US Military Classifies Wikileaks As 'Enemy Of The United States' | Hacker News Reader

US Military Classifies Wikileaks As 'Enemy Of The United States'

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147 pointsmcantelon168 comments

Without commenting on this particular document, the military has an extremely valid reason for criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active servicemembers; people in the armed services are stewards of all sorts of information that can't be leaked, and Wikileaks has a stated goal of extracting as much intelligence from the US military as they can.

This "declaration" (it's a Techdirt story; someone could do us all a favor by trying to verify what it actually means) comes in the wake of the most grievous opsec breach in US history. The only reason we're not outraged by the breach itself is that it got overshadowed by the subsequent disclosure to the press. If it had been Israel that extracted this information and not ransomed it to The Guardian, we'd be calling for heads to roll over it.

> Wikileaks has a stated goal of extracting as much intelligence from the US military as they can.

I've followed this for quite sometime and I do not recall this ever being a stated goal of Wikileaks. It is a stated goal of theirs to publish anything a whistle-blower sends them. If the US military has the most to fear it might be because they have the most to hide in regards to warcrimes etc.

Primary Source here: http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FO...

Original article was in the Sydney Morning Herald. This is a rewrite of a rewrite of the documents.

The US has the most to fear because the US leaks like a sieve.

If the countries with the most evil militaries had the most to fear, we'd all be remote desktopping into the laptops of Syrian generals right now.

> If the countries with the most evil militaries had the most to fear, we'd all be remote desktopping into the laptops of Syrian generals right now

Are you suggesting people are not? Assad's personal emails, Minister of the Interior's personal emails, Defence Minister... and so it goes: all of it http://wikileaks.org/syria-files/

And so we know what movies Assad wants to watch. A blow for justice to be sure.

No but, perhaps the emails outing his propagandists in Washington are? http://wikileaks.org/syria-files/releasedate/2012-07-06-06-t... Or perhaps the world is slightly better off for knowing which Western security companies provided support for the Assad regime http://wikileaks.org/syria-files/releasedate/2012-07-16-12-e... To mention just a few. Story from those sources: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/emails-syrian-security-got-co...

If you dig through, chances are you will find something nobody else has yet recognised the significance of.

>The US has the most to fear because the US leaks like a sieve.

Part of that is the scale of the US military. It has bases all around the world and is almost always at war. More surface area means more leaks.

Wikileaks is a journalistic organization. If someone in the US military emails the New York Times a classified secret, that does not make the Times an "enemy of the United States."

All this nonsense about "most grievous breach in opsec history" and "extracting information" completely obscures the issue by putting the blame on the wrong boot.

Hacking, spying, all these things can and should be declared illegal/wrong. But publishing data that was sent to you by a willing informant is much less clear-cut, and certainly doesn't warrant "enemy of the state" status from any country claiming to respect freedom of the press.

The goal of news organizations is to find out information and make it public. If you want to keep information private, fine, make it a criminal offense for your people to disclose that information to news sources. Case closed.

A US Army information assurance agent downloaded gigabytes of state secrets and mailed them to a foreign national. Your willingness to call that a "nonsensical" breach says more about your biases than mine.

> If you want to keep information private, fine, make it a criminal offense for your people to disclose that information to news sources.

Honestly I thought that was the interesting segment of the post you responded to. You haven't really addressed what his point was.

What do you think about his point?

I initially didn't think much of it, but in light of your response to his post I think he may have a valid point.

"Make it a criminal offense for your people to disclose that information to news sources" is exactly what is happening here. A member of the military (presumably a female in the Air Force, from context) was leaking information to (EDIT: suspected of corresponding with) Assange and/or Manning.

The implication of his wording as I see it is that this is fine, and that this is as far as it needs to go.

But doesn't the same logic make every person without classified access an enemy of the state?

That is, if an Army agent emails classified info to you or your neighbor, that should be wrong without labeling you and your neighbor enemies of the USA.

What is the US Army? What is it for?

What is an information assurance agent?

What is a state secret?

What is a foreign national? What is nationality?

Yeah this sounds like a real fun discussion.

My point is that I see the comment I replied to as incredibly biased. I see it as laden with charged words and assumptions of the nobility of "our" side and the badness of "their" side.

One man's state secret is another man's dirty laundry.

Edit: In other words, you weren't really saying anything :D

Edit 2: I always come to regret saying "you". Pointing fingers doesn't feel good.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/

I don't think anybody disputes that the person or persons who both were given access to the classified data and then gave it to someone who wasn't cleared to have it, should not be hunted down and punished.

A number of people don't think that a journalistic organization that then tells the world about the information rises to the level of treasonous behavior.

There is no evidence that Wikileaks seeks to 'overthrow' or otherwise 'impune the soverignty of' the United States or any other country whose dirty laundry their air, they are in the most classical of definitions the "messenger" here.

What sort of reasoning can you use to show that they deserve the moniker 'enemy' which doesn't apply to the New York Times or the Economist?

The TechDirt article was very distracting, but it seems that they way the US Military tells its own members "don't send secret information to a given third-party or we will hang you by the neck until you are dead" is by declaring that third-party an enemy. The documents are entirely about how they are prosecuting "Subject."

Saying "enemy of the state" is sure good link bait, but it doesn't mean the US is in a state of war.

And do the US newspapers have this same classification?

I could see declaring Iranian state run TV as an enemy, they are the propaganda engine for Iran, I could see them declaring "The Center for Holy Jihad and the Complete Destruction of the US and Israel" an enemy.

But Wikileaks seems to be pretty even handed in their dissemination of data they get, whether its US secrets or Australian secrets or what ever.

So tell me the Times and the Washington Post are on the same list or have the same standing in the eyes of the US Government and I'll agree that this is a non-story and over blown.

No. No newspaper has that classification, including Al Jazeera. The US military isn't terrified that Reuters is trying to socially engineer whole databases of diplomatic cables out of them.

Wikileaks socially engineered Bradley Mannings?

I do believe that, yes.

Seems kind of odd to throw the guy in solitary, if that was the case.

Why? Because anyone I think was victimized by someone else must legally not be culpable for their own actions?

It would be neat if the world worked that way.

In your opinion, was he aware of the nature of his actions, and the nature of their potential consequences?

I think he was fully aware of the nature of his actions but incorrect in his expectations as to how he would be perceived. In the chats between Lamo and Manning it was apparent he thought he'd be seen as some sort of hero for his actions by the majority of the US population. Obviously this isn't the case.

You're right, we are going to agree to disagree :-)

I think the US Military has every reason to be terrified that Reuters might successfully social engineer entire databases of sensitive data out of them in pursuit of a story.

We disagree on the response, I'd advocate the State department and Military need to give better training and supervision of their staff. Not, if Reuters is successful, declaring Reuters an enemy.

> But Wikileaks seems to be pretty even handed in their dissemination of data they get

Of course "even-handed" can be read as "non-discerning", and I think that's one of the biggest problems with the attempts to classify what Wikileaks is doing as "journalism."

The NYT, for instance has released "state secrets" (the Pentagon Papers), but they did so because it revealed policy errors in the government's prosecution of the Vietnam war, which were clearly in the interests of the U.S. public to know. They carefully judged the value of the data, and released it because they felt the value of the making the information public in that specific case out-weighed the value of keeping it secret.

Wikileaks, on the other hand, seems to have applied almost no judgement at all: they just released an enormous "bluh" of data, much of which is both problematic diplomatically (and so actually has the potential to harm U.S. interests) and yet of little obvious value to the U.S. public.

[An example being all the various cables where an ambassador says something like "The public here thinks president Y is a doodyhead, and we should be careful when talking about subjects A and B." In many cases this is essentially common wisdom, and yet seeing it explicitly stated by U.S. representatives may enrage "president X" and cause diplomatic problems for the U.S. in his country.]

Unless Wikileaks actually tries to follow journalistic practices, I don't think they can reasonably be called journalists. Journalism entails responsibility and judgement as well as freedom, and Wikileaks has shown little stomach for the former despite claiming the benefits of the latter.

A number of people don't think that a journalistic organization that then tells the world about the information rises to the level of treasonous behavior.

-- The question is inducement. Context is relevant.

Eg, Is it ok for the "XYZ press" to pay for people to <leak> "official" secrets? What about foreign press? What about foreign governments? What about foreign State press? Quite quickly you end up in the edge-case of pretexting bad behaviour in the name of otherwise legitimate activity.

I think we agree, I've been arguing the 'Equal protection' angle, which is to say that if Wikileaks is an enemy of the US then so is every journalistic outlet in the world. This is a general argument and says nothing about specific acts.

Now if you or I or a reporter or a Mossad agent or a IRG member seeks out someone with classified information and bribes, extorts, or otherwise induces that person to reveal it, that is espionage pure and simple. If the person doing the inducing has diplomatic immunity they are expelled, if the person who gave up the information is identified they are dealt with in either civil court or military court.

Over our history, we have chosen to separate that activity from people who are in possession of classified information that they feel proves or exposes some great injustice or cover up. And that person independently seeks out a reporting agency to bring the information to light and correct the injustice. We still prosecute the people who release that information but we haven't (traditionally) been able to prosecute the receiver of that information (and I'll reiterate that the Pentagon Papers case is a great exemplar here).

So the treatment here would seem to hinge on the motivation of the organization and how they came about to have possession of the classified information.

To be clear, I agree that that was a crime on the part of the agent, but I fail to see why that incriminates Wikileaks in any way.

Wikileaks hasn't been incriminated (here, at least).

While doing a personnel investigation, the Air Force said that female Subject was accused of communication with the enemy.

Saying that "the enemy" was Wikileaks, and that "enemy" means various nefarious things are both things that are being read into this, with much urging from Assange and his lawyer. The Air Force didn't even want to publicize this but it got released by a FOIA request; it's hard to say I was incriminating a third-party with communications intended to be private.

(I could well see that "communication with the enemy" refers to any dissemination of classified data that could end up in the hands of the enemy. Just what should count is probably a good debate to have, and I bet it's already been had since issues like this were around long before the Internet.)

The New York Times will parse and redact the information that they feel could endanger people from any classified information that they may publish or use in an article. They notably published the Pentagon Papers, which showed that the US had been misled regarding Vietnam. This information did not endanger anyone.

Wikileaks, at least with the initial major leak, does not redact or edit information to protect anyone. This has been one of the reasons major journalist outlets (such as NYT) didn't cooperate with them regarding the initial leak.

They simply serve as a clearinghouse for leaked info. The government would almost certainly be able to invoke prior restraint if they were able to take wikileaks to a US court. They were not able to show this in the Pentagon Papers case.

I'm not commenting on the "enemy of state" situation, but I did want to clarify that major difference between an organization such as the NYT and Wikileaks.

So you think NY Times or other media shouldn't have exposed that video of the army guys in helicopter gunning those unarmed men?

I'm not sure how you attribute that belief to me.

I simply said that the New York Times and Wikileaks have different procedures for dealing with information leaked to them.

I never said anything about what should or shouldn't have been exposed.

Can't reply to the child, but I'll just say I'm super pleased with this disagreement / thread in general. Polite discourse hasn't died on HN!

Playing devil's advocate here, but several of the men were actually armed. The controversy was not whether unarmed men were killed, but that two Reuters journalists who were among them were killed. Also, the NYTimes didn't break the story, the Washington Post did.

This is the problem with the state of journalism today: Information is released AFTER the bad decision has already been made and it's too late to do anything about it.

The media isn't doing their jobs in this world and that's why WikiLeaks is important.

If a soldier has lunch with Julian Assange, he could be executed. If he has lunch with David Pogue, no big deal. The reason is because the New York Times answers to the politicians and Wikileaks answers to a higher power.

Wikileaks is going to start releasing information before things happen?

People tend to make and disseminate plans to their minions prior to executing them. Thus, the plan could be leaked before the thing that is planned occurs.

Easy solution: Make plans for every possible option, so you don't know which one will actually occur.

Oh, wait. The Pentagon already does this: The have battle/attack plans for every country in the world! So I guess they should leak those and let people scream in outrage?

A plan is not equal to intent. And you only know intent after it happens, not before.

"Here are the targets we'd attack in Canada if we were at war" is a little different from "everyone meet up at Fort Afghanistan in Tent 123 at 1300 hours".

And how exactly do you want wikileaks to announce this in advance? The military is not known for giving early warning of things like this.

By the time a schedule like this is announced (even internally in the military), it's already in progress!

Well, the thing of importance would be the enemy knowing a strike is coming (for example). If the military is having people come to a meeting, the subject of that meeting is already determined. A mole could release the details on Wikileaks, saying "they're meeting in Tent 123 to prepare for the attack on Kabul National Bank". Well, now the bank manager knows there's a strike force inbound.

Not that this is a problem inherent to Wikileaks; you could use any service to communicate the same thing. I'm just giving an example of a time where publishing sensitive documents could be done ahead of time to disastrous consequences.

They could, if they had that information. I have meetings scheduled out until November right now. If I tell you I have a meeting on Monday and here's the agenda for the meeting, that's releasing the information before the event happens.

While this sounds awesome and potentially disastrous, it also distroys itself as valuable info IMO.

Plans can change, the past cannot. Now, if there's breaking news however and it affect a large amount of people in a negative way, you'll notice it'll be reversed before it'll become finalized. This is something similar to that vein of thought, and IMO is why social media is important.

Then I guess my question is more about the failures of today's journalists. Is the implication that the Times knows about these plans but refuses to talk about them?

I'm trying to wrap my head around just what wikileaks is doing differently here, regarding BEFORE and AFTER. It would have been nice if wikileaks had told those photojournalists that the gunship was coming BEFORE they were killed, instead of posting the video of the event AFTER it happened.

I agree with you that there is a "major" difference between the NYT and Wikileaks. But it's subjective.

It's "freedom of the press" not "freedom of the reasonable press (as determined by the government)"

The relevant law(s) is(are) about disclosure of information, not the freedom of the press. Unless you want to challenge the constitutionality of government secrets. To illustrate in a related way, consider another example: Acessory to Murder. Which is a also a crime.

But "Freedom of the Press" is not a carte blanche allowance to print whatever you want, just as Freedom of Speech doesn't allow you to say whatever you want.

Prior restraint in the US has established that it is, in fact, "freedom of the reasonable press (as determined by the courts)", fortunately there needs to be a strong burden of proof that prior restraint is necessitated.

That is false. WL offered to censor any paper the US government could argue would bring people in danger. The US government demanded that they cease all publication.

The issue is that the NYT doesn't publish the stuff we actually need to know. NYT publish what we needed to know 30 years ago.

> Wikileaks, at least with the initial major leak, does not redact or edit information to protect anyone.

Do you have a source on this? I don't recall all the leaks, but I do remember hearing that Wikileaks did a lot of work redacting and quantizing location information (I think for the cables).

So your argument is that the New York Times and Wikileaks have different journalistic standards.

That I can agree with.

I have seen the argument about potential harm raised a number of times, and I resonate with it and dislike it, just like I disliked Jane Fonda's trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam War but she wasn't made an enemy of the state.

But I note that even The National Enquirer gets the same journalistic privileges and protections that the New York Times does, we do not yet set a 'minimum standards of practice' bar for qualification as being journalists.

If Julian Assange had just taken a stupid PR trip to Afghanistan, I don't think that would have had any particular repercussions for Wikileaks.

The materials were initially redacted and Wikileaks did attempt to consult with the Department of State prior to publishing the materials and was stonewalled.

Given both this and the way these documents were published in a system accessed by several million individuals (including the allegedly mentally unstable), it seems a leap to argue that the fairest portion of blame if someone was hurt (who?) lies on anything except the Department of State for failing to adequately classify source materials, guard access to sensitive documents, and protect/extract imperiled sources when notified of danger to them in advance.

At what point does circumvention of (bad?) security begin to constitute a violation of UCMJ?

Leaking classified documents is illegal, but publishing leaked materials is protected speech.

IIRC they were redacting information they judged to be dangerous to release. The unredacted dump was released due to the error of publishing the password to the backup archive they distributed on the internet for redundancy in a book.

Right but this was a major problem.

Assange tried to weaponize the document dump. He put the encrypted dump out there and threatened that if anything happened to him the info would be released.

The fact that the key then leaked is an amazing demonstration of Wikileaks' incompetence, but it does not speak to the actual intent and threat that Assange was bringin to bear against the US government.

idonthack countered your claim that Wikileaks does not 'edit or redact' with this link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/16/wikileaks.assessment/index.... (well the slashdot story pointing to that link but primary sources and all that)

It seems that Gates found that Wikileaks did actually use some restraint (not perhaps as much as one would like but it would be inaccurate to characterize them as a free flow channel of secret data)

>The New York Times will parse and redact the information that they feel could endanger people from any classified information that they may publish or use in an article. They notably published the Pentagon Papers, which showed that the US had been misled regarding Vietnam.

I'm sure if wikileaks had co-operation from officials in this regard, they would have rededacted the information prior to release. Actually, it was publicized before release/after the point was made by officials that they weren't even going to consider cooperating with wikileaks.

Link: http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/11/wikileaks-and-state...

>This information did not endanger anyone.

Meaning Wikileaks data did? Sources???

>Wikileaks, at least with the initial major leak, does not redact or edit information to protect anyone. This has been one of the reasons major journalist outlets (such as NYT) didn't cooperate with them regarding the initial leak.

Initial leaks? Oh you mean initial AMERICAN leaks. The many first leaks pertained to a Swiss bank, the 2008 election campaign specifically Sarah Palin emails, a corrupt Kenyan leader, Scientology secrets, and a member ship list of the BNP. Also, while true major outlets didn't want to work with them (in the US), they did anyways, because Assange used them against each other pretty intelligently I might add. They may say he's a horrible person and dick in one column, but they (NYT + The Guardian) were his two biggest collaborators in these HORRIBLE leaks.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#2006.E2.80.9308 / http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/julian-assange-the...

>They simply serve as a clearinghouse for leaked info.

Yup agreed. Definitely not a mainstream media outlet. It's been coined the first stateless news organization for a reason.

You should really read this though: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iK8J7-6...

Also it's hard for an NGO to hire workers to redact information when a nation state attacks them economically: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/mastercard...

Sorry if I've made you upset or offended you. My sources are an index on censorship article (40+ org advocating free speech), wikipedia..., a rolling stone article with Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, A Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review Article (best source of info IMO), and TPM (12+ blog/)

You certainly haven't upset or offended me. I'm sorry my point got lost in some of my factual inaccuracies.

It appears I was wrong regarding them not redacting any info.

My main intention was to clarify (and I think you'll agree) that an organization like wl and the NYT operate substantially differently.

Due to this operational difference, it makes some sense that a government would treat them differently and have different policies regarding them.

Thanks for the sources. I haven't had a chance to check them out, but I will.

The best one by far is the Harvard Law Review article. Very fair, very deliberate, and in my opinion does a good job at presenting both sides.

I diffidently agree that there are major operational differences with these organizations, and even within the Wikileaks community, some dissent and division (most likely due to being open in nature).

It's not a white or black issue. While I think that there have been faux pas on both sides, IMO, the US gov should be the bigger man and just tighten it's security and not make so many outrageous and scary threats all the time. It makes them look bad and incompetent. Fix the security problem and move on. I also personally feel that this NGO (Wikileaks), has the right to exist. Read up on the awesomeness that they helped facilitate in Iceland! Some of that info is contained in this documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvmfOaZ34Pk

Cheers

If you want to keep information private, fine, make it a criminal offense for your people to disclose that information to news sources. Case closed.

It already is, that's why Bradley Manning is in detention, the only problem is that it's selectively enforced largely because it's not easy to figure out the source of each leak.

If it's such a clear and cut case, then why isn't there a trial against him yet?

His trial is schedule to begin in Feb. 2013.

There is, United States v. Manning, Bradley E., PFC, presided over by Colonel Denise Lind. Even in civilian courts trials tend to move slowly, especially when there are many different defence motions filed.

The court-martial was due to start on the 21st of this month, but has been delayed as a result of a motion filed by Manning's defence to dismiss all charges. The hearing for this motion will be on 29 October and the court-martial will now only start after that's resolved, expected to be early next year.

In other words, if you waive your right to a speedy trial, you don't get a speedy trial.

I believe that what is meant by "criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active servicemembers" is not that Wikileaks should be considered an enemy of the US, but rather that "leaking secrets to Wikileaks" should be criminalized.

The same should hold for communicating confidential information to any newspaper, I don't believe that Wikileaks should be singled out here.

Exactly, see my 'connecting the dots' response below. I get it that the US is pissed off that people are sending Wikileaks classified information, the Nixon administration was really pissed off by Woodward and Bernstein's revelations and the Johnson adminstration was in a tizzy over the release of the Pentagon papers, but they didn't turn around and declare the papers and the journalists 'enemies of the state' now did they?

So, if I mean to do espionage against the US military, all I have to do is gather lots of information, and publicly dump part of my findings in order to become a "news organization".

It wasn't clear whether the classification means only that U.S. servicemembers are subject to punishment for contact with Wikileaks, or whether the general public is as well. It's one thing to tell employees who are entrusted with state secrets that they should not divulge them to someone who's going to plaster them on the NYTimes; it's another to tell members of the general public that they can't talk to or express support for Wikileaks for fear of criminal sanctions. The latter seems a gross violation of freedom of assembly.

IANAL. However, I don't believe that the US military can impose criminal sanctions on civilians, only their own personnel. (With specific exceptions for being called in to deal with specific emergencies, etc.)

From the article TechDirt links to: "Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with "communicating with the enemy", a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death."

So far I haven't seen anyone link to the document itself, so it's all third-hand.

What about former servicemembers? What about defense contractors? Their subcontractors? The downstream impacts of this decision are vague and unsettling.

If I hypothetically supported/donated to wikileaks would I later be ineligible for employment at a very large portion of the US workforce?

I have no doubt there are all sorts of perfectly legal activity that will make you ineligible for military service.

Former servicemembers can be recalled to active duty for the explicit purpose of charging them under the UCMJ, although there are some restrictions. This occurs only very rarely (I only know about the time it was used to convict a murderer).

Defense contractors are not bound by the UCMJ.

So you think it's fair that Bradley Manning has been in prison way past the legal amount, without a trial? You seem to imply that everything the Government is doing now to Wikileaks is fair game.

Manning (if true) and Wikileaks, exposed war crimes. Should they not be exposed? Should the exposing of war crimes be punishable more than the war crimes themselves?

>The only reason we're not outraged by the breach itself is that it got overshadowed by the subsequent disclosure to the press.

Why be outraged by the breach? It's good to know of double-dealing by one's government. And most of the US info WL has leaked is pretty low level in terms of classification. Other state intel agencies likely already had unauthorized access to the cables, for example.

> people in the armed services are stewards of all sorts of information that can't be leaked

It's much more complicated than that.

One could credibly defend there is a lot of information that should be made public because doing so is in the best interest of the people of the United States (never forget government != people). Hiding things such as war crimes, torture, extraordinary rendition, aid to dictators and other kinds of assorted undue intereference in internal affairs of sovereign nations goes against the interests of the people.

If, for no other reason, it may make the government better represent the ideals of its people. That can't be a bad thing.

Reading the link that the techdirt article is based on, the document is about an analyst with Top Secret clearance who had been actively expressing support for Wikileaks. The document suggests that he could be charged with "communicating with an enemy" if he had leaked secrets to Wikileaks, and because it mentions no other organizations, some people are taking this to mean that Wikileaks itself is considered an enemy of the United States.

That same article, though, mentions that Bradley Manning was charged with this exact thing - but the enemy he is accused of communicating with is specifically Al-Qaeda, not Wikileaks. Apparently, they consider Wikileaks an intermediary for communicating with terrorists.

> the military has an extremely valid reason for criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active servicemembers

Surely leaking classified information was already a crime.

While it's completely reasonable for the US to be concerned with preventing breaches of classified information, the problem with the US reaction to the horrors and gaffes revealed by Wikileaks is that there has been absolutely zero outrage about them, only the attempt to shoot the messenger.

This asymmetry has been a real awakening for me about the level of corruption and moral bankruptcy of the US ruling class, and about the apathy and complicity of the press and the citizenry in general.

I think we are already past the inflection point that historians will one day view as similar to the turning points that led to Nazi Germany and other large scale moral failings of humanity. There is a culture of denial and intentional blindness to the consequences of US actions abroad and a terrible enthusiasm for the leaders who initiate these kinds of things.

Aside from Collateral Murder, what shocking revelations have come to light as a result of the leaks? Not saying they don't exist, but speculating perhaps some of the 'revelations' weren't so shocking or were even publicly known.

Collateral Murder was not a shocking revelation. The Washington Post ran a transcript of that video, scene for scene, a year before the video was released. The video only shocked people who don't read.

Surely you don't believe that everyone reads the Washington Post?

The Washington Post reported an event in excruciating detail, but its later disclosure by Wikileaks is a "revelation" because nobody reads the news?

Do you have a link to the original story? A lot depends on how something is framed.

Here's one:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09...

It was very annoying to go track this down.

There is a difference between reading a description of a video and seeing it.

Some that I think are most significant:

- The complicity of US forces in turning over captive Baathists to the provisional Iraqi officials for nearly certain torture.

- The revelation that information was classified only to prevent bad news from getting out about the progress of the war effort. This counts as propagandizing the American people.

- Lying about civilian death tolls.

- ISI complicity with the Taliban.

Thank you for actually providing examples. However, I can't help but feel that:

* Preventing bad news from getting out about the progress of the war effort is to be expected of any military.

* Lying about civilian death tolls is to be expected of any military.

* ISI complicity with the Taliban has been speculated for a long time, even before the leaks. Seeing as the religious element of Pakistan sympathizes greatly(read: completely) with their cause, it makes complete sense that it runs high up the chain of command. IMO the only reason they keep up the facade of alliance is because of our money(and, of course, the decently sized Pakistani diaspora who see the fallacy of the fanaticism in their homeland).

The first issue you mentioned seems to be the only true revelation to me, shocking or not.

Things "expected of any military" might actually be crimes. It is against the law for the US Government to propagandize the American people. At present, a few hawkish members of congress are trying to overturn those laws, and clearly both major parties support overturning them in spirit.

It's reasonable for a US citizen to support the wars if he/she feels that overall they are the right thing to do. But it's an insult to our democratic process to hide the bad news and then turn supporters into dupes who cheer on the team without having a clue about what is actually going on.

> Things "expected of any military" might actually be crimes.

Good point, and that's absolutely the case. The question then to me is would anyone be shocked when those things happen anyways regardless of the law? Even if there was an uproar at such revelations, would anyone be held accountable for them? My answer is "no" and "likely not" respectively.

Where do you draw the line? What kinds of crimes would result in shock and concern from the public, media, etc?

I have one friend (a United States citizen) who has spent much of his life living abroad. He has been to dozens of different countries, including the Asian country where I met him. He has not been back to any part of the United States in the last five years, during which time he has been to multiple countries of varied cultural and political background. His reaction to the Wikileaks publication of United States diplomatic "cables" was that his respect for United States diplomats increased enormously. That is my reaction too. United States diplomats have to deal with other governments all over the world, many much more treacherous and duplicitous than the United States government has been even at its worst. Those of us who are Americans who have been abroad, and who thus are especially aware of the consequences of US actions abroad, certainly have our own criticisms of United States policy. We also criticize the actions of United States persons who violate some United States policies, to the harm of foreign persons. But if Wikileaks wanted to so something both constructive for world peace and likely to elicit even more surprised outrage, it should turn its attention to the classified documents of China, of Iran, of Russia, of North Korea, of Belarus, of Venezuela, and of various other dictatorial regimes around the world.

AFTER EDIT: The reply two levels down by pdonis correctly summarizes the single standard I apply to all governments: they all ought to act morally, they all fail to act morally from time to time, I oppose all of those failures, and I would especially like to know more about the activities of governments that don't subject themselves to the discipline of free and fair elections, even if it means an organization like Wikileaks has to reveal their secrets.

I also do not consider the diplomatic cables particularly significant, their release mainly creates personal embarrassment to the diplomats who must apologize in person to the victims of their petty and rude remarks found in the cables... in general nothing revealed was outside the bounds of what is reasonable to discuss if one assumes the conversation will be private (humans are gossipy, petty creatures). They do reveal a somewhat unflattering aspect of diplomacy, but nothing that any realist wouldn't have already imagined.

The meat is in the Iraq and Afghan war logs, so it sort of irks me when the diplomatic cables are discussed b/c they are mostly just gossip column material.

They already have. Here's an example: http://wikileaks.org/syria-files/

Given your eager defense of US I doubt you see how dangerous this kind of reasoning is.

You basically said that US, in general, is a good guy and therefore it's justified in doing illegal, immoral things and then hunting down those who expose this behavior.

So exposing bad behavior of US government is bad and worthy prosecution but exposing bad behavior of other governments, those you deem to be worse than US, is good and worthy praise.

Please explain the rationale for that double-standard.

Please also tell me which which other country dropped two atomic bombs, fought a prolonged, unprovoked political war (Vietnam) and invaded another country based on evidence that is believed to be completely fabricated (Iraq) and destroyed the lives of many creative people during McCarthy's communist witch hunt.

This is not to say that other countries aren't worse but let's not blindly wave patriotic flag and pretend that US government is immune to immoral, corrupt behavior. This kind of blind patriotism is easily exploitable. One thing that the "bad" governments have in common is that blind patriotism is a main propaganda technique used by Nazi Party, North Korea, communist countries to build us vs. evil them (except to them it's the jews or US is the "evil") and explain away their bad behavior (because the other side is even worse).

I agree with your characterization of the dangerous attitude of moral superiority by default.

If you start with the assumption that the US is generally a better world citizen than most other nations, it's a lot easier to turn a blind eye to the atrocities happening every day on the margin.

> You basically said that US, in general, is a good guy and therefore it's justified in doing illegal, immoral things and then hunting down those who expose this behavior.

That's not what he said. He said the US is, on balance, less immoral than the dictatorial regimes he named. Yet those other regimes don't get the scrutiny the US does.

this is also another really terrible argument that is used to rationalize bad behaviour constantly.

At least we arn't as bad as THAT guy.

If the USA does not have the level of human rights abuses of say china, does that give them a free pass? They cannot be questioned or criticized until china "cleans up its act", and everyone complaining should complain about china instead?

> If the USA does not have the level of human rights abuses of say china, does that give them a free pass?

No, but it means that if your goal is to fix human rights, you're going to get a lot more "bang for the buck" going after China than going after the USA.

Yet those other regimes don't get the scrutiny the US does.

For better or worse, the US puts itself in that position by acting as the world police. The most visible nation will, of course, be under more scrutiny, and rightfully so. The more power one has, the more safeguards need to be available to ensure that power is used for good.

Also, Wikileaks posts leaks from countries other than the US.

> For better or worse, the US puts itself in that position by acting as the world police.

To an extent, yes, this is a valid point. But I'm not sure "world police" is the right term. The United Nations is supposed to be playing the role of enforcing standards of civilized behavior on all nations, but it has failed miserably. The US is more like one of the more civilized citizens who is getting fed up with the stuff the less civilized citizens get away with without being called on it by either the "authorities" (the UN) or the other supposedly more civilized citizens. Which is not to say that the US always does the "right" thing when it gets fed up like this; but in many situations I'm not sure there is a "right" thing to do. The sad fact is that there are a lot of nations and a lot of people in the world who simply do not care about upholding standards of civilized behavior.

> Also, Wikileaks posts leaks from countries other than the US.

Yes, this is true, and I didn't mean to imply that the US was the only country being "targeted". As far as I can tell, Wikileaks is an equal opportunity organization: they're willing to piss off anyone. ;)

Just out of curiosity: are the Russians classified as "Enemy of the US"? How about the Chinese? Or the DPRK?

The Chinese military and government, for example, is way more actively trying to get military secrets out of the US, and not for altruistic reasons either. What makes them saints compared to Wikileaks?

That they then do not turn around and inform the general public.

What do you think happens to a US servicemember who leaks military secrets to Russia or China?

We are not talking about leaking here; by declaring Wikileaks to be EOUS, _any_ contact with them is verboten. FTA: "the military is effectively declaring that any contact with Wikileaks or its supporters could be deemed "communicating with the enemy" -- which can be punished severely (even death)."

While our military is free to make port calls, joint maneuvers, etc. with PRC?

What do you think happens when a servicemember in the US is discovered to have been communicating with the intelligence services of China, or, for that matter, France and Israel?

The article implies that it's not just "a servicemember of the US", but "anyone". Big difference there.

The Air Force cannot declare random people "enemies of the state" and then kill US citizens who talk to them.

Wikileaks engages in journalism. Saying that people can't donate money to Wikileaks or read the published cables on their website is as inane as saying they can't subscribe to the NYT because of the Pentagon Papers.

Equating an organization whose stated philosophical goal is promoting government transparency with clandestine intelligence services is ridiculous.

I am not interested in litigating the virtues of Wikileaks. Perhaps you & I can come to some limited agreement that there clearly are secrets held by the US military that should be disclosed, and that the citizens of the US deserve better oversight over the conduct of our armed conflicts. We probably agree broadly that our conflicts should be radically curtailed as well.

With all that said:

I am simply saying that the military has an extremely valid operational reason for drastically cracking down on servicemembers communicating with organizations like (and including) Wikileaks. The military cannot reasonably leave it up to random servicemembers to determine whether, what, and how things should be leaked. It employes over 1.2 million people.

What I'm arguing --- and I don't assume you agree, but here's my argument --- is that the alternative policy of saying "by all means it is just fine for servicemembers to collaborate with Wikileaks so long as that collaboration doesn't violate any of our other regulations" is so clearly fraught as to be unreasonable.

This article is about government harassment of a cyber systems analyst who dared to "express support for Wikileaks" and attended a pro-Wikileaks demonstration. What is wrong with that?

Pretending people are upset about the existence of classification system is silly. The question is why an organization devoted to promoting government transparency and engaged in supposedly-protected free speech is getting officially classified using language which is used to justify (illegal and criminal) warrantless detention, torture and extra-judicial assassination.

It is entirely possible that the US military could restrict service members from subscribing to the New York Times or the Washington Post, but I don't see Bob Woodward or Tom Friedman getting described as an enemy of the American Republic.

There is nothing wrong with attending pro-Wikileaks demonstrations as far as I can tell, and to the extent that the Air Force is trying to criminalize advocacy on behalf of Wikileaks, I strongly agree that they're irredeemably in the wrong.

False analogy. Last I checked, Wikileaks doesn't have a seat at the UN Security Council...

That's not the point. Wikileaks isn't a servicemember, they're the recipient and conveyer of the leak. The point here is a double standard: if a SuperSpy steals info and gives it to China, it's an "incident" that doesn't meaningfully affect diplomacy. If JoeClerk emails the same inforomation to SomeDude on the internet, suddenly SomeDude is a ... enemy of the United States?

Surely you see the problem here, right? It has nothing to do with security processes.

What does it matter who JoeClerk is mailing state secrets to? Clerks can't be mailing state secrets to random people on the Internet!

Right. So punish JoeClerk, not SomeDude.

That's what this appears to be about.

That is what this is all about. The Air Force was dealing with an incident involving JoeClerk (actually JaneClerk). Providing information to Wikileaks was called communicating with the enemy, 104-d (referring to the UCMJ) not to go after WL, but to go after Jane.

What happens to a senior government official that leaks military secrets to the New York Times ? (the 'yeah we did stuxnet' is the most recent one that comes to mind)

Iran is clearly an enemy, I am sure there is at least one person in an official capacity in Iran that reads the New York Times, there for leaking information about Stuxnet to the Times is equivalent to leaking it to Iran.

So the New York Times is an 'enemy of the US' ? I am too dense to figure out how you arrive at the conclusion that this is OK for Wikileaks and not then also required to put the Times on that list.

No, you're not too dense to see the issue here. I'll give you two reasons, but there are more:

(1) The New York Times does not have operatives on IM sessions with the people in charge of protecting military data in order to convince them to hand over archives wholesale and indiscriminately.

(2) The New York Times doesn't later publish that data so indiscriminately that it takes a crowdsourced data mining effort simply to figure out whether informants have been compromised by the disclosure.

That is kind of a weak argument there, one might easily ask

"If a reporter with the NYT had an IM session with someone who had access to really explosive data and that someone wanted to share it,..." You're saying the NYT would counsel them for that the good of the country they shouldn't share it?

If Ellsberg contacted Sheehan with an IM and offered to send over the Pentagon Papers in '72 you think that Sheehan would have said, "No thanks, that is secret data even though it says the Government has been lying about the war." ?

I'm not convinced. Given the challenges the prosecution is facing with Manning I'm left wondering what evidence the government has that he was an operative or that Wikileaks was anything more than a opportunistic journalistic contact.

Your second claim is that the NYT doesn't publish indiscriminately. But you are trying to argue a possible behavior for a situation that didn't exist. Lets say for the sake of argument that the source was Manning, and that rather than Wikileaks he chose to dump the data on someone at the NYT, then suppose that the NYT spent several weeks going over that data with various understaffers, and the threat of someone else breaking the story came up.

Now are you going to argue that the NYT wouldn't just run with it at that point? How about if in all the weeks of looking they had yet to find anything that would hurt/compromise an innocent third party? Do you know the NYT that well? And unlike 1972 where they were constrained by how many pages of newspaper they could print, on the web you can print everything now and get those clicks early and often.

Given that the NYT has released comparably classified material in the past (I've heard one argument that the state department communications were actually a lower grade classification but cannot find a source for that), and probably still has lawyers on staff from the resulting court cases that caused, its easier for me to believe they would have run with the story.

You & I aren't going to agree on this, but hopefully we can just live with that fact. I don't think you're a crazy person for thinking this stuff.

What TechDirt and the title suggest is that people communicating with Wikileaks could be considered "talking with the enemy," the real restriction is on military personnel. Maybe that's still bad, but we generally accept that the military can place restrictions on people its soldiers are allowed to talk with.

They refer to a FOIA request releasing a document from the Air Force, but the link is to another news article, not the document. Anyone have the original so we can read for ourselves?

EDIT derrida provides primary document below: http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FO...

JFK made a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961. His discussion of the dangers of stifling transparency - often in the name of public safety - seems as important today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

Obama himself gave a speech before the UN just yesterday extolling the virtues of free speech:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-obamas-2012...

The right to free speech does not imply the right to force people to speak.

For people, yes. For government, it should be mandatory. The government's military? Sometimes.

I partially (mostly?) agree, but for Obama to promote free speech while at the same time claiming the government has the right to remain silent is not some grand hypocrisy.

relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

Edit: This just goes to show what you say != what you do

The phrase that comes to mind is Noblesse oblige

I am probably looking with rose tinted spectacles, but post WWII there seemed to be a ruling class who tried to live up to noble words.

These days the ruling class see gutter fighting as an acceptable response, lining your pockets with contracts as due payment and constitutions as inconvenice not guidance.

If you are a 600-pound gorilla, sticking to the queensbury rules is not likely to affect the outcome. But it will affect how trusted you are the next fight you get into.

There is a lot going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. For example: whatever happened to the BoA emails they were going to reveal? Isn't it convenient that some "rogue" guy in Germany ran away with these emails? Given Assange's background and technical capabilities, isn't it surprising that he allowed it to happen?

Indeed, has there been any more coverage of this? I didn't hear about some rogue guy in Germany.

They had backups in S3 but they were lost in the power outage caused by the storm caused by the orbital bad weather gun.

It probably isn't the intention but that will serve as a validation of wikileaks in the eyes of quite a few people.

Apparent Facts:

- AF OSI (the Air Force's own little internal FBI-like agency) investigates military members contacting Wikileaks / Julian Assange

- AF OSI is alleging that some service-members may be punished under UCMJ 104-D Communicating with the Enemy / Aiding the Enemy for communicating with Julian Assange

Unjustified Speculation:

- The US Military or US AF considers Wikileaks an Enemy of the State.

- The US Military is going to assassinate Julian Assange with a UAV drone.

Debatable, but likely (IANAL):

- This particular investigation case (involving those service members) is closed and it is unknown/classified regarding whether official charges were filed.

- UCMJ 104-D may also charge non-service-members for Aiding the Enemy (Google is embarrassingly unhelpful confirming or denying this for me)

- TechDirt is flame-baiting and fear-mongering (obviously their raison d'être)

I think it would behoove wikileaks to try and dump documents of countries that the US considers hostile to suspect, such as Iran, Russia and North Korea.

So far Wikileaks has been releasing files that are largely from the US, but it needs to be more neutral in releasing files from all countries.

Wikileaks' US focus it hurting it. Other countries like England, Russia, Israel, China, India, etc. all deserve some time in the spotlight.

Personally, I would love to see more exposure of corruption by politicians in countries like Brazil. Putting corrupt politicians in prison would do more to bolster its image and support for it than its current crusade.

A major problem with this article is that it does not clearly define what "Enemy Of The United States" means in this context. Who made this decision? Is this a special status / designation with associated repercussions, or simply a description used by an anonymous writer in the Air Force?

NB that I would not defend the latter case, but this article does not really tell us exactly what the leaked paper implies about US policy towards Wikileaks.

Primary source here http://wikileaks.org/US-Military-Refers-to-Julian.html

More like an Enemy of the United States MILITARY. I personally like to be informed about what my tax dollars are funding around the world.

It is interesting (in a sad sort of way) to see how this article is being flagged into oblivion. Even though it has 130 points in 3 hours, it has been relegated to page 3 of HN.

I would have assumed that this topic was of widespread interest, especially to the HN community. But some folks seem to confuse what the "flag" button means...

Bombing the servers won't be a good idea now when GeoLocated has gained a lot of popularity.

As an enemy of US, being in the same category as al-Alqaeda and the Taliban insurgents, does it mean that if the US military happens to see Assange anywhere in the world, they have to shoot him on sight or send killer drones after him? After all, according to them, he's just as dangerous as al-Qaeda.

No, it does not mean that. The federal authorization to kill Taliban and AlQ operatives arises from the 2003 Iraq AUMF; there isn't some doctrine that says "if the military designates you as an enemy of the state they can kill you with winged death robots".

Tell that to Obama.

"An enemy is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial, etc," - Marc Ratner, Assange's attorney

"Any person who ... aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with ... money. Any person who ... without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct." Punitive Articles of the UCMJ: Article 104—Aiding the enemy

"Scope of Article 104. This article denounces offenses by all persons whether or not otherwise subject to military law. Offenders may be tried by court-martial or by military commission."

Oh, well if Marc Ratner says we're going to send the death robots after Assange, I'm sold.

Sigh. Next up, imprisoning US "Dissidents".

Please connect those dots for us.

Not saying the line is complete yet, but the NDAA looks like a connecting dot to me.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but is this not what a steady slide into military dictatorship would be expected to look like?

The NDAA authorizes the President to kill members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It can kill Americans only if they are providing material support to those two organizations and only if they are on foreign soil. Those (very limited) restrictions actually narrow the powers granted to the executive under the 2003 AUMF. The NDAA actually made it harder for the President to sic the death robots on people.

This isn't usually how I hear the NDAA characterized. I'd be interested if you had more I could read on this perspective.

Keep in mind that definitions of terms like "material support" give wide latitude to interpretation. Last I heard there were people in jail under such terms for donating money to what on the surface appeared to be an Islamic charity.

I never ran a mirror, but I configured DNS record for wikileaks when it was under DoS. Does this make me an "enemy of the state" too?

I think these are justified concerns and as an American it saddens me deeply that I would even think to have them.

Respectfully, Marsh (you know it's all respect with you & me, even though I think you wear a tinfoil hat and you think I'm a tool of the status quo), you believe this stuff because you only read about the NDAA from advocacy sources.

Material support has a specific definition. Your donation must be made "knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for" an actual terrorist attack. You cannot be killed by the death robots for donating to Islamic charities.

What specific people do you believe have been unjustly imprisoned for donating to Islamic charities?

you know it's all respect with you & me, even though I think you wear a tinfoil hat

Oh absolutely. I'm in touch with with my inner tinfoil-hat-ness and am secretly less off the deep end than my tweets would make it appear. (at least that's what I tell myself :-)

and you think I'm a tool of the status quo), you believe this stuff because you only read about the NDAA from advocacy sources.

No, I know you're too smart for that. This is why I'm interested in how you came to your conclusion.

What specific people do you believe have been unjustly imprisoned for donating to Islamic charities?

This is probably what I was thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_Foundation_for_Relie... (note that I'm not saying this specific prosecution was just or unjust, only that it supports the theory that prosecutions are possible under a definition of "material support" which includes giving to what is ostensibly a charity).

The law requires foreknowledge of an actual terrorist action that the donation contributes to.

Moreover: I'm actually wrong here; the Obama Administration (which, recall, was pushing back on a far broader standard requested by the GOP-controlled Congress) applied a stricter standard, of "substantial support", which I understand to mean that not only do you need to have foreknowledge that your contribution applied to an actual terrorist attack, but also that your contribution actually has to have significantly enabled the attack.

A steady slide into military dictatorship orchestrated by whom? You have to invent a non-partisan conspiracy including both GW Bush and Obama... given the level of partisanship of politics over the last several years, you really expect me to believe that they managed to coordinate a slide into military dictatorship between themselves? Who is going to be the ultimate beneficiary?

I don't accept that I'm obligated to identify some specific set of consiprators in order to make observations about some outward appearances that I find concerning.

Nevertheless, the traditional (if perhaps archaic) name for this in the US is "military-industrial complex". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex

When you say there is a conspiracy, you should be prepared to provide some evidence that there is a conspiracy.

When Eisenhower talked about the military-industrial complex, he wasn't identifying a non-partisan conspiracy to set up a military dictatorship.

I disagree, but everyone can read the relevant part of the address and decide for themself what Eisenhower was saying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex#Or...

Certainly, historically the US has gone after the folks who allowed confidential or classified information to get out of their, not the people who received it.

In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, which published them and embarrassed the administration, in '72 Woodward and Bernstein would get information from Mark Feldt (aka "Deep Throat") which would they go on to publish and it toppled the Nixon administration.

In both of those cases neither the New York Times or the Post, the journalists, or the editors of those papers was ever in danger of criminal proceedings, much less military action.

How Wikileaks got their information is not known, it is clear that Julian Assange was not the source of the leak, he merely benefited from it.

So the line goes like this:

1) A government that prosecutes people who leak their information.

2) ... to a Government that prosecutes people who publish the information leaked to them.

3) ... and next up ... prosecuting individuals who express influential opinions based on documented knowledge of otherwise classified material.

Do you really think this country would have tolerated President Johnson declaring the New York Times and its journalist Neil Sheehan "enemies of the US" ?

There was a rather significant court case regarding the pentagon papers and their publication.

Yes, actually several if you count all the various side motions and what not. And at no time before, during, or after did the times become an 'military enemy of the US.'

They were, however, in danger of criminal proceedings.

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