6 ms·

U.S. warns Ottawa of WikiLeak release

90 points by kgarten 16y ago

mrtron 16y ago
This is the type of positive political pressure news agencies should be putting on governments. It shouldn't be just wikileaks - there are far too many reporters and far too few journalists.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  If you're a media outlet and you don't want to lose your 'access' you should not be doing your job too well.
- martythemaniak 16y ago
  Canada and the US have some of the most pliant media out there. It makes me want to throw up every time I see someone interview a power figure. For example, last year our PM decided to prorogue parliament (ie, like ending a session of congress prematurely) because it was politically expedient. During his end-of-year, he got a soft-ball question and simply dismissed it as business-as-usual (even though it upset people and led to a fair bit of protesting). Meanwhile, people like Jeremy Paxman in Britain thrive on asking tough questions and calling politicians on their bullshit.
steveklabnik 16y ago
Is the US just saying this so that when the actual leak comes out, it seems softer? Are they just making this up for some reason, or is the leak actually real? What kind of thing could possibly be leaked, and how badly will it damage international relations? International espionage makes my head hurt.
- mrcharles 16y ago
  Well, back in July, Wired quoted Manning as saying “Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed,” Manning wrote. “It’s open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV format. It’s Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It’s beautiful, and horrifying.” The article also says "a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”" ( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/ ) I think it's real, and I think it's bad. Time will tell though.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Bad? Its great news, without allies the US can't really act internationally and they will have to stop invading other countries.
    - mrcharles 16y ago
      I meant bad for the US, though I question the validity of calling what may be a massive international clusterfuck "great news".
      - d2viant 16y ago
        You're absolutely right. Contrary to what parent claims, the US and our allies do a lot of good around the world that is made possible by having strong international diplomacy with other countries.
        pyre 16y ago
        If there are 'criminal' political back-dealings, then don't the people perpetrating them, bear some responsibility? Otherwise we end up in the 'too big to fail' position where anything bad these people do will always be covered up, and they basically get a blank cheque to do what they please. (by 'people,' I mean the specific politicians/diplomats/etc involved).
        hugh3 16y ago
        After reading this thread I've come to the conclusion that it's ethical to leak secret government documents (from a democratic country) if and only if the document provides evidence of someone in the government behaving illegally. Random dumps of four hundred thousand random government documents, however obtained, don't cut it.
      - tomjen3 16y ago
        It will be bad for the US leadership, but great for the country and its people.
- dfghjkhgbfd 16y ago
  >What kind of thing could possibly be leaked, and how badly will it damage international relations? Well it might be tricky politically for Germany to get behind the US if the leaks contain plans for a 'final solution' to the problem of muslims living in America. Mostly it's just lots of governments that have opposed torture in public statements are going to be embarrassed when it's detailed how their security services stood there while the person was electrocuted then asked their questions. The UK just made a big payout to lots of Gimto inmates to avoid this coming out in court.
martythemaniak 16y ago
Excellent. It used to be that you had to wait a generation or two to find out what actually transpired behind closed doors (example, Margaret McMillan's excellent book "Nixon in China"), but thanks to Wikileaks we can know merely years after the fact.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Here's to hoping that that time will decrease to 'near realtime' and that all governments will live in a glass cage. Hopelessly naive ? Maybe, but I think that it would take something like that to get some honesty in politics.
  - oiujhygtyhuji 16y ago
    No it would just mean that more decisions are taken in bathrooms. The reason things like cabinet meeting minutes are secret is that it does allow people to discuss issues honestly without just considering how it will play on the 6 Oclock news. Imagine negotiating a sale at work if everything about it was published? All that would happen is that all emails and documents would become sanitized public statements and the real talking would be done off the record
    - thwarted 16y ago
      Part of how things play on the 6 o'clock news is that things are not transparent enough, and there's a lot of opportunity to re/misinterpret things that the populace doesn't have any documentation for. Somehow, I don't think politicians are being more honest when it comes to what's good for their constituents when they have conversations behind closed doors. I'm sure closed door discussions do allow the capability to be "more honest" about backscratching and payola with the other people in the room.
  - arihelgason 16y ago
    After Tony Blair had the Freedom of Information Act passed in the UK (2000), more discussions took place off the record and ministers began to avoid writing down minutes for meetings.
ajays 16y ago
Time to stock up on popcorn. This is going to be good. When I think of the Internet, I see it as a worldwide communication medium that equalizes (or tries to) the distribution of knowledge. These leaks will be the Internet living up to this goal. I hope WikiLeaks doesn't release these docs on Friday, as the coverage will be drowned out (in the US) by all this shopping BS. I hope they wait till things quiet down, and do it later next week.
- mcantelon 16y ago
  I would guess that Wikileaks understand the news cycle.
- markeroon 16y ago
  I feel the same way. Most of the people in this thread who oppose the leaks appear to be American citizens. I feel that we Canadians have a right to know how US policy is affecting our country behind closed doors.
aneth 16y ago
As much as I am in favor of government transparency, diplomatic channels have a very important need for privacy, and from the looks of it, this is really a senseless, destructive act by Assange and WikiLeaks. Diplomacy is incredibly complex and delicate. In particular when communicating with dissidents of foreign countries, it's often necessary to have complex and multi-faceted positions in private communications, some of which may be conflicting and offensive to one side or the other. Take communications with North Korean or other dissidents as an example. On the surface, Kim Jong needs to think we are negotiating with him without trying to support opposition and bring down his government - otherwise he may become unstable and violent. We also however need to provide moral and material support to dissidents. Shall we just be the fools and pretend that diplomacy is not a complex game? In a perfect world, maybe there would be no need for secrecy, but to think that diplomacy does not need some level of underhandedness, deception, head-fakes, and other manipulation is terribly naive. We don't yet know what is going to be released, and perhaps some of it very well should be public, however if any of it damages our efforts to work with dissidents in oppressed countries, or has other destructive effects on the work of the State Department, there will be serious questions about whether real-time transparency is really what we want when it comes to diplomacy.
- icegreentea 16y ago
  This. Furthermore, anyone's private conversations can make anyone seem like a jerk. I know there's that nice little saying... 'if you have nothing nice to say, then don't say it'. But frankly that's bullshit. At the very best, there's stuff in here that will make perfect rational sense, but still cause outrage amongst other countries. For example, as a Canadian I can easily see some angry faces over any report that shown that our decision to not participate in Iraq was dismissed as 'irrelevant'. It's like how Alice and Bob are discussing Joe's crappy documentation in private in the context of having to work around it, and then suddenly Eve broadcasts that conversation through the world. Now Joe is probably pissed off at Alice and Bob, and the rest of the world is laughing at Joe. Even though Alice and Bob really did have to have that conversation.
  - Jach 16y ago
shaddi 16y ago
What happened to everything else that Wikileaks used to host? I remember when it first went live it was an actual Mediawiki site that had a lot of other whistleblower documents. Since this "War Logs" stuff went up I can't seem to find any of the old documents.
- pyre 16y ago
  They didn't garner enough publicity, so they were cut loose as liabilities.
- bbatsell 16y ago
  My understanding is that they now only host the latest documents purportedly to cut hosting costs. Some argue that it's a bit of manipulation in order to garner more donations. You can google for mirrors of the old content.
motters 16y ago
I think that people rushing to issue denunciations of Wikileaks and defences of the behaviour of diplomats would be better advised to wait and see what information these particular documents actually contain.
joshes 16y ago
Potentially destructive? Yes. Sometimes a broken, corrupted system needs a bit of destruction to be set in a better direction. Whatever Assange is sitting on must be damning, considering the way this is unfolding. I am intrigued to see where this goes.
forza 16y ago
Many of you have a US perspective on this, but it could be even more interesting for the rest of the world. I supposedly live in the most democratic country in the world, but that doesn't seem to prevent officials from breaking the law under US influence. "Sweden investigating alleged U.S. spying" http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-06/world/sweden.us.investigation_1_swedish-law-swedish-authorities-stockholm?_s=PM:WORLD http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-06/world/sweden.us.investiga... "New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05... "SWIFT breaks EU law to comply with US law" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/swift_us_privacy_violation/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/swift_us_privacy_vio... "US government behind Pirate Bay raid" http://www.thelocal.se/3969/20060602/ http://www.thelocal.se/3969/20060602/

90 points by kgarten 16y ago

This is the type of positive political pressure news agencies should be putting on governments. It shouldn't be just wikileaks - there are far too many reporters and far too few journalists.

jacquesm 16y ago
If you're a media outlet and you don't want to lose your 'access' you should not be doing your job too well.
martythemaniak 16y ago
Canada and the US have some of the most pliant media out there. It makes me want to throw up every time I see someone interview a power figure. For example, last year our PM decided to prorogue parliament (ie, like ending a session of congress prematurely) because it was politically expedient. During his end-of-year, he got a soft-ball question and simply dismissed it as business-as-usual (even though it upset people and led to a fair bit of protesting). Meanwhile, people like Jeremy Paxman in Britain thrive on asking tough questions and calling politicians on their bullshit.

steveklabnik 16y ago

Is the US just saying this so that when the actual leak comes out, it seems softer? Are they just making this up for some reason, or is the leak actually real? What kind of thing could possibly be leaked, and how badly will it damage international relations? International espionage makes my head hurt.

mrcharles 16y ago
Well, back in July, Wired quoted Manning as saying “Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed,” Manning wrote. “It’s open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV format. It’s Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It’s beautiful, and horrifying.” The article also says "a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”" ( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/ ) I think it's real, and I think it's bad. Time will tell though.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Bad? Its great news, without allies the US can't really act internationally and they will have to stop invading other countries.
  - mrcharles 16y ago
    I meant bad for the US, though I question the validity of calling what may be a massive international clusterfuck "great news".
    - d2viant 16y ago
      You're absolutely right. Contrary to what parent claims, the US and our allies do a lot of good around the world that is made possible by having strong international diplomacy with other countries.
      - pyre 16y ago
        If there are 'criminal' political back-dealings, then don't the people perpetrating them, bear some responsibility? Otherwise we end up in the 'too big to fail' position where anything bad these people do will always be covered up, and they basically get a blank cheque to do what they please. (by 'people,' I mean the specific politicians/diplomats/etc involved).
        hugh3 16y ago
        After reading this thread I've come to the conclusion that it's ethical to leak secret government documents (from a democratic country) if and only if the document provides evidence of someone in the government behaving illegally. Random dumps of four hundred thousand random government documents, however obtained, don't cut it.
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      It will be bad for the US leadership, but great for the country and its people.
dfghjkhgbfd 16y ago
>What kind of thing could possibly be leaked, and how badly will it damage international relations? Well it might be tricky politically for Germany to get behind the US if the leaks contain plans for a 'final solution' to the problem of muslims living in America. Mostly it's just lots of governments that have opposed torture in public statements are going to be embarrassed when it's detailed how their security services stood there while the person was electrocuted then asked their questions. The UK just made a big payout to lots of Gimto inmates to avoid this coming out in court.

martythemaniak 16y ago

Excellent. It used to be that you had to wait a generation or two to find out what actually transpired behind closed doors (example, Margaret McMillan's excellent book "Nixon in China"), but thanks to Wikileaks we can know merely years after the fact.

jacquesm 16y ago
Here's to hoping that that time will decrease to 'near realtime' and that all governments will live in a glass cage. Hopelessly naive ? Maybe, but I think that it would take something like that to get some honesty in politics.
- oiujhygtyhuji 16y ago
  No it would just mean that more decisions are taken in bathrooms. The reason things like cabinet meeting minutes are secret is that it does allow people to discuss issues honestly without just considering how it will play on the 6 Oclock news. Imagine negotiating a sale at work if everything about it was published? All that would happen is that all emails and documents would become sanitized public statements and the real talking would be done off the record
  - thwarted 16y ago
    Part of how things play on the 6 o'clock news is that things are not transparent enough, and there's a lot of opportunity to re/misinterpret things that the populace doesn't have any documentation for. Somehow, I don't think politicians are being more honest when it comes to what's good for their constituents when they have conversations behind closed doors. I'm sure closed door discussions do allow the capability to be "more honest" about backscratching and payola with the other people in the room.
- arihelgason 16y ago
  After Tony Blair had the Freedom of Information Act passed in the UK (2000), more discussions took place off the record and ministers began to avoid writing down minutes for meetings.

ajays 16y ago

Time to stock up on popcorn. This is going to be good. When I think of the Internet, I see it as a worldwide communication medium that equalizes (or tries to) the distribution of knowledge. These leaks will be the Internet living up to this goal. I hope WikiLeaks doesn't release these docs on Friday, as the coverage will be drowned out (in the US) by all this shopping BS. I hope they wait till things quiet down, and do it later next week.

mcantelon 16y ago
I would guess that Wikileaks understand the news cycle.
markeroon 16y ago
I feel the same way. Most of the people in this thread who oppose the leaks appear to be American citizens. I feel that we Canadians have a right to know how US policy is affecting our country behind closed doors.

aneth 16y ago

As much as I am in favor of government transparency, diplomatic channels have a very important need for privacy, and from the looks of it, this is really a senseless, destructive act by Assange and WikiLeaks. Diplomacy is incredibly complex and delicate. In particular when communicating with dissidents of foreign countries, it's often necessary to have complex and multi-faceted positions in private communications, some of which may be conflicting and offensive to one side or the other. Take communications with North Korean or other dissidents as an example. On the surface, Kim Jong needs to think we are negotiating with him without trying to support opposition and bring down his government - otherwise he may become unstable and violent. We also however need to provide moral and material support to dissidents. Shall we just be the fools and pretend that diplomacy is not a complex game? In a perfect world, maybe there would be no need for secrecy, but to think that diplomacy does not need some level of underhandedness, deception, head-fakes, and other manipulation is terribly naive. We don't yet know what is going to be released, and perhaps some of it very well should be public, however if any of it damages our efforts to work with dissidents in oppressed countries, or has other destructive effects on the work of the State Department, there will be serious questions about whether real-time transparency is really what we want when it comes to diplomacy.

icegreentea 16y ago
This. Furthermore, anyone's private conversations can make anyone seem like a jerk. I know there's that nice little saying... 'if you have nothing nice to say, then don't say it'. But frankly that's bullshit. At the very best, there's stuff in here that will make perfect rational sense, but still cause outrage amongst other countries. For example, as a Canadian I can easily see some angry faces over any report that shown that our decision to not participate in Iraq was dismissed as 'irrelevant'. It's like how Alice and Bob are discussing Joe's crappy documentation in private in the context of having to work around it, and then suddenly Eve broadcasts that conversation through the world. Now Joe is probably pissed off at Alice and Bob, and the rest of the world is laughing at Joe. Even though Alice and Bob really did have to have that conversation.
- Jach 16y ago

shaddi 16y ago

What happened to everything else that Wikileaks used to host? I remember when it first went live it was an actual Mediawiki site that had a lot of other whistleblower documents. Since this "War Logs" stuff went up I can't seem to find any of the old documents.

pyre 16y ago
They didn't garner enough publicity, so they were cut loose as liabilities.
bbatsell 16y ago
My understanding is that they now only host the latest documents purportedly to cut hosting costs. Some argue that it's a bit of manipulation in order to garner more donations. You can google for mirrors of the old content.

motters 16y ago

I think that people rushing to issue denunciations of Wikileaks and defences of the behaviour of diplomats would be better advised to wait and see what information these particular documents actually contain.

joshes 16y ago

Potentially destructive? Yes. Sometimes a broken, corrupted system needs a bit of destruction to be set in a better direction. Whatever Assange is sitting on must be damning, considering the way this is unfolding. I am intrigued to see where this goes.

forza 16y ago

Many of you have a US perspective on this, but it could be even more interesting for the rest of the world. I supposedly live in the most democratic country in the world, but that doesn't seem to prevent officials from breaking the law under US influence. "Sweden investigating alleged U.S. spying" http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-06/world/sweden.us.investigation_1_swedish-law-swedish-authorities-stockholm?_s=PM:WORLD http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-06/world/sweden.us.investiga... "New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05... "SWIFT breaks EU law to comply with US law" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/swift_us_privacy_violation/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/swift_us_privacy_vio... "US government behind Pirate Bay raid" http://www.thelocal.se/3969/20060602/ http://www.thelocal.se/3969/20060602/