US slams 'criminals' behind WikiLeaks

[DarkCorp]

Am I the only one who thinks there is a strange double standard here?

On the one hand people think whistleblowers themselves should be charged because they broke a law.

Wikileaks on the other hand can do the same exact thing but because they didn't "promise to not breach security", then its ok?

There is a reason the whistleblowers get in trouble. Organisations like wikileaks do not have to swear the oath because they ARE NOT meant to have access to sensitive information. If people knew they would get their hands on the info then they would be just as responsible in swearing said oaths.

So many people think legal loopholes is bullshit when it goes against their agenda yet its ok when it supports it?

As some other people here have stated in past topics. Just because you can do it and not get caught doesn't make it right.

 

[smilodom]

In present we still have practically not much free press worldwide and "Wikileaks" is probably not the only but it´s the leading one...
Nearly all others are influenced from lobbyists and political interests because most of them are owned by the great companys and they give us just halfway informations to keep us calm and silent.

Not talking about real background news whose are more and more rare to get possesion off...

 

[Bulero]

Not talking about real background news whose are more and more rare to get possesion off...

I'll never understand why a man wants to fan the fire between his ears with knowledge that can't save him. Ignorance is wisdom.

 

[smilodom]

It´s NOT a question of law or if it´s against or even a loophole.
The only security they broke is the one of the great companys and there interests to keep on the wheelings and dealings they made.
We are in the need to point it out through organizations like "Wikileaks"...

Now it´s the turning point if we fail now the US goverment will just create the rules like they did in the past to ristrict our freedom and our rights of self determination.

EDIT Just don´t want to comment such a stupid contribution by the last member of this fabulous forum..

 

[Little Robot]

It's true! Damn them! Always taking away our simple human rights of self-determination by fixing their own security holes and following up on rape charges!

 

[.Pixote.]

Frankly, shutting down an organization dedicated to stealing and releasing random secrets without any thought or moderation will sure as Hell not signify the end of the free press. That's just indefensibly wrong.

Get your facts right....Wikileaks does not steal data -

WikiLeaks is a non-profit media organization dedicated to bringing important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for independent sources around the world to leak information to our journalists. We publish material of ethical, political and historical significance while keeping the identity of our sources anonymous, thus providing a universal way for the revealing of suppressed and censored injustices.

People go there to publish information, just like a newspaper or television station. Why hasn't the authorities gone after the publishers of the El Pais in Spain, The Guardian in Britain, Der Spiegel in Germany and the The New York Times, because that would be seen as an attack on the freedom of speech and would blow up in their faces...it's easier to put the blame on Wikileaks, and not the poor bastard (PFC Bradley Manning - 22), who is locked up in a Military Prison somewhere in the States.

The way I see it - the U.S is rubbish at keeping secrets, and dealing with the secrets that have been leaked...the smart person would have drawn as little attention to the situation as possible and simply given a "no comment" when asked.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

Am I the only one who thinks there is a strange double standard here?

On the one hand people think whistleblowers themselves should be charged because they broke a law.

Wikileaks on the other hand can do the same exact thing but because they didn't "promise to not breach security", then its ok?

It's okay because Wikileaks is a journalistic publication and are in no way responsible for the leak. It's the first amendment, freedom of the press and, to a lesser extent, freedom of speech. If there is a conviction of any crime then it means that anyone who reports on a Watergate using information from an informant like Deepthroat in the future would be prosecutable.

There is a reason the whistleblowers get in trouble. Organisations like wikileaks do not have to swear the oath because they ARE NOT meant to have access to sensitive information. If people knew they would get their hands on the info then they would be just as responsible in swearing said oaths.

How do you figure? Wikileaks would be under no obligation to swear any such oath, least of all to countries which it's staff do not belong to.

It's true! Damn them! Always taking away our simple human rights of self-determination by fixing their own security holes and following up on rape charges!

They aren't fixing security problems, they are attempting to prosecute a journalistic publication's owner and founder instead of restricting access to files in a more logical manner than security clearance levels. I have heard absolutely nothing about plans to change access to only files relevant to one's work, like how most organizations operate.

As for the rape charges, they are a crock of shit and really boil down to the surprise sex charge as it's the only prosecutable charge. It's a law which is so absurd that no other country in the world has it.

Why hasn't the authorities gone after the publishers of the El Pais in Spain, The Guardian in Britain, Der Spiegel in Germany and the The New York Times, because that would be seen as an attack on the freedom of speech and would blow up in their faces...it's easier to put the blame on Wikileaks, and not the poor bastard (PFC Bradley Manning - 22), who is locked up in a Military Prison somewhere in the States.

That's another problem, if Wikileaks was in the wrong then every media organization who has used the information leaked by them are in the wrong. I was actually flabbergasted by the NY Times reporter who leaked the story saying that Wikileaks had broken the law and should be prosecuted.

The whole thing has been handled extremely poorly and overreacted to by the US government.

 

[Bad_Karma]

@ UncannyGarlic and .Pixote
There's a difference between the classic investigative journalistic magazines and wikileaks. The classic magazines don't only leak information, they filter them and make a real article to it, with adding further information and such. Also they don't focus only on such things.

Their 'buisness plan' might read something like the following:
-Hire people to research information through legal ways, and if a turstable sources supplies other information carefully treat them and double-check them.
-Protect your sources as far as they're not too criminal.
-Try to inform the citiziens with information about wrong-doings they should know about.
-Use legal means when you get into trouble in terms of contracts and scuh things.

The 'buisness plan' of wikileaks would more read like:
-Give informants, who most definately are criminal, a save haven to publish their information, with only limited editorial of the data and most likely not even the possibility of double-checking given informations.
-Protect your sources automatically, even if they seemingly want to reenact revange on someone.
-Try to inform the public of every doing of 'THEM'.
-Use all means when reacting to problems in terms of contracts and such.

Not to forget that a classic magazine is stationary in one country and can be hold responsible for wrong-doings, while we now see how wikileaks and their follower react to charges against Assange (the charges, indifferent how dumb they are, are there and are 'justified') or when former 'buisness partners' no longer want to deal with this organisiation.

So the difference is really that Wikileaks main-field is dealing with stolen data, while the main-field of other classic magazines is dealing with legal informations.

---edit---

Wow, this whole wikileaks is still entertaining. I mean Putin saying the arrest of Assange being a setback for democracy.
Wonderful - well it would be more wonderful if it wasn't real and just a sitcom, but well...

 

[Sander]

Another problem with Wikileaks is the idea that it's 'whistleblowing'. Whistleblowing on what practices, exactly? Wikileaks is nothing more than a giant datadump at this point.

 

[Brother None]

Oh come now, they do good things every now and then like the protest against Scientology.

No. That would be exactly why I dislike them. They decide they don't like Scientology so it shouldn't exist? I don't like Scientology either, but who are they to make that determination? Who is watching over their shoulder? They claim to fight for freedom of information because that makes democracy work better, yet their methodology is that of unchecked vigilantes. Who watches the watchmen? Or rather, who watches the bored hooligans? Fuck them.

I have an issue with the Swiss shutting down the bank account for legal fees and the payment companies disallowing payment to his accounts without valid reason.

The valid reason is they were told to do so. People seem to think legal banks should act as if they're hidden offshore bank accounts and ignore government edicts. Attacking MasterCard or Paypal over this is retarded and victimizing the wrong people.

Today Anyonmous has been hacking politie.nl and om.nl because of the arrest. Because of this, services and missing people information has been unavailable to people. Well, that certainly makes their point, doesn't it? Fuck them.

All in all, the US government is overreacting and taking some dubiously legal actions against Wikileaks.

Yeah, that's what I said.

@ "Blackut" and "Brother None" "DGT" and some more blindless followers of the apocalypse..

YOU guys are really CRAZY...

Assange is even not acused of raping...

I never said he was. Don't call me crazy over something I didn't even say.

You are just an envy person...nothing left to say

All this is a campaign to shut down "Wikileaks" and if they succeed this will be the end of democracy and the freedom of the press.

Hah. You don't seem to have a very well-balanced opinion on this. WikiLeaks is not very relevant to democracy or the press, and most people just don't care about Assange. We don't all worship him as a hero as you do, no.

On the one hand people think whistleblowers themselves should be charged because they broke a law.

Whistleblowers are generally protected by law once the legal wrong of what they blew the whistle on has been proven. So what did WikiLeaks blow the whistle on, please tell me? You're using the wrong term.

Not talking about real background news whose are more and more rare to get possesion off...

I'll never understand why a man wants to fan the fire between his ears with knowledge that can't save him. Ignorance is wisdom.

EDIT Just don´t want to comment such a stupid contribution by the last member of this fabulous forum..

Cool it you two.

Though really, smilodom, I hope you can see your opinion is pretty far from reasonable or well-informed. You're basically just acting like a fanboy, so don't be surprised if you don't convince anyone.

Now it´s the turning point if we fail now the US goverment will just create the rules like they did in the past to ristrict our freedom and our rights of self determination.

German freedom and rights of self determination? Impressive.

I can't help but feel the whole support of WikiLeaks stems from the inherent mistrust some folks have of anything government does. This isn't well-reasoned. Government has checks and balances. WikiLeaks proposes to add another check which is great, but no one is questioning either whether this check is necessary or who is then supposed to check WikiLeaks if anything the US does about it is inherently unreasonable. This is a bias against government and pro private organization that ignores that private organizations aren't inherently more reliable than government.

 

[Starseeker]

I am somewhat ambivalent towards Assange and his personal actions, but I feel that wikileaks might be providing that voice that a lot of cogs in the machine wants to speak but can not do so.

I am also somewhat curious as to his thought process. I know the stereotype of the hacker/computer programmer is usually the one who lacks social skills and has trouble reading between the lines in complex social situations. But I would think that it would be freaking obvious that by leaking these cables that a lot of important people will lose face or reputation, and some of those people are still in office or holds a lot of power. It would've been obvious that some kind of retaliation was in order.

Of course, locking him up under trumped up sex charges (well, according to a friend, that particular country's law concerning this issue is extremely feminist, so I don't know), or do something even more stupid like prosecuting him under the archaic espionage laws in the US would probably make him a martyr, and that would just make it worse. Of course, maybe he does wants to be a martyr for the cause that he believes in, who knows? There were some calls(one of them being an idiot who said it on live TV broadcast) for his assassination. If someone did attempt to assassinate Assange, I think that would only add fuel to the fire. If that were to happen, that would only add to his mystique and maybe we'll have a moder day's internet's Che on our hands.

As for the contents of the cables itself, I haven't seen any reported on the news that's like ..., uber shocking or something. Watergate it ain't (In my pov). The China/Russian/North Korean-esque reactions from the leaders in power were a lot more amusing to watch than any actual contents.

 

[Brother None]

There's absolutely nothing of interest released, at least so far. It's an interesting read if you're curious about the workings of ambassadors, but unless you're exceedingly naive, no one should be surprised at the opinions expressed. It's been hyped as hell, but uninteresting.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

Wikileaks is nothing more than a giant datadump at this point.

I agree but apparently they are considered a journalistic organization and that would be extremely difficult to argue otherwise in court. There is something to be said for licensing journalists in a manner similar to how Lawyers and Engineers are licensed in order to grant them the extra legal protection but the issue comes in how licensing is decided.

They decide they don't like Scientology so it shouldn't exist?

Actually the protest against Scientology was kick-started by the church having religious videos which are used internally taken down because they knew it made them look bad to outsiders. It was a move agaisnt censorship.

The valid reason is they were told to do so. People seem to think legal banks should act as if they're hidden offshore bank accounts and ignore government edicts. Attacking MasterCard or Paypal over this is retarded and victimizing the wrong people.

Mastercard, Visa, and Paypal should know about due process and given that Paypal makes money through people sending money on their service, one would think that they wouldn't want to block accounts prematurely. As for the legal banks comment, that's pretty much how the Swiss bank acts until they can seize the funds in accounts of illegal operations...

Today Anyonmous has been hacking politie.nl and om.nl because of the arrest. Because of this, services and missing people information has been unavailable to people. Well, that certainly makes their point, doesn't it? Fuck them.

Yeah, that's bullshit. I never said I like them, they do a lot of stupid shit but every now and then they fall on doing something good. I get the feeling that none of their shenanigans is going to be helpful this time and the more they expand their targets, the more the damage shit that shouldn't be messed with. Their DDOS attacks in general are obnoxious and generally without good cause, if any, so I have no sympathy for that portion of Anonymous.

 

[Threepwood]

There's absolutely nothing of interest released, at least so far. It's an interesting read if you're curious about the workings of ambassadors, but unless you're exceedingly naive, no one should be surprised at the opinions expressed. It's been hyped as hell, but uninteresting.

Though one does wonder, how the Italian, French, and British leaders, will react knowing such choice comments have been made.

It's almost like playground gossip, or the kind of things people read The Sun for. It may be small, but it's definitley interesting.

 

[Bad_Karma]

Wikileaks is nothing more than a giant datadump at this point.

I agree but apparently they are considered a journalistic organization and that would be extremely difficult to argue otherwise in court. There is something to be said for licensing journalists in a manner similar to how Lawyers and Engineers are licensed in order to grant them the extra legal protection but the issue comes in how licensing is decided.

I guess courts are well versed in deciding if something falls under journalism and art or not - because it's not as if not a lot of people try to use such things as protection. Well at least not in germany, but i think that also stays true for america.
So guess prosecutors and such are also well versed in arguing against such a status. For example by saying that journalists don't simply 'copy paste' sources, but write real articles and have some real editorial...

But well, let's see what US-american judges will decide...

 

[Bad_Karma]

Wikileaks is nothing more than a giant datadump at this point.

I agree but apparently they are considered a journalistic organization and that would be extremely difficult to argue otherwise in court. There is something to be said for licensing journalists in a manner similar to how Lawyers and Engineers are licensed in order to grant them the extra legal protection but the issue comes in how licensing is decided.

I guess courts are well versed in deciding if something falls under journalism and art or not - because it's not as if not a lot of people try to use such things as protection. Well at least not in germany, but i think that also stays true for america.
So guess prosecutors and such are also well versed in arguing against such a status. For example by saying that journalists don't simply 'copy paste' sources, but write real articles and have some real editorial...

But well, let's see what US-american judges will decide...

---edit---
Well i guess at least in the case of Angela "Teflon" Merkel the whole things won't stick to long in her mind *cough cough*

 

[smilodom]

@ Brother None
I am really not surprised that I couldn´t convince someone nowadays.
We are too few people we have ever been not sufficient enough to really change something for the good...even in the 68´s ... but it was worth a try..
Nevertheless I am still not tired to post my contribution to this thread that I will don´t give up to cry out my mistrust against the governements of the now so called "Neoliberal countries".

 

[TheWesDude]

How do you figure? Wikileaks would be under no obligation to swear any such oath, least of all to countries which it's staff do not belong to.

absolutely true

They aren't fixing security problems, they are attempting to prosecute a journalistic publication's owner and founder instead of restricting access to files in a more logical manner than security clearance levels. I have heard absolutely nothing about plans to change access to only files relevant to one's work, like how most organizations operate.

ok, you dont understand what actually happened.

the documents that were released were from the State Dept files. the PFC is in the military which is controlled by the DOD ( department of defense ) and both the state dept and DOD have separate security clearances and requirements for access to information.

ALL sensitive information is need-to-know. either this information was a part of his job in some shape or form, or someone somewhere made a mistake. security clearances are a minimum set of requirements/investigations into a person and their background. once you get X clearance, you do not have access to all information that has a minimum requirement of X clearance.

so the guy who got this information most likely has both a DOD and state department security clearance. having a security clearance does not guarentee that you wont ever leak information. its a best effort and sometimes does not work.

 

[DGT]

Yeah, Blakut or whatever threw me off with the "rape" thing, but you knew what I was referring to.

I can't help but feel the whole support of WikiLeaks stems from the inherent mistrust some folks have of anything government does. This isn't well-reasoned. Government has checks and balances.

I disagree; checks and balances are built in because people distrust government, a fear that IMO history demonstrates to be reasonable. Information is rarely harmful, and I don't see how you can argue that at least the citizens of any "free" nation are not entitled to any information that doesn't pose a potential security hazard.

This is a bias against government and pro private organization that ignores that private organizations aren't inherently more reliable than government.

I agree with you there, though; WikiLeaks is no more trustworthy than governments (in this case, the US; thus my focus on them in this post) are. The difference is a matter of power, private organizations having a notable lack of it in comparison with any state.

Another problem with Wikileaks is the idea that it's 'whistleblowing'. Whistleblowing on what practices, exactly? Wikileaks is nothing more than a giant datadump at this point.

Yeah, the WikiLeaks fanboys are almost as crazy as the ones that want everyone affiliated with the site prosecuted.

In terms of the Anonymous shit, Anon is very rarely right, and usually crazy. The CoS bit I agreed with Anon because the Church was trying to suppress information, something I disapprove of no matter who's doing it -- in fact, I would say most NMAers would say so, considering the general reaction here to Bethesda trying to squash negative feedback or blacklisting fansites.

Edit: Dude, all those examples would be the kinds of things I was thinking when I said information was "rarely harmful." Clearly, when information can actually be dangerous, it should be kept private. I'm not saying all information should be free, just that the vast majority of it should. In terms of the Steve Jobs thing... transparency would have made it clear he was not in fact ill, that whole scare was because companies and governments trying to lock everything down makes nonsensical "leaks" seem more credible. And yeah, I would say the health of the very public head of the company is rather consequential to everyone with an interest in the company.

 

[Bad_Karma]

@DGT
Informations can be a really dangerous.
Military informations (e.g. the nuclear codes) - dangerous when in the wrong hands.
Police informations (e.g. about an covered operation) - dangerous when in the wrong hands.
Jurisdication information (e.g. about a witness in a Mafia process) - dangerous in the wrong hands.

And so on and so on.

Not to forget that the whole idea of complete transparency of organizations and protection of personal information is problematic when you look at how organization consists of persons and their informations are therefore often intertwined.
See Steve Jobs and his healt-status. His health is naturally a private information, but than again it's damn important for the stock-holders of apple as far as it seems.
Even if you say, well Steve Jobs is a public person - is the whole board of managment 'a public person'? Their secretaries? How far goes this down?
Where's the line between public and private - and i don't think anyone will ever find a line which is good in every situation.

Transpoarency sounds great, but than again so does communism in theory (well not really in theory, both don't sound to good in theory, but in an utopian view they do).