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Sometimes public release of secret documents serves a useful purpose. But I'd be more impressed with WikiLeaks if it would also obtain and release secret docume
by dctoedt 16y ago
Sometimes public release of secret documents serves a useful purpose. But I'd be more impressed with WikiLeaks if it would also obtain and release secret documents from the Taliban, al Quaeda, etc. Except that would probably result in Julian Assange having his head cut off, wouldn't it -- something he likely won't admit he needn't worry about with the Pentagon.
- Confusion 16y agoI don't think the Taliban have any secret documents to be released. Their organisation simply hasn't advanced to that of a bureaucracy yet.
- dctoedt 16y ago> I don't think the Taliban have any secret documents to be released. It was reported a couple of years ago that "Taliban maps, manuals and propaganda have been discovered at training camps in Pakistan showing the sophistication of the insurgent's operations in the country's tribal areas." See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/3441968/Taliban-documents-reveal-scale-of-operations-in-Pakistan.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/3441....
- Andrew_Quentin 16y agoThe article does not mention whether those were in paper format or digital. It mentioned student notes so I would think it to be more likely that they were in the former format. As such, except for actually posting the documents, I can not see how they can be leaked. That is very different from the download and send, which protects anonymity much more I would think perhaps, as well as being more convenient. To address the point of the parent, I do not think Wikileaks chooses which documents to leaks. It is more a supply thing rather than someone sitting on a pile of documents sifting through them to see which serves their own political agenda if they were leaked. Though I hardly know anything of wikileaks, the wiki part in the leaks sort of suggests that it is kind of like wikipeia, so that anyone can leak whatever they want straight away I guess without going through some sort of filtering system.
- arst 16y agoThough I hardly know anything of wikileaks, the wiki part in the leaks sort of suggests that it is kind of like wikipeia, so that anyone can leak whatever they want straight away I guess without going through some sort of filtering system. This is not how WikiLeaks works, though it was the original idea behind it and the source of the name. Today all submitted documents go through a series of reviewers, with Julian Assange ultimately having the final say on what gets published.
- ojbyrne 16y agoHe's Australian, and the Australian army is in Afghanistan, so he could be charged with treason. Apparently they don't have capital punishment for treason in Australian, but life imprisonment still seems like a deterrent to me.
- cromulent 16y agoThere's been some commentary in Australia about him one day being charged for treason, for endangering the lives of Australian defence force personnel. In my non-expert, poorly formed, and probably soon-to-be-corrected opinion, this is a long bow to draw. Currently, the Taliban are actively trying to kill Australian soldiers. I'm not sure how you could endanger their lives further without releasing operational plans or secrets giving information about the future, not about public events of the past. The laws seem to be about collaboration with the enemy, which is not what he is doing.
- ojbyrne 16y agoI also am ill-informed on this topic, but i have heard that the Afghanistan leaks included the names of Taliban informers, which would put them in danger, and make it harder to recruit informers in the future. That would seemingly jeopardize Australian soldiers, and could be characterized as collaboration with the enemy.