US slams 'criminals' behind WikiLeaks

Crni Vuk said:
Now thats a bit naive.
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Well yea I know, I just thought I would throw it out there even though it's a rather old fashioned way of thinking. :p

Also why do people in this thread keep going on about Ammendments and other American law in this thread? Assange is Australian.
 
Alphadrop said:
Crni Vuk said:
Now thats a bit naive.
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Well yea I know, I just thought I would throw it out there even though it's a rather old fashioned way of thinking. :p

Also why do people in this thread keep going on about Ammendments and other American law in this thread? Assange is Australian.
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The stuff he released was American. They probably have more than enough to convince whatever country he's in to extradite him and try him in a criminal court in the States.
 
@ thegaresexperience and Hassknecht

I simply say Assange and wikileaks isn't acting different than any goverment which they want to 'fight'.

Assange is an information anarchist - who thinks companies and goverments shouldn't hold secrets so that all people (not only citizens as you can see with wikileaks) are able to monitor them.
Then again he isn't really willing to share the information about his 'company'- and wikileaks is more or less a company, right?

Also just take a short look at the last leaked informations.
A insider offered wiki leaks information, if only wiki leaks would keep his identity hidden.
The informations he transmitted to Assange and wikileaks were classified. Even if you say a goverment shouldn't hold secrets against it's citiziens - there's no reason why a country shouldn't be allowed to keep secrets against other countries or non-citizens.
So he transmitted data which Assange and Wikileaks - as non-US-citizens don't have any right to hold. Data which is potentionally dangerous to US-citiziens (like soldiers).
So i guess that is enough to fit the definition of espionage.
And this espionage is encouraged by Assange, as he tries to protect his 'spies' and seems invoice people to send him such informations.
This whole happens while he seems to condemn countries and companies for such a practice.

So it comes down if you belive in his claim that his ethics are right, while the ones of the US using the same tools is wrong.
And if his publications of information help more people than they are hurting - and i'm not convinced that's the case.
As the Leaks did only harm until now - i don't see that Germany gained anything from the information that US diplomats think Angela 'Teflon' Merkel is uncreative or Westerwelle is an idiot. But i imagine quite a few people got into problems over this leak, people who didn't need to have done something really bad.
 
Wikileaks isn't a company. They don't make money or anything.
Again, sharing information about his "clients" would put them in much more danger than the leaked information would put US citizens or anyone else in. Imagine what would happen to some poor bloke who leaked information about the russian government. He'd be suicided before the blink of an eye. The protection of the clients is important.
The protection of war crimes, torture and illegal actions in general is not.
Also, it's not that governments shouldn't have any secrets. Wikileaks is about taking them the ability to get away with certain actions.
Well, and the leaked ambassador documents... I don't see the point of them, actually. It's no big surprise that foreign politicians are described in "harsh" words. That leak was pretty pointless, I'll give you that :D
I mean, Putin an alpha male? No shit, Sherlock!
But well, everyone can and should have an own opinion about Wikileaks. It's a very complicated matter, so it's no wonder that opinions diverge.
 
Hassknecht said:
Wikileaks isn't a company. They don't make money or anything.
Again, sharing information about his "clients" would put them in much more danger than the leaked information would put US citizens or anyone else in.[...]The protection of the clients is important.
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As other have stated in this thread I am too starting to feel that they should have let the named people in the documents remain anonymous as well. We only need to know weird stuff is going on. The protection should go both ways. They are people too.
 
exactly, and many just do their job. Of course we are talking here about legal jobs. Not killing civlians. That those should be made public goes without saying. But as said several times. I am not sure if Assange and his clique are the correct people to decide which information is important and which one not.
 
Candlejack said:
Hassknecht said:
Wikileaks isn't a company. They don't make money or anything.
Again, sharing information about his "clients" would put them in much more danger than the leaked information would put US citizens or anyone else in.[...]The protection of the clients is important.
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As other have stated in this thread I am too starting to feel that they should have let the named people in the documents remain anonymous as well. We only need to know weird stuff is going on. The protection should go both ways. They are people too.
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Yeah, I agree. The problem is that Wikileaks puts the stuff unreviewed and unaltered online. I too would rather anonymize some names (especially soldiers, ambassadors... I guess they are pretty safe and also easy to find anyway), but Wikileaks does not want to do that. They put it online "as is". Sucks sometimes.
 
Hassknecht said:
Candlejack said:
Hassknecht said:
Wikileaks isn't a company. They don't make money or anything.
Again, sharing information about his "clients" would put them in much more danger than the leaked information would put US citizens or anyone else in.[...]The protection of the clients is important.
Click to expand...
As other have stated in this thread I am too starting to feel that they should have let the named people in the documents remain anonymous as well. We only need to know weird stuff is going on. The protection should go both ways. They are people too.
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Yeah, I agree. The problem is that Wikileaks puts the stuff unreviewed and unaltered online. I too would rather anonymize some names (especially soldiers, ambassadors... I guess they are pretty safe and also easy to find anyway), but Wikileaks does not want to do that. They put it online "as is". Sucks sometimes.
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If it last´s just as an opinion to another politician or similar it´s ok...but if there is really something going wrong it´s better to point out who´s doing what with all backgrounds as possible documented.
 
smilodom said:
Hassknecht said:
Candlejack said:
Hassknecht said:
Wikileaks isn't a company. They don't make money or anything.
Again, sharing information about his "clients" would put them in much more danger than the leaked information would put US citizens or anyone else in.[...]The protection of the clients is important.
Click to expand...
As other have stated in this thread I am too starting to feel that they should have let the named people in the documents remain anonymous as well. We only need to know weird stuff is going on. The protection should go both ways. They are people too.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I agree. The problem is that Wikileaks puts the stuff unreviewed and unaltered online. I too would rather anonymize some names (especially soldiers, ambassadors... I guess they are pretty safe and also easy to find anyway), but Wikileaks does not want to do that. They put it online "as is". Sucks sometimes.
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If it last´s just as an opinion to another politician or similar it´s ok...but if there is really something going wrong it´s better to point out who´s doing what with all backgrounds as possible documented.
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Absolutely, but you know, most soldiers got their orders, I don't think that their families should be put in danger. Of course, that would be true for the families of the General who gave the order and pretty much anyone. It's a really tough decision. I guess in the end it's good to put out documents completely unaltered.
 
@Hassknecht
As we've seen Assange and Wikileaks aren't only publicing crimes and really illegal actions of goverments. They release everything they want to.
Giving their informants away has the same problem as giving away the names of spies. Because they are spies. And as seen, they don't only spy on things that might be an illegal action of a goverment - but all data they get their hands on.

And this exactly brings us to the point where we have to ask, who watchs the Watchsmen?

We don't know what Assange and the Wiki-Leak staff does with their non-released information? - They could sell it (sure they claim they won't), they could use certain informations as insider knowledge in stock trading and whatnot.

We don't know who's behind it really or who are the informants.
Think about how other goverments might be interested in ruining the public opinion on certain other nations. So feeding wiki leaks certain informations might exactly lead to such a goal - and some people might be won over because it's coming from Wikileaks instead of 'tyrant-country'.

So i'm really sceptical about them, as much as i'm sceptical about a lot of other so claimed well-intentioned people.

And as somebody who holds high respect for Ghandi who refused to use the same methods GB used or at least tried to abstain from voilence - find it hilarious that somebody who's fighting for transparency because only than real monitoring and control is possible don't want to have his 'project' transparent.
 
Bad_Karma said:
@Hassknecht
As we've seen Assange and Wikileaks aren't only publicing crimes and really illegal actions of goverments. They release everything they want to.
Giving their informants away has the same problem as giving away the names of spies. Because they are spies. And as seen, they don't only spy on things that might be an illegal action of a goverment - but all data they get their hands on.

And this exactly brings us to the point where we have to ask, who watchs the Watchsmen?

We don't know what Assange and the Wiki-Leak staff does with their non-released information? - They could sell it (sure they claim they won't), they could use certain informations as insider knowledge in stock trading and whatnot.

We don't know who's behind it really or who are the informants.
Think about how other goverments might be interested in ruining the public opinion on certain other nations. So feeding wiki leaks certain informations might exactly lead to such a goal - and some people might be won over because it's coming from Wikileaks instead of 'tyrant-country'.

So i'm really sceptical about them, as much as i'm sceptical about a lot of other so claimed well-intentioned people.

And as somebody who holds high respect for Ghandi who refused to use the same methods GB used or at least tried to abstain from voilence - find it hilarious that somebody who's fighting for transparency because only than real monitoring and control is possible don't want to have his 'project' transparent.
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You might be sceptical about what the real interests of "Wikileaks" are, but we can be sure of the true intensions the U.S goverment has got....
 
I don't see how much more transparency you can demand from Wikileaks. It's a project by people who leak out information without censoring or altering it. These people need to stay anonymous as much as their informants. We see it with Assange how much repercussions they might face. Hell, Assange can't even open a frickin' bank account in fuckin' Switzerland!. Switzerland!
He faces a rather dubious charge for rape, and I'm quite sure that if he hadn't distributed the insurance file, he would have been suicided or silenced in some way.
Now, the diplomatic documents are quite uninteresting for the most part, but there are some rather interesting informations in there.
For example, this.

Theoretically, of course Wikileaks should be transparent. It would only be fair, and I'm pretty sure that Assange would like it. The problem is that it would be counterproductive. It would put all people associating with Wikileaks in more or less danger (even mortal danger if you leak information about the 'less nice' countries. Putin might hunt you down personally :D), and without protection of their sources, nobody would leak information to them.

The nice thing about Wikileaks is that you don't have to believe them. So far they didn't put out any hoaxes, but it can happen. Most people make the mistake and see Wikileaks as a journalistic institution, which they're not. You don't have to trust Wikileaks, because you know that they put out unaltered and unreviewed stuff.
All in all, Wikileaks should absolutely be seen critically. There's absolutely no point in trusting them blindly and taking their word for granted.
The War Documents and the Diplomatic Documents seem to be genuine, though.
And a nice thing happened from them, too: There was an informant mentioned who worked high up in the FDP (Westerwelle's party). They found him, that's quite nice.
 
If you are going to go with Supreme Court precedent, it was illegal for the man who leaked the documents to leak them. But it is not illegal for WikiLeaks to publish them.
 
He's been arrested. I hope that Sweden has the balls to not immediately deliver him to the US.
 
smilodom said:
You might be sceptical about what the real interests of "Wikileaks" are, but we can be sure of the true intensions the U.S goverment has got....
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which would be ? The gouvernement is not about one person. Smells a bit like a conspiracy if you aske me.

The US gouvernement is not beter or worse then most others (compared to Europe). Though I would assume that in the "Gouvernement" most simply do their job.
 
Yes they do their jobs, but they get nothing REAL done, but they sure do a hell of a lot of talking about getting things done and whos fault it is that they aren't.
 
ncr_insurgent said:
If you are going to go with Supreme Court precedent, it was illegal for the man who leaked the documents to leak them. But it is not illegal for WikiLeaks to publish them.
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Yes, it was absolutely illegal to give up the leaked documents, but not to publish them.
 
thegaresexperience said:
Yes they do their jobs, but they get nothing REAL done, but they sure do a hell of a lot of talking about getting things done and whos fault it is that they aren't.
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I am really curious about this. I hear that a lot. But sorry forgive me if I say that you have to be a bit more "specific" when you say "they" because we are talking here about the "gouvernement". So you think offering you firebrigades, police stations and what else needs a ministery either for the enviroment, energy, infrastructure all do simply nothing for you ? Or all those Congressmen beeing corupt in and completely incompetent ? The Gouvernement is a large body containing countless of workers and employees some doing a great job, some a mediocre one others a bad job. Just like in most other companies.

Letz be honest here. I doubt ANYONE (including me) who is posting here would do a better job as congressman, president or what ever else. I think we really hvae to seperate here the gouverement and people working for it. Because the large part of it is doing what it should do. And its doing the job "alright". Not always, not everywhere but a nation particularly like the US is pretty big and its no easy job runing a state or even keeping an eye on such a big system with so many different administrations.

I sure dont think the gouvernement is doing everything alright, regardless if the German or US gouvernment. But beeing just critical for the sake of criticism seems to be a bit strange in my eyes. Generalisation ist really a good way of how to give criticism.
 
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