ( i havent been to their site ), if all they are publishing is "embarassing" information, then it puts the burden on the DOD and SD to crack down and do some kind of information versioning and control to identify who accessed that specific information and released it.

has any information that they have released been anything beyond merely embarassing?
 
TheWesDude said:
dark, i agree with that a lot

if information is classified or concealed from public distribution, then it is that way for a reason

while some of this information may not be that important in the grand scheme of things, it is not good for it to get out. yes, lots of these things are common knowledge for those "in the game", nobody admits it. and it is pretty embarassing having that information being publically released.

the real question is, what kind of information would wikileaks not release?

would wikileaks publish information of US spies in foreign countries and their identities? would they release design documentation of federal/military networks?

because information like that could cause people to die. while it seems like they havent really released any detailed information ( that i know of ), do they have limits on what they would publish?

to me that is the biggest thing. from what i have heard ( i havent been to their site ), if all they are publishing is "embarassing" information, then it puts the burden on the DOD and SD to crack down and do some kind of information versioning and control to identify who accessed that specific information and released it.

has any information that they have released been anything beyond merely embarassing?
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From what I remember Assange saying, they'd never release anything that is directly harmful or dangerous to people operating in the field. They have morals, they just don't agree with governments not having transparancy.

The only sources I have for the impact of their information releases has been Swedish newspapers citing newsfirms saying that none of the leaked information has led to any bodily or grievous harm to people in Iraq working with the Americans.
 
DarkCorp said:
I imagine wikileaks as a naive but spirited organisation. Kind of a "I am going to put out the truth for the sake of it being the truth and any truth should not be hidden" organisation. I really do not believe they have any care or have given any thought to the potential blowback of what their leaks may cause.
Click to expand...

They've been at this long enough to be fully aware of what blowback might result from this. They're neither inexperienced, naive or dumb. Have you seen Julian Assange (their spokesman/director/whatever) speak in the media? He's far from a naive hippie who lives in a fantasy land of his own creation.

They have an agenda.. we just don't know what it is (nor do I care).

For the record, I support their activities 100%.

TheWesDude said:
dark, i agree with that a lot

if information is classified or concealed from public distribution, then it is that way for a reason
Click to expand...

I really don't mean to come off as rude but you sound very naive here. In college I studied history and economics.. I can assure you that there are more than a handful of historical precedents for information to be kept secret for personal gain at the expense of others. Or, in other words, we're in agreement that information gets classified for a "reason".. I'm just not as willing as you to assume that reason is good for me or the rest of the world.

...but, that said, I did come off rude. For that I apologize preemptively. It's just not safe to assume that in countries run to the tune of individual self interest and capital accumulation (the two resounding themes of U.S. policy since the late 19th century) that those "memes" wouldn't be present in the minds of those in power.

To be fair, though, I agree that total transparency isn't an effective way to run a government in a hostile world. However, I'd look at the content of those now freely available cables to see whether there was justification in making them public.
 
@Anarchosyn

Let me re-iterate. I don't believe wikileaks is niave in the sense you described. What I mean is how things can be released with the purest of intentions yet bring about consequences that nobody could predict besides the folks at the top.

Take for example Vietnam. Although the Tet Offensive was widely considered to have failed in its goals, the american media did wonders for enemy morale. Walter Cronkites pessimism was a pivotal point for shifting american views on the war. Lyndon Johnson remarked, "That’s it. If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America."

Another example would be the execution of a Viet Cong prisoner by S. Vietnamese general Nguyen Ngoc Loan. Eddie Adams who took the photo later remakred in Time:

"The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths ... What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?"

He expressed dismay for the damage his photo caused to both the general itself and the damage it did to public perception of the war. Eddie ended up personally apologising to the general himself and his family.

As you have already stated, what is their agenda? You say you would rather not know. But without knowing what the agenda is, how can you support them whole heartedly? When did Julian Assange/wikileaks become the sole authority and judge on what blowback would result? Are they psychic? Do they have the same experience as some of our leaders?

In regards to Hilary Clinton asking US diplomats to spy on others. How does that possiby affect the average joe? To me it sounds like they either did it because they could or to hit back at the government for attempting to censor it (and in my eyes rightly so). I am sure that this kind of spying is routine but most nations have it kept under raps for political reasons. Now that wikileaks has released it, the only nation with yolk on its face is america.
 
No really shocking material, but an interesting read. Particulary to read the background of government policy without the rhetoric.
 
This shows how the US goverment is thinking of the rest of the world...
We desperately are needing more organizations like "Wikileaks" to tell us the truth about our leadership.

I am really wondering why are so many people against this opportunity on that board to get some real informations from the administration.
 
Anarchosyn said:
They have an agenda.. we just don't know what it is (nor do I care).

For the record, I support their activities 100%
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Sorry but isnt that a bit contradicting. Should you not at least care about it if you really support them ?


I am neither a fan nor a enemy of wikileaks. I think there should be always a certain healthy level of cautioness regarding the gouvernement and mistrust with the military. Particularly when it comes to secrets. THat doesnt mean that everything has to be known to the public. Certain secrets are there to protect the people an their families. But other secrets are nothing more then propaganda. If in the right time some politicans or the public would had access to certain informations maybe the decision for some situations would have been different like with the Vietnamwar. Or the Cuba crisis. The Iran–Contra affair and the reasons behind the war in Iraq which proved to be wrong in the end (nuclear weapons or the supposed try to aquire uranium). Overuse of secrecy is just as bad like a completely open source of information. Though who should be responsible to decide about that ...

It was both Eisenhower and John F. Kenedy which talked and warned about this with the one about the military industrial complex and JFK with secrets by the military/gouvernement

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnkdfFAqsHA&feature=related[/youtube]

Sadly I am not sure if Wiki leakds will change here anything in the future while the idea behind it (just like with Wikipedia ) might be a interesting maybe even a good one it depends on the public and people living in the nations. If those do not care enough about the politicas in their nation, the way how their politicans act and how things work then its useless. Its the gouvernement which should be afraid form his people not the people from their gouvernement. Yet sadly, here at least in Germany many stop to care about politicas havning no aligment anymore in beeing either more social or more right winged ~ without talking about the extrem forms but more the liberal sense of it like with democracts and republicans. If the population of a state does not care enough about democracy they should not be surprised if at some point it doesnt work correctly anymore like intended. For a democracy to work correctly it needs politicaly educated citizens. Not the level of a high politicans although those politicans should come from the public but the citiziens should know about the parties, their actions and what is behind them. THey should care about the laws they decide and what is causing them. They should be demanding from their politicans and gouvernement and be citizens with the knowledge that they dont have only rights but also responsibilities. If we simply act like the sheeps then we will be obviously threated like ones.
 
smilodom said:
This shows how the US goverment is thinking of the rest of the world...
We desperately are needing more organizations like "Wikileaks" to tell us the truth about our leadership.

I am really wondering why are so many people against this opportunity on that board to get some real informations from the administration.
Click to expand...

I am also neither for nor against organisations such as wikileaks.

My question is what does wikileaks overall strategy or goal in releasing information. Like with the diplomatic cables, is it actually going to help the downtrodden average joe or they doing it just because they can?

Second is how much change do they believe they can accomplish? As Crni stated above, the military industrial complex has been known for quite some time now. Lobbyists and such didn't just happen with the Bush administration. Wikileaks has been around yet the banks still got their government bailout. Wikileaks was around yet nothing has changed in regards to the american people getting better representation (lets face it both the repubs and dems are kind of a joke). We need a party that actually sticks up for the working class (neither for the extremely rich or for the insanely poor).
 
They've provided change already by publishing this material; that's the point; that we don't really know what happens in international politics and war. The average joe either has his senses deadened from constant rhetoric or finds some marginal view on an internet blog that is often ridiculous.
 
34thcell said:
They've provided change already by publishing this material; that's the point; that we don't really know what happens in international politics and war. The average joe either has his senses deadened from constant rhetoric or finds some marginal view on an internet blog that is often ridiculous.
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The average Joe only hears about the news when it's especially sensational, ie he's ignorant. Wikilinks isn't really for the average Joe's consumption, it's mostly consumed by the media and a more informed audience. Of course it's goal is total and complete transparency, which isn't realistically achievable.
 
it wont really provide much change

it will make other countries possibly more suspicious and cost us more in the short run, but it will be forgotten in the long run.

much shorter term if the people involved get replaced.
 
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