5 ms·

I disagree, it hasn't stopped being a force for good. Where is the evidence that his leaks have directly got people killed? When I see something like this, my

by kul 16y ago

I disagree, it hasn't stopped being a force for good. Where is the evidence that his leaks have directly got people killed? When I see something like this, my first reaction is, who benefits? Who is better off with Wikileaks discredited? There's another way to lose credibility you didn't mention, have someone big and powerful with vested interests attack you relentlessly. The Pentagon's primary (and I think leaked) tactic was to turn people against Wikileaks by equating them with the direct loss of life. Sadly, it seems to be working.

potatolicious 16y ago
They directly leaked the names of informants in a country where such information is an obvious danger. This is reckless, irresponsible, and unforgivable now that we know that Assange was aware of the poor quality of redactions prior to the documents' release. Their poor editorialization of the Collateral Murder video also put a large dent in their credibility for me. Much effort was spent pointing out the journalists shot, but it was not even mentioned in a glancing note that they were in fact with armed insurgents, and that the group was armed. If they want to be a credible whistleblower organization they need to be objective and impartial. Right now they reek of fame whoring and partisan bias.
- mquander 16y ago
  This is starting to smell like bullshit. I agreed at the time that failing to redact these names seemed to be a poor decision that could put people in danger. However, now we're a month or two on, and nobody has cited an instance where anyone has actually been targeted as a result, even though the government would have considerable incentive to be able to point at such an instance. If a thousand people, or a hundred people had died because of that leak, I would be receptive to the idea that Wikileaks was actually doing harm. If a dozen had died, I would be sharply critical of Wikileaks for not taking more care and redacting their names. But as best we can tell, none have died. It seems pretty clear to me that Wikileaks erred on the right side of "get the documents out as soon as possible" vs. "keep working on them."
  - krschultz 16y ago
    "As best you can tell" is not a good measure. An example of what is seemingly innocuous data that was classified for a reason and puts our guys in danger. A battle report with times in it can be used to basically figure out response time for air support to a given location in Iraq/Afghanistan. That basically tells the enemy how long they have for their ambush before they should break off. If they know that time is 20 minutes instead of 5 minutes, they may be more inclined to stick around and put our troops in more danger. If they know the time is 5 minutes when they had thought it was 20 minutes, they bail sooner than they would have otherwise and now we can't kill as many as we would have otherwise, again reducing the effectivness of our troops. Can you quantify that? How do you know if the insurgents are just getting smarter or if it is from the leak? We can't say for sure but it is very plausible that the wikileaks information was damaging to our troops in the field, even if it didn't have a roadmap to the informants house.
    - mquander 16y ago
      That's all true, and no, you can't quantify that, or at least it's very hard to quantify. Here's what I can quantify: http://www.gallup.com/poll/141716/new-high-call-afghanistan-war-mistake.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/141716/new-high-call-afghanistan-... I personally believe that the expected value of -5% public approval for the Afghan war is very, very positive; on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars and many lives. I also assign a high, but hard-to-quantify value to generally decreasing the public's trust in government, which leaks like this tend to do. I just don't believe that scenarios similar to the one you describe can be having a similar degree of impact. I think your description is plausible, but to imagine that it's happening frequently sounds like an overestimation of the technical capacity and manpower of the Taliban and insurgent groups. I am very ready to condemn avoidable harm caused by bad practices surrounding leaked information, things that Wikileaks can clearly control, like redacting names. However, the sorts of situations you describe are inevitable with any leak of meaningful classified information, and since I think that these type of leaks are a big net positive (after taking your scenario into account) I'm not inclined to consider them damning in any way. (I understand that you might disagree strongly with me about the utility of the war in general, so I don't expect to convince you if that's the case.)

by kul 16y ago

potatolicious 16y ago

They directly leaked the names of informants in a country where such information is an obvious danger. This is reckless, irresponsible, and unforgivable now that we know that Assange was aware of the poor quality of redactions prior to the documents' release. Their poor editorialization of the Collateral Murder video also put a large dent in their credibility for me. Much effort was spent pointing out the journalists shot, but it was not even mentioned in a glancing note that they were in fact with armed insurgents, and that the group was armed. If they want to be a credible whistleblower organization they need to be objective and impartial. Right now they reek of fame whoring and partisan bias.

mquander 16y ago
This is starting to smell like bullshit. I agreed at the time that failing to redact these names seemed to be a poor decision that could put people in danger. However, now we're a month or two on, and nobody has cited an instance where anyone has actually been targeted as a result, even though the government would have considerable incentive to be able to point at such an instance. If a thousand people, or a hundred people had died because of that leak, I would be receptive to the idea that Wikileaks was actually doing harm. If a dozen had died, I would be sharply critical of Wikileaks for not taking more care and redacting their names. But as best we can tell, none have died. It seems pretty clear to me that Wikileaks erred on the right side of "get the documents out as soon as possible" vs. "keep working on them."
- krschultz 16y ago
  "As best you can tell" is not a good measure. An example of what is seemingly innocuous data that was classified for a reason and puts our guys in danger. A battle report with times in it can be used to basically figure out response time for air support to a given location in Iraq/Afghanistan. That basically tells the enemy how long they have for their ambush before they should break off. If they know that time is 20 minutes instead of 5 minutes, they may be more inclined to stick around and put our troops in more danger. If they know the time is 5 minutes when they had thought it was 20 minutes, they bail sooner than they would have otherwise and now we can't kill as many as we would have otherwise, again reducing the effectivness of our troops. Can you quantify that? How do you know if the insurgents are just getting smarter or if it is from the leak? We can't say for sure but it is very plausible that the wikileaks information was damaging to our troops in the field, even if it didn't have a roadmap to the informants house.
  - mquander 16y ago
    That's all true, and no, you can't quantify that, or at least it's very hard to quantify. Here's what I can quantify: http://www.gallup.com/poll/141716/new-high-call-afghanistan-war-mistake.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/141716/new-high-call-afghanistan-... I personally believe that the expected value of -5% public approval for the Afghan war is very, very positive; on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars and many lives. I also assign a high, but hard-to-quantify value to generally decreasing the public's trust in government, which leaks like this tend to do. I just don't believe that scenarios similar to the one you describe can be having a similar degree of impact. I think your description is plausible, but to imagine that it's happening frequently sounds like an overestimation of the technical capacity and manpower of the Taliban and insurgent groups. I am very ready to condemn avoidable harm caused by bad practices surrounding leaked information, things that Wikileaks can clearly control, like redacting names. However, the sorts of situations you describe are inevitable with any leak of meaningful classified information, and since I think that these type of leaks are a big net positive (after taking your scenario into account) I'm not inclined to consider them damning in any way. (I understand that you might disagree strongly with me about the utility of the war in general, so I don't expect to convince you if that's the case.)