One day, we'll all hate WikiLeaks
thedailymaverick.co.za
thedailymaverick.co.za
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> In the case of the war logs, we got a picture of a military operating in difficult circumstances in the most effective and humane way possible.
I think your bias is showing.
> So let's ponder the implications for the rest of us. When your company's secrets – profit margins, production methods, distribution deals, and marketing plans – are no longer confidential, how will you compete?
You mean like when TC posted the Twitter files ?
> When your personal medical or financial records can be disclosed at any time, will you still enjoy the notion of “free speech”?
Free Speech is not a privacy issue, and medical and financial records being public will not limit your ability to speak out.
> Whether as private individuals or public officials, WikiLeaks will come back to haunt even those who applaud it today.
Time will tell. I think it is much too early to make that call.
> It will plunge us into a new dark age of Shakespearean whispers and plots.
The only thing that would have stopped this stuff from being juicy and interesting would have been impeccable behavior, so there are multiple solutions to this.
It speaks volumes that you would immediately assume that like any organization that can not stand 'the light of day' that diplomacy would move underground. And if it does that will tell us two things and nothing will change so in that case if it does not harm it does not hurt either.
If one cannot communicate private information without worrying about its release to the public, one may be pressured internally NOT to speak as one would wish.
So only in the case that all those conditions are met and the person we're talking about is embarrassed to the point where they'd rather shut up than speak out (in which case I'd call them a coward) does that come true.
The end points can be encrypted by every techonology imaginable, that only prevents people who shouldn't be able to access the data from accessing it.
The guy who leaked this stuff was granted access to it. He had the passwords to open everything he leaked, so the problem is not (a possible) lack of encryption but the fact that he was able to access so much without anyone noticing. He seemingly downloaded more files than one person could read in a year, how was this not noticed?
I'm not close to the scariest person breaking systems. And I'm appalled on a biweekly basis by what I can manage to get software to cough up. One person's "basic precaution" is another's "failure so spectacular it demands an example be made of its author".
You aren't OK with a world governed by the ethic you just alluded to. You're only OK with invoking it to make a haphazard argument.
I absolutely do place blame on the people charged with protecting the information that got leaked. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with WL's culpability.
The American Government and it's diplomatic services are currently being made an example of.
> You aren't OK with a world governed by the ethic you just alluded to.
That's an assumption.
> You're only OK with invoking it to make a haphazard argument.
I think it's pretty solid. If you are in charge of material that you deem important enough to stamp it 'secret' then you should take basic precautions, if you do not then you only have yourself to blame. Not locking your house is stupid, even if burglary is wrong.
> I absolutely do place blame on the people charged with protecting the information that got leaked.
Good.
> But that has nothing whatsoever to do with WL's culpability.
Indeed, it doesn't because as far as I know they're not culpable. The investigation in to the leak has so far been limited to those in the employ of the US government, and again, as far as I know wikileaks and its associates have not been charged with any crimes or even misdemeanors related to these leaks.
The 'if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear' mantra cuts both ways. I don't agree with it when applied to the general public, and I just as much don't agree with it when applying it to the government. The difference is that I would expect the government to at least be somewhat capable when it comes to dealing with data that is deemed sensitive.
So maybe your point is that crypto is pointless because no matter what information will be leaked and therefore the recipients of the leaked data should have culpability but that is a world governed by an ethic that I'm not ok with.
Information security people in the US government were apparently negligent with information they were charged with protecting. But those people weren't information owners or stakeholders.
Not everybody that disagrees with you is incoherent.
> People who leave their front doors unlocked are not themselves responsible for burglary.
I agree with that and I would like to live in a society where that was true. However, the insurance company and the police in the region where I live consider living in an unlocked house reason enough to lay at least part of the blame with the owner of the premises, insurance companies respond to this by refusing to pay out, the police responds to this by saying they will not spend time investigating the case.
> Burglars are responsible for buglary.
Yes, they are, they are the perpetrators. But locking your door makes it harder for burglars to do their deeds. We also have a proverb here that illustrates some of the culpability of the keeper of the resource, 'the opportunity creates the thief'. Not giving people opportunities significantly cuts down on the risk.
> Information security people in the US government were apparently negligent with information they were charged with protecting.
And not for the first time. They also support leaking information when it suits their purposes, such as the Valerie Plame scandal.
> But those people weren't information owners or stakeholders.
I have no knowledge of that.
Of course, in the real world, "unlocked door" is as moot a point as "properly encrypted data". The people you really worry in the city about just take a cinderblock to your doors and windows (our car and garage doors are never locked for exactly that reason), and the people you really worry about online don't care what you did to encrypt your data, because they already own your kernel.
That's skirting the edge of an ad-hominem attack, maybe even crossing the line. For someone of your stature that is a pretty bad example to set.
> whoever was charged with protecting this information was negligent, and whoever actually leaked it is responsible for their own actions.
Neither of those are Assange.
So, the new world we live in: if information is leaked it will instantly reach an audience of millions. Plan accordingly.
Encryption works fine for trusted communication, but it's not a solution when the people posting the information are also potential valid recipients.
Eventually it will hit the street and eventually it will be abused, you can pretty much count on it.
That's also the reason why I have yet to get a new passport because I don't think the government should have my fingerprints on file, given their history with respect to data loss and internal abuse cases.
Ironically our governments are asking for the power to snoop in our personal communications and records without a warrant or a valid reason. This is a taste of their own medicine.
Are some things unnecessarily secret? Of course. I'd love to see papers exposing the motivation behind the Iraq war or about who knew what when about torture or what is going on at Gitmo.
Do we really need to know a lot of this mundane stuff?
I think if you gave me a choice between a country in which a lot of things are classified but the populace actually read and understood what the competiting parties platforms were, and one in which classified documents are leaked all the time but no one even reads the public documents to begin with, I'd prefer to live in the former. Unforunately currently the US is the latter.
I guess this is opinion but I didn't think that the released information was mundane.
"and one in which classified documents are leaked all the time but no one even reads the public documents to begin with, I'd prefer to live in the former. Unforunately currently the US is the latter."
Actually imo the US is a country where "a lot of things are classified, but where most of the populace is too disinterested to read public documents or stay current on news." However, that doesn't mean that there isn't any value for educated, interested parties in having access to public documents.
Wikileaks is a recent phenomenom and not an age old one.
I don't think you can just state that without justification. Anything juicy enough to be a revelation will probably also cause diplomatic problems for our country. Is that helping us? I think almost everyone in this country agrees we wouldn't want to see Iran or North Korea with nukes, we just disagree on what should be done about it. Diplomacy on those issues could well be more difficult now because of this leak. Why is that a good thing? What benefit has outweighed that cost? That now you know what our state department's negotiating plan is?
I get why certain things should be leaked when it is necessary, but this seems to me to be one guy with sour grapes dumping reams of data for no clear reason and some tidbits of it being interesting.
And what happens after X millions of pages are leaked when the one super important thing (ala the Nixon papers of today) are leaked and nobody cares? Has that made it a better place?
Maybe if the government was less pervasive and more hands off (i.e. taxes and so on) I would be less interested in their day to day affairs.
It's an absolutist argument.
Wikileaks is not releasing all secrets because they don't have all secrets nor are they likely to ever acquire all secrets. So this discussion is not "either Wikileaks is good because nothing should be secret or it's bad because some secrets are necessary". A rational view of this discussion breaks down into two primary paths:
1- Is enough being done by Wikileaks (and partners and government) to minimize threats to individuals named in the leaked documents? Any rational review of the evidence to date determines that it does appear that enough is being done in this regard even without the government agreeing to involve itself (no evidence that any individuals have been harmed by the leaked documents and apparent active attempts by Wikileaks to seek guidance and pursue internal review in order to redact specific information).
2- What are the implications of the actual information that is being released? Ultimately, this is the key discussion topic. The rest (save #1) is just noise that some are using to intentionally minimize the relevance of this discussion topic.
In regards to your two choices, the first doesn't exist, never has and there's no indication that it ever will and the second, overstated first because the amount of information released pales in comparison to the amount of classified information in toto, is by all measures preferable to the only realistic alternative: minimal classified information leaked and minimal public engagement, providing ample cover for government misdeeds. Therefore, it is fortunate.
I stopped reading right there.
PS: I would much rather the term not simply mutate into yet another name for evil / bad people, but good luck fighting that fight.
Thats were Wikileaks went astray in my mind.
What does this show us except how the metaphorical sausage of National Security and diplomacy is made?
What has the exposition of this information done, except make it harder for the American government to do its job?
Releasing classified information, just for the hell of it, strikes me as a bit silly. There's a reason that information is classified ... and if you disagree with the reasons, then the information you release should clearly show why the information should be public knowledge (covering up civilian casualties in the Iraq/Afghan wars for example).
Little if any of the information I've seen has passed that test. I love wikileaks, but they screwed up on this one.
Now, it's become "someone who makes us in the media look bad for doing such a terrible job of investigative reporting the last 25 years".
Heh. I know she (likely) didn't mean it the way I'm reading it, but that's amusing phrasing given the context.
I feel really sad reading this. The impression I've gotten from the media (mostly newspapers, little TV coverage) about this leak is that any and all "issues", "scandals", whatever you want to call them are downplayed, dismissed or worse, not even mentioned. I have the uneasy feeling that had this come to light when Bush was president, the outrage would be massive; now, however, few seem to care and I don't see any willingness to make people care either.
As a sidenote to, quoting: "When your personal medical or financial records can be disclosed at any time, will you still enjoy the notion of “free speech”?" : The Greek government, with consent from EU, is planning to make any and all citizens' financial records public. The legal basis for this enterprise exists since 1992, and it's only awaiting approval from the DPA (Hellenic Data Protection Authority). I assure you that barring the initial exclamation-filled newspaper headlines, nobody's said a word about this.
So, Mr. Vegter, the people are far too misinformed and manipulated by biased executives to care about their privacy anymore, let alone "free speech". Congratulations.