7 ms·

WikiLeaks will Not be abandoned.

61 points by d_c 16y ago

man1sh 16y ago
Pentagon declared Wikileaks as a threat to national security. I we look at The Apache helicopter and Australian internet plans leaks, the government was trying to do something wrong, which Wikileaks exposed. Now they have been declared threat to national security. Great progress in hypocrisy.
- tptacek 16y ago
  That's just about the most generous possible interpretation of what's been happening with Wikileaks. A less generous interpretation: * Wikileaks leaked the video that accompanies a detailed transcript (with quotes) of the same video that appeared in the Washington Post many months beforehand --- a PR black eye to be sure, but in no way a revelation. * Wikileaks has in fact cultivated confidential sources inside DoD and military service agencies that are talking about forwarding cables and other TS-classified material, and is in fact part of a grave threat to national security (which, true, the real "threat" is clearly the negligent lapses in operational security that allow someone like Manning to leak cables in the first place). In other words: Wikileaks is less valuable to society than it seems, and at the same time the government has a legitimate (if misdirected) concern with them.
  - barrkel 16y ago
    Do you really believe Manning is the leaker?
    - tptacek 16y ago
      I don't care that much, but, what's your theory?
      - barrkel 16y ago
        I just found the whole story a quite odd - the Wired reporter and his friend's difficult to believe story, this low-level kid, the obvious desire - and leaked plans - of the US to find and punish leakers to discredit Wikileaks. I don't care that much either. On net, I think Wikileaks is a good thing, but I've never donated and never would until they are more transparent about their own operations. Re that video, the first half wasn't what disturbed me, but rather the firing of the missiles into the building in the second half. But there's an obvious strategy for the US to discredit Wikileaks, and that's to find someone - anyone - that appears to have leaked to them, and come down hard on them. Finding an oddball kid suits the story they want to tell, irrelevant of how guilty he may be. But the Wired stuff is just off the wall odd.
        tptacek 16y ago
        Doesn't it bother you that without reliable evidence, you can make a similarly credible narrative out of almost anything else? Maybe it was the Bush-era DoD people who leaked the story to discredit the Obama administration! You can't prove a negative. I'm working under the assumption that someone named Manning did in fact do something stupid with Wikileaks, which did indeed encourage him to do that stupid thing. That Wikileaks is encouraging stupid people to do stupid things is something that bothers me about Wikileaks; that stupid people are given access sufficient to do stupid and damaging things is something that bothers me about the DoD.
        barrkel 16y ago
        I don't think Wikileaks encourages stupid behaviour - as I understand it, the input avenue is primarily an file upload field. As to evidence (in the legal sense), I don't have any one way or the other that Manning had anything to do with the leak. I just have media reports, which sound really weird, which makes me not give them much weight.
        tptacek 16y ago
        Regardless of how (say) Manning conveyed files to Wikileaks, leaking classified-TS cables is manifestly stupid. One doubts most of the people who might help Wikileaks from inside the DoD have any idea what they're actually doing. My guess is that it all seems unreal, happening as it does on the always fake-seeming Internet using computers that make everything seem like chat room drama.
  - torpor 16y ago
    >threat to national security The real threat to national security is the predominance of special-interest groups who are currently in control of the US Military machine, having it fight un-just, disgusting wars, in the name of the United States of America. The true threat to national security is the Pentagon itself, which simply wouldn't be necessary if it weren't creating its own reasons for war around the world. You want real national security? Stand down your soldiers, America. That is the only true way to be secure in your beds, Americans.
JeffJenkins 16y ago
Is there some background on this I should know about?
- mukyu 16y ago
  http://cryptome.org/0001/wikileaks-dump.htm http://cryptome.org/0001/wikileaks-dump.htm
roboneal 16y ago
We need organizations that are true watchdogs of the government. Governments should be made uncomfortable by the press. However, WikiLeaks lost me when they released selectively edited video, spliced in editorial overlays, registered a domain name "CollateralMurder" and advocated a position.
- Rod 16y ago
  "WikiLeaks lost me when they released selectively edited video, spliced in editorial overlays, registered a domain name "CollateralMurder" and advocated a position." Showing that the U.S. Military makes mistakes helps destroy the dangerous myth that all U.S. servicemen are saints. I have no idea how this meme that "WikiLeaks is bad because it showed U.S. soldiers doing bad things" was born, but it's, frankly, really ludicrous. When you see cold-blooded murder right before your eyes, you do take a stand. If you don't, you're a monster. Or an accomplice. Period.
  - roboneal 16y ago
    You missed my point entirely. If they want to leak material showing the government doing "bad things", go ahead. Leak it. All of it. The more the better. But selectively EDITING video and hyping it under the "Collateral Murder" banner enters into ADVOCACY.
    - jimmyjim 16y ago
      > But selectively EDITING video and hyping it under the "Collateral Murder" banner enters into ADVOCACY. To be fair, both the edited and the complete video of the attack were released simultaneously. Watching some 40 minutes of a clip mostly filled with inaction vs. the clip containing only the important parts with context, which would you rather watch? I know what I'll choose, time is important to me. I can almost understand your argument against the editorializing, but the bottom line (at least to me) is that Wikileaks does eventually leak all data in its entirety, you can so choose to ignore all their commentary if you desire.
      - 16y ago
Natsu 16y ago
Has anyone noticed a pattern yet? We get a sensational rumor. Then we get a flat denial. Over and over. Someone trying to cast doubt on their viability in hopes of getting people to stop funding them?

61 points by d_c 16y ago

Pentagon declared Wikileaks as a threat to national security. I we look at The Apache helicopter and Australian internet plans leaks, the government was trying to do something wrong, which Wikileaks exposed. Now they have been declared threat to national security. Great progress in hypocrisy.

tptacek 16y ago
That's just about the most generous possible interpretation of what's been happening with Wikileaks. A less generous interpretation: * Wikileaks leaked the video that accompanies a detailed transcript (with quotes) of the same video that appeared in the Washington Post many months beforehand --- a PR black eye to be sure, but in no way a revelation. * Wikileaks has in fact cultivated confidential sources inside DoD and military service agencies that are talking about forwarding cables and other TS-classified material, and is in fact part of a grave threat to national security (which, true, the real "threat" is clearly the negligent lapses in operational security that allow someone like Manning to leak cables in the first place). In other words: Wikileaks is less valuable to society than it seems, and at the same time the government has a legitimate (if misdirected) concern with them.
- barrkel 16y ago
  Do you really believe Manning is the leaker?
  - tptacek 16y ago
    I don't care that much, but, what's your theory?
    - barrkel 16y ago
      I just found the whole story a quite odd - the Wired reporter and his friend's difficult to believe story, this low-level kid, the obvious desire - and leaked plans - of the US to find and punish leakers to discredit Wikileaks. I don't care that much either. On net, I think Wikileaks is a good thing, but I've never donated and never would until they are more transparent about their own operations. Re that video, the first half wasn't what disturbed me, but rather the firing of the missiles into the building in the second half. But there's an obvious strategy for the US to discredit Wikileaks, and that's to find someone - anyone - that appears to have leaked to them, and come down hard on them. Finding an oddball kid suits the story they want to tell, irrelevant of how guilty he may be. But the Wired stuff is just off the wall odd.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        Doesn't it bother you that without reliable evidence, you can make a similarly credible narrative out of almost anything else? Maybe it was the Bush-era DoD people who leaked the story to discredit the Obama administration! You can't prove a negative. I'm working under the assumption that someone named Manning did in fact do something stupid with Wikileaks, which did indeed encourage him to do that stupid thing. That Wikileaks is encouraging stupid people to do stupid things is something that bothers me about Wikileaks; that stupid people are given access sufficient to do stupid and damaging things is something that bothers me about the DoD.
        barrkel 16y ago
        I don't think Wikileaks encourages stupid behaviour - as I understand it, the input avenue is primarily an file upload field. As to evidence (in the legal sense), I don't have any one way or the other that Manning had anything to do with the leak. I just have media reports, which sound really weird, which makes me not give them much weight.
        tptacek 16y ago
        Regardless of how (say) Manning conveyed files to Wikileaks, leaking classified-TS cables is manifestly stupid. One doubts most of the people who might help Wikileaks from inside the DoD have any idea what they're actually doing. My guess is that it all seems unreal, happening as it does on the always fake-seeming Internet using computers that make everything seem like chat room drama.
- torpor 16y ago
  >threat to national security The real threat to national security is the predominance of special-interest groups who are currently in control of the US Military machine, having it fight un-just, disgusting wars, in the name of the United States of America. The true threat to national security is the Pentagon itself, which simply wouldn't be necessary if it weren't creating its own reasons for war around the world. You want real national security? Stand down your soldiers, America. That is the only true way to be secure in your beds, Americans.

JeffJenkins 16y ago

Is there some background on this I should know about?

mukyu 16y ago
http://cryptome.org/0001/wikileaks-dump.htm http://cryptome.org/0001/wikileaks-dump.htm

roboneal 16y ago

We need organizations that are true watchdogs of the government. Governments should be made uncomfortable by the press. However, WikiLeaks lost me when they released selectively edited video, spliced in editorial overlays, registered a domain name "CollateralMurder" and advocated a position.

Rod 16y ago
"WikiLeaks lost me when they released selectively edited video, spliced in editorial overlays, registered a domain name "CollateralMurder" and advocated a position." Showing that the U.S. Military makes mistakes helps destroy the dangerous myth that all U.S. servicemen are saints. I have no idea how this meme that "WikiLeaks is bad because it showed U.S. soldiers doing bad things" was born, but it's, frankly, really ludicrous. When you see cold-blooded murder right before your eyes, you do take a stand. If you don't, you're a monster. Or an accomplice. Period.
- roboneal 16y ago
  You missed my point entirely. If they want to leak material showing the government doing "bad things", go ahead. Leak it. All of it. The more the better. But selectively EDITING video and hyping it under the "Collateral Murder" banner enters into ADVOCACY.
  - jimmyjim 16y ago
    > But selectively EDITING video and hyping it under the "Collateral Murder" banner enters into ADVOCACY. To be fair, both the edited and the complete video of the attack were released simultaneously. Watching some 40 minutes of a clip mostly filled with inaction vs. the clip containing only the important parts with context, which would you rather watch? I know what I'll choose, time is important to me. I can almost understand your argument against the editorializing, but the bottom line (at least to me) is that Wikileaks does eventually leak all data in its entirety, you can so choose to ignore all their commentary if you desire.
    - 16y ago

Natsu 16y ago

Has anyone noticed a pattern yet? We get a sensational rumor. Then we get a flat denial. Over and over. Someone trying to cast doubt on their viability in hopes of getting people to stop funding them?