Wikileaks says it is under attack
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
As you grow up however, you kind of start realising that much of the above is sort of true in theory, but not true in practice, especially if the freedom of speech concerns a criticism of those who have more power than you. It is because power corrupts that many people had to die to ensure that we today live in relative freedom. It is because those in power have the means to subvert criticism and silence such criticism that it has been necessary for many to be shunned, called lunatics, heretics, traitors, or to die, so that truth can be spoken to power, so that truth can be spoken to power in order to preserve our liberty.
The right to free speech does not apply only to the dissemination of pictures of cats. A society and its adherence to its principles are tested and shown when power is seriously criticised, when power is or has the potential to be seriously undermined, not, when someone writes about lolcats because people even in North Korea can write about lolcats.
I am very amazed that people even consider an attack on wikileaks to be 'good', or that a real attack on the wikileaks founder would have been even better, because, they consider the leak to be a potential attack on their own percieved or real self interests, such as the image of their nation around the world, or that the world may find out that real life is so much more interesting that any fantasy book that can be written or any idealistic principle that can be formulated.
I consider it amazing that anyone may even think of supporting an attack by what may be a state actor, not because of any breach of law, but because it is embarrassing to such state actor.
We are not children any more, and if our principles are to die with the passing of our childhood, then we might need to consider the principles in the first place, their truth, their applicability, whether our generation of grown up adults wants to stand by them and continue supporting them. If we as the people wish to turn a blind eye to government censorship, to dirty tactics by governments through reputation damage by means of charges unsupported by evidence, if we are going to eat up the effective propaganda (PR I read somewhere began as an industry after the second world war and was based on the effectiveness of Hitler's tactics) and blindly state that such an attack is a good thing whether by anyone, let alone the government, simply because our perceived interest may potentially be damaged or undermined, not because of any reason of principle, not because we consider it to be an illegal activity not even based on reasonable moral arguments, but simply and only because it is a criticism which embarrasses, then something has gone badly wrong since the time I was born and now that I have grown up.
Truth is Power. Suppression of truth allows power to corrupt. That is why we have such principles of freedom of speech and such principles are not quantifiable simply by our embarrassment when criticised, or even more woringly, by the embarrassment of politicians.
Managing information like this is not easy, and though it's easy to fault a government for hiding and/or obscuring the truth, there are some things that are better left unknown.
As I said in another comment, I don't believe that Assange knows the power of this information, whether we're talking secrets or classified information.
The government ignored them, however. What does that say?
It's more complicated than you're presenting.
And incidentally, if you really believe in the first amendment, his actions should be entirely legal. At this point he is part of the press, and the government has no right to limit his free speech, or the freedom of the press. OK, so I don't like him. But there is a well-known principal of constitutional law that the important precedents are set by people who are hard to like. Because if they were nice people, they wouldn't have been in court in the first place. But by defending the rights of least likable people, we defend everyone's rights.
If you want to compare it to something, compare to the publication of plans for making a hydrogen bomb. The government tried to sue to stop publication, and failed. Now you can find discussion of the subject on wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller-Ulam_design. Which matters more? The Constitution, or the release of information that could kill tens of millions of people? The actual ruling of the court was that the Constitution mattered more!
He could play a much greater role in change were he to use this information in a more strategic fashion than to recklessly publish 100% of it.
In what way, at this point, is Assange not part of the press?
Remember, a large part of the Constitution is meant to provide checks and balances to prevent government from being able to abuse its power. The proper Constitutional role of the press SHOULD be to inform the public on the actions of the government so that the public can get properly outraged about things they do not agree with.
But once published, they are published.
As for whether random bloggers are members of the media, I agree that it isn't a simple cut and dried situation. However at this point wikileaks is so prominent, and is so frequently part of the information infrastructure that more traditional media provides, that I believe it clearly is media.
They'd know:
* a DDOS wouldn't change anything
* wikileaks has decent contingency plans, and are prepared for a lot beyond a simple denial of service
* It'd just get wikileaks in the news more in the run up to the release
Conclusion: Misguided amateur patriots or complete fabrication
"Now is a good time to download some "history insurance" https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5723136/WikiLeaks_insurance 1:04 AM Nov 26th via web"
Yes, you're right, even if the servers are down, they can leak the key via twitter etc. to this file.
This is a dangerous game to play, especially for someone with little experience doing so.
I don't know how I feel about the concept of Wikileaks itself, but I do feel uncomfortable that this man seems to enjoy playing God.
Replace one tyrant with another and you end up in the same place.
You can't help but wonder if he is playing out some international hacker of intrigue fantasy, but I think that even if he is, that mindset does more good for his cause than it does harm.
The first part I can agree with, but I'm not sure how it helps...I think he's in over his head.
My $0.02.
Such a leak would be applauded and the perpetrator would be declared a hero by those exact same governments that would like wikileaks to go away.
Don't shoot the messenger.
And realize that whatever your government does it does so in your name too. If it can't stand the light of day because it is illegal or embarrassing then maybe it should not be done.
Much of what's here is not in the least surprising, but having official confirmation just makes it that much more complicated for people out there trying to make things better.
Not all secrets are eeeevil, you know.
And that goes for a large number of people.
Not all secrets are evil, however I'm fairly sure that the fact that some secrets in fact are evil is what drives the feeding frenzy around wikileaks. If all that came to the surface would be an impeccably functioning diplomatic machinery with the highest standards for ethics I highly doubt this would get as much press and attention as it does.
I don't know why but when I read the headline I chuckled. It is so apropos.
It is a fact that revealing HUMINT data has a high probability of ending the life of informant or spy.
Revealing private diplomatic information is not free expression, it is an attack on the country. It gives an information advantage to that country's adversaries and sours its relations with its allies. If wikileaks did the same to North Korea, the U.S. would celebrate it not because it represents free speech, but because it would weaken their government. There are some legitimate government secrets, and diplomatic cables are one of them.
Which ones you would think are 'valid' and which are 'invalid' apparently depends on your own interests in the world, and not so much on the 'badness' of that particular government. I would welcome total openness from my government about stuff like this, I would hope for the citizens of those other countries to do the same.
This is not an attack on any country, and to sketch it as such is not an honest depiction of the facts, it is an attack at those that perpetrate illegal acts in the name of all of us.
That 'if you've got nothing to fear, you've got nothing to hide' thing works both ways.
Either we, the citizens of all those states have a right to privacy, or the government does not have a right to privacy either. A society without privacy will have zero privacy for everybody, and I think part of the anger and the backlash against all this is that the governments are slowly waking up to this and they don't like it much.
If your perspective changes depending on which nation you are from that's a fair indication that you are probably wrong, if only because no nation is 'absolutely better in all respects' than any other.
Many North Koreans would agree with that statement about the US (of course, they've all been brainwashed, right?).
In seriousness though, the attack probably will moderate the damage slightly, as I imagine Wikileaks was going to publish all the raw documents on its site, whereas the other sites will probably just give summaries of the important points. Sure, Wikileaks will eventually come back up and have all the raw data available, but the peak viewing time was going to be today. If I were trying to minimize number of eyeballs viewing the raw documents, I'd take this approach.
The biggest problem the DDoS creates, in my eyes, is that anyone reading about the leaks will go to Wikileaks.org and find a dead page and then forget about it, thus minimising their exposure to the other doings of Wikileaks.
Potential informants, no longer trusting the US to be able to keep their identities secret, clam up. Intelligence dries up. Bombs go off. People die. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.
Much like throwing pennies off the top of the Empire State Building, though, uncertainty about whether something will have positive or disastrously negative consequences is generally a good argument against doing it.
Julian Assage's demeanor or persona is irrelevant.
some of those had a little bit of impact
How the hell can that be legal? Are police officers banned from joining all political parties or just the BNP?
Membership of, say, the Green Party, does not conflict with the officer's obligations.
It's better than a policy of ignoring the beliefs of your officers, isn't it?
I'd agree that policemen shouldn't wear their uniforms to a meeting of any political party. This is very different though.
[citation needed]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Modern_Media_Initiati...
The American press has been embedded and self-censored out of relevancy when it comes to war reporting.
In war, you can make all the right decisions and innocent people will still needlessly die. It's a far stronger statement of the horrors of war and the need to avoid it than the ridiculous claim that the military was intentionally targeting reporters and children.
This piece of information makes an attack on Iran (and the subsequent bloodshed and mayhem) less likely, once the light has been shined on the Saudi hand. This, IMHO, is a good thing. If we have to attack Iran (and I'm not saying we should), then we should do so because Iran is a threat to US, and not to the Saudis.
That being said, the US doesn't look so great in complaining about the consequences of released sensitive information. If it is so important and people's lives depend on it, then why not invest more in information assurance?
-Abraham Lincoln (http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplace-english/2008/December/...)
To be fair, I'm a consequentialist, we might be arguing morality at cross-purposes.
Exactly. My quote was an example to support the sentiment of your post, not argue against it.
Ultimately the end result and lasting impact was the freeing of the slaves, history and time rendered Abe's intentions/motivations nearly irrelevant outside of historical study.
I feel -- and you guys are welcome to trash me on this and I'm sure you will -- that taxpayers have paid billions of dollars to our government to perform diplomacy. And diplomacy always involves the keeping of secrets. It did 500 years ago, and it will 500 years from now.
So no matter how much arm-waving you want to do about freedom and truth, nations still have to have secrets. And while I oppose the secrecy state that we've created, it's the taxpayers that have created it, not wikileaks. It's our monster to tame. Assange neither represents us nor has our best interests in mind.
Assange is no representative of freedom or honor in my book. In my book he's a low-life self-promoting pimp of anarchy, and I imagine what goes around will certainly come around to him.
If you want to leak a few documents about the Iraq war as part of informing the public that it's not going well, then fine, more power to you. Hell I'll contribute to your defense fund. The truth has to be free. But if you're going to dump all the state department cables from countries all over the planet on the internet, then you have attacked my country. And while I'm all with you and fully support getting to an open society, that doesn't even begin to forgive an act of war like this.
This discussion has gotten to absolutes -- people are arguing that everything needs to be open. Other people are arguing that everything must be secret. The truth is that neither position is going to work, and I have to say I'm pretty pissed at Assange at taking such a serious issue like openness and crapping all over it. He's done more harm to his own cause with this than his opponents could ever help to accomplish. For the next ten years we'll have story after story trickle out about what harm this has caused. It will make a nice backdrop to even further draconian security measures.
There is a space between anarchy and the security state. Let's find that spot and live there.
Remember, everything they do...they do in our name.
But this is a bridge too far. This is like using a nuclear bomb to put out a city that is on fire. It's not going to have the effect that its supporters want. Quite the opposite.
Wikileaks is a news service, not a terrorist organization...you can negotiate with them. Expecting them to do say what you want, is not journalism...that's PR.
The government has too many secrets. That's a given. I firmly support making society more open.
But when you come into possession of all the state department cables, you're participating in a theft. Now maybe its a theft for wondrously good reasons we can all agree to, but it's still a theft. You are a thief. Perhaps you are a thief for a good cause, but your role in this matter is not super-hero, its a thief for a good cause.
You can't go back and say that since wikileaks was willing to negotiate with the government they stole from and the government wasn't that somehow this makes a total dump more palatable. That sounds completely crazy in my book. Look at it this way: what's the state department going to do? Go through each doc and censor out things they don't like? Do you have any idea how long it would take the state department to do that, even if they were ordered to? Hell, they can't figure out what's classified or not right now, without a gun to their head. It's not like threatening to release all their communications is going to make the agency more functional.
And let's say through some magic they decided that yes, they would vet the papers and somehow managed to do that. Let's additionally assume that they perfectly and totally vetted them -- no detail is left in there that at any point in the future is going to jeopardize U.S. interests. That's an impossible thing in itself, but let's imagine they do. At this point you have an agency actively participating in disseminating information that it has previously and publicly said was non-distributable. What? Were they lying then? Or are they lying now? The entire purpose of the state department is to engender and promote trust among fellow nations. Even if it's a "correct" result in yours and my book, even if the state department itself wants to do it, you simply can't take the diplomatic branch of the government and completely change the way it works overnight. It would be total chaos.
Nope, the government is stuck not being able to vet those docs, and for about a dozen different good reasons. That doesn't mean that docs shouldn't be released, just that assuming that vetting could happen is too much.
I have immense sympathy for this cause, but continuing to defend Assange like this is going to go nowhere. You can't steal something from a crook and then complain that the crook isn't helping you organize the things you stole. Two wrongs don't make a right. To suggest that somehow wikileaks is off the hook for responsibility simply because they offered the U.S. a chance to vet the docs isn't to look into the matter in much detail. It's just throwing stuff out there in hopes that some of it will stick.
Like I said, I'm 99% with everybody in their complaints about secrecy. So I'll close this thead. No point in making much of it. If you've decided that wikileaks is good, you'll just keep throwing out things and I'll just keep showing you how they don't apply. No need to do that. I have no desire to get into a debate or argument. I just wanted to clarify that this idea that keeps getting peddled that somehow it's better because of the vetting offer just doesn't fly for me at all.
Even if wikileaks physically returned whatever they physically received, but made a copy for their own purposes, is that still stealing? There are laws that apply to information, such as copyright, but this information is not protected by copyright. I read somewhere that there was no classified information in this release, so it also wouldn't be protected by those laws.
For me, the 2 main questions are: 1) is it legal (yes) 2) will it do more good than harm? (unknown)
US officials stole classified information from the UN. Chinese officials stole classified information from Google. Let's be honest here: they're all at it.
It's not really even comparable to the leak of the Pentagon Papers -- those revealed a pattern of multiple presidential administrations deliberately lying to the public about US involvement in southeast Asia.
These last couple of wikileaks releases? They've just been raw, massive data dumps with a comparably terrible SNR.
So Watergate? Right on. Random dumps of sensitive information? Not so much.
Same with the Guatemala one.
Haider was democratically elected in Austria.
Some of those you could defend, some you could not, which ones you will defend probably depends on your viewpoint.
What your viewpoint is however does not matter in the longer term, democratically elected governments are not immune from perpetrating illegal acts (and the US has a pretty good share of the world market there).
You now get the good with the bad, which I think is preferable to getting just lies and spin.
¿lolque?
edit: hacker news, the only site where your candid opinion (an unpopular one, apparently) will get you modded down.
Look here, if you think that the US has democratic elections I would suggest you have a long hard look at Sweden, which has a much less money and dynasty focused system, and which comes a lot closer to being truly democratic. Two parties are just as bad as one, especially when to foreigners those two parties are pretty much indistinguishable except op a few unimportant issues which seem to be added just to polarize the voters.
I'd like to point at my own country but unfortunately they're currently not the best example.
The lack of editorial oversight and the massive volume is a blessing, not a detraction, after all if this sort of information would have been released at the time of the 'red scare' it would have been over and done with much quicker for "I am not a crook" Nixon.
Remember how it all came apart because of one tiny detail, a botched burglary. Now you have to wonder how much this will cause. Looking forward to the next installment, and looking forward to diplomats that, instead of becoming even shadier will live up to a new standard of transparency and openness. After all, they do represent all of us, and I'd like to them to be as accountable as possible. If that means that there might be a chilling effect on their communications then so be it, that's the bad guys as far as I'm concerned.
The number of people arguing that governments need secrets to operate are ignoring the painful fact that for the most part these secrets are just used to hide that which can't stand the light of day, not because those secrets serve a concrete purpose to the betterment of all.
I'm not arguing against leaks of any sort -- I brought up the Pentagon Papers specifically because I think their leak was ultimately a positive thing -- I'm arguing against the haphazard dumping of information without any particular rhyme or reason.
>Remember how it all came apart because of one tiny detail, a botched burglary.
Again, that was specific information.
>After all, they do represent all of us, and I'd like to them to be as accountable as possible.
There's more to this than simple accountability. Diplomacy often requires keeping your hand close to your chest. If your diplomats are negotiating the terms of an agreement and are given instructions that "ideally we would like this, but if you can't hardball them to those terms, we will still accept X", those instructions are worthless if they're out in the open.
In fact, one of the cables released by the NYT discusses negotiations with Pakistan to remove potentially weaponizable nuclear material from a nuclear reactor there. Apparently one of the sticking points for the Pakistanis was that if knowledge of the removal was made public, the local populace would be up in arms about American interference with Pakistan's nuclear weapons programs.
Guess what just happened? Is that a net positive?
That's the whole reason why Kim and his ilk as well as tons of other tin-pot dictators and movie star wanna-bes do the exact same thing.
The US is hypocritical in this sense that they would like to deny those weapons to others while hanging on to their own stockpile.
If US diplomats could work in the light of day on this subject it would be the Pakistanis that would have to bow, the hypocrisy is what drives the need for secrecy.
The countries that are the biggest proponents of non-proliferation all have a nuclear stockpile...
>The countries that are the biggest proponents of non-proliferation all have a nuclear stockpile...
So does that make it morally wrong for them to try to reduce the proliferation of those arms? If not, I don't see why it matters. It's not like they're building up their stockpiles, either. Quite the opposite, in reality.[1]
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/24/barack-obama-nuc...
I think this leak has done no such thing.
It has merely documented a situation, which will continue to exist for some time.
Having the knowledge that the situation exists out there might actually put pressure on the parties involved to do something about it, rather than to let it persist.
Also, I'm not at all afraid of the 'terrorists' acquiring such weapons of mass destruction, I sleep pretty good and I estimate my chances of dying from crossing the street significantly larger than from rogue states or terrorists acquiring a dirty or fissile bomb.
Fear mongering has very little effect on me in general, but I do perceive that the terrorists have gotten value for their money. After all fear runs rampant.
> So does that make it morally wrong for them to try to reduce the proliferation of those arms?
If you want to be credible about non-proliferation I think you should not only commit to reduction of your own stockpile but you should commit to elimination.
The current reduction strategy is just a step back from the overkill situation in the cold war, which is offset in large part by better targeting and by higher yield as well as more reliable systems for simulation and stockpile control.
The threat is just as large as it ever was.
30,000 bombs or 5,000 it makes no difference.
Or a government with a tenuous grasp on power will simply have to forgo any kind of agreement to dispose of the weapons-ready material to avoid internal backlash.
>Also, I'm not at all afraid of the 'terrorists' acquiring such weapons of mass destruction, I sleep pretty good and I estimate my chances of dying from crossing the street significantly larger than from rogue states or terrorists acquiring a dirty or fissile bomb.
You know, there are reasons for seeking nuclear non-proliferation that have nothing to do with terrorism, like the fact that Pakistan borders a bitter enemy which is also a nuclear power.
>If you want to be credible about non-proliferation I think you should not only commit to reduction of your own stockpile but you should commit to elimination.
That's the ultimate goal. It's not going to happen overnight, and treating steps toward that goal as if they don't count is nothing more than childish fantasy.
>30,000 bombs or 5,000 it makes no difference.
Ah, this is why preventing the production of more arms in Pakistan isn't that big a deal. If they've got one bomb, they may as well have them all, I guess.
One nuclear weapon is indeed almost as bad as all of them, imagine a nuke on Islamabad or New Delhi. In those places a single nuclear weapon could kill millions, and it would take a very large effort to add to the scale of devastation. 10 nuclear weapons on either the Pakistani or the Indian side used against the other could cause hundreds of millions of people to eventually die of the direct or indirect causes of the use of these weapons.
The US is like the parent that tells its children not to smoke because smoking is bad for your health but can not give up smoking themselves.
Pakistan already has all the nuclear weapons it needs, and so does India, and neither of those countries will give them up because of pressure from the US, they will only give them up because they themselves, together will decide that a nuclear stand-off is to nobodies benefit.
So every American or Russian or other person from a nuclear power that argues in favor of non-proliferation is simply looking to "maintain their edge?"
>In those places a single nuclear weapon could kill millions, and it would take a very large effort to add to the scale of devastation.
Which is exactly why some of us think it'd be nice to keep even more of them from being built.
>The US is like the parent that tells its children not to smoke because smoking is bad for your health but can not give up smoking themselves.
Real progress is nearly impossible in an all-or-nothing world.
>Pakistan already has all the nuclear weapons it needs, and so does India, and neither of those countries will give them up because of pressure from the US, they will only give them up because they themselves, together will decide that a nuclear stand-off is to nobodies benefit.
Pressure from the US and Russia already helped divert at least one potential nuclear crisis between the two countries.[1] Is your argument seriously that the US should just shrug its shoulders and stand aside? I don't see how there's any other logical conclusion to this line of thought you're going down.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001%E2%80%932002_India%E2%80%9...
EDIT:
Of particular note in that article:
"A Defense Intelligence Agency report in May 2002 estimated that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan could, in a worst-case scenario, lead to 8–12 million deaths initially and millions more later from radiation poisoning."
On a subcontinent of over a billion people, it could be a lot worse. Sounds like a strong argument for keeping it from being able to.
>In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”
EDIT:
Unless you mean the casualty estimates? Those were officially released to the press during the crisis.
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/05/31/kashmi...
I'm not really sure which bit of knowledge you're referring to, to be honest.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/arti...
There is plenty of it in wikipedia as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_of_mass_de...
Blaming wikileaks for the leak is just as stupid as celebrating a defector from a rogue nation state. That's just a change of viewpoint, the mechanism is the same.
If a government is operating clandestinely (and plenty of the material in these cables gives indications of not so clean dealings) then they have themselves to blame, do not create information that can embarrass you in the future, and if you do keep it on a need-to-know basis. If all that comes to light is how the various governments behaved impeccably and had our best interests at heart then there is nothing to fear right ?
Sooner or later all information will spread and will be used against you. Non-proliferation starts with disbanding research and with making all possession of such material illegal, not only when it suits you.
And so on. It's a principled stance, not one that tries to use these things as just another way to gain the upper hand as a nation.
Ask yourself why a person at this level in the government should have access to all this information and proportion blame accordingly. Keep in mind that the main reason people are upset is because the shady nature of their backroom dealings will become public not because 'lives will be in danger', surely more lives were lost by going after non-existent weapons of mass destruction than there ever were lost due to terrorism. If human lives were so important then surely Dr. Kelly would have been listened to, and Hans Blix to boot.
It's all just spun for what it's worth, and plenty of times for more than it's worth because 'our' governments are the good guys, or so we are led to believe.
You keep making this assertion that the leaks will either expose something that's important for the public to know or that it will be totally benign while leaving no middle ground between the two.
I couldn't imagine going into business negotiations with the opposite party being privy to all the internal metrics in my head and not expect it to seriously disadvantage me. That's not malicious, it's looking out for my own best interests, and I wouldn't expect any different of a nation.
Similarly, there are cables that include information to the effect that Official Jack and Secretary Jane from Country X have a personality conflict that's useful to be aware of when you're dealing with them, but embarrassing for all parties involved if aired publicly. Again, that's not maliciousness, it's just basic courtesy.
>Ask yourself why a person at this level in the government should have access to all this information and proportion blame accordingly.
Sure, it's a problem. There are discussions going in other threads on the topic. I don't see how the fact that it's possible changes whether the release of the information is a good or bad thing from a global perspective, however.
>It's all just spun for what it's worth, and plenty of times for more than it's worth because 'our' governments are the good guys, or so we are led to believe.
My concern, in actuality, is less about the impact on the US itself as it is how the leak could affect other, less stable nations around the world.
As far as making non-proliferation more difficult, this official documentation removes plausible deniability for several governments in condemning Iran's move towards nuclear weapons in private while remaining necessarily neutral in public. The effect isn't massive, but it is real, and it does matter.
What is most likely to be the source of a rogue nuke in any of those cities?
One of the nations where the US is trying to avoid nuclear development or at the very least keep the stockpile under control.
If the US kept its secrets under wraps neither India or Pakistan would have the bomb in the first place, keeping things secret now is not going to put that genie back in the bottle.
The US has been spied upon successfully by countless nations to get those secrets including Israel, Pakistan, India (Canada also implicated there), the Russians took care of most of the rest of them, China gave some help to Pakistan and North Korea. France developed its nuclear arsenal independently, the UK had a lot of help from the US.
Non proliferation seems to mean: not to states not friendly to us. But in reality that translates to eventually the knowledge and the material will spread everywhere unless the production of the materials is halted. Which would mean a shut-down of all nuclear facilities, and that's a very difficult bridge to cross, it would cause a much stronger dependence on other fossil fuels.
The irony of all this is that now Iran uses the 'power plant' figleaf to set up it's own nuclear facilities.
Neither. They're making the best of a bad situation in which their hand is forced.
You make some good points, and I do have some mixed feelings about the way WikiLeaks is operating, and about Bradley Manning's choice to just vacuum up everything he could lay his hands on rather than confining himself to information that would prove a particular point. Still, in the end, I don't know how I'm going to feel about the material being released until I see what's in it.
I imagine this release is more contentious since it undoubtedly contains sources, methods, and likely personal opinions of the diplomatic corps and the clandestine services operating under the guise of the diplomatic corp.
What's completely insane (in my view) is that the diplomacy corps of the United States may have just been damaged beyond repair. It could take a generation or more to recover from this, and it could hurt a hell of a lot of people. Even if you hate the United States, that's a lot of collateral damage on the path to openness. There are a lot of very serious things going on in the world, and people have spent their entire lives getting into position to help nations come to agreement over various things. These do sneaky things, sure, but they also prevent wars. Getting rid of them by exposing all of their reports and identities is whacked, not to mention the damage to foreign governments when it comes out who has been secretly helping whom.
The far-reaching impact could truly be mind-boggling in scale. And it wouldn't surprise me at all to see it all being greeted with silence from around the world -- there's really no point in anybody making a spectacle of reacting.
I can't help but feel that this is going to be very destabilizing to a lot of nations. And U.S. secrecy is not going to be affected at all. If anything it will just increase to more insane levels beyond where it already is.
I think one of the most important things to recognize here is that we're not the only ones whose cards have been revealed. It sounds like there's verification the Chinese government was behind the attacks against Google, Yahoo and the rest. That's a big deal, and it could hurt China.
I also think that in general, having a clear understanding of US goals makes it easier to come up with creative solutions that benefit all. It does also potentially make it easier to screw the US over - but frankly that's difficult to do, and I'd say given the power the US wields, any direct action against US interests comes with strong likelihood that it's a net negative for both the opposing power and the US. Win-win situations, when you can come up with them, carry far less risk. But you can't come up with win-win situations when people are holding their cards close to their chest.
But if we let them keep their secrets, how do we learn enough about their motivations to figure out when they are abusing it? Human nature being what it is, if they have the right to make whatever they want secret, they will DEFINITELY use the right to cover up things that make them look bad or are illegal.
Classic case in point, United States v. Reynolds, the case that established the state secrets privilege. When the documents were finally declassified, the only real "secrets" in the report were evidence of serious errors that would have greatly helped the lawsuit against the government.
It is my feeling that this monster cannot be tamed, but must be slain, and the most horrible thing that could be constructed from its corpse must also be destroyed.
But everyone has their own opinion, and I'll agree that absolutist argument can poison the waters of common ground.
But until I find that line I defer to my juvenile glee of seeing the American government submit to their own (ridiculous) privacy policy: If you don't have anything to hide, all your private, personal and professional life are belong to us.
Yes, because the US government clearly has great concern for unnecessary loss of life :-/
Maybe those people are like they are because they are living in a glittery facade world based on ignorance for too long?
You trust these governments far more than I do, I will say that.
There's a careful balance between transparency and secrecy.
That said, I'm a bit torn on wikileaks as an organization. I think there needs to be an organization like wikileaks that serves as an outlet for whistleblowers, but I also think that wikileaks is falling too far down the path of self-aggrandizement for me to take them seriously.
For one, they've heavily promoted some releases that have turned out to contain very little truly new information. More importantly, their inclination to editorialize hurts their credibility in a massive way. The "Collateral Murder" video is case in point -- you not only have the title the video was released under, but the entire thing was annotated telling you exactly how you were supposed to interpret it. You're a helicopter pilot observing a combat zone and somebody traveling with a group of armed men pokes a cylindrical object around a corner in the direction of your forces - are you likely to think that object is A. a weapon or B. a pro-grade telephoto lens. According to the Colateral Murder video, it's ridiculous to think A.
Things like that make me somewhat distrustful of wikileaks since it makes it clear they have an agenda beyond the simple dissemination of information, and forces me to wonder whether they'd actually publish information contrary to that agenda if they were to receive it.
Regardless of whether Wikileaks is self-aggrandizing or not (and the recurring theme here is that people "feel" it is, but can never substantiate), the information released and the results achieved speak for themselves.
(i.e. if your business depends on imperialism, you are an imperialist. now consider oil and hegemony)