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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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 Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| Wikileaks was irresponsible for posting everything they did, they should have removed all names and sensitive material. |
It was not irresponsible for wikileaks to post everything it did, because the safety of individuals involved in the employ of our government is not wikileaks' responsibility. The irresponsibility lies on the shoulders of government employees who leaked sensitive information, not on the recipient of said information.
I don't want our government legally harassing this man. If nothing else, he acts as a valuable troubleshooter; if he's able to get this information, it's not secure enough. If our government can't even prevent a known individual like this from receiving sensitive information, then it's got a problem that it needs to work on. And frankly, at this moment in time I'd rather err on the side of too much information coming to public attention than too little. |
The second he put what he did on his website it became partly his responsibility, and as such there is blood on his hands. The thing is what good does it do? It's not like any of this in general is a surprise to anybody who had been following it. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
The second he put what he did on his website it became partly his responsibility, and as such there is blood on his hands.
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No, there isn't. If anyone is put at additional risk because of any government documents he put on his website, it is the responsibility of the government to compensate for that. If there's blood on anyone's hands, its on the hands of any government official that supports anything less than the quickest reasonably possible withdraw from our military engagements (which is most of them).
I wouldn't complain if he edited out names where appropriate, but I also don't feel it's his responsibility to do so. Rather, it's the governments responsibility to stop putting people at risk through its actions. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 9:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| Wikileaks was irresponsible for posting everything they did, they should have removed all names and sensitive material. |
It was not irresponsible for wikileaks to post everything it did, because the safety of individuals involved in the employ of our government is not wikileaks' responsibility. The irresponsibility lies on the shoulders of government employees who leaked sensitive information, not on the recipient of said information.
I don't want our government legally harassing this man. If nothing else, he acts as a valuable troubleshooter; if he's able to get this information, it's not secure enough. If our government can't even prevent a known individual like this from receiving sensitive information, then it's got a problem that it needs to work on. And frankly, at this moment in time I'd rather err on the side of too much information coming to public attention than too little. |
The second he put what he did on his website it became partly his responsibility, and as such there is blood on his hands. |
Who died as a result of what Wikileaks did? |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2010 5:27 am Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| Wikileaks was irresponsible for posting everything they did, they should have removed all names and sensitive material. |
It was not irresponsible for wikileaks to post everything it did, because the safety of individuals involved in the employ of our government is not wikileaks' responsibility. The irresponsibility lies on the shoulders of government employees who leaked sensitive information, not on the recipient of said information.
I don't want our government legally harassing this man. If nothing else, he acts as a valuable troubleshooter; if he's able to get this information, it's not secure enough. If our government can't even prevent a known individual like this from receiving sensitive information, then it's got a problem that it needs to work on. And frankly, at this moment in time I'd rather err on the side of too much information coming to public attention than too little. |
The second he put what he did on his website it became partly his responsibility, and as such there is blood on his hands. |
Who died as a result of what Wikileaks did? |
"After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents�some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military�it didn�t take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to �punish� any Afghan listed as having �collaborated� with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated how seriously those threats should be considered. Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province�s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen."
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/02/taliban-seeks-vengeance-in-wake-of-wikileaks.html
Don't be naive. The Taliban M.O. is to kill anyone that collaborates with the United States. Wikilinks gave them a hit list. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2010 5:30 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
The second he put what he did on his website it became partly his responsibility, and as such there is blood on his hands.
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No, there isn't. If anyone is put at additional risk because of any government documents he put on his website, it is the responsibility of the government to compensate for that. If there's blood on anyone's hands, its on the hands of any government official that supports anything less than the quickest reasonably possible withdraw from our military engagements (which is most of them).
I wouldn't complain if he edited out names where appropriate, but I also don't feel it's his responsibility to do so. Rather, it's the governments responsibility to stop putting people at risk through its actions. |
Is it hard to comprehend that responsibility can be shared? When people die directly because of what is on Assange's web site then how can he not share in the responsibility? He put people's lives in danger to make a political statement that really didn't have much of an impact. When publishing a name that puts that name on a hit list you have blood on your hands. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2010 9:18 am Post subject: |
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WikiLeaks` Julian Assange spoke yesterday via video link to the Frontline Club in London
Julian Assange:
WikiLeaks is not a stateless organisation... all of our parts are in some state, all of our people are in some state, we've won every court case in every state that we've been [in court] in.
It is true that we do play some kind of arbitrage between these states, and that affects the interim abuse of process - though we can keep publishing during process abuse proceedings and when we get to the end of proceedings we win - we've been quite good like that.
Mainstream media organisations also play arbitrate with states, and they do it in terms of tax structure - they do it with a lot of resources. Even the Guardian tax structure is quite complex. I think that these [mainstream media] organisations ... don't give a damn about getting the truth out to the people - that's why they haven't structured their information flows, in such ways to take advantage of any of the [legal] jurisdictions, but they've been the first off the block to do it for tax structure.
The reason being is they have been relative monopolies in their own countries. So what they [mainstream media organisations] have been incentivised to do is simply have the loudest mouth within their country, and it is the external publishing which is now providing a competitive incentive for these organisations to try to and gain extra freedom of speech, where we are enabling other publications to do that.
An important example in the UK, is Task Force 444 is under a D-notice, and Task Force 42. Those are the kill-or-capture task force run by the UK in Afghanistan. [A book publisher] had Task Force 444 removed from his book [about these task forces] as a result of that D-notice. Our [WikiLeaks] publication of that data in public permitted the Sunday Times to then publish their Task Force 444 data. So we are shifting the envelope of what is possible in various countries by providing some kind of external publishing discipline.
This transcription is by Mathaba. The links and [comments] inserted above are for clarification or additional information. The full meeting is on video at link. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2010 9:53 am Post subject: |
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I lost interest in Wikileaks when they coordinated the document dump with Germany's DS, the UK Guardian and the NYT. The NYT would not actually run something that Hope and Change strongly opposed.
What did we learn? Pakistan is bad and Afghanistan is a lost cause. There was always an element - the paranoid fringe? - who said Wikileaks was a disinformation project, started initially with a focus on China and strongly connected to Soros and the Open Society fund (that gave us the faux Green Revolution in Iran). I think the paranoid fringe might be on to something here. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2010 10:38 am Post subject: |
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| What did we learn? Pakistan is bad and Afghanistan is a lost cause. There was always an element - the paranoid fringe? - who said Wikileaks was a disinformation project, started initially with a focus on China and strongly connected to Soros and the Open Society fund (that gave us the faux Green Revolution in Iran). I think the paranoid fringe might be on to something here. |
Wikileaks is a tad too dramatic for me and the information they provide as you say isn't really anything we don't know, and far more interesting to the Taliban than to news organizations or regular people back home. I would have preferred them to stay out of the limelight as they used to, just releasing documents from time to time and avoiding titles like collateral murder.
Green Revolution: nobody calls it that in Persian, by the way - it's the green movement (جنبش سبز) and they are looking for reform within the system, not a revolution. I wouldn't call it faux, just crushed for the moment. The western media did get overexcited for a while but the movement for reform is much more long-term, and it's the media's fault if they were too excited in the beginning and now feel the pangs of withdrawal. Ahmadinejad isn't liked very much by conservatives either so there are more than two sides there too. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2010 1:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
Is it hard to comprehend that responsibility can be shared?
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No, it isn't difficult to comprehend. This simply isn't such a case.
| Leon wrote: |
When people die directly because of what is on Assange's web site then how can he not share in the responsibility?
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They're dying directly because of what our government, the Taliban, and they themselves are doing. That is where the ethical burden belongs.
| Leon wrote: |
| He put people's lives in danger to make a political statement that really didn't have much of an impact. |
No, our government put those people's lives in danger by involving them in their plots, and they put their own lives in danger by being willingly involved in said plots. Trying to pour that ethical burden onto Assange isn't reasonable; this is a time in history when we need to be erring on the side of too much information being released rather than too little, and as such I can understand the man's desire to release these documents unedited.
| Leon wrote: |
| When publishing a name that puts that name on a hit list you have blood on your hands. |
This is pure hysterics. Assange releasing unedited documents isn't getting people killed, the American government screwing around in the region is getting people killed. That is where the buck stops. I think I've said all I care to say on the issue; I understand why you would prefer that he edited out names, but screaming about him having blood on his hands is over the top, especially given your willingness to accept America's continued presence there in the first place. The government knows it has a security problem here. The government should be focusing on fixing said problem internally, not on encouraging other nations to legally harass this man. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2010 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| When publishing a name that puts that name on a hit list you have blood on your hands. |
This is pure hysterics. Assange releasing unedited documents isn't getting people killed, the American government screwing around in the region is getting people killed. That is where the buck stops. I think I've said all I care to say on the issue; I understand why you would prefer that he edited out names, but screaming about him having blood on his hands is over the top, especially given your willingness to accept America's continued presence there in the first place. The government knows it has a security problem here. The government should be focusing on fixing said problem internally, not on encouraging other nations to legally harass this man. |
I understand your position, but I think it is irrelevant. The Taliban has a very clear and well known M.O., namely killing people who collaborate with N.A.T.O. One has to assume that Assange knows this, so it's not a hard stretch to make that making names public puts people's lives in danger. He knowingly took an action that put people's lives at risk. It's very cut and dry. It's not hysterics, if he had edited out names and sensitive information it would be different.
Regardless of whether you want America to stay or not, I don't want them to stay longer than the current deadline, I think it's reasonable to assume that having the Taliban in charge again is not a good thing. Assange's actions make it less likely that anyone will provide intelligence against the Taliban in the future. Not much was gained, but there is a significant potential loss. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 8:11 am Post subject: |
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The Swedes are now protecting Assange as Aftonbladet has hired him as a columnist.
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STOCKHOLM (Rixstep) � Julian Assange's visit in the Swedish capital achieved several things. Assange will be writing for Aftonbladet and WikiLeaks will be applying for full source protection under Swedish constitutional law.
Assange already works with the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel. But he's not yet worked as a columnist for any publication. Starting now that will change.
Assange met Aftonbladet's editor in chief Jan Helin yesterday.
'It's no coincidence that I'm going to be writing for a Swedish paper. The Swedish publicist culture and Swedish law have supported us from the beginning', said Assange. |
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