Julian Assange's Really Creepy Emails

[guyser]

Kimmy's right. But why do you care? Remember, if a few people get killed, so be it.

Well, Shady TWB, if you want to be kimmy's little bitch then by all means post up the link.

What do you care either way ...killed , women beaten up (and you agree some should be)...whats it to you?

WikiLeaks has blood on it's hands. As does everyone of their apologists.

Just plain dumb shady .

Now since you've been asked, better run away and hide,it is your SOP .

Edited December 23, 2010 by guyser

[dre]

Kimmy's right. But why do you care? Remember, if a few people get killed, so be it.

WikiLeaks has blood on it's hands. As does everyone of their apologists.

WikiLeaks has blood on it's hands. As does everyone of their apologists.

[dre]

Well, Shady TWB, if you want to be kimmy's little bitch then by all means post up the link.

What do you care either way ...killed , women beaten up (and you agree some should be)...whats it to you?

Just plain dumb shady .

Now since you've been asked, better run away and hide,it is your SOP .

Well, Shady TWB, if you want to be kimmy's little bitch then by all means post up the link.

In all fairness he might wish he was Kimmy's little bitch and he might think they are on the same page but they arent. Kimmy has pointed out that there could be negative consequences to the release of such data in addition to positive ones. She hasnt actually said that she believes they should be prosecuted for it, and shes not one of the retards calling this guy a terrorist or calling for his death or imprisonment.

My $5 says that once Kimmy digests the arguments she would grudgingly admit that even though its possible for "leak media" to cause problems, it would be a huge mistake to criminalize such behavior.

The governments job is to keep stuff classified that would damage national security. The Presses job is to sniff around, and try to catch the government doing stuff people would not approve of. The arrange provides for some secrecy, and still keeps the media in place as check on government. The press shouldnt have for the government permission to publish documents.

Edited December 23, 2010 by dre

[kimmy]

Careful with the analogy.

1)Robbery is stealing under threat of violence ,not theft, which I suspect you meant.

2)You have no business in that home, the wiki leaker (US man) had authority to be where he is

Dre argues that these leaks are the fault of those who failed to secure the data. I argue that the leaks are the fault of the person who leaked the data.

In all probability, the people who leak this data are the people who are supposedly entrusted with its security in the first place, which makes the "they should have secured the data better" argument pretty moot.

I think most here, including me, are willing to admit tha not only good will come of this.

You've been willing to concede that "you've gotta break a few eggs". Dre has been willing to concede that not all of this is positive, but won't concede that any of the negative is WikiLeaks' responsibility.

And eyeball is clearly willing to rationalize that nothing that's come of this has had any negative impact at all. ("well, whatever Abbas was trying to accomplish wouldn't have worked anyhow...")

In some cases it wont be , but frankly I dont see the overwhelming harm that I would need to see to stop this.

I've never argued that they must be stopped.

-k

[kimmy]

She/he could just as easily have a school named after them.

City of Berkeley debates naming Wikileaker a hero

Says that he exposed a cover-up of civilian casualties. It doesn't say anything about leaking the identities of civilians who've assisted our armed forces. The former fits my idea of whistleblowing. The latter fits with any reasonable definition of treason.

So how about the Indian government's crimes against human beings, or do you just shrug them off as easily as Shady and our government do too?

I'd be all for a strongly worded rebuke of such behavior.

You, correct me if I'm wrong, are calling for a complete severance of ties with India.

Thinking back to when Harper criticized the Chinese for human rights issues, the angry cry from liberals and Liberals was that doing it publicly would actually undermine the cause. The proper way to do it, we were told, would be to work with them behind closed doors, try to influence them positively in private rather than scold them in public. A public confrontation would only cause us to lose influence with them. That was the argument at the time.

I wonder how many of those folks who were in favor of gentle, private persuasion at the time are now on the "we're entitled to know everything and anything!" campaign now?

I have to bow out now. I'm leaving for the airport shortly, and won't be online much in the next week. If you like, I can catch up when I get back.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

-k

[Shady]

Merry Christmas Kimmy! Once again you've utterly destroyed all of their substanceless arguments.

[dre]

Dre argues that these leaks are the fault of those who failed to secure the data. I argue that the leaks are the fault of the person who leaked the data.

In all probability, the people who leak this data are the people who are supposedly entrusted with its security in the first place, which makes the "they should have secured the data better" argument pretty moot.

You've been willing to concede that "you've gotta break a few eggs". Dre has been willing to concede that not all of this is positive, but won't concede that any of the negative is WikiLeaks' responsibility.

And eyeball is clearly willing to rationalize that nothing that's come of this has had any negative impact at all. ("well, whatever Abbas was trying to accomplish wouldn't have worked anyhow...")

I've never argued that they must be stopped.

-k

Dre argues that these leaks are the fault of those who failed to secure the data. I argue that the leaks are the fault of the person who leaked the data.

No they are the fault of both of those parties... neither of which is wikileaks. By the time wikileaks ever saw a single byte of that data the leaker had already leaked, and the game was up. He could have sent the data to ANYBODY at that point.

In all probability, the people who leak this data are the people who are supposedly entrusted with its security in the first place, which makes the "they should have secured the data better" argument pretty moot.

No the data they suspect was leaked by an insider. But that doesnt mean it wasnt a security breach. Judging by what we know so far a low level intelligence official was able to download all those documents to a laptop while serving in Iraq. As someone that secures large volumes of documents for a living I can tell you this is just a gaping security hole. Security is all about managing access. Now maybe this guy needed to read through these documents... search them... or whatever. But he didnt need to download half a million documents to a laptop. You can secure that type of access by only allowing the operative to access small bits of data at once and giving him a search feature to find them.

And this isnt the only leak. Its the third massive batch of documents. The US government is leaking like a sieve, and fixing THAT is the only way that they can safeguard secrets.

Dre has been willing to concede that not all of this is positive, but won't concede that any of the negative is WikiLeaks' responsibility.

Thats because it ISNT. A free press doesnt need to ask the government permission to publish information. The press has been publishing proprietary and confidential information for hundreds of years. Is there negative consequences that stem from freedom of speech and freedom of the press? SURE! But they nowhere near as bad as the consequences of not having those things.

Wiki did more due diligence in releasing this data than the vast majority of media outlets would have. They even offered to redact sensitive stuff.

[dre]

Merry Christmas Kimmy! Once again you've utterly destroyed all of their substanceless arguments.

[eyeball]

And eyeball is clearly willing to rationalize that nothing that's come of this has had any negative impact at all. ("well, whatever Abbas was trying to accomplish wouldn't have worked anyhow...")

-k

I never said that.

[eyeball]

Says that he exposed a cover-up of civilian casualties. It doesn't say anything about leaking the identities of civilians who've assisted our armed forces. The former fits my idea of whistleblowing. The latter fits with any reasonable definition of treason.

Civilians who assist occupiers also fit the definition of collaborators. I know I warned there would be a need to evacuate collaborators of our's a long long time ago. Given the fickle fair-weather propensity of our side to cut and run from the crusades we start this contingency could have and should have been allowed for right from the beginning.

Recall how our side encouraged the people of Iraq to rise up against tyranny in the waning hours of the so-called 1st Gulf War who were then left out to dry. The whole world should know by now that dealing with us is fraught with risk and that we simply cannot be trusted. It's regrettable but as I said above the sort of collateral damage you're demonstrating so much concern over has always been inevitable. As has been pointed out, the fallout from these leaks may cause people to think twice before collaborating with government officials in the future. If so, then perhaps some good can come out of this tragedy. The path to enlightenment is usually painful.

I'd be all for a strongly worded rebuke of such behavior.

Delivered to India in secret, perhaps with a diplomatic nod and a wink?

You, correct me if I'm wrong, are calling for a complete severance of ties with India.

That's correct.

Thinking back to when Harper criticized the Chinese for human rights issues, the angry cry from liberals and Liberals was that doing it publicly would actually undermine the cause. The proper way to do it, we were told, would be to work with them behind closed doors, try to influence them positively in private rather than scold them in public. A public confrontation would only cause us to lose influence with them. That was the argument at the time.

I wonder how many of those folks who were in favor of gentle, private persuasion at the time are now on the "we're entitled to know everything and anything!" campaign now?

I don't know, but speaking for myself I do know I've made my disgust about our ties to countries like China known more than a few times around here. I'm also on record suggesting that we always tie trade directly to human rights with everyone. I've long been on record that we should not trade with and especially supply any nations that maintain alliances with dictators or who invade and occupy foreign countries or who commit crimes against humanity. Bar none.

I have to bow out now. I'm leaving for the airport shortly, and won't be online much in the next week. If you like, I can catch up when I get back.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

-k

Same to you.

[WIP]

Says that he exposed a cover-up of civilian casualties. It doesn't say anything about leaking the identities of civilians who've assisted our armed forces. The former fits my idea of whistleblowing. The latter fits with any reasonable definition of treason.

Even Robert Gates said that this story was blown all out of proportion. If anything, there were few Afghan collaborators endangered by that first Wikileaks dump of unredacted emails...what about the new releases? What is the excuse for treason besides the fact that they confirm the rumours of crimes committed by the Bush and Obama administrations? And as long as we're all bent out of shape about crimes against Afghan civilians, how about some attention for the scores of civilians who have been massacred by missile attacks based on dubious tip-offs of Taliban or Al Qaeda being at those locations.

[WIP]

Journalist John Cole wrote about the Bush Administration:

The message is clear – you torture people and then destroy the evidence, and you get off without so much as a sternly worded letter. If you are a whistle blower outlining criminal behavior by the government, you get prosecuted.

In fact, the Obama Administration DOJ is prosecuting more whistleblowers than the Bush Admin. Under Bush, torture was official policy. It remains so under Obama who absolved CIA torturers, despite unequivocal evidence of their guilt. But leaking it risks criminal prosecution for revealing state secrets and endangering national security.

[bloodyminded]

WikiLeaks doesn't decide what to publish? Are you sure? This article has a WikiLeaks spokesman claiming that they asked NATO to review files prior to publication.

You guys are telling me that WikiLeaks has no responsibility for what gets published on their site, but here's "Daniel Schmitt" claiming that they asked NATO to help them go through the files before they were published so that Afghan civilians wouldn't be put in danger. Are you guys mistaken, or is "Daniel Schmitt" a big fat liar?

You misunderstood me...or got confused between my remarks and somebody else's.

Do you have any definition for "whistleblowing"? Or do you feel that anytime anybody has private information that they wish to publish, it's "whistleblowing"?

If anything is whistleblowing as long as person divulging the information thinks people have a right to know, then "Elizabeth" from the opening post is just a whistleblower, no different from anybody who contributes to WikiLeaks.

But if you believe information needs to meet a higher standard to qualify as "whistleblowing", then let's talk about that.

To me, the term whistleblowing involves the exposure of wrongdoing. If somebody becomes aware of wrongdoing, I believe they have a moral right to make it known. Some of the controversial information published by WikiLeaks certainly qualifies as whistleblowing to me.

But not all of it.

So you do think the wiukileaks "dump" was a public service...though perhaps, simultaneously, a wrongdoing.

I have a hard time rationalizing that as whistleblowing under any definition I'm familiar with. I'd consider that to be legitimate discussion by political officials who were probably doing exactly the job their government and their citizens employ them to do. I'm at a loss to see how the world was made a better place by that being leaked. I'm at a loss to see how leaking the names of Afghan civilians assisting NATO forces makes the world a better place.

This has been by far the best argument agaisnt Wikileaks. In fact, the only one even worthy of discussion. However, as you mentioned, requests were made to NATO (and also the U.S. State Department) for assistance in redaction.

Their refusals make the officials culpable, if any deaths occur.

[bloodyminded]

There is a huge difference between the rights of someone arrested, say, for a bank robbery and one who, on the front lines of a battle in the field is lobbing grenades at our soldiers. I consider Assange to be closer to the latter category.

why, o why can't y'all support the troops?

Ye gods.

[bloodyminded]

So an example from India of possible torture is a stain on the west? Cuba does the same thing. Do they also stain the west? If so, what are we suppose to do about it? Is this all you have?

We're talking, in this case, specifically about the wikileaks information about the extensive levels of Iraqi torture. The case of India is arguably less clear...though Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Indian and Kasmiri and Pakistani humna rights groups have been talking about abuses in Kasmir for some time now; it hardly seems doubtful.

As for Iraq torture...Remember...the way Saddam's use of torture was given as further support for the war?

But torture's ok now...because Saddam's gone! (Just as, at one time, Saddam's torture was certainly not an issue).

It seems you want it both ways.

The Iraqis are torturing....and the US has turned a wilfully, intentionally blind eye to it.

And people shouldn't be "allowed" to know this information....why again?

Edited December 23, 2010 by bloodyminded

[bloodyminded]

WikiLeaks published the names of Afghan civilians who have assisted coalition forces-- civilians who are now being assassinated according to Amnesty International.

Clearly, knowing that their identities won't be secret after-all will make people unwilling to assist coalition forces. Thanks to WikiLeaks, former informants are dead, and future informants are going to keep their mouths shut. Obviously this undermines the mission in Afghanistan. Far more than some mooks with grenades could.

-k

And again...if our officials actually care about Afghan civilians--which sounds a bit like a dark joke, doesn't it?--then why do they refuse to assist wikileakls in redaction?

If it "undermines the mission," then they could help remedy that situation.

They choose not to do so.

Edited December 23, 2010 by bloodyminded

[bloodyminded]

Especially when so many of the governments in question routinely lecture us on the inevitability of collateral damage whenever they serve up omelettes.

This is a pitch-perfect analogy.

Except those lecturing us on the irrelevance of collateral damage" ("it's unfortunate," they sniff with weary world-wisdom, "but.....") honestly couldn't give a rat's ass about collateral damage....until now, suddenly, when powerful governments are being exposed.

That is, the possibility of some collateral damage is far more disturbing than the objective certainty of widespread collateral damage. For...some reason, unstated.

Edited December 23, 2010 by bloodyminded

[Shady]

And people shouldn't be "allowed" to know this information....why again?

Once again, I'll repeat what I've said a number of times already. Which for some reason, keeps getting ignored by you people. That's the type of information I think it perfectly appropriate to shine the light on. It's back channel diplomacy, and behind the scenes cooperation from people like Abbas against Hamas, and Yemen against Al Qaeda that are damaged by WikiLeaks. It's releasing the names of individuals in Afghanistan, and other places around the world. That risk their lives in an effort to defend us.

[Shady]

And eyeball is clearly willing to rationalize that nothing that's come of this has had any negative impact at all. ("well, whatever Abbas was trying to accomplish wouldn't have worked anyhow...")

Exactly. Which is one of the dumbest, most juvenile thoughts ever expressed in this forum. Abbas probably wouldn't have succeeded, so WikiLeaks is ok.

Edited December 23, 2010 by Shady

[bloodyminded]

Who here was honestly unaware that Israel has been dealing with Abbas against Hamas?

That's public knowledge already. Long has been.

anyone who was unaware of it has not paid any attention whatsoever to what's been going on. And that's fine; what's not so fine is when one receives all their "knowledge" from talking-point politicized criticims of wikileaks.

[eyeball]

And eyeball is clearly willing to rationalize that nothing that's come of this has had any negative impact at all. ("well, whatever Abbas was trying to accomplish wouldn't have worked anyhow...")

-k

Exactly. Which is one of the dumbest, most juvenile thoughts ever expressed in this forum. Abbas probably wouldn't have succeeded, so WikiLeaks is ok.

Who actually said this anyway? Kimmy and now you seem to think it was me but it wasn't.

[Rue]

LOL! I need to try these lines on my wife:

....there was something unusual about our interaction....

....I want you in isolation.....

Translation: Can I get laid again?

"I want you in isolation". That's what I said to Paris Hilton when she tried to kiss me and I noticed this big cold sore on her mouth....

[Rue]

Once again, I'll repeat what I've said a number of times already. Which for some reason, keeps getting ignored by you people. That's the type of information I think it perfectly appropriate to shine the light on. It's back channel diplomacy, and behind the scenes cooperation from people like Abbas against Hamas, and Yemen against Al Qaeda that are damaged by WikiLeaks. It's releasing the names of individuals in Afghanistan, and other places around the world. That risk their lives in an effort to defend us.

All kidding aside, its one thing to release he said she said gossip-I agree with you though that when you release info you know will compromise the safety of someone's life and get them killed, then you are acting unethically.

I also question how releasing sites governments are worried are vulnerable to terrorist attacks is vital or promotes full disclosure and democracy. All it does is scare people and encourage terrorists to attack these sites.

Police often repress evidence to protect the public. Knowing what to release to the public is not an all or nothing black and white issue as Assange turned it into.

His efforts probably will result in governments justifying themselves acting even more secretly in the future.

He like many of his trendy kind, are short sighted, feel entitled, and live in the present tense with no thought of

the future.

Assange's sex life merely confirms his personality profile-a narcissist bully with a short attention span.

[eyeball]

All kidding aside, its one thing to release he said she said gossip-I agree with you though that when you release info you know will compromise the safety of someone's life and get them killed, then you are acting unethically.

Like the US government did?

I also question how releasing sites governments are worried are vulnerable to terrorist attacks is vital or promotes full disclosure and democracy. All it does is scare people and encourage terrorists to attack these sites.

Police often repress evidence to protect the public. Knowing what to release to the public is not an all or nothing black and white issue as Assange turned it into.

Police often also blow things out of proportion to frighten or fool the public. When governments try to hide virtually everything they do it does in fact get pretty damn black and white.

His efforts probably will result in governments justifying themselves acting even more secretly in the future.

That'll be just fine if this results in more awareness of the growing polarization between the governed and governments - as far as I'm concerned there's been a virtual clash within civilization shaping up for sometime now along an axis that can better be described as top and bottom as compared to right and left.

He like many of his trendy kind, are short sighted, feel entitled, and live in the present tense with no thought of

the future.

Funny how that sounds just like the sort of people most governments are filled with, even more so the higher up the ladder you go.

Assange's sex life merely confirms his personality profile-a narcissist bully with a short attention span.

If we had a real revelation in hand for every time some supporter of the governing classes pointed to the sexcapdes of their detractors, wikileaks would be almost pointless.

Edited January 6, 2011 by eyeball

[dre]

All kidding aside, its one thing to release he said she said gossip-I agree with you though that when you release info you know will compromise the safety of someone's life and get them killed, then you are acting unethically.

I also question how releasing sites governments are worried are vulnerable to terrorist attacks is vital or promotes full disclosure and democracy. All it does is scare people and encourage terrorists to attack these sites.

Police often repress evidence to protect the public. Knowing what to release to the public is not an all or nothing black and white issue as Assange turned it into.

His efforts probably will result in governments justifying themselves acting even more secretly in the future.

He like many of his trendy kind, are short sighted, feel entitled, and live in the present tense with no thought of

the future.

Assange's sex life merely confirms his personality profile-a narcissist bully with a short attention span.

I disagree. In the long term people need to reign their governments in, because theyre run away trains that are starting to do a lot of damage. We cant do that without information. This whole platonian "myth of the cave" paradigm where people are perpetually kept in the dark isnt working.

There certainly IS risks to having an open society and government where information flows around easily and freely, but I personally think the risk presented by closed government are much much more dangerous.