If you are a citizen of Connecticut, or, hell, anywhere, please email Lieberman and tell him that his actions and comments are completely ludicrous and, in fact, anti-Democratic.
http://lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/contact/email-me-about...
Welcome to Amerika, where anyone who speaks out against you is branded a terrorist. (I have downmodded this exact comment a number of times, because I never thought it was really true. But this time, that's exactly what's happening! There is a well-established legal precedent in the US that you can publish anything that has been leaked, regardless of how you got that information. The person who leaked it gets in trouble, not the person who tells everyone about it. But now... we want to throw away our freedoms and call wikileaks a "terrorist organization". What the fuck? Terrorists fly airplanes full of people into buildings full of people. This is a collection of documents that say China hacked Google. NOT THE SAME AT ALL!)
</rant>
What did you expect? Did you honestly think you could dump years of State Department cables on the internet and what? Somebody would come give wikileaks an award? They'd win the Nobel Peace Prize? (yikes, that still might happen)
This is not wikileaks reporting that the war is going badly, ie making a point that we are being lied to by showing the lies. This isn't honorable. If you'll remember, when the Pentagon Papers happened the leaker was fully willing to take whatever punishment came to him. As he should have.
This isn't that, either.
This is some asshole with a computer connection hooking up with somebody else with a grievance and destroying billions of dollars of my collective property. His stated mission is to destroy the structure of my country by making it impossible for various nodes of the country to communicate with each other.
No amount of ranting is going to make an anarchist into a superhero. We need leaks for society to function, not crazy self-centered promoters bent on single-handedly redesigning our way of life.
</rant> (wink)
On a more serious note, I told you guys when this happened that there aren't actions without reactions. If Assange is just getting started? Well the other side is just getting started too. Expect more of this.
If we can't have any privacy, the government can't either.
I keep telling you that none of that matters. Consent of the governed isn't about the best way of governing people, it's about the general agreement that things are working this way. Wikileaks has done nothing to change any of that. So it's just an attack on the government itself. Expect the government to react. That's all I saying. For every person you might convince that change is needed, you just created a hundred people wanting to throw the entire wikileaks bunch in jail.
Honestly, I agree with you that individual freedoms are at an all-time low -- in all kinds of ways. It's a travesty and a horrible thing. I'm just telling you that the emotional argument about how screwed up things are isn't going to hold much say when pitted against the way groups of people work. To them, this is an attack and a crime. Hell, it's an attack and crime to me too, and I agree with it. (The two beliefs are not mutually exclusive) Yelling about being surprised at the response here doesn't make much sense to me. You can easily see where this all is headed, and it's not a new golden age of human freedom, as much as one is needed.
Just don't forget what you were getting into power for when you get there.
Incidentally - when was the last time politicians changed world for the better in a major way? (and I don't mean simply voting money to schools or hospitals - I mean structurally).
Suggesting possible solutions is much tougher.
But you asked, so I owe it to whomever cares to at least give it a shot.
The idea/structure of wikileaks itself is broken, and here's why: for some reason they've went down the road of promoting Assange and going for the big stories. This would be a great idea if you wanted to foment the next Marxist revolution or create a new internet rock-star, but it ain't going to work if you really care about people and want a better world.
If you asked me to create a list of things that should remain secret, no matter how good or bad the government is, at the top of the list would be things like tactical military reports, state department cables, personnel matters, security, and negotiations. For that very reason, these are the "hot button" issues -- the ones that give wikileaks the biggest bang for their buck. So they love those kinds of stories. And they're exactly the issues where they are going to piss off the most people. Wikileaks can't be a publicity hound and also be a force for good. The two don't go together. People will buy into the idea that too many secrets are kept, but there's no way in hell they're ever going to buy into the idea that some guy in Europe knows better than the will of the taxpayer.
It keeps getting back to that -- pissing off people. Whatever a person wants to do to instigate change, he/she has to piss off more people at the way secrecy currently works than he does piss off more people at the leakers themselves. Wikileaks is failing miserably here.
So I'd suggest a truly anonymous version of wikileaks that had an high ethical standard of what they would not publish -- things like alcohol addiction treatment of top government executives, or any top secret cable that mentions sources. (These standards would need to be developed)
A set of public ethics, along with a faceless dump of information, would generate much less initial hype, but would have a greater effect in the long run. You could even have people who "spoke" for the leaking organization but were not associated with it in any way, thereby separating the operation of the group and the publicity of it.
You want to tick me off as a taxpayer over how much secrecy there is? Try dumping the legislative notes of the Agriculture department, how deep they're tangled up in big business and how much they use secrecy to cover for that. Or how much secrecy is used by the FDA to use politics to make decisions on drug approval. There are hundreds of examples like this. And don't make everything so sure to tick off the right-wing in America. This is a structural problem, not a political one, and you'll have right and left wings of politics forever, no matter what your government structure. So leak some stuff on leftist organizations in Europe. Leak some stuff about China. Whatever you do, don't purposely antagonize one group or another. Dish out the medicine evenly.
Assange's argument of disrupting information flow between the nodes doesn't require flashy news conferences and huge PR events. Sure, that's more fun and gives folks a better visceral feeling of making a difference, but if you really want change, you don't need to be emotionally fulfilled, you need to do the things that over 20 years or so will actually change things. So far this aint' it.
Play chess, not checkers.
Have you considered the possibility that the current leaks are intentionally 'low value', and intended to cause outrage at Wikileaks to be spent early in the game, so that when they release something truly meaningful the story will no longer be about Wikileaks itself?
If we have structural problems (e.g. widespread corruption) then politicians alone won't fix it.
I can't say that I know whether Wikileaks is going to effective, or that it's going to cause any positive ourcomes, but it seems clear to me that if there is going to be positive action on corruption it's either going to happen as a result of a massive crisis (i.e. the system breaks down), or because a new force shines light on the corruption from outside, forcing politicians to act. Both paths carry a risk of things getting worse rather than better - although so does a slow decline resulting from inaction.
Personally, I'd hate to see any (more?) major breakdowns in society, and the idea of a slow decline is equally tragic. Perhaps wikileaks is doing it wrong, but the idea of a non-government actor exposing corruption - something the media has stopped doing - seems entirely healthy to me.
I want the state department to be able to do its job effectively. I saw extremely little in the cables (if anything) that changed my view of the state department, where is the scandal?
But the state department is now less effective than it was pre-Wikileaks.
Why, as an American, would I ever support that?
I agree if there is a scandal, leak that shit. Blow it up for all to see. But leaking by the original guy who had the clearance as an F U to the government, and now by Wikileaks as an F U to the united states doesn't seem necessary to me.
Stolen materials? Every wrongfully classified document is stolen from the American public, the rightful owner of all information produced by the government we instituted.
I'm sorry, I generally avoid snarky posts on HN, but that comment literally makes less sense to me than anything I've seen on HN is a long long time. Down vote me to -3000, I don't care, I can't let that one slide.
Do you think the nuclear launch codes should be published? (of course not right? who would do that?)
How about where are nuclear submarines are right at this very moment. (of course not, who would do that?)
Do you think George Washington should have written in the paper he was crossing the Delaware river on Christmas? This country has had secrets since before its inception!
Ok, I guess in your defense you emphasize the phrase wrongfully classified. Everyone agrees too many things are classified (though having a clearance, I was actually shocked how many things AREN'T classified that you would think should be). But lets say I agree on your premise that things that are wrongfully classified should be made available to the public. Who decides what is wrongfully classified? Wikileaks? The guy leaking it? You? I find it interesting that of the thousands of people who had access to these documents, over 99.9% of them thought they rightfully should remain hidden, and one guy disagreed and leaked them. This isn't 100,000 documents leaked by 50 people out of 80, it is 100,000 documents leaked by 1 guy out of thousands upon thousands.
So lets go to the official definitions of classified material to see if they were "wrongfully classified"
Top Secret (TS) The highest level of classification of material on a national level. Such material would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security if made publicly available.
i.e. your launch codes, orders, locations of troops, capabilities of weapons (things you and the people we are fighting don't even know we can do)
Secret Such material would cause "grave damage" to national security if it were publicly available.
Confidential Such material would cause "damage" or be "prejudicial" to national security if publicly available.
Restricted Such material would cause "undesirable effects" if publicly available.
I feel like the fact that the state department has spent the last week running around trying to clean up the diplomatic brush fires that have been caused by this prove that they were right to be classified in the first place. Should the cables have been classified as Top Secret - of course not. And thats why none of them were. Should they be restricted (i.e. noforn or distro d or something similar that says they are not to be released)? I think they rightfully should be. Nothing in the cables were above Secret, and most were simply restricted. They're not wrongfully classified when the definition of restricted is that it impedes your ability to do the job of the state department if leaked, which clearly this leak is doing right now.
My response will be relatively short, and I feel compelled to explain why.
You wrote thirteen paragraphs. The first two are rhetorical metadiscourse. The next three are implied arguments against a straw man. In the sixth paragraph you actually attempted to make an argument, it appears, but you only violently agreed with my point ("everyone agrees too many things are classified"). The next six paragraphs consist of irrelevant information probably copied and pasted. In the last paragraph alone do you make a claim which actually merits my response.
Your claim that the state department "spent the last week clean[ing] up...diplomatic brush fires" is completely unsubstantiated. I've seen little evidence that "cablegate" has caused anything more than mild embarrassment of government officials and a media bonanza.
Your only real contention worth a response is "[Documents are] not wrongfully classified when the definition of restricted is that it impedes your ability to do the job". Part of the government's job is explaining itself and its actions to its citizens: it reports to us, because it exists by our consent. Classification and secrecy exists not so the government won't be required to account for its actions, but in order to protect the lives of the citizens who consent to its existence. According to your interpretation of "restricted" the government should classify all potentially embarrassing information which might be construed negatively by the citizenry, and frankly, I don't think I need an argument to demonstrate the bankruptcy of that claim: given the usual incompetency of the government your principle, taken to its logical conclusion, would have the government classifying nearly everything.
I believe he spoke about wrongly classified materials. I should hope that neither he, nor anyone else, would think that nuclear launch codes were an example of something wrongly classified.
This guy is such a two-faced liar and a hypocrite.