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Comment by EvanKelly | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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)"

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.

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.

> 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).

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)

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.

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.

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.

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!

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