woodchip wrote:While I agree Assange should be horsewhipped, OTOH how is he any different than the NYT's when they published leaks about the govt. tracking bank to find out where terrorist money was coming or even more egregious...the pentagon papers? Assange differs from regular journalist in only volume.
I always find it pleasantly ironic when the good Christian folk like wood chip scream about how Islamic countries are barbaric but they are the first people to want some type of corporal punishment for doing something they disagree with.
woodchip wrote:While I agree Assange should be horsewhipped, OTOH how is he any different than the NYT's when they published leaks about the govt. tracking bank to find out where terrorist money was coming or even more egregious...the pentagon papers? Assange differs from regular journalist in only volume.
I always find it pleasantly ironic when the good Christian folk like wood chip scream about how Islamic countries are barbaric but they are the first people to want some type of corporal punishment for doing something they disagree with.
And based on what do you think I am good christian folk?
Someone should have told Assange to quit while he was ahead, because posting information like that does not help his position.
I don't see how this is any more or less "wrong" or "right" than what he has done previously. All of these locations can be found with a simple Google search. It's amazing, really, that they haven't been targeted before now.
Someone should have told Assange to quit while he was ahead, because posting information like that does not help his position.
I don't see how this is any more or less "wrong" or "right" than what he has done previously. All of these locations can be found with a simple Google search. It's amazing, really, that they haven't been targeted before now.
It's amazing at how you can't see the obvious distinction between the ability to locate arbitrarily chosen things and a list of which particular things the U.S. considers crucial. I think you just knee jerk to come up with a rationalization without thinking it through.
Yes, you can google a bunch of places and industries etc that the U.S. may find useful....that list would be practically infinite! Now narrow it down to prime targets to get the most from your attack. Do the research, investigate the locations, interview the people involved to determine which of the thousands upon thousands of potential targets are the prime ones. You have to do that to make the list because the U.S. has classified it.
Oh, that's right...you don't have to do the legwork and risk your interest in those places and things becoming exposed because some self serving ego maniac has published them for you!! He's done a great service right?
\"Panama Canal\" is pretty dang obvious, so are United States installations in foreign countries. They might not even have to get on an airplane for those, it sounds like a brilliant plan to me.
Wow... So this is what happens when you piss in the wrong peoples corn flakes. I have mixed feelings, yes the site crossed the line, but the hammer that came down has no transparency to the public which makes it fairly alarming.
Wow... So this is what happens when you piss in the wrong peoples corn flakes. I have mixed feelings, yes the site crossed the line, but the hammer that came down has no transparency to the public which makes it fairly alarming.
I can't wait to see what's in that insurance file, if anything. I wonder if it's just like, cake recipes.
Wow... So this is what happens when you piss in the wrong peoples corn flakes.
Er... it's what happens when you act like a foreign intelligence agency with a flair for the overly dramatic. When you announce that your goal is to attack the US government*, you should not be surprised to find businesses cutting off service to you, nor should you be surprised to find US and allied governments bringing legal and law-enforcement pressure against you.
* Assange, after the cable leaks, stated something along the lines of "our goal is to make it difficult for parts of the US government to communicate with each other". Smooth move, ex-lax.
Grendel wrote:Well, cat is out of the bag. I have no problems w/ legal persuits but a witch hunt ? Why do the governments want the site down at all cost ?
Grendel wrote:Well, cat is out of the bag. I have no problems w/ legal persuits but a witch hunt ? Why do the governments want the site down at all cost ?
Probably because the releases have now become highly destabilising in a diplomatic sense. The US, rightly or wrongly is a huge component of global security and the ongoing maintenance of a fragile balance of power. Undermine the perceived integrity of US diplomacy in the minds of the worldwide public and you undermine the ability of democracies worldwide to guarantee regional security to their populace in the face of US involvement.
(I'm constantly reminded of that wonderful line from Men in Black: "A person is smart. People are scared, stupid panicky animals and you know it!")
While I stand by my earlier comments on the need for services like wikileaks, this guys is now becoming dangerous.
The Russians have a saying: "Tell the truth and run." But when you make trouble on a global scale, the running part becomes problematic. It's not just the US who want this problem to go away.
Well I still do not see the leakers immediate supervisors being held accountable. For some reason all the attention is on Assange. Remember the Abu Graib prison photos? The commanding officer was ultimately held accountable and disciplined. Yet we see nothing about who was in charge of the private who stole the info. The really big question is why the smokey mirror called Assange getting all the attention. Something doesn't smell right.
Iran maintains the leak was done on purpose in order to \"smear\" them and make them look bad to the world. Is there perhaps a grain of truth in that statement? Just throwing that out there, haha.
article wrote:Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.
If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.
WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.
article wrote:Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption....
Says the surgeon who chose to use a chainsaw instead of a scalpel to remove a tumor from a patients brain!
Will may have a point there, but I wonder how much information people would have actually had to accept before not dismissing it due to pride and the like as the U.S. has been apt to do in the past when individual things have come out.
Mjolnir wrote:Will may have a point there, but I wonder how much information people would have actually had to accept before not dismissing it due to pride and the like as the U.S. has been apt to do in the past when individual things have come out.
I don't think the quantity of the dumps content is driving anyone to get properly outraged at any one or two items considering none of us have read all of it anyway. Maybe the totality of it has added to the curiosity factor for the media but ultimately we all rely on them to tell us about anything that might give us reason to react. I don't see why the inclusion of content that has no smoking gun of wrong doing but does hurt diplomacy in general is needed. Assange wants us to see wikileaks as a branch of the media, as another legitimate outlet for news but what he did is totally irresponsible. Filtering out the gossip is usually a sign of a good outlet. He was lazy or more likely vindictive in his actions as he said 'he wanted to hurt the U.S.'s capacity to function'. That is espionage not journalism.
Well since you all are talking about it. If we find out the US cyber crime unit is committing the DDoS which by the way is a crime under the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996. What should be done about it. Also on NPR they were talking about how the US Government should release a worm that targets wikileaks information on everyones computer again another crime under the above act. Should we the people stand for this?
Of course we shouldn't stand for it, it's ridiculous.
Will, the releases are more targeted than you seem to believe. Only a very small amount of the data Wikileaks has obtained has been released. Not to mention that the news publications mentioned in that article published just as much as Wikileaks did and have not come under any fire for i.
Heretic wrote:Well since you all are talking about it. If we find out the US cyber crime unit is committing the DDoS which by the way is a crime under the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996. What should be done about it. Also on NPR they were talking about how the US Government should release a worm that targets wikileaks information on everyones computer again another crime under the above act. Should we the people stand for this?
Isn't it funny when NPR's guy is in power they have no qualms about infecting peoples comps. If Bush was in office and say, Glen Beck suggested the worm tactic, I'd have to wear my ear protectors to drown out the howling by the left.
null0010 wrote:Of course we shouldn't stand for it, it's ridiculous.
Really we are already putting up with unwarranted searches in our airports. Along with warrantless wiretaps. Vehicles roaming the street x-raying or cars and houses. The reading of our e-mails. Not to mention anything you say can and will be misconstrued and used against you in the court of law. Cameras on every street light in major cities. What's a little code running around the net deleting your files that the Government don't want you to see.
Will, the releases are more targeted than you seem to believe. Only a very small amount of the data Wikileaks has obtained has been released. Not to mention that the news publications mentioned in that article published just as much as Wikileaks did and have not come under any fire for i.
The ratio of what they have to what they released is irrelevant to my point if what they release includes the stuff that is simply inter department communications that expose no illegal activity instead it harms diplomatic relations between countries and exposes foriegn entities that helped us putting them and/or future cooperation at risk. The stuff wikileaks has released DOES include that.
If other outlets are doing the same then they too are irresponsible and let them suffer as well. Did these other outlets recieve the data from wikileaks or the punk U.S. serviceman who stole the data? Not that it excuses them either way but I'm curious.
I think we'd all agree that we need more transparency in government. Most of us could identify several issues where we'd like to see that transparency -- especially stuff like the TSA.
Wikileaks seems to be dedicated to leaking exactly NOT that stuff. Instead, they're leaking much of the stuff that actually *should* be secret. They're leaking state department cables and intelligence reports on high-value targets, when they should really be leaking evidence of government abuse and wrongdoing. Because they're not really whistleblowers, they're propagandists. They're not looking to root out corruption, but to fundamentally alter the government. They're the extreme version of corporate personhood -- a group accountable to nobody, working outside of the legal system to modify our government. (Those of you upset about the supreme court ruling that corporations have first amendment rights, you should be doubly upset about Wikileaks trying to influence American politics. At least corporations have to put in a token effort to follow campaign finance laws; wikileaks doesn't even pretend to follow US law.)
article wrote:As the U.S. Justice Department works on a legal case against WikiLeak's Julian Assange for his role in helping publish 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables, authorities are leaning toward charging Assange with spying under the Espionage Act of 1917. Legal experts warn that if there is an indictment under the Espionage Act, then any citizen who has discussed or accessed "classified" information can be arrested on "national security" grounds.
Benjamin Wittes, who specializes in legal affairs, blogged, "By its terms, it criminalizes not merely the disclosure of national defense information by organizations such as Wikileaks, but also the reporting on that information by countless news organizations. It also criminalizes all casual discussions of such disclosures by persons not authorized to receive them to other persons not authorized to receive them-in other words, all tweets sending around those countless news stories, all blogging on them, and all dinner party conversations about their contents. Taken at its word, the Espionage Act makes felons of us all."
article wrote:As the U.S. Justice Department works on a legal case against WikiLeak's Julian Assange for his role in helping publish 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables, authorities are leaning toward charging Assange with spying under the Espionage Act of 1917. Legal experts warn that if there is an indictment under the Espionage Act, then any citizen who has discussed or accessed "classified" information can be arrested on "national security" grounds.
Benjamin Wittes, who specializes in legal affairs, blogged, "By its terms, it criminalizes not merely the disclosure of national defense information by organizations such as Wikileaks, but also the reporting on that information by countless news organizations. It also criminalizes all casual discussions of such disclosures by persons not authorized to receive them to other persons not authorized to receive them-in other words, all tweets sending around those countless news stories, all blogging on them, and all dinner party conversations about their contents. Taken at its word, the Espionage Act makes felons of us all."
Which is why we have Judges and trial by jury so in this case you could find yourself guilty if your involvement in publishing the material was like that of Assange's and yet have no prosecutor interested in pursuing your arrest because you posted your opinion complete with excerpts on a blog....
Under the current law, if it is enforced, other news outlets might decide that instead of just publishing anything they can get with only ratings or political affiliation as their guide a call to the State Dept. might be a worthwhile effort to make sure they aren't going to end up in jail like the leaker or the wikileaker.
wikipedia wrote:New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), was a United States Supreme Court per curiam decision. The ruling made it possible for the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censure.
President Richard Nixon had claimed executive authority to force the Times to suspend publication of classified information in its possession. The question before the court was whether the constitutional freedom of the press, guaranteed by the First Amendment, was subordinate to a claimed need of the executive branch of government to maintain the secrecy of information. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment did protect the right of the New York Times' to print the materials.
wikipedia wrote:New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971),...
Like I said, we have Judges and courts to sort it out...
So, if you knew that what was the purpose of your The Espionage Act is falling from the sky post there Mr. Little?
Mjolnir, you're just digging a deeper hole here.
