Comment by eob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eob | Hacker News Reader

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Two reasons:

First, the "confession" -- whosever they are trying to elicit -- has more value if given out of paranoia.

Think about it this way: you have a brief glimpse into something wrong that happened, but you don't know the full story. Let's say you know 10% of the full story.

If you come forward with the evidence, the accused party need only acknowledge or refute the 10% that you've divulged.

However if you make them think you know a whole lot more than 10%, you might end up pressuring them to give a confession that will reveal a much larger amount of the wrong deed.

Second, pressuring a government to admit wrongdoing is better PR for Wikileaks than disclosing leaked information. Wikileaks is treading on delicate territory already with their mission statement. When classified information becomes whistleblower-deserving information is a debatable topic. Because of this, Wikileaks has to manage their PR very carefully, lest they be viewed as the enemy-to-all, friend-to-none. By pressuring organizations to admit wrongdoing rather than publicly accusing them of it, it's a win-win: the information gets out, and WikiLeaks doesn't have to be in the press again for leaking "stolen" information.

Those loyal to truth are often the enemy of all. We all have secrets to hide. Watching a philosopher speak the other day, he said a quote from someone I can't remember, but goes something like this: Those who introspect and attempt to confront the demons within must have more courage than a soldier on the battle field.

In this case, if the "leader of the free world" is responsible for something so dramatic that this is happening, then it is of the utmost importance to share it with the world. We must do what we can to stop abuses of power.

If we can't stop them, then we must make each of us reflect on the injustice leveled on others in order that we may have what we have. At some point, we must recognize that the evils we perpetrate are not worth it. I would love to see a resurgence of conscience, that is so poorly absent from our modern society full of invisible ills, purple pills, and political shills.

> Those who introspect and attempt to confront the demons within must have more courage than a soldier on the battle field.

Nice rhetoric, but I don't buy it. Methinks the author of said quote has never been a soldier.

I thought that too. It's one thing to think about death and another to face it. But I have faced it. 4 times I've almost died: Once I was saved from drowning, I was in two car crashes, and the last time was due to an illness. Everything went blue. My vision shrank to a pin hole and right before I passed out and collapsed, this feeling of peace came over me. I remember thinking, "This is what it is like? This is dying? It's not so bad."

Since then, I've spent more time thinking about life and death and it is through that reflection that I feel fear. I try to imagine not existing. It's hard and I come to some place of blackness which is much more terrifying than that last time I almost died, but in all fairness to soldiers, there were no bullets flying by me, bombs exploding, or adrenaline in my veins.

I knew of an economist who has to flee to the United States because he was high on Nazi's wanted men list.

woah, now that is something to be feared!

Do you have PTSD?

No, I don't think so. Not at all.

Interesting. I guess the way you wind up facing death changes things? I ride motorcycles, and every now and then there are moments you are sure you're going to die (though you may not be thinking 'die' in your head). You can taste the fear as it bubbles in the pit of your stomach. I haven't known anything more frightful in my life, except for possibly the time I was fully paralyzed (lungs included) for a half-minute and thought I broke my neck.

I'm not sure how you experienced your car crashes, but from your reaction I'm guessing they were the out-of-nowhere kind where you don't see it coming?

P.S. I am not a reckless rider. When you are a new rider, your instinct can flip out on you even when you are really ok, and even when you are a seasoned rider other cars and nature can conspire against you.

The first time I was swerving to miss a dog in the middle of a dirt road and the car spun out of control and nearly ended up in the water. The next day all my tires were flat from the sand and gravel that got lodged between the rubber tire and the rim. My windows were down and the inside of the car was full of sand and dirt and plants.

The second time, I fell asleep on the interstate. The sound of the tires on the dirt woke me up and when I pulled back onto the road, the car started doing 360ies until I crashed into a guard rail. I never fell asleep again and no one was hurt either time. I was really amazed both times that the car didn't flip. The second time, the people behind me saw me spinning out of control and like, 5 cars pulled in behind me. I feel really lucky, not only for myself, but for others I could have hurt.

I ride motorcycles too, not in a long time, but I remember times when I'd be going through a turn and hit a patch of sand or dirt and lose traction. It's quite scary. Almost went off the side of a mountain when I got my first bike and still didn't know to handle high speed tight turns. Sure knocked the invincibility out of me.

Each of those times you nearly died by accident. In combat you nearly die on purpose. Repeatedly. Can you will yourself into that fear as part of your job - regularly?

Isn't it a bit different?

Yeah, it's totally different. I didn't choose to be in those situations and I can't imagine ever choosing to be in something immeasurably greater in risk. The experiences soldiers have and the things they see. I wish they didn't. I haven't seen anything even close to that. When that philosopher said that, I really wondered if he believed it.

Philosophy, introspection... they're imagination. War is real.

I think a lot of people don't understand, and never will understand, what's so trauamtic about combat. It's not that you could die at any moment over extended periods...I came to grips with my own mortality on the flight to my first combat deployment. It's not seeing people die, most times we weren't sure if the lack of shooting was because they were dead, out of bullets, or trying to draw us out. It's not the sickening, overwhelming, stomach churning smell of the pools of blood. It's not that you are taking another life. For me, the biggest impact was the realization that I had to do my job, perfectly, or someone else would needlessly die. And my own life relied upon another person doing their job perfectly. You don't pull the trigger to stay alive, you pull the trigger so that the people keeping you alive stay alive. You don't question if the fight needs to happen...it just is happening, and your options is you and your squad dies or the enemy and their squad dies. There's no higher purpose, no moral agenda, no feelings, no dreaming of home. Eventually, the adrenaline wears off, but you can't even tell because you're basically numb to its affects.

And when you get back, even years later, people ask you about it. And you think up a couple of cheeky stories, but don't even try to tell most people what it's like because words can't accurately communicate the experience. You just continue on enjoying things in life everyone else discards as annoyances or commonplace.

Note: It's been a few years since I got out and I'm perfectly fine, well adjusted, no related problems, no PTSD, no nightmares, minor paranoia occassionally. However, the mental experience of each person is different, and many do not come out ok.

the mental 'quiet' that comes from being absolutely terrified is probably the most interesting part of motorcycling, I think. Considering the danger, it's probably not worth it, but it is very interesting how time seems to slow down, and how I seem to become more competent in times of extreme fear.

> Those loyal to truth are often the enemy of all.

And lately especially of the US govt.

Our govt. holds secrecy of classified information above morality. I am sure CIA and other such agencies have blood on their hands, and they have done many morally questionable things in the name of 'national interest'.

For them morality is only manifested as legal limits -- the amount of stuff they can get away before being found legaly guilty of something. This means two things, they will try to influence the legislative branch to widen up the laws so they can have more 'freedom' (this happened after 9/11, Patriot Act, torture laws etc)., but it also means that they will do things that are clearly illegal if they are sure these things will never be publically released or opened. I think we are dealing with the later -- as set of things that will be hidden forever but un-exectedly got out.

Wikileaks breaks govt.'s modus operandi. At some point there will be a person working for them that will hold morility above their freedom, and professional duty ( and /put tin foil hat on possibly their life). In the past it was much easier to handle and contain such leaks, this becomes much harder with the wikileaks infrastructure.

I am not defending the government here. The truth should and will come out. I just hope wikileaks people know what they are doing and know how to protect their sources. If they compramise their whistleblowers somehow, they will lose credibility.

EDIT (type): second paragraph, 'about' changed to 'above'

Should all kinds of truth always be released? I think a bit more sophistication is necessary here. For instance, should the launch codes for our nuclear weapons be made public?

I think you're offering a bit of a straw-man here. There's a vast difference between truthful documentation of past misdeeds and disclosing information that could in the future be used to cause great harm -- the difference between, "Regime X has used chemical weapons on its own people," and, "Here's how you make mustard gas."

From what I understand, mustard gas isn't hard to make at all. ("There are several routes to this compound, none of which require sophisticated technology and/or special materials.", Federation of American Scientists: Chemical Weapons Production and Storage) The process is more or less described in Wikipedia.

I was thinking more of 'we just bombed 50 civilians in Afghanistan and we are very sorry.' kind of information.

Or 'we have captured someone in Albania today, flew him to Latvia to get tortured, but it turns out it was the wrong guy. We have let him go and we are very sorry. Our government will pay him some restitution for the harm caused.'.

Then our citizens will start to ask questions. 'How come our government is doing that?', 'Why not bring them to trial?', 'What about world court? should they hold the trial instead?', 'What are our tax dollars used for?' and other such discussions.

I think a lot of this information will not compromise national security, but it is compromising our image internationally. And I think that is why it is hidden. It is shameful and wrong. Not because it can be used to launch rockets or crack our cyber-security.

And if bringing those kinds of acts to light will reduce the chance they happen again, then it's the right thing to do.

Bombing civilians shouldn't just be a mistake you sweep under the carpet, because if it were your own civilians you'd move heaven and earth to have them honored.

Sometimes that too can be classified. I do agree that should be disclosed at some point. But a third party indiscriminately leaking such material without understand the consequences is not a good way to do it. It could very well lead to many US service members getting killed, increasing Taliban support amongst the locals, perhaps even getting innocent Afghanis or Iraqis killed, etc. A better way is to get the necessary clearance, understand what's going on, and work your way through the legal chain. There is not a time crunch right now, and without a time crunch, it's best to stay inside the system.

The moral issue is very important, but sometimes getting focussed on a single moral issue can violate even higher moral mandates.

Well, the fact that they were once set to 00000000 has been made public:

http://www.damninteresting.com/ive-got-the-same-combination-...

Still, I think the idea of a small amateur (as far as spycraft is concerned) organization pressuring the DoD like this is insane. They're risking their own wellbeing.

> They're risking their own wellbeing.

For a good cause, that is. One that benefits us all.

Information in the ultimate weapon and the internet is the ideal vector for attack.

I don't understand why this comment is being voted up. What does it mean, and how does it relate to the comment it's responding to?

It means that the free and open exchange of information is the public's best weapon against corruption.

If that's so, why is Africa still a mess? We have no shortage of knowledge about the scale of corruption south of the Sahara (and north of it); the problem is that those who are prepared to fight in, let's say, Nigeria and those who want to stop corruption in Nigeria are seldom the same people.

In the end, weapons are the most important weapons. If a group of people no longer care about anything but their own power, and they're armed, the thing to do is to deprive them of those arms -- not to catalog their abuses and trust in the power of words.

Africa is a perfect example of a continent where, in many countries, there is no free press and little access to the Internet. In general you'll find a strong correlation between a lack of free press and low GDP, war, oppression etc. Yeah, causation != correlation, but obviously the reason for a corrupt government to disallow the free press is to keep itself in power.

Africa is meant to be a mess, Western powers ensure it through foreign aid, propping up dictatorship all to ensure cheap access to raw materials.

With the internet you can take on the DoD. If you know what you're doing, you can hack the DoD in such a way. Transparency all the way: look how Wikileaks are being so open on Twitter, look how we're all discussing it.

You'll have a hard time hacking past an air gap.

Actually that is the most effective kind of hacking -- past an air gap between people not between a person and a machine connected by a wire.

The most serious breaches of security are the ones done by insiders, agents and whistle-blowers, not by hacking a network or crypto protocol.

They didnt close Gitmo for no reason, its cost effective to outright eliminate people.

Except we never closed Gitmo, and even if we did, the public outcry is associated with that base's name alone. If the military were to rename and move it a couple miles over, the public perception wouldn't ever reach Gitmo levels at least as long as Obama is in office.

Which is pretty much what's happening, except it's moving to the other side of the world.

And we're just killing people rather than bringing them in.

So, there's your Gitmo solution.

And we did it before with the School of the Americas.

It was in Panama as the "U.S. Army Caribbean Training Center" and was forced to move as a result of the Panama Canal treaty. Then they changed the name to School of the America's and focused on fighting communists (with the same tactic of training what we now call insurgents).

After the killing of nuns in South America it started to get bad press (referred to as the "School of Assassins") and eventually was forced to "close" and reopen as "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation".

Gitmo seems like it is about to undergo a similar process.

Edit: Just saw that today is the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero. The people responsible were trained at the School of Americas.

http://soaw.org/

There are still yearly protests there despite the name change.

It's a rally and vigil, not a protest. I know from experience.

Depends. I was a part of a peaceful direct action on the base during the annual event.

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