The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters
salon.com
salon.com
It's comments like this that regularly put me off Wikileaks. If you do the job they do then I believe very strongly you should be driven by a desire for truth (not a desire to crush anyone) and also be objective. I don't always 100% see that in their actions.
Isn't there a slight irony there... (in the use of the word destroy).
If that is their aim I don't think Wikileaks can really take the moral high ground over the recently released intelligence document concerning them ;)
something as intangible as "the truth."
Possibly truth was an unfortunate choice of word. "Objective" was the key part i meant to get across.
it's a job for news organizations and journalists (some of whom might be supporters or volunteers of wikileaks) to analyze and present this released information objectively.
I disagree in the strongest way; they can and should, in my view, be entirely neutral/objective in how they release information.
Im interested in how it is arguable they should be allowed to put their opinion or spin onto a release and it be considered ok?
But they're not. They don't publish everything they get. They have an agenda. And they don't seem to have publication guidelines, which even YouTube (and every other quasi-anonymous publisher) has. In addition, everything they publish is supposed to be against the wishes of some national government somewhere.
Nope. Once they gave up neutrality, they're not a publishing channel. They're a political cause masquerading as a public service.
So... political causes don't get free speech anymore? What United States is it that I'm living in, where political causes can be censored?
Free speech is first and foremost political free speech. You have a right (and obligation) to assemble and speak on matters of public policy.
But you don't have a right to say just anything. Obviously if you decided to "out" all the spies in Bulgaria and that resulted in dozens of deaths? A crime has been committed.
I absolutely support political organizations and their right to speak out. But that's not a blank check.
So I agree that there are limitations to be placed on free speech, as the Supreme Court agrees, but in Wikileak's case people are trying to silence information that is legal by the court's judgment. And I don't think the CIA should be above the law, although it seems to disagree.
As a contrarian, my concern is that this issue is being painted with way too broad of a brush. There are limits from a U.S. constitution standpoint for free speech. There are also practical limits as to how useful to the global public an organization can be if it has an agenda and a megaphone for disseminating secrets. Lots of room for third-party players to screw with public opinion.
As a libertarian, however, I think these guys are doing the work of the angels and I support anything that levels the playing field between the individual and the state. Rock on.
I just don't think everybody involved has thought it through completely, though. Lots of sloganeering and simplistic arguments going on. And that keeps nagging at me. I get this feeling that we are missing something important.
On the other hand, here's something they did publish: a leak of their own donor list. http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/46864/. I see that as pretty good evidence of their integrity.
http://blog.chaosradio.ccc.de/index.php/2009/08/24/cr149-wik... (if you understand spoken German, that is)
Someone has to make the conscious effort to leak to WikiLeaks. Those people leak because they find the leaked material odious. WikiLeaks only gets the negative stuff, because happy employees don't leak the positive stuff.
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This whole saga seems to me like WikiLeaks is trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, they style themselves as the intelligence organization of the people, doing serious and valuable work releasing information in the people's interests. On the other hand, they get upset when other intelligence organizations try to bully them, and they play the "mean CIA detained a 17 year old kid" card.
Wikileaks provides a valuable service, but they need to tread carefully. Releasing the wrong information could get some of our spies killed. If that happens, I suspect the CIA "bullying" will get much more severe.
"At exactly the time when U.S. government secrecy is at an all-time high, the institutions ostensibly responsible for investigation, oversight and exposure have failed. The American media are largely co-opted, and their few remaining vestiges of real investigative journalism are crippled by financial constraints...
The need for independent leaks and whistle-blowing exposures is particularly acute now because, at exactly the same time that investigative journalism has collapsed, public and private efforts to manipulate public opinion have proliferated. This is exemplified by the type of public opinion management campaign detailed by the above-referenced CIA Report, the Pentagon's TV propaganda program exposed in 2008, and the ways in which private interests covertly pay and control supposedly "independent political commentators" to participate in our public debates and shape public opinion."
JYA did this with cryptome for YEARS as a hobby.
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/bj7x5/wikileaks_...
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/biz27/all_the_re...
But yeah - showing what is the money spent for would be a good idea.
I wouldn't be surprised if people don't want to pay them high salaries voluntarily.
But they are being openly paid by X media organisation with Y leanings. It's possible to adjust for bias etc.
For a start no one knows who funds Wikileaks.
No Governments and corporates is obviously a good policy. But that does not mean individuals with an agenda are not involved. What if it came to light that, to pick a random ott example, senior Chinese officials were personally donating?
All I'm pointing out is that it is unclear where their complete funding comes from; making it difficult to filter for any bias. If they take no personal payment that becomes a little easier, for me anyway, to sync.
"We don’t have to pay for our lawyer’s time. Hundred of thousands or millions dollars’ worth of lawyer time are being donated. But we still have to pay things like photocopying and court filing. And so far we have never lost a case, there were no penalties or compensations to pay." - http://stefanmey.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/leak-o-nomy-the-ec...
Authenticating the information could be done with a cryptographic signature, possibly by an unknown signer. Operate on the "last 100 0-days signed by this key when initially published were good, #101 is probably good too" basis, to build a brand.
The problem of maintaining a nice repository for the information is much much simpler, once it's already online. Google could do this for most data (just include a special string in the file), and for stuff google won't touch, there are plenty of people who would pass it around informally.
If instead it takes on its own propaganda effort do discredit a private nonprofit, something stinks.
The CIA is largely a propaganda organization, by the way. One wonders how many Iranian tweets are being funded by US tax dollars and CIA operations.
In my opinion it's completely scary to think that there might be a campaign to discredit wikileaks, but it's a huge relief to see that that document was itself leaked, suggesting that at least some government employees are aware of possible excesses committed by their departments.
If a government agency wanted to discredit wikileaks and didn't feel empowered to simply assassinate the people running it, it could use all sorts of time tested approaches to discredit/discourage it.
[citation needed]
1. On the ground intelligence gathering (ie - Bribing a reluctant member of a militant group for information on their operations and physical location). Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
2. Analysis of gathered intelligence and policy recommendation (how trustful is the information from the above described asset, does it mesh with what is already known, and if it is what course of action should be taken). Example: Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in Charlie Wilson's War, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson%27s_War
3. Clandestine operations (carrying out of policy recommendations in #2 that can't be performed by traditional military forces, say the group in question is determined to present a credible threat and needs to be neutralized but is headquartered in Iran). Example: Bay of pigs invasion, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
This is important, since a large amount of what's being discussed here hinges on what the CIA "is", or at least can be seen to be.
- We all know that the CIA funds things like opposition groups, etc. Funds them to do what? Buy guns? Recruit new members? The membership recruitment aspect is obviously propaganda, and I think one could easily consider (for example) a bomb detonated by an opposition group to be propaganda, much like a radio spot or infomercial.
I'm not sure if that makes sense. As I read (and I note others have agreed with me on this interpretation) they are saying:
- lets find some of those leaks and publicly expose them
- and in doing so people will be more concerned about going to wikileaks potentially "destroying" them as a conduit for release.
I'm not sure I see the problem there.... if it talked about assassinating them then I'd be pretty concerned to be honest :)
Which document are you referring to?
Having said that, I also support the idea that some things -- some very few things -- should be kept secret.
Wikileaks does not seem to discriminate between these things.
Therefore I cannot in good conscience support Wikileaks with their mission to make everything they find public. If, as the article indicates, they're in it for personal kicks then that makes it all the worse.
It's 2010. You'd think the average person/whistleblower would have enough ability to self-publish for the entire world to see, right? If Wikileaks isn't providing some kind of independent, third-party vetting or creating some standards for what can be published or not, what value do they bring to the table?
And how can someone without a clear view of the whole picture distinguish between both? And who do you want to arbitrate what should and what should not be secret?
Guantanamo Bay interrogation manual? Moral significance; leak.
Possible US use of chemical weapons? Moral significance; leak.
US order of battle for 2009? No moral significance; don't leak.
And in the interest of fairness:
Al-Qaida interrogation manual? Leak.
We need a picture of both/all sides' dirty laundry, and Wikileaks doesn't really give that.
Just don't expect Wikileaks to be a one-stop-shop for leaked documents.
And, BTW, I doubt Al Qaeda has such a document. That's not their style to document everything. One may interpret that as one of their major tactical strengths.
Your not going to get any kindlier ears simply by reposting it every time this topic comes up...
It's an impractical suggestion that would be bad for Google and Wikileaks
A few others have since started to pick up on the idea, so I think I can retire from this particular thing.
Regardless of karma you have to "spend" neither of those are appropriate behavior (on these threads).
I should remark that I feel my comment is witty and appropriate and happens to employ a useful bite of sarcasm/satire to the issue.
Furthermore, I don't think that posting a comment that you deem inappropriate constitutes inappropriate "behavior". The comments have clearly received lots of upvotes as well, but have ended up a few points negative after a few days.
I am far from anti-google. In fact Google is one of my favorite companies, but its one vice is its tremendous willingness to get involved in politics (first Eric Schmidt's schmoozing with politicians and now Sergey's neoconservative anti-China posturing).
Wikileaks occupies the uncomfortable space of being a subversive element right in Google's back yard. And, as much fun as it is to throw stones at China, there are still important issues of censorship and corruption right here in the US that could use exposure.
The worst aspect of politics, by the way, is the way it leads people toward an "us vs them" view. Google's approach on China reinforces this. Being anti-China is the new livestrong bracelet, and it's dangerous to our society and will result in war.