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Comment by colinplamondon | Hacker News Reader

I haven't heard a decent argument on how Wikileaks isn't a terrorist organization, and why the principal members aren't enemy combatants.

The scattershot releases show that the goal is to hurt the US, not to affect change. There was real legitimate news in the releases so far- hidden in mounds of classified information that had no news value beyond exposing sources, risking lives, and slinging mud at the State Department.

There's HUGE value in an organization like Wikileaks, as shown in Tunisia.

Wikileaks itself, though, has shown that it is blatantly anti-American, risking the lives of our allies and sources. I really, really hope that one of the splinter groups takes off, with a bit more respect for the human cost of these kind of releases.

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> Wikileaks isn't a terrorist organization, and why the principal members aren't enemy combatants.

Well, they aren't operating with the intent to cause terror in enemy civilians. Further, an enemy combatant is usually considered to be someone armed on the field of combat. I believe there is a very technical legal definition of an enemy combatant.

They - Wikileaks - are pursuing anti-US goals, however. That is not illegal. It should be expected, however, that the US will retaliate in various fashions, because the interests of the US dictate that anti-US interests be diminished.

I am not certain in the least of the facts of Jacob Appelbaum's case. Certainly, if he was definitively operating against the US government in a terrorist fashion, he would deny it. But if he was an honest man, he would also deny that he was operating against the US government.

After spending an amount of my time in the last few months reading about the USSR's beginnings and the fall of the Tsar, I can assure him that he is living in a very nice country where dissidents don't simply get shot out without a trial. Being stuck in a holding cell is quite gentle comparatively. Which does not make it perfectly upright either, nontheless.

There is a higher problem here. The conventions of warfare since 1812 or so describe nation-states at war with each other, including how to deal with prisoners and manage trials. However, today we do not have significant nation-state actors in active war with each other, we have un-uniformed[1] militias operating against nation-states. I do not know of any serious attempt in international circles to define the non-nation-state actors in legal categories. This has led to the Guantanemo Bay problem. A terrorist is neither a civilian nor a military officer, but current law - to the best of my knowledge - does not handle that.

Nor does current law - to the best of my knowledge - handle the 'info-war' legal categories well. What are the legal details on publishing sensitive or classified material in time of peace, if you are not constrained to silence by your duties? I don't know that that's ever been seriously treated in the US.

So how should the laws of a country handle someone who appears to be acting as the ambassador for an anti-country interest? That's the real question.

[1] At least in the narrow eyes of the law, uniforms matter, according to a former US Army officer I know.

What are the legal details on publishing sensitive or classified material in time of peace, if you are not constrained to silence by your duties? I don't know that that's ever been seriously treated in the US.

Treason? Applies to citizens acting against their own sovereign nation. I don't know what you call it from a non-citizen. Perhaps sedition?

Well, Merriam Webster defines sedition as "incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority"[1].

Treason also has a fairly narrow meaning, "the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family"[2].

I don't believe Wikileaks' actions falls under sedition or treason. Certainly I've never heard them of them advocating insurrections or US government overthrow.

What they did do is publish large amounts of data classified by the US.

Legally, that should be a crime, I believe. I'm not sure it is. From my brief (and IANAL) reading on the question, it's never been adequately addressed, and it brings up massive First Amendment issues.

There is also the question of Assange, who is not a US citizen, and therefore not per se subject to US law, and then Applebaum, who is a US citizen, and therefore unquestionably subject to US law. Even under harsher strictures is Manning (and other soldiers), who are under military US law, which is not like civilian law.

The laws have to deal with the "electronic frontier". They must, or we will continually mire ourselves in grey areas of general suspiciousness.

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sedition?show=0...

[2] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/treason

"I haven't heard a decent argument on how Wikileaks isn't a terrorist organization"

That's not how the justice system works.

"Wikileaks itself, though, has shown that it is blatantly anti-American"

So fucking what?

People who operate against society always get screwed. That's the cost they take on by operating against society. They have the right to work against society- but that doesn't mean that they aren't watched, closely. KKK and neo-Nazis have the right to say whatever they want, but life is made difficult for them, and the ATF watches the shit out of them.

In the same way, when someone participates in an organization that's going out of its way to acquire and distribute classified stuff, regardless of news value, but rather simply because it's there, I'd hope that our government would make life hard on them.

Wikileaks is not engaging in journalism- it's engaging in infowar against America. That's not legally defined yet, and the legal ramifications have not been decided yet- but I hope that it is defined, and there are severe legal ramifications for it.

> People who operate against society always get screwed. That's the cost they take on by operating against society.

That's what Wikileaks is trying to make happen: they're making those people who "operate against society" accountable to that society, secondarily so that those people can get screwed, but primarily to protect society from them. Here's a partial list of people "operating against society" who have gotten screwed so far by Wikileaks: Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Gamal Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, US troops that murdered civilians in Iraq, Magnus Gudmundsson, Ágúst and Lýður Guðmundsson, Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, the US diplomats promoting ACTA, and most recently Robert Tchenguiz.

People "operating against society" who still may get screwed by Wikileaks include Björgólfur Guðmundsson, various tax evaders protected by Julius Baer, and some Bank of America executives.

This is not "infowar against America". War involves killing people and creating confusion. This is the opposite of war: exposing corruption and conspiracy, creating accountability, protecting the public.

"it's engaging in infowar against America. That's not legally defined yet"

So what you're saying is that you're a fuckwad who's just making shit up?

"Wikileaks is not engaging in journalism"

In Your Opinion. There is a reason they haven't brought the law down on them, and have to resort to Mafia like tactics.

What happened to civility on HN? Why are people upvoting the above comment?

"naughty words" contain no real meaning, but comparing wikileaks to the KKK or neonazis is truly uncivil.

Perhaps it is a sign that this avenue of discussion is finally maturing enough to understand the difference between a comment that merely uses taboo words, and a comment that actually contains uncivil content.

> Wikileaks is not engaging in journalism- it's engaging in infowar against America

I would agree that Wikileaks have recently had much material relating to the US leaked to it, and has then published it.

However, I think this ignores their publications in relation to Kenya, Peru, various banks, Scientology, Iran, and so on. They publish what they get.

define: terrorism--the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.

So, while it could be argued that Wikileaks uses intimidation or coercion, it most certainly can not be argued that Wikileaks uses nor threatens violence. This means that they cannot be definition be a terrorist organization.

What evidence is there that Wikileaks is anti-American? They post leaks from every- and anywhere, but they got a HUGE leak that happened to be from the U.S. Of course they're going to concentrate on it! Wikileaks is against opaque government, and the only way it can be called "anti-American" is to recognize that the U.S. government is anything but transparent. This view encompasses many other governments, though, so calling them "anti-American" is disingenuous.

> I haven't heard a decent argument on how Wikileaks isn't a terrorist organization, and why the principal members aren't enemy combatants.

Terrorism involves violence or, at least, the threat of violence.

What 'human costs of these kind of releases'? Can you perhaps show me some evidence of the human cost of the leaks compared to say the human cost of the corresponding wars?

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