Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Assange...

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2968342.htm

TONY JONES: Well, not according to the Pentagon. They're accusing you of revealing the identities of Afghan informants and putting their lives at risk. Afghan's president, Karzai, agrees with that he says 'the breach is extremely irresponsible and shocking.' Your response to those comments.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well we have yet to see clear evidence of that. I mean the London Times is also making this allegation today and in a quite disingenuous way, for example they mention some informers' names they say they had found and with a headline Afghan informer already dead, but when you actually read the story what you see is in fact that individual that they're mentioning died two years ago.

So there's a little bit of media manipulation occurring here. In terms of the Afghan government, it's in their interests to sort of play up the irresponsible, irresponsibility of the United States that they say has been involved in sort of collecting and permitting this data to release, be released.

Now we contacted the White House as a group before we released this material and asked them to help assist in going through it to make sure that no innocent names came out, and the White House did not accept that request.

TONY JONES: So you're saying that you offered the White House a chance to go through the documents, or officials from the White House a chance to go through the documents and single out names of people at risk. Is that correct?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah that's right. Now, of course we did not offer them a chance to veto any material, but rather we told them that we were going through a harm minimisation process and offered them the chance to point out names of informers or other innocents who might be harmed and they did not respond to that request which was mediated through the New York Times who was our, acting as the contact for the four media groups involved in this.

Specific examples would be great.

>If he gave information about locations of jews to the Nazis, would we say it was freedom of information?

The jews weren't attempting to occupy Germany at the time so probably not the most fitting comparison.

>That's because Obama knows the importance of secrets.

Absolutely. The truth can be politically damaging.

>Wikileaks failed to remove actual names. I don't see a difference.

Most people recognize the difference between dropping bombs on civilians and revealing the names of those involved in the killing trade.

The story I've heard is that Wikileaks attempted to contact the White House, so the two parties could go through the documents and remove references to informants. The White House declined the offer. Has any evidence emerged to suggest this is untrue?

Wikileaks failed to remove actual names. I don't see a difference.

See above.

Godwin's law so soon in this thread? Not helpful.

While we've got a time machine handy: If he gave information about the location and plans of Vichy officials to the French resistance, would we say it was an act of espionage/treason/terrorism and/or murder?

Nice strawman. Calling the folks who recklessly fire on civilians murderers may be a bit exaggerated. Human error happens and human error when the human is on the trigger of a 30 mm cannon is usually disastrous, but automatically siding those who propose a less reckless fight with the Taleban is a flaw of logic.

When you are in position of using lethal force, you must use it responsibly, with great care.

Also, removing the Taleban from power in Afghanistan was necessary, but empowering corrupt local powers is, most definitely, not the best way to employ the resources consumed in this invasion. People die in wars and we owe them to make wars short, clean and effective, so that no more people need to die other than absolutely necessary.

This whole situation is appalling. It reeks incompetency and corruption from top to bottom. It's unworthy of the high ideals that are, or, at the very least, should be, the core philosophy of the groups we authorize to use lethal force against our fellow humans.

When there are two groups of killers involved in a conflict recognizing the killing of one group doesn't mean one is excusing the killing of the other group.

If you are familiar with the history of the Taliban you are likely aware of the role the US played in their rise to power (http://nyti.ms/ddOTcu). The Taliban would likely not exist without the support of the US. The US didn't nurture the Taliban for the good of the people nor are they attempting to control Afghanistan for the good of the people.

Calling someone a murder means you assert that they have murdered.

Don't make a leap of logic and then try to tell other people what they 'risk implicitly' doing.

The fact that you took this nonsense as far as you did makes me wonder whether you have some emotional need to justify these murderers, or if it's just part of your job.

The Taliban might have been evil, but it doesn't mean that the replacements will be any better. As near as anybody who isn't a jackass can tell, the US has inserted ourselves into a pair of century (millenia?) long sectarian conflicts. Government barely exists 100 miles from the Kabul. These warlords were fighting each other before the Taliban, somewhat subjugated by the Taliban, and will be fighting each other again after we finally leave. All we've done is inflicted horrendous collateral damage on whoever happened to get in our way while mouthing trite bullshit about democracy. In order to leave the citizens of the country in a position that will be, at best, no better than under the Taliban. And probably much worse. We've killed how many in order to install some thug and his drug / warlord brother atop the heap?

As for Wikileaks, after Bush decided to run black prisons and endorsed the torture at Abu Ghraib, I frankly stopped believing anything out government says. Obama, with his support of the Afghanistan war and Bush era spy laws, has more or less endorsed Bush' view of civil liberties and demonstrated that the US government is worth the trust of exactly nobody. I'll believe what the government says when Bush is executed for war crimes, and there are a long line of US Generals up there with him. In light of those facts, Wikileaks is a force for good. Since we've demonstrated that morality and probability of success have no impact on our decisions, perhaps Wikileaks can damage the war effort enough to get us out of Afghanistan. Frankly, the less Americans trust their government, the better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

In my short lifetime, hundreds of thousands of people, many of them civilians, have died in Iraq. Tens of thousands, many being civilians, have died in Afghanistan; we continue to kill several civilians per day. We have spent God knows how much money to date on both combined. They have completely undermined our moral standing in the world. Those are not potential costs. Those are the real costs of our military's actions, and I honestly can't imagine how anyone could defend them as being justifiable or reasonable. Nothing we even dreamed of accomplishing is worth that much.

That seems to me like a really big destructive force, and barely anything stands in opposition to it. It's a lot bigger than 100 Afghan informants who are at risk of retribution. If anything can put the fear of God into the people responsible for making these decisions, it's worth a huge price, and I think that shining a huge light on the military's actual actions is a pretty good start.

Wikileaks fucked up badly, in my opinion, by not redacting identifying details from the documents. They will indeed have some blood on their hands if retribution arrives. However, it seems to me like the benefit of Wikileaks' continued operation dwarfs the cost of their fuckups.

I hate to put people on the spot with "well, what would YOU do." But Daniel's post implies that there is some wise oversight that can expose just the right secrets, without exposing the dangerous ones. I don't think that's realistic, unless he has some particular scheme in mind. I think the choice is between total control and some degree of anarchy, and I would take as much anarchy as I could get on that spectrum.

Neither way is perfect - but that's far different from your equivocation. "Hundreds of people" possibly identified through the Wikileaks release pales in comparison to the tens or hundreds of thousands collaterally killed by the U.S. military.

Some examples of this would be great.

Who exactly are you talking about? The Taliban or the current Afghan government? Neither have intelligence services capable of doing this. The idea is ludicrous.

2) "Do you think that some random schmuck on the internet should have the power to decide what remains secret and what doesn't?"

This is a poor way to phrase the question, since we are talking about a group of people engaged in releasing _specific_ information. They hardly have the ability to decide what is secret and what is not. They only get to choose to leak what they have on hand.

"as I understand it the basic argument would be that things are so bad now that any type of release of docs is good."

Well I believe that is a misapprehension on your part. I'm certainly not arguing for the release of any and everything.

3) Obviously abuse is subjective, but the only other alternative is to appeal to some authority to help us decide what is important. That's not working very well is it? In my opinion the military has at best skirted the truth and at worst lied about actions involving civilians. That seems like abuse to me and it seems lots of other people agree.

"Call me an idiot, but wouldn't you want some kind of orderly process for releasing docs, even if you were for releasing all of them? What kind of half-assed system is this?"

Well in my opinion wikileaks seems to be orderly; for one they take the time to vet material and engage in harm-minimisation -- if we take them on their work anyhow. Again, what is the alternative? The government? Some committee that the government will cooperate out of the goodness of their hearts? They have no inclination to be transparent, so the only alternative is to force them to be so by leaking.

That's uncomfortable and risky, but a hell of a lot better than letting the bastards hide those awful truths.

4) Completely unworkable for obvious reasons. For one thing, secrets are only useful if they can be recalled accurately. People aren't going to remember them flawlessly. But even is this scenario were workable, it's the same situation. Anyone that knows the secret is capable of leaking it. Granted verifying it is harder without documentation, but nothing happens in a vacuum; a leak would be enough to get people probing for the truth and evidence to back it up.

I understand the basic gist of what you are saying and I agree. It would be better if the current system could be improved, if abuses could be curtailed and there was more transparency. That is much better than having material leaked, absolutely.

But it's not going to happen by itself. There is a complete lack of political will to change things. Like most important issues, a government's hand has to be forced; that's why leaks are necessary.

The who?

On my list of prioritized concerns, Wikileaks falls well below unchecked military. But since you're adamantly opposed to this ...

Surely there is a middle ground, but the status quo was (is) heading in the direction of more secrecy. Sometimes, as now, it takes a shakeup. The very actions you prefer (eliminating classification for 99.9% of documents, streamlined intelligence agencies, criminal penalties) are so far in opposition to the past 10 years that they're literally pipe dreams. If your solution is to hold your breath until your pipe dreams come true, well, that's no solution at all. Meanwhile, the unchecked military rampantly wages war, killing thousands.

If Wikileaks helps the public take even a small step in opposition to these wars by virtue of shining a light on the depth of Govt lies, it will have done a far greater service than those who not only attack it, but essentially sit quietly waiting for impossible things to suddenly happen out of thin air.

How can a constitutional amendment help, unless it's backed by a threat? The powerful have repeatedly shown that they don't respect the rule of law. It's a pleasant fiction. It's just not the way the world works.

You can't realistically expect those in power to modify their behaviour to your liking unless you somehow have power over them.

You can't realistically take on an establishment (if that's your thing) by playing by their rules. There has to be an element of threat, which will appear reckless.

Proffering a system where it's perfectly ok for one random dude in Australia, who is beholden to no one, to make choices about the distribution of information directly impacting the lives scores of millions of people as some sort of acceptable alternative to fixing the structural defects of the current system is INSANE.

It's a false dichotomy between leaving the current system untouched and disowning the need for a system at all. It's like choosing between optimizing the world financial system and returning to an agrarian barter economy.

Could you stop calling him an asshole? He does indeed have an ass and a hole and we know that just finely. We don't need degrading of people, only of ideas.

As for the quote, it is not a random person. The person who leaked the first video is in jail! That is an extremely high price to pay.

As for Julian, yes you have indeed not met him, nor have you met Obama, or the many people in congress who decide many things about you, or the guys at the fed, intelligence...

You don't know if this guy is actually qualified to take such decisions as what is to be leaked and not. You don't know his motivations, you don't know his value system, you really don't know anything about him.

The only thing that it perhaps seems you do know is that you are having a little chat here thus maybe not really considering what you are typing in your comments. Yet if so I may respectfully remind you, we are talking about a very serious subject, on the comments of an article which calls for the arresting of an individual who is not a citizen of the United States, in the soil of a sovereign nation and potentially without the authority of such sovereign nation. An article which states that the US apparently has authority to arrest any individual whatever who breaks some law of the United States.

And this not just an individual he has the intelligence to build a great system which I am most certain would have been of immense use had it been around the drums of Iraq war as someone would have certainly leaked something decisively damaging and perhaps saved us an entire war.

And finally, if I may quote one of the great, enemies of the republic, within or foreign.

Secrecy? Those anarchists care about secrecy so they can stop the government from finding about their economic activities.

They don't care about if government have secrets or not, just that the government can't spy on their black market activities.(Which could be anything from selling pets to lawn mowing, and drugs)

If you want technologies, a lot of techno-libertarians are into http://bitcoin.org cryto-currency. For credit and reputation management, some have looked into complementary systems like Ripple.

As far as social system? I prefer free markets and voluntary systems due to my libertarian leaning. However, I don't know if they're effective or have flaws.

All I do know is flaws that exists in the government, especially the democratic system of government, in addition to my ethical dislike about the nature of governments.

Really, in my original reply, I am just pointing out how anarchy hate secrecy is laughable.

I think it's important to what kind of information governments need to keep secret and what kind they keep secret. Judging by Wikileaks content this seems to be information about (a) wars of aggression (defensive wars apparently need less secrets) (b) providing unfair advantages to private companies (I think ACTA counts here) (c) things they shouldn't allow (such as misbehaving personnel) (d) censorship.

So, we need to ask: does our perfect, imaginary, peaceful state need to keep anything secret from its own citizens? I think no.

Kowloon Walled City was essentially lawless, not set up as an anarchy, but becoming one by chance. Controlled anarchy seems like a strange idea, but maybe that's what we need. Personally, I'm a fan of zenarchy, the belief that perfect anarchy follows general enlightenment. It's both joke and serious theory.

I don't disagree with your points, and I think you articulate some aspects quite well. True Assange is a political figure. He is also the founder of an institution. To date we have not seen the rise of a virtual institution with this sort of political significance, nor have we seen one that exists independently of a state or party.

We seem to disagree on the issue of supporting Wikileaks as an act of civil disobedience. In my opinion, we are not morally obligated to obey unjust laws. Of course, we may be made to suffer the consequences of disobedience, but I do not (as you seem to) imbue the law with any special moral significance just because it's the law.

Let me remind you that it is illegal for the US to propagandize Americans. I'd argue that some of the information that is being declared "secret" is simply information that the government wants withheld for propaganda purposes.

So without Wikileaks, what check or balance exists to prevent this misuse of secrecy for propaganda? I'm curious if you think this is a reasonable question to ask and what you think the answer is.

To address your broader critique of Wikileaks, I'd argue that Assange is building a very ambitious institution, and it's currently imperfect. Some of your critiques apply only to the young incarnation of Wikileaks and (I'd expect) will go away once/if the institution manages to gain additional credibility, experience, and stability.

One quote of yours really intrigues me: Getting folks thinking about the particulars of the information distracts them from the larger picture by making them emotionally, well, irrational. This suggests that you think that a member of the public judging the appropriateness/worth of the war would be more rational if he/she ignored all the messy noise offered by the leaks and focused only on the government's official story of how/why the war should continue. If not, then I'm curious how you'd advise the rational citizen to assess the status/progress/worth of a war effort such as the current US involvement in Afghanistan.

In the Internet age, I find the concept of that laughable. If you want to show something to a great number of people, just post it on a social news/bookmarking site. Sending your info to Wikileaks is a hundred times as responsible an act as just letting the information spread virally would be.

"Always suspect people and news reports that agree with your worldview."

Yeh sure, but I am willing, unlike it seems you, to give him and this very new company the benefit of good will.

I have not seen the "collateral murder" video, so maybe I should not comment on that, but it strikes me as strange that people would focus on the tile and use that against the entire company, what it does, and all else, never mind that it was a revelation of some sort and I suspect that the media has a great role to play in such strange behaviour.

Again we see the same happening with the Afghan files. Could, possibly, it may be, arguably. On these very thin foundations an argument so powerful is made. No, it doesn't matter that the government was careless, no its him, him..

I think it is both. I am not in any way angry at the intelligence agencies, nor secrets, nor at the Afghan war. What I do dislike and would like is a world which is not guided by selfish interests, big corporations with too much power, big individuals with too much power, I suppose it very shorty can be summed up as things which are not right or just by the standard of the reasonable man.

For example, I would very much like the minutes of the meetings between Google and Verizon to be leaked in their entirety because they have no right to conduct a conversation of such grave importance in secret and the fact that they have chosen to do so makes me highly suspicious and makes me think that they are conspiring against the public to their own benefit.

A while back here in the UK there was a super injunction whereby no one could report about a specific statement in Parliament! Wkileaks leaked the statement. The injunction was lifted I would think despite the leak due to much pressure, but in another situations it might have not been lifted while it was right that it should be.

These are only examples which indicate quite well the combination between the two things you mentioned. I believe that the person who was able to build such a formidable machine is a reasonable man in the same way that I would consider myself a reasonable man. Thus I would not think - and the fact that he has not published some info in the Afghan files - that he would expose a secret that a reasonable man would think not right to expose.

Reasonable people can of course disagree. An example of anarchism might be the making public of Google's algorithm. Would a reasonable person think this to be desirable? Well Google thrives on secrecy. It is because of this secrecy that they have the liberty to state things like "oh we are impressed that our search results are not getting worse". It is because of this secrecy that innovation in the area of search is stifled. They had for example the decency to tell us only recently just how much it takes from the adverts places on our sites. Why should such a thing be secret? You might say well that's the free market, but is there really a choice here?

As for the algorithm, the argument often is that people would play the system, so lets just keep it as it is and fatten our pockets rather than try and make things better.

People are playing the system anyway. But that argument is like saying lets not tell people what the law is because they then would be able to subvert it. No one would suggest not telling people what the law is. That is a Kafkaesque world and the way google operates is very much Kafkesque.

So if people play the system, is google just going to sit back and relax and have a cup of tea, or is it actually going to fight back and keep order? Might it perhaps be that this secrecy suits them well, suits their pockets, and screws everyone else?

That is just an example. Perhaps of no relevance as I said he does not leak everything. He seems to be a reasonable man. Everything that has happened until now seems very reasonable to me. Yes perhaps he did made some mistakes, but these are 90,000 documents! and it is not all entirely his fault, a one man, as opposed to the entire machinery of state who has the decency to refuse considering whether the life of people might be put in danger.

I do not however blindly favour it. If so it happens that he does something which would be considered unreasonable, then there might be an argument, but he hasn't.

Now, what problem is he exactly feeding? The government is keeping secrets from us for the benefit of the politicians and the wealthy, the wealthy are keeping secrets from us and conspiring against the public to further increase their wealth. He is trying to expose things which have no reason to be secret. What problem is he exactly feeding? That perhaps there will be an arm's race, that we will see evolution in a fast motion in regards to keeping secrets? That's very good. The harder it is to keep secrets which need not be kept secret, the better for us all.

So, at the very least, give the man and the company the benefit of the doubt. He is not an idiot, I doubt he is evil, I doubt he is being an asshole. He is standing up to the wealthy and fighting for the general public not in some Hollywood film, but in our real life and he seems to be doing a good job.

So at the very least, support some neocon guy who favours torture and illegal wars and thinks he is above the law when wikileaks has actually done something which is deserving of being judged criminal.

It doesn't take plundering a nation by the military in order for a war to have massive wealth producing opportunities for those involved in promoting it and deciding to under take it. As I said, you may receive no chests full of loot - but hundreds of corporations are, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. There is unquestionably a massive financial incentive for everlasting war. Meanwhile, the war you gain nothing from produces the opposite of what you seek (less terrorists).