The government should operate in a fashion that any leaks would be really boring. Shouldn't they?
Why isn't all the information our governments are doing public? They could censor things that identify individual people and imminent troop movements. Release the troop movements in a timely fashion after it doesn't threaten their mission.
If the government operated in that way, Wikileaks would have no thunder.
And the citizens would have more tools to hold their government to account.
But the government has chosen to make things like civilian casualties a secret. And uncomfortable video of what soldier's are doing a secret. How the hell is a citizen supposed to know whether Iraq and Afghanistan is "worth it" unless they're presented with all the costs and benefits?
Also: it doesn't matter at all if a specific citizen is going to read the leaks. What matters is that it's there so that researchers can get at it, journalists, pundits, fools and hippies. A lot of people will say some stupid shit based on whatever the new information is. The good arguments will rise to the top.
The mere existence of Wikileaks has a potential chilling effect. And while it can certainly cut both ways, my opinion is that the effect is more in the public good than bad.
The 'chilling effect' works both ways, as various people in government have pointed out. If there is a threat of every private discussion being released publically, then people in government will never say anything controversial. Given your position that "the majority are rarely correct", and I can tell you from personal experience, this will entrench a coruscatingly ineffective culture of lazy groupthink which generally bubbles under the surface of the civil and military services anyway. Though those organisations require a degree of conformity to work at all, pretty much their only saving grace comes from the few people who push boundaries or think outside those constraints.
The 'chilling effect' won't just make people think before doing bad things. It will make people think before doing anything, and the result will be that nothing happens outside the norm. That will cause more endemic corruption, bad practice and inefficiency than you see currently.
As an aside, it would also make some aspects (such as diplomatic negotiations) almost impossible, because the way they fundamentally work as human interactions require a level of secrecy (i.e. your real position) which is covered by either imperfect knowledge or a bluff (i.e. your assumped position). In this, it mirrors all human interactions - you've told a white lie, right? - and unless you can change human psychology first, you might want to be careful before you throw away our ability to negotiate at a state or government level. For example, all those poorly negotiated private-public contracts which screw the taxpayer out of money? Those are partly based on the private side having a wealth of information about the government side which isn't reciprocated, which they use to unfairly influence the negotiation.
Second, I see the bad effects day in and out, because I work with the consequences of information disclosure of the kind that Wikileaks are making happen. I can only claim to experience, which you are justifiably allowed to question for all sorts of reasons, but I can make this point: you don't. You don't see the end product of the 'public bad' aspect, because by the time that it routes through to you, it is part of an amalgous whole in which you cannot differentiate what caused what. The already-happened consequences and chaos that certain aspects of government have been thrown into by the disclosures are genuinely frightening. But I can pretty much guarantee that though they will directly create the conditions, for example, a successful terrorist attack by the chilling effect on intelligence sharing, the most that you will ever see this related to Wikileaks is a speculative sentence at the end of a newspaper report that "this might have contributed". I can certainly guarantee that, unless Wikileaks leak themselves, you won't hear about people who died directly as a result of the disclosures, because governments cannot engage in 'tit-for-tat' information release reprisal just to prove they are right. The principle of secure information is more important.
But that is why I point out that "the Establishment" is no such thing, but a collection of individuals who generally know their job pretty well. The fact that so many of these individuals have spoken out, in the strongest terms, about the damaging effects of this trend should give smart men and women serious pause. Certainly it deserves more consideration than simply a childish 70's protestor dismissal of "well 'the Establishment' would deny it".
If more people don't honestly consider the consequences of demanding total disclosure, the next serious piece you read on it will be a theory in 50-odd years time arguing how the new millenial drive for 'freedom of information' set up an environment which seriously undermined Western society and global relations for the 21st century.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
PS The basic flaw of "information should be free" can be succinctly demonstrated with the following question:
Can I have your name, address, date of birth, family details, bank account and PIN number please?
Good lord.
Obviously it would be imprudent to leak things like passwords, code names, identities of agents, identities of informants, and etc. And as far as I'm aware, the Times et. all explicitly avoided doing anything of the sort, and, in fact, went to painstaking length to avoid disclosing anything that could damage current combat operations.
In any case, I am entirely comfortable with jeopardizing US National Security objectives in at least some classes of case. For instance, when it was decided that we would fabricate a military incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, that was arguably within our national interests--it was decided so by the people in charge, at least--but nonetheless, the world would have been much better off had the lie been exposed in a timelier fashion. Hell, if any of the internal documents surrounding Vietnam, from analysts claiming the war was primarily to avoid embarrassment to the strategy documents outlining a campaign of unrestricted attacks on civilian targets, it would have done the world a lot of good.
Let's not forget that the legal doctrine of "state secrets" was actually founded on a case where the air force suppressed documents, that, upon their eventual declassification, contained no noteworthy secrets at all--instead, they contained evidence of negligence pertinent to a court case against them. There should be no presupposition at all that the ability to avoid oversight will be used responsibly. It certainly has not been in the past. If our goal is to avoid the international damage done to our credibility by embarrassing leaks, then we'd be best off by having a government that doesn't do discreditable things.
That isn't what "information wants to be free" means.
Given that the capability exists, information that is intended to be kept secret is only going to remain so as long as everyone with access to it considers that this should be the case. As such, organisations in the public eye are probaby going to have to come to terms with the idea that if they are doing something that is, or is widely considered to be, questionable, then information is going to leak.
If that check had existed prior to the commencement of operations in Afghanistan, it's worth considering if they would have commenced at all. Certainly it's going to be a consideration the next time military action is contemplated.
I didn't say "information wants to be free". I understand what that means.
I said "information should be free", which is what most people here are arguing. "Information wants to be free" is essentially a way of absolving responsibility for disclosure by saying "well it will happen anyway" and so you might as well help it along. This is patently bollocks, since human society for millenia have managed to keep some information secret, and the fact that it is easier to disseminate stuff nowadays does not mean it is inevitable. A large part of keeping things secret is understanding why they should be secret. Which is what my 'ridiculous' question indicates. Who wants to give me their bank account and PIN number? Nobody has volunteered so far. Does anyone not understand why not?
It doesn't really matter whether Wikileaks commands public support or not. The entire point of the exercise is to demonstrate that pretty much anything can be leaked by anyone, without necessarily exposing themselves.
It's going to continue happening, Wikileaks, Assange, or no.
I agree with your second sentence entirely, and yes Wikileaks is just a conduit for an idea. That's why it is important to discuss the flaws & consequences of the basic idea that "information should be free", because the only thing that will stop people doing it is an understanding of how fucking stupid that is. Which is the only reason I bother spending my time typing this.
Only if that argument fails, will it inevitably continue to happen.
PS The basic flaw of "information should be free" can be succinctly demonstrated with the following question:
Can I have your name, address, date of birth, family details, bank account and PIN number please?
Well, I don't necessarily agree that any and all information should be free. But your "question" is ridiculous. If there was a culture of total transparency, then why would it matter if you had any of that information? In a world of full transparency, you would be unable to defraud me or do anything negative to me with that information anyway.
Wrong, that's conflating information with effect (such as taking an action or physical possession).
It's a fairly pointless discussion based around an impossible world of perfect information, but the anti-proof for that would be a heart surgeon. The heart surgeon might have perfect information about my heart, and know far more about it than I ever could, but until he cuts me open and does something, it remains my heart. In the slightly unsettling situation where he decides to have a psychotic episode, flip out, wantonly remove my heart and take it away with him, no amount of perfect information that it is him who has done it will help me much, because I am still lying dead on an operating table.
The only world of perfect information which would change that situation would be prescience, which I assume isn't part of your argument.
PS That isn't the point of the question either, which is in the post above.
The mere existence of Wikileaks has a potential chilling effect. And while it can certainly cut both ways, my opinion is that the effect is more in the public good than bad.
The 'chilling effect' works both ways, as various people in government have pointed out. If there is a threat of every private discussion being released publically, then people in government will never say anything controversial. Given your position that "the majority are rarely correct", and I can tell you from personal experience, this will entrench a coruscatingly ineffective culture of lazy groupthink which generally bubbles under the surface of the civil and military services anyway. Though those organisations require a degree of conformity to work at all, pretty much their only saving grace comes from the few people who push boundaries or think outside those constraints.
The 'chilling effect' won't just make people think before doing bad things. It will make people think before doing anything, and the result will be that nothing happens outside the norm. That will cause more endemic corruption, bad practice and inefficiency than you see currently.
As an aside, it would also make some aspects (such as diplomatic negotiations) almost impossible, because the way they fundamentally work as human interactions require a level of secrecy (i.e. your real position) which is covered by either imperfect knowledge or a bluff (i.e. your assumped position). In this, it mirrors all human interactions - you've told a white lie, right? - and unless you can change human psychology first, you might want to be careful before you throw away our ability to negotiate at a state or government level. For example, all those poorly negotiated private-public contracts which screw the taxpayer out of money? Those are partly based on the private side having a wealth of information about the government side which isn't reciprocated, which they use to unfairly influence the negotiation.
Second, I see the bad effects day in and out, because I work with the consequences of information disclosure of the kind that Wikileaks are making happen. I can only claim to experience, which you are justifiably allowed to question for all sorts of reasons, but I can make this point: you don't. You don't see the end product of the 'public bad' aspect, because by the time that it routes through to you, it is part of an amalgous whole in which you cannot differentiate what caused what. The already-happened consequences and chaos that certain aspects of government have been thrown into by the disclosures are genuinely frightening. But I can pretty much guarantee that though they will directly create the conditions, for example, a successful terrorist attack by the chilling effect on intelligence sharing, the most that you will ever see this related to Wikileaks is a speculative sentence at the end of a newspaper report that "this might have contributed". I can certainly guarantee that, unless Wikileaks leak themselves, you won't hear about people who died directly as a result of the disclosures, because governments cannot engage in 'tit-for-tat' information release reprisal just to prove they are right. The principle of secure information is more important.
But that is why I point out that "the Establishment" is no such thing, but a collection of individuals who generally know their job pretty well. The fact that so many of these individuals have spoken out, in the strongest terms, about the damaging effects of this trend should give smart men and women serious pause. Certainly it deserves more consideration than simply a childish 70's protestor dismissal of "well 'the Establishment' would deny it".
If more people don't honestly consider the consequences of demanding total disclosure, the next serious piece you read on it will be a theory in 50-odd years time arguing how the new millenial drive for 'freedom of information' set up an environment which seriously undermined Western society and global relations for the 21st century.
So...you don't believe that the government itself is an establishment that represents the collective actions, policies, and so forth of the individuals that comprise it, abstract of those individuals?
So...you don't believe that the government itself is an establishment that represents the collective actions, policies, and so forth of the individuals that comprise it, abstract of those individuals?
Yes, I do. But it doesn't follow that every decision, thought or action of every individual in the government is part of that collective. That is the fallacy that "well the Establishment would say that" always falls into.
For example, I'm about to cook dinner. I'm pretty sure - aside from the general assertion that it is a good idea to feed employees - my choice and preparation of dinner isn't a specific representation of government policy simply because I'm in the military.
But I can pretty much guarantee that though they will directly create the conditions, for example, a successful terrorist attack by the chilling effect on intelligence sharing,
Keeping secrets of what needs to be done in order to stop terrorists causes society to have a rosy view of how to stop terrorists.
I'm no expert. Maybe the only way to keep America safe is to shoot at people who look like civilians. Maybe that's just an ugly truth to the world and we all have to grow up and accept civilian casualties, assassinations and water-boarding.
But because the public is shielded from this information, we have no opportunity to grow up and see global struggle and global politics for what it really is. To us, the sheltered western people, we think it's possible to fight a terrorists ethically.
But we can't have the discussion of the balance between what tactics we're willing to have our soldiers use with how safe we expect our soldiers to make us without disclosure.
I said "information should be free", which is what most people here are arguing. "Information wants to be free" is essentially a way of absolving responsibility for disclosure by saying "well it will happen anyway" and so you might as well help it along. This is patently bollocks, since human society for millenia have managed to keep some information secret, and the fact that it is easier to disseminate stuff nowadays does not mean it is inevitable. A large part of keeping things secret is understanding why they should be secret. Which is what my 'ridiculous' question indicates. Who wants to give me their bank account and PIN number? Nobody has volunteered so far. Does anyone not understand why not?
If you were my financial manager, you'd have access to my bank account. I would quite likely also give you money, do the kind of things a financial manager does.
If you then start refusing to tell me what you're doing with my money, our relationship is going to deteriorate. If you start telling me that this has to kept a secret because it'll let you increase my money more than if it's still a secret, I'm quite probably still going to be feeling a mite suspicious. If I start catching you, or maybe just your company, in outright lies where you tell me I make more money if it's kept a secret and then it turns out I clearly didn't, then you keep telling me it has to be a secret...
There's a pretty hefty difference with you telling me wha you're doing with money I'm giving you, and you just randomly demanding access to the whereabouts of my money. This isn't about exchanging information between private individuals, this is about exchanging information between the provider/client who enables and appoints a set of agents to perform a series of task in his stead.
This isn't to say that I don't think Assange is an ass, or that I think that all workings of a government should be public. What I do think is that when the secret becomes routine - when you start thinking that the basic statistics about what the fuck is actually going on out there in the name of the citizenry - it's time to be worried. Are there better systems than random mass-info dumps? Absolutely. Do we have them? Not really.
(Also, I'm not sure what's with the insistance on focusing on Assange's character. He's an ass. I don't think he raped anyone - based on the reports I read - but sure as fuck wasn't particularly gentlemanly and if it was my sisters I'd have punched the fucker. But he's just a face, and the whole notion that I should trust the analysts of the organization behind him less "because he's an ass", while trusting analysts belonging to organizations that have motive to release certain information rather than correct information, strikes me as pretty strange.)
Pretty much every person - certainly from the government, but also other areas which deal with leaks / information, such as the mainstream media or NGOs - who has commented, publically or privately, officially or unofficially, on what Assange is doing has condemned his actions.
Shocking. The establishment doesn't like someone rocking the boat and standing up to them.
Shocking. You entirely managed to miss my point, which was that "the establishment" is a collection of individuals, and in this case, includes a significant proportion of "non-establishment" voices from the media and NGO world. "The establishment" is a tired assertion of mass-groupthink which allows people who disagree with the government to dismiss anyone who doesn't agree with them without any actual engagement or discussion of the issue. Much as some people on this thread are doing, in fact.
Apparently you find it easier to believe that one person is right and hundreds of thousands of others are in some sort of government mind-meld which means they are all toeing "the establishment" line. It seems to have escaped you that there is a more likely option in that situation.
Please. The media is very much a part of the establishment. And I don't just mean stuff like Fox News being the propaganda arm of a major party.
All these people have a vested interest in the status quo. Thus it should surprise no one that they will defend it.
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This isn't to say that I don't think Assange is an ass, or that I think that all workings of a government should be public. What I do think is that when the secret becomes routine - when you start thinking that the basic statistics about what the fuck is actually going on out there in the name of the citizenry - it's time to be worried. Are there better systems than random mass-info dumps? Absolutely. Do we have them? Not really.
(Also, I'm not sure what's with the insistance on focusing on Assange's character. He's an ass. I don't think he raped anyone - based on the reports I read - but sure as fuck wasn't particularly gentlemanly and if it was my sisters I'd have punched the fucker. But he's just a face, and the whole notion that I should trust the analysts of the organization behind him less "because he's an ass", while trusting analysts belonging to organizations that have motive to release certain information rather than correct information, strikes me as pretty strange.)
While I don't think saying "Assange is an asshole" is really relevant, I think focusing on Assange's character is pretty relevant.
I mean, the ultimate issue (for me anyway) here is that the decision for what should and should not be classified has now, essentially, been left up to Assange or whoever else on Wikileaks. And frankly, what do you know about him? Should his judgement in these matters be trusted? And so on. These are all relevant questions and all very much based on his character.
That isn't what "information wants to be free" means.
Given that the capability exists, information that is intended to be kept secret is only going to remain so as long as everyone with access to it considers that this should be the case. As such, organisations in the public eye are probaby going to have to come to terms with the idea that if they are doing something that is, or is widely considered to be, questionable, then information is going to leak.
If that check had existed prior to the commencement of operations in Afghanistan, it's worth considering if they would have commenced at all. Certainly it's going to be a consideration the next time military action is contemplated.
I didn't say "information wants to be free". I understand what that means.
I said "information should be free", which is what most people here are arguing. "Information wants to be free" is essentially a way of absolving responsibility for disclosure by saying "well it will happen anyway" and so you might as well help it along. This is patently bollocks, since human society for millenia have managed to keep some information secret, and the fact that it is easier to disseminate stuff nowadays does not mean it is inevitable. A large part of keeping things secret is understanding why they should be secret. Which is what my 'ridiculous' question indicates. Who wants to give me their bank account and PIN number? Nobody has volunteered so far. Does anyone not understand why not?
Fair enough, I misread.
I am not, personally, one that would argue that every piece of information should be free. I'm actually a fairly strong privacy advocate, and can often be found objecting vociferously to the volumes of data collected and retained by governments and other organisations.
I wasn't suggesting that it is inevitable that all information will eventually be published anyway. What I am saying is that it is easier than it has ever been for anyone that wants to leak something to do so. I don't think that Wikileaks shouldn't exist, and I don't think that they necessarily should be held responsible for the consequences of leaking whatever information is submitted to them. These are moot points in any case. It is now possible for anyone to anonymously leak information. The technical abilities to do so are trivial and within the reach of anyone with an internet connection and a will to perform the necessary research.
Ultimately, the debate can only ever be about whether a particular piece of information should have been leaked. With the Afghan war diaries, I'm ambivalent. I'm yet to be convinced that the leak particularly put anyone in danger, and Wikileaks can always claim the mitigating factor of having asked the Pentagon et al what information needed to be redacted, and getting no cooperation. With regard to these diplomatic cables, I don't know. It depends what's in them when they're eventually published.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I mean, the ultimate issue (for me anyway) here is that the decision for what should and should not be classified has now, essentially, been left up to Assange or whoever else on Wikileaks. And frankly, what do you know about him? Should his judgement in these matters be trusted? And so on. These are all relevant questions and all very much based on his character.
Well, it also quite importantly depends on who's willing to leak to him and what they're willing to leak.
* Included are 251,287 cables and 8,000 diplomatic directives
* One cable dates back to 1966, but most are newer than 2004
* 9,005 documents date from the first two months of 2010
* Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde and El País have had access to the files and reviewed them.
According to Der Spiegel, just over half of the cables are not subject to classification, 40.5 percent are classified as "confidential" and only six percent or 15,652 dispatches as "secret." 2.5 million U.S. employees have access to SIPRNET material, where these cables originated.
just over half of the cables are not subject to classification
While I don't think saying "Assange is an asshole" is really relevant, I think focusing on Assange's character is pretty relevant.
I mean, the ultimate issue (for me anyway) here is that the decision for what should and should not be classified has now, essentially, been left up to Assange or whoever else on Wikileaks. And frankly, what do you know about him? Should his judgement in these matters be trusted? And so on. These are all relevant questions and all very much based on his character.
That's the thing though, he is just a face. They're not gonna push out 400 000 documents, contact 3-4 different serious newspapers while running a massive webservice with just one guy and a few dozen others living in their mom's basements. As an organization, they have to be a lot bigger than that, and the idea that Assange - on account of being the most visible person/official spokesperson - has any kind of editorial influence seems a bit... farfetched.
One can object to the fact that the people behind it are secret - but then again, doing so while being perfectly willing to accept the word of Nameless Employee who might actually have something to lose from disclosing reality - but Assange himself is probably just the guy they decided was totally expendable. And he adores the attention anyway.
Maybe I just havn't been keeping up, but is there any other name assosciated with wikileaks as an organization rather than as a source to that organization?
I was wondering why it was slow. But "cyberattack" is such a poor word. It doesn't look like much more than a poorly executed DDoS attack since I can still reach it.
And DDoS is not a hack. BBC should be smarter than that.
I was wondering why it was slow. But "cyberattack" is such a poor word. It doesn't look like much more than a poorly executed DDoS attack since I can still reach it.
And DDoS is not a hack. BBC should be smarter than that.
If it's poorly executed then DING DING, the CIA are doing it.
I saw Assange when he was on Colbert Report and I immediately hated the douchebag. He's a piece of shit that's, unfortunately, in charge of something useful.
* Included are 251,287 cables and 8,000 diplomatic directives
* One cable dates back to 1966, but most are newer than 2004
* 9,005 documents date from the first two months of 2010
* Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde and El País have had access to the files and reviewed them.
According to Der Spiegel, just over half of the cables are not subject to classification, 40.5 percent are classified as "confidential" and only six percent or 15,652 dispatches as "secret." 2.5 million U.S. employees have access to SIPRNET material, where these cables originated.
just over half of the cables are not subject to classification
Yes that's nice.
Meanwhile there's still over a hundred thousand classified documents.
"Wikileaks less criminal than initial press releases implied" is not terribly convincing.
You know, there's actually so many possible suspects on this one it's hard to say who's most likely to be behind it.
About 5 seconds rational thought suggests that all of the state "possible suspects" which I'm sure will be blamed have absolutely nothing to gain from denying access to the website for a small period and a huge amount to lose.
It's also not much of a DDOS attack that allows me to access the website 50 minutes later.
You know the number of people casually suggesting they'd be a-ok with Julian Assange being murdered by the state without trial I find unsettling.
Far more impressive and less deserving people than Assange have been murdered without trial. I'd have little to no compunction about it happening to him. But then, I generally think that playing out extreme idiocy / ideology should carry more culpability than merely a shrug of the shoulders.
I just think that it would be a spectactularly unhelpful way of going about it. A certain mildly delusional group of people would see it as some kind of martyrdom to the cause of assholism, and be encouraged to follow suit. He just belongs behind bars.
The cables published today reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material...
Other fun stuff, which will largely not be fun for anyone involved.
While I don't think saying "Assange is an asshole" is really relevant, I think focusing on Assange's character is pretty relevant.
I mean, the ultimate issue (for me anyway) here is that the decision for what should and should not be classified has now, essentially, been left up to Assange or whoever else on Wikileaks. And frankly, what do you know about him? Should his judgement in these matters be trusted? And so on. These are all relevant questions and all very much based on his character.
That's the thing though, he is just a face. They're not gonna push out 400 000 documents, contact 3-4 different serious newspapers while running a massive webservice with just one guy and a few dozen others living in their mom's basements. As an organization, they have to be a lot bigger than that, and the idea that Assange - on account of being the most visible person/official spokesperson - has any kind of editorial influence seems a bit... farfetched.
Those are all assumptions. You really don't know whether they actually have thousands of well-qualified people vetting documents, or another couple of people like Assange just reading a few before falling asleep. Therein lies the problem. Precisely the fact that they choose Assange to be the best qualified spokesperson might make one legitimately concerned about who the others are.
One can object to the fact that the people behind it are secret - but then again, doing so while being perfectly willing to accept the word of Nameless Employee who might actually have something to lose from disclosing reality - but Assange himself is probably just the guy they decided was totally expendable. And he adores the attention anyway.
First, "Nameless Employee" (who I presume you mean someone in some government somewhere) is nothing of the kind. Government spokespersons are, by virtue of their job, named. So are most of the people at the top of the chain who carry the can for even spy agencies. Pretty much all other government employees are published and accountable somewhere. More to the point, in most democracies, ultimately it is politicians who are accountable, and you have a way of holding them accountable every few years.
Wikileaks has, let's see...precisely none of that at all.
Second, yes you can object to the fact that people behind WikiLeaks are secret, and I'm going to have to resort to big letters now, because nobody seems to acknowledge this:
They are complete fucking hypocrites
They preach freedom of everyone else's information but their own. You may not have a problem with that. But frankly, I and plenty of other people do. What right do you or WikiLeaks claim to insist that you can release my information? This applies to government information, which is as much mine as it is yours? Did the nation or world vote on this at some point and I missed it?
No. They are stealing what belongs to other people. They are then using it in direct contravention to the wishes of those people. As a result, they are causing damage and disruption on a scale that reaches from the personal to the international.
In any other walk of life, you would be happy that these people were put behind bars. What they are doing amounts to at best mass vandalism, and at worst they are getting people killed. But for some reason, some nebulous ideological principle that nobody has quite been able to explain for me yet, lots of people seem to think that this is OK. Again...why?
You know I almost wonder if its not an actual DDOS attack and instead just the servers being overloaded by everyone trying to read the site.
They'd be able to tell based on historical traffic around releases, and the source of the traffic that's slowing things down.
You're assuming that WikiLeaks act in a rational and trustworthy manner in the way they accuse people of doing shit to them. See: accusations of rape being a smear campaign; accusations of being followed by CIA agents everywhere; etc etc.
You know I almost wonder if its not an actual DDOS attack and instead just the servers being overloaded by everyone trying to read the site.
They'd be able to tell based on historical traffic around releases, and the source of the traffic that's slowing things down.
You're assuming that WikiLeaks act in a rational and trustworthy manner in the way they accuse people of doing shit to them. See: accusations of rape being a smear campaign; accusations of being followed by CIA agents everywhere; etc etc.
The material includes a reference to Vladimir Putin as an "alpha-dog", Hamid Karzai as being "driven by paranoia" and Angela Merkel allegedly "avoids risk and is rarely creative". There is also a comparison between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler.
Godwin's law prove true again.
I hope this means that Vladimir PUtin will be a new alpha-dog of the week at Colbert Report.
The most controversial target was the leadership of the United Nations. That directive requested the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top UN officials and their staff and details of "private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys".
When the Guardian put this allegation to Crowley, the state department spokesman said: "Let me assure you: our diplomats are just that, diplomats. They do not engage in intelligence activities. They represent our country around the world, maintain open and transparent contact with other governments as well as public and private figures, and report home. That's what diplomats have done for hundreds of years."
WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department's fears, it also initially intends to post only limited cable extracts, and to redact identities.
Secrecy of the people revealing this sort of information is fairly common. Anonymity when publishing damaging shit goes back very far and obviously makes sense.
You know I almost wonder if its not an actual DDOS attack and instead just the servers being overloaded by everyone trying to read the site.
They'd be able to tell based on historical traffic around releases, and the source of the traffic that's slowing things down.
You're assuming that WikiLeaks act in a rational and trustworthy manner in the way they accuse people of doing shit to them. See: accusations of rape being a smear campaign; accusations of being followed by CIA agents everywhere; etc etc.
Are you responding to the right post? :?
Yes. I assume "They'd" in your post referred to WikiLeaks? You are relying on their characterisation of the site going down as a DDOS attack. Shadow pointed out that it might just be a lot of people trying to sign on.
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Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
Diplomats don't engage in intelligence activities?
You know I almost wonder if its not an actual DDOS attack and instead just the servers being overloaded by everyone trying to read the site.
They'd be able to tell based on historical traffic around releases, and the source of the traffic that's slowing things down.
You're assuming that WikiLeaks act in a rational and trustworthy manner in the way they accuse people of doing shit to them. See: accusations of rape being a smear campaign; accusations of being followed by CIA agents everywhere; etc etc.
Are you responding to the right post? :?
Yes. I assume "They'd" in your post referred to WikiLeaks? You are relying on their characterisation of the site going down as a DDOS attack. Shadow pointed out that it might just be a lot of people trying to sign on.
"So many people are accessing it that we can't keep up" works just as well as "someone is attacking us" for PR purposes. There's no incentive to lie in this one case.
In fact, the former would work better against an attacker since it lets WikiLeaks benefit from their efforts.
The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size.
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Why isn't all the information our governments are doing public? They could censor things that identify individual people and imminent troop movements. Release the troop movements in a timely fashion after it doesn't threaten their mission.
If the government operated in that way, Wikileaks would have no thunder.
And the citizens would have more tools to hold their government to account.
But the government has chosen to make things like civilian casualties a secret. And uncomfortable video of what soldier's are doing a secret. How the hell is a citizen supposed to know whether Iraq and Afghanistan is "worth it" unless they're presented with all the costs and benefits?
Also: it doesn't matter at all if a specific citizen is going to read the leaks. What matters is that it's there so that researchers can get at it, journalists, pundits, fools and hippies. A lot of people will say some stupid shit based on whatever the new information is. The good arguments will rise to the top.
The 'chilling effect' works both ways, as various people in government have pointed out. If there is a threat of every private discussion being released publically, then people in government will never say anything controversial. Given your position that "the majority are rarely correct", and I can tell you from personal experience, this will entrench a coruscatingly ineffective culture of lazy groupthink which generally bubbles under the surface of the civil and military services anyway. Though those organisations require a degree of conformity to work at all, pretty much their only saving grace comes from the few people who push boundaries or think outside those constraints.
The 'chilling effect' won't just make people think before doing bad things. It will make people think before doing anything, and the result will be that nothing happens outside the norm. That will cause more endemic corruption, bad practice and inefficiency than you see currently.
As an aside, it would also make some aspects (such as diplomatic negotiations) almost impossible, because the way they fundamentally work as human interactions require a level of secrecy (i.e. your real position) which is covered by either imperfect knowledge or a bluff (i.e. your assumped position). In this, it mirrors all human interactions - you've told a white lie, right? - and unless you can change human psychology first, you might want to be careful before you throw away our ability to negotiate at a state or government level. For example, all those poorly negotiated private-public contracts which screw the taxpayer out of money? Those are partly based on the private side having a wealth of information about the government side which isn't reciprocated, which they use to unfairly influence the negotiation.
Second, I see the bad effects day in and out, because I work with the consequences of information disclosure of the kind that Wikileaks are making happen. I can only claim to experience, which you are justifiably allowed to question for all sorts of reasons, but I can make this point: you don't. You don't see the end product of the 'public bad' aspect, because by the time that it routes through to you, it is part of an amalgous whole in which you cannot differentiate what caused what. The already-happened consequences and chaos that certain aspects of government have been thrown into by the disclosures are genuinely frightening. But I can pretty much guarantee that though they will directly create the conditions, for example, a successful terrorist attack by the chilling effect on intelligence sharing, the most that you will ever see this related to Wikileaks is a speculative sentence at the end of a newspaper report that "this might have contributed". I can certainly guarantee that, unless Wikileaks leak themselves, you won't hear about people who died directly as a result of the disclosures, because governments cannot engage in 'tit-for-tat' information release reprisal just to prove they are right. The principle of secure information is more important.
But that is why I point out that "the Establishment" is no such thing, but a collection of individuals who generally know their job pretty well. The fact that so many of these individuals have spoken out, in the strongest terms, about the damaging effects of this trend should give smart men and women serious pause. Certainly it deserves more consideration than simply a childish 70's protestor dismissal of "well 'the Establishment' would deny it".
If more people don't honestly consider the consequences of demanding total disclosure, the next serious piece you read on it will be a theory in 50-odd years time arguing how the new millenial drive for 'freedom of information' set up an environment which seriously undermined Western society and global relations for the 21st century.
Good lord.
Obviously it would be imprudent to leak things like passwords, code names, identities of agents, identities of informants, and etc. And as far as I'm aware, the Times et. all explicitly avoided doing anything of the sort, and, in fact, went to painstaking length to avoid disclosing anything that could damage current combat operations.
In any case, I am entirely comfortable with jeopardizing US National Security objectives in at least some classes of case. For instance, when it was decided that we would fabricate a military incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, that was arguably within our national interests--it was decided so by the people in charge, at least--but nonetheless, the world would have been much better off had the lie been exposed in a timelier fashion. Hell, if any of the internal documents surrounding Vietnam, from analysts claiming the war was primarily to avoid embarrassment to the strategy documents outlining a campaign of unrestricted attacks on civilian targets, it would have done the world a lot of good.
Let's not forget that the legal doctrine of "state secrets" was actually founded on a case where the air force suppressed documents, that, upon their eventual declassification, contained no noteworthy secrets at all--instead, they contained evidence of negligence pertinent to a court case against them. There should be no presupposition at all that the ability to avoid oversight will be used responsibly. It certainly has not been in the past. If our goal is to avoid the international damage done to our credibility by embarrassing leaks, then we'd be best off by having a government that doesn't do discreditable things.
Don't worry, I'll pay attention to this thread again when I don't have more important stuff to do.
I didn't say "information wants to be free". I understand what that means.
I said "information should be free", which is what most people here are arguing. "Information wants to be free" is essentially a way of absolving responsibility for disclosure by saying "well it will happen anyway" and so you might as well help it along. This is patently bollocks, since human society for millenia have managed to keep some information secret, and the fact that it is easier to disseminate stuff nowadays does not mean it is inevitable. A large part of keeping things secret is understanding why they should be secret. Which is what my 'ridiculous' question indicates. Who wants to give me their bank account and PIN number? Nobody has volunteered so far. Does anyone not understand why not?
Wrong, that's conflating information with effect (such as taking an action or physical possession).
It's a fairly pointless discussion based around an impossible world of perfect information, but the anti-proof for that would be a heart surgeon. The heart surgeon might have perfect information about my heart, and know far more about it than I ever could, but until he cuts me open and does something, it remains my heart. In the slightly unsettling situation where he decides to have a psychotic episode, flip out, wantonly remove my heart and take it away with him, no amount of perfect information that it is him who has done it will help me much, because I am still lying dead on an operating table.
The only world of perfect information which would change that situation would be prescience, which I assume isn't part of your argument.
PS That isn't the point of the question either, which is in the post above.
So...you don't believe that the government itself is an establishment that represents the collective actions, policies, and so forth of the individuals that comprise it, abstract of those individuals?
Yes, I do. But it doesn't follow that every decision, thought or action of every individual in the government is part of that collective. That is the fallacy that "well the Establishment would say that" always falls into.
For example, I'm about to cook dinner. I'm pretty sure - aside from the general assertion that it is a good idea to feed employees - my choice and preparation of dinner isn't a specific representation of government policy simply because I'm in the military.
And on that note...
Keeping secrets of what needs to be done in order to stop terrorists causes society to have a rosy view of how to stop terrorists.
I'm no expert. Maybe the only way to keep America safe is to shoot at people who look like civilians. Maybe that's just an ugly truth to the world and we all have to grow up and accept civilian casualties, assassinations and water-boarding.
But because the public is shielded from this information, we have no opportunity to grow up and see global struggle and global politics for what it really is. To us, the sheltered western people, we think it's possible to fight a terrorists ethically.
But we can't have the discussion of the balance between what tactics we're willing to have our soldiers use with how safe we expect our soldiers to make us without disclosure.
I agree with this, but it does imply there needs to be someone who is assessing whether an instance falls under this subclass.
Clearly there is not even minimal effort with regards to this on Mr. Assange's part, and that's incredibly off-putting to me.
If you then start refusing to tell me what you're doing with my money, our relationship is going to deteriorate. If you start telling me that this has to kept a secret because it'll let you increase my money more than if it's still a secret, I'm quite probably still going to be feeling a mite suspicious. If I start catching you, or maybe just your company, in outright lies where you tell me I make more money if it's kept a secret and then it turns out I clearly didn't, then you keep telling me it has to be a secret...
There's a pretty hefty difference with you telling me wha you're doing with money I'm giving you, and you just randomly demanding access to the whereabouts of my money. This isn't about exchanging information between private individuals, this is about exchanging information between the provider/client who enables and appoints a set of agents to perform a series of task in his stead.
This isn't to say that I don't think Assange is an ass, or that I think that all workings of a government should be public. What I do think is that when the secret becomes routine - when you start thinking that the basic statistics about what the fuck is actually going on out there in the name of the citizenry - it's time to be worried. Are there better systems than random mass-info dumps? Absolutely. Do we have them? Not really.
(Also, I'm not sure what's with the insistance on focusing on Assange's character. He's an ass. I don't think he raped anyone - based on the reports I read - but sure as fuck wasn't particularly gentlemanly and if it was my sisters I'd have punched the fucker. But he's just a face, and the whole notion that I should trust the analysts of the organization behind him less "because he's an ass", while trusting analysts belonging to organizations that have motive to release certain information rather than correct information, strikes me as pretty strange.)
Please. The media is very much a part of the establishment. And I don't just mean stuff like Fox News being the propaganda arm of a major party.
All these people have a vested interest in the status quo. Thus it should surprise no one that they will defend it.
While I don't think saying "Assange is an asshole" is really relevant, I think focusing on Assange's character is pretty relevant.
I mean, the ultimate issue (for me anyway) here is that the decision for what should and should not be classified has now, essentially, been left up to Assange or whoever else on Wikileaks. And frankly, what do you know about him? Should his judgement in these matters be trusted? And so on. These are all relevant questions and all very much based on his character.
Fair enough, I misread.
I am not, personally, one that would argue that every piece of information should be free. I'm actually a fairly strong privacy advocate, and can often be found objecting vociferously to the volumes of data collected and retained by governments and other organisations.
I wasn't suggesting that it is inevitable that all information will eventually be published anyway. What I am saying is that it is easier than it has ever been for anyone that wants to leak something to do so. I don't think that Wikileaks shouldn't exist, and I don't think that they necessarily should be held responsible for the consequences of leaking whatever information is submitted to them. These are moot points in any case. It is now possible for anyone to anonymously leak information. The technical abilities to do so are trivial and within the reach of anyone with an internet connection and a will to perform the necessary research.
Ultimately, the debate can only ever be about whether a particular piece of information should have been leaked. With the Afghan war diaries, I'm ambivalent. I'm yet to be convinced that the leak particularly put anyone in danger, and Wikileaks can always claim the mitigating factor of having asked the Pentagon et al what information needed to be redacted, and getting no cooperation. With regard to these diplomatic cables, I don't know. It depends what's in them when they're eventually published.
Well, it also quite importantly depends on who's willing to leak to him and what they're willing to leak.
One can object to the fact that the people behind it are secret - but then again, doing so while being perfectly willing to accept the word of Nameless Employee who might actually have something to lose from disclosing reality - but Assange himself is probably just the guy they decided was totally expendable. And he adores the attention anyway.
Maybe I just havn't been keeping up, but is there any other name assosciated with wikileaks as an organization rather than as a source to that organization?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11858637
You know, there's actually so many possible suspects on this one it's hard to say who's most likely to be behind it.
And DDoS is not a hack. BBC should be smarter than that.
If it's poorly executed then DING DING, the CIA are doing it.
:winky:
Yes that's nice.
Meanwhile there's still over a hundred thousand classified documents.
"Wikileaks less criminal than initial press releases implied" is not terribly convincing.
About 5 seconds rational thought suggests that all of the state "possible suspects" which I'm sure will be blamed have absolutely nothing to gain from denying access to the website for a small period and a huge amount to lose.
It's also not much of a DDOS attack that allows me to access the website 50 minutes later.
Far more impressive and less deserving people than Assange have been murdered without trial. I'd have little to no compunction about it happening to him. But then, I generally think that playing out extreme idiocy / ideology should carry more culpability than merely a shrug of the shoulders.
I just think that it would be a spectactularly unhelpful way of going about it. A certain mildly delusional group of people would see it as some kind of martyrdom to the cause of assholism, and be encouraged to follow suit. He just belongs behind bars.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable-leak-diplomacy-crisis
Lots of stuff. Some outed things include:
The cables published today reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material...
Other fun stuff, which will largely not be fun for anyone involved.
Those are all assumptions. You really don't know whether they actually have thousands of well-qualified people vetting documents, or another couple of people like Assange just reading a few before falling asleep. Therein lies the problem. Precisely the fact that they choose Assange to be the best qualified spokesperson might make one legitimately concerned about who the others are.
First, "Nameless Employee" (who I presume you mean someone in some government somewhere) is nothing of the kind. Government spokespersons are, by virtue of their job, named. So are most of the people at the top of the chain who carry the can for even spy agencies. Pretty much all other government employees are published and accountable somewhere. More to the point, in most democracies, ultimately it is politicians who are accountable, and you have a way of holding them accountable every few years.
Wikileaks has, let's see...precisely none of that at all.
Second, yes you can object to the fact that people behind WikiLeaks are secret, and I'm going to have to resort to big letters now, because nobody seems to acknowledge this:
They are complete fucking hypocrites
They preach freedom of everyone else's information but their own. You may not have a problem with that. But frankly, I and plenty of other people do. What right do you or WikiLeaks claim to insist that you can release my information? This applies to government information, which is as much mine as it is yours? Did the nation or world vote on this at some point and I missed it?
No. They are stealing what belongs to other people. They are then using it in direct contravention to the wishes of those people. As a result, they are causing damage and disruption on a scale that reaches from the personal to the international.
In any other walk of life, you would be happy that these people were put behind bars. What they are doing amounts to at best mass vandalism, and at worst they are getting people killed. But for some reason, some nebulous ideological principle that nobody has quite been able to explain for me yet, lots of people seem to think that this is OK. Again...why?
They'd be able to tell based on historical traffic around releases, and the source of the traffic that's slowing things down.
You're assuming that WikiLeaks act in a rational and trustworthy manner in the way they accuse people of doing shit to them. See: accusations of rape being a smear campaign; accusations of being followed by CIA agents everywhere; etc etc.
Are you responding to the right post? :?
I hope this means that Vladimir PUtin will be a new alpha-dog of the week at Colbert Report.
So does anybody believe the state department?
Yes. I assume "They'd" in your post referred to WikiLeaks? You are relying on their characterisation of the site going down as a DDOS attack. Shadow pointed out that it might just be a lot of people trying to sign on.
"So many people are accessing it that we can't keep up" works just as well as "someone is attacking us" for PR purposes. There's no incentive to lie in this one case.
In fact, the former would work better against an attacker since it lets WikiLeaks benefit from their efforts.