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WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

• ximeng 16y ago
  Document on what the classifications mean: http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/quist2/chap_7.html http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/quist2/chap_7.html There are apparently no top secret documents in this leak, top secret documents would include such things as detailed plans for war.
• Groxx 16y ago
  Single page: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?_r=1&#...
• steveklabnik 16y ago
  With Google referrer, to get around the wall: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=8&sqi=2&ved=0CDsQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2010%2F11%2F29%2Fworld%2F29cables.html&rct=j&q=new%20york%20times%20cables&ei=PKPyTOGqDMG78ga94aWLDA&usg=AFQjCNGP61_ELeSsVsUVVOve4iW8mSW8xw http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=8&s... And one with single page: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2010%2F11%2F29%2Fworld%2F29cables.html%3Fpagewanted%3Dall&rct=j&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2010%2F11%2F29%2Fworld%2F29cables.html%3Fpagewanted%3Dall&ei=lKPyTOGoJ8P6lwf8h4CrCg&usg=AFQjCNEr12GQmhcb-4o0przJny_CHndbvw&cad=rja http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&v...
  • ronnier 16y ago
    All pages, one click: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?_r=2 http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/...
    • naner 16y ago
      Have we discussed ViewText here? I'm impressed. I think I may start using this instead of readability.
      • ronnier 16y ago
        I don't think so, other than me posting links on HN threads for articles that need it (such as this NYT article). But thanks! It's mostly based on readability, not 100% though. I ported Readbility (JavaScript) to C#.
        • StavrosK 16y ago
          Is it okay if I link to it from historious for formatting webpages?
          • ronnier 16y ago
            Yup! That's really the intended use, for others to provide links to articles from within their apps. That's what I did for http://ihackernews.com http://ihackernews.com (HN for iPhone/Android).
            • vladocar 16y ago
              Nice work! Can I integrate this service with my HN Mobile Front Page Reader? http://www.vcarrer.com/2010/11/hacker-news-mobile-front-page-reader.html http://www.vcarrer.com/2010/11/hacker-news-mobile-front-page...
              • ronnier 16y ago
                Sure! I love to see others using it :)
            • StavrosK 16y ago
              Fantastic, thank you. I used Google Mobilizer before, but it didn't format the site nicely, so I wasn't convinced that it was useful at all (most mobile devices can display full-blown webpages and the Kindle has an "article mode" that's basically readability). Your tool joins pages as well, which is fantastically useful, and formats the page nicely, which is, again, very handy. I'm not sure this feature belongs in historious (rather than having people do it themselves), but I've linked to you for now, thank you for providing this service!
    • nitrogen 16y ago
      Is it possible to detect the author credits at the end of each individual page and move them all to the end of the aggregate page?
      • ronnier 16y ago
        I'm sure it's possible. I'll look into it.
• trotsky 16y ago
  A global computer hacking effort: China’s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google’s computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said. Nothing new per-se for those that followed aurora or watch infosec, but interesting to see it all itemized together in a state cable instead of a bunch of assumptions & rumors. Look forward to seeing the details on that one.
  • acgourley 16y ago
    There are _so_many_ rumors out there, no matter what was leaked in these cables, someone would have come out saying, "No news here, I knew it all along!" So in so far as they let me know what rumors to choose to believe, they are useful.
• d2viant 16y ago
  Perhaps off topic, but what is a cable? Is it just an email? Or is it some other form of communication specific to the State Department?
  • brc 16y ago
    even more OT, but an interesting story about decryption and leaking of cables is the Zimmerman telegram - the cable that was decrypted and leaked and caused the USA to enter the first world war - from a time when cables literaly went over the cable. This is from the days before computers, when intelligence and human decryption were used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram So the decryption and leaking of cables is nothing new, but this is a whole new scale. Sometimes I wonder if Wikileaks is now doing the bidding of governments without realising it. It's unlikely now but maybe in the future will be so.
  • keiferski 16y ago
    I'm assuming it's just the general term for a 'piece of transmitted information', no matter what the medium.
    • ars 16y ago
      They used to actually be cables, i.e. telegraph. (Meaning faster then mail, or diplomatic pouch.) They kept the name as communications technology moved on.
  • moondowner 16y ago
    As I understood by reading the articles, they have their own "Internet" through which they communicate via cables, and every cable has it's own strict structure.
    • moondowner 16y ago
      So, I guess yes? They have their own Internet called Spirnet (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network)? http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/siprnet-america-stores-secret-cables http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/siprnet-america-...
• philwelch 16y ago
  Earlier WikiLeaks releases seemed to expose atrocities and human rights abuses by the US military and government, which represents at least a partial justification. What end does this release serve?
  • bryanh 16y ago
    Hype and attention it seems.
  • jonknee 16y ago
    Exposure of corruption within our allies. I found things like Afghanistan’s vice president being caught (and released) in the UAE carrying $52 million in cash to be quite interesting. Also the part about Saudi donors are still the driving force in financing terrorism.
    • deleted 16y ago
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    • credo 16y ago
      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29editornote.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29editornote.html ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948067 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948067) has a "note to readers" explaining why the NYT decided to publish the documents
    • bl4k 16y ago
      the US and Britian have turned a blind eye to the opium trade and the associated corruption in Afghanistan in order to appease the local anti-Taliban population. I watched footage last week of British soldiers fighting to free large opium fields from Taliban control so that the real owners can get back to farming. All par for the course. The war on drugs takes a back seat to the war on terrorism
      • rottencupcakes 16y ago
        As it should. Terrorists are an affront to freedom. Drugs are not.
• jsz0 16y ago
  The excerpts the NYT is reporting in this story are pretty ho-hum. We'll have to wait and see what else is in there but it looks like another Wikileaks hype job to me. No doubt there's going to be some embarrassing sausage making details in here but it just confirms things we already knew. Pakistan is a complex situation, Karzai's government is corrupt, etc. Wikileaks would be better off releasing this material without the hype and grandstanding.
  • acgourley 16y ago
    Well just as a counterpoint, perhaps you knew these things, but maybe most of the Times readers did not, or perhaps they suspected it but wanted more evidence.
  • ars 16y ago
    The rumors were there, but this is concrete evidence that Arab nations actually want a strike on Iran, but are too scared to say it out loud. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-saudis-iran http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/arab-states-scorn-iranian-evil http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/arab-states-scor... By making this public it could significantly change what happens next with Iran.
    • grandalf 16y ago
      I think it will put in context the silly, local squabbles that are behind all this. Iran is a western-style Democracy that has a radical faction thanks to decades of US meddling.
      • ars 16y ago
        Meddling? Sure. But western style democracy?? Did you completely ignore what happened during the last "election" there?
        • grandalf 16y ago
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• moondowner 16y ago
  It's not only NYT releasing info about #cablegate, check out Guardian too: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-us-embassy-cables http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-us-embassy-cables
  • moxiemk1 16y ago
    Could we call it something more descriptive than "cablegate?" Its also not a scandal in the same way as Watergate - much more in line with the likes of the "Pentagon Papers". Perhaps a similarly descriptive hashtag, like #wikileakscables or #wikileaksdiplomaticcables if you're not bound by 140 characters. But please - let's raise the level of discourse from sensationalist "Action News" by refusing to use pidgeonhole phrases and instead call things accurately.
    • moondowner 16y ago
      True - Watergate maybe is a scandal of a larger scale, and true - a more descriptive tag could've been used, but the tag #cablegate was proposed by Wikileaks via their Twitter profile ( http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/status/8942910410072064 http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/status/8942910410072064 ), and everyone followed along. I think that they did it so everyone would't use the tag #wikileaks when they are referring to the US Embassy cables release but a separate one.
• nostrademons 16y ago
  Is there a torrent anywhere with the actual text of the cables? Wikileaks itself is being DDOSed, and none of the news sites are reprinting anything but summaries.
  • rospaya 16y ago
    "Assange made them available to the Guardian and four other newspapers: the New York Times, Der Spiegel in Germany, Le Monde in France and El País in Spain. All five plan to publish extracts from the most significant cables, but have decided neither to "dump" the entire dataset into the public domain, nor to publish names that would endanger innocent individuals. WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department's fears, it also initially intends to post only limited cable extracts, and to redact identities." From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable-leak-diplomacy-crisis http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable...
    • ajays 16y ago
      I wish Wikileaks would just dump the contents, and leave the analysis to the rest of the world. By doing selective "analysis" and redaction, they're basically doing exactly what they claim to be fighting. Either release all the information, or withhold it. Don't play sides. Oh, and while you're at it, Wikileaks? I'd love to see leaks from Russia, China, UK, Japan etc. You've been picking on the US for far too long; these other countries are no angels either.
      • oomkiller 16y ago
        I think the main reason they redact thing is to protect the innocent, and more so, themselves. I do agree they should stop picking on the US though.
      • jerf 16y ago
        I would have almost immeasurably more respect for them if they did this. I'm not saying I love the corruption in the US which clearly exists, but giving away only one piece of the puzzle is Opinion Manipulation 101, which I think is the core reason there's rather a lot of us who don't really trust them. I won't even claim the US is nebulously "better" then others, I'll simply claim that I think if you could see everything clearly you wouldn't be able to credibly argue that the US is clearly "worse", and I would certainly bet the "uniquely evil" position a lot of people hold is completely unfounded.
• matthewsimon 16y ago
  The Guardian has posted headers and metadata, but not the message bodies, as a Google Fusion Table: http://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?dsrcid=317391 Additional data links on the Guardian's site: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-cables-data#data
  • deleted 16y ago
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• Alex3917 16y ago
  "WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals." This is ironic since one of the biggest contributing factors behind Manning allegedly leaking the documents was probably the fact that the government was kicking him out of the military for being gay. The fact that Obama literally can't even stop lying during his one sentence soundbite condemning the leak is pretty symbolic of why we need WikiLeaks in the first place.
  • sudonim 16y ago
    I had no idea that the wikileaks and don't ask, don't tell stuff were connected. How deep does the rabbit-hole go? Im glad they're not focusing on Manning's sexuality in the coverage, but it seems to me that the policies about sexuality in the military have some bearing on Manning's motivations for wikileaking. Interesting!
    • Alex3917 16y ago
      The basic problem is that Obama is a cheerleader in support of bigotry and discrimination against minorities. And when the vast majority of Americans are a member of some discriminated-against class, it shouldn't really be that big of a surprise when Americans start attacking America. Until we have equal rights for LGBT, drug users, the chronically ill, the mentally ill, children, students, fetishists, men, women, religions that don't look or act like Christianity, gun owners, parents, travelers, the poor, etc., then America will never be safe. What we need isn't some free for all where everyone can do anything, but rather rules and punishments based on reason and science rather than bigotry, fear, and corporate greed.
      • krschultz 16y ago
        "Until we have equal rights for {x} then America will never be safe." I'm quite certain you can't argue that "the terrorists" would stop attacking us if only we had equal rights for LGBT in this country. And the fact that 1 guy may or may not have have leaked the documents because he may or may not have felt discriminated against isn't much of a reason to argue FOR equal rights. I'd prefer to argue FOR equal rights on the basis of the that being the morally right position, rather than do what you did and threaten those that are against equal rights with consequences. THat is just fear mongering.
• Helianthus16 16y ago
  What is interesting about this is not the damage it does, which will likely be minimal as it's really just embarrassing. What's interesting is the look into the hidden minds of countries. I didn't know, for instance, that so many Arab countries urged US intervention in Iran, or that Israel has been monitoring Iran's nuclear program so closely--as indicated by their pressing warning that 2010 specifically is a key year. Of course, everyone here knew or suspected China's dirty hands, but it's nice that this calls them out for it. And it's funny to know exactly how little most countries seem to think of Europe's importance.
  • commandar 16y ago
    >I didn't know, for instance, that so many Arab countries urged US intervention in Iran This type of information is what's likely to end up being actually damaging. There's a good chance nations that may have offered private support while maintaining public face will be less cooperative in the future. > or that Israel has been monitoring Iran's nuclear program so closely--as indicated by their pressing warning that 2010 specifically is a key year. This part isn't that surprising, to be honest. The Israelis keep very close tabs on their neighbors, ad the Mossad has earned their reputation as being one of the most effective intelligence agencies in the world. Remember a few years ago when Israeli jets seemingly randomly bombed Syria with almost no public reaction from Syria? In fact, everyone involved was strangely quiet about it, with the Syrians claiming the Israelis had just bombed empty desert. Turns out the Israelis had gotten wind of a clandestine nuclear reactor supplied by North Korea and taken it down.[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Orchard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Orchard
  • foffen 16y ago
    "What is interesting about this is not the damage it does, which will likely be minimal as it's really just embarrassing." I believe that you underestimate the insanity of some of the individuals that have been insulted. I'm certain that many of these megalomaniacs put their ego at such high regard that they go to war and kill people for less then a personal insult. Still, I'd rather see a war fought over humanitarian values like freedom of speech and the rights of wikileaks then for money and oil. /Setec Astronomy
• joshes 16y ago
  When you comment that these cables are mundane in nature, you are assuming that you yourself are indicative of the audience as a whole. If you do not believe that millions upon millions of people will read this, you are mistaken. And many, if not the vast majority, of these readers will have previously been in the dark as to the information contained therein. So to them, this is not mundane; it's extraordinary. Furthermore, all that we are reading right now are redacted and cherry picked summaries and analyses. Please wait for more data to be released before passing a quick, premature, unframed sigh against what is happening here. We're at the beginning of this, not the end.
  • utku_karatas2 16y ago
    Very true. Only a tiny fraction of the leaks are published as of writing this and yet the information leaked so far is enough to put my country - Turkey - in political turmoil for months.
  • kissickas 16y ago
    I agree, especially as these summaries are written by the NYT, which has (so far) had the least interesting and most pro-American reporting on every Wikileaks leak.
  • cabalamat 16y ago
    > When you comment that these cables are mundane in nature, you are assuming that you yourself are indicative of the audience as a whole. I don't think they're mundane -- some are quite amusing, such as the Afghan vice president trousering $52 million. > If you do not believe that millions upon millions of people will read this, you are mistaken. I'm sure millions will read them. > And many, if not the vast majority, of these readers will have previously been in the dark as to the information contained therein. It's not so much that they're in the dark about the information, it's that they have an unrealistic view of how world affairs are conducted. This might be because they're naive, or because their nationalist sentiments cause them to believe their own country acts more virtuously on the world stage than countries actually do, or whatever. Or it may just be because most people don't pay much attention to world affairs. But for whatever reason, if someone's bubble is pricked and they later understand world affairs better, that person is more rational. And improving rationality worldwide is likely to be in the long term interest of the human species. > So to them, this is not mundane; it's extraordinary. Then hopefully it will cause them to update their worldview.
• greyman 16y ago
  I find this interesting, but we would also need such leaks from other countries embassies, not just U.S. ones. This will probably create embarrassment for U.S., but on the other hand, isn't it a job of a diplomat to truthfully describe the situation in the country where he is dispatched? In most cases, they probably just did their job, assuming that the documents will stay secret. I don't think that's immoral.
  • mcantelon 16y ago
    Violating UN conventions by spying on, and attempting to steal credit card #s and biometric info of, UN leaders (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-spying-un http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable...) and attempting to steal DNA of world leaders (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/202678 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/...) would be considered, by most, to be immoral.
• steve19 16y ago
  It is bizarre that a PFC had access to so much intelligence.
  • ismarc 16y ago
    It's all secret or noforn. If he was working as an analyst, he'd likely be badged for it. It also depends on his particular job responsibilities. My guess is that he was cleared to access a document archive for his day-to-day operations and started grabbing random stuff when he figured out a way to transport the data. There's no rhyme or reason to what was leaked, it's looks like wholesale whatever could be retrieved so it was likely a fire-sale type data grabbing.
    • krschultz 16y ago
      Which really begs the question why they don't have some automatic monitoring on who starts accessing a hundred thousand documents not related to their day to day job.
      • drpancake 16y ago
        According to The Guardian: "There have been suggestions that an alarm system to detect suspicious use of the network was suspended for US military personnel in Iraq after they complained it was inconvenient." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/siprnet-america-stores-secret-cables http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/siprnet-america-...
        • gwern 16y ago
          It would be rather inconvenient if one full-text search on the name of this old possible insurgent you captured suddenly disabled your computer and led to your arrest by MPs, I agree.
          • ceejayoz 16y ago
            Surely such a system could differentiate between a search match and saving the entire document to a hard drive.
• bl4k 16y ago
  today it was confirmed that the US knows about everything, everywhere, in every corner of the world
  • foffen 16y ago
    wrong. If that was true then the cables would have included reports on alien activity and the US connections with the aliens walking amongst us. Now, where did I put my tin foil hat.
• deleted 16y ago
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• d2viant 16y ago
  What surprises me most is that Julian Assange has lasted this long. This isn't OBL, where he's living in a cave somewhere -- this guy is known to travel between first world countries. I can understand those countries may not be willing to hand him over, but the US has lots of experience with rendition and I'm surprised some three-letter agency hasn't snatched him up yet.
  • jscore 16y ago
    Why is it surprising? America can't go against every one who doesn't agree with them. It needs to weigh its options carefully and intelligently. The mere reason that Hugo Chavez is still in power testifies to this fact. The world is not black and white where we might send CIA or Special Forces to neutralize someone who we don't like. It's definitely more complicated than it seems. There are other, more indirect ways to neutralize what he's doing. A good one is using the media to sway public opinion, etc. Another one is to discredit the guy by linking him to some "terrorist group/government" and say they're funding him, etc.
    • commandar 16y ago
      >The mere reason that Hugo Chavez is still in power testifies to this fact. That and the fact that the last time they tried, he turned out the be more resilient than expected -- and the coupe leaders far more incompetent; the coupe failed at least in part because they left Chavez's own people guarding the presidential palace after they took it over. Oops -- and the whole thing ended up being a huge embarrassment and likely gave Hugo an extra push over the old crazy ledge.
      • adolph 16y ago
        Just a style pointer: Coupe: a hardtop two door car [1.] Coup: an overthrow of a government by focused action against the central leadership [2.] 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupé http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupé 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup
    • zephyrfalcon 16y ago
• nir 16y ago
  As someone who grew in the Mideast and spent some time in the US/EU/Aus, I was often amazed how completely detached Westerners are from the way the rest of the world works. Left wingers or conservatives, so many guns & money have been sheltering the past 2-3 generations from reality that they genuinely believe most people share their values and goals, and that the world operates similarly to their own surroundings. If these documents will cause people to start questioning the utter bullshit they are fed by Fox News or Reddit, Glenn Beck or Jon Stewart, then Assange is the most important person alive today. I doubt that would happen, though.
  • prodigal_erik 16y ago
    If someone's failing to question Jon Stewart, who outright announces that he's not a serious journalist, they're going to need something a lot less subtle than wikileaks.
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  • Zev 16y ago
    Left wingers or conservatives, so many guns & money have been sheltering the past 2-3 generations from reality that they genuinely believe most people share their values and goals, and that the world operates similarly to their own surroundings. Not quite, but, its an easy mistake to make. There's a saying over here, "Politics stops at the water's edge." It means that with domestic politics, politicians can be as bipartisan as they like. But when it comes to international politics, politicians are united and present a similar set of ideals[1]. This idea goes back to America's founding, not just the end of WW2 and the rise of America as a superpower in the 20th century. Daniel Webster said it way back in 1814 and Arthur Vandenberg in the 1950's, when he was a Senator. Anyway. My point is that if you (viewing from the outside in) look at American politics and use it to judge an entire nation, you're getting the wrong viewpoint. If you think that Americans are ignorant of other cultures because they are more occupied with what goes on in the states surrounding them than in countries an ocean away, you've got the wrong idea of America. 1. This is why it was such a big deal for Nancy Pelosi to meet with Bashar Assad from Syria a few years back. She said something different than what George Bush (the President at the time) was saying.
• aneth 16y ago
  The most interesting thing about reading these cables is how the US comes out well - reasonable, rational, and analytical - not the nefarious evil satan that it is portrayed by our enemies and domestic extremists. This snapshot of the inner workings of American diplomacy actually make me feel much better about how things are being managed, and should undermine efforts to portray some nasty plot to dominate the world. I don't expect our government to act in international affairs with complete transparency or without ulterior motives, but I do expect that they try to act ultimately for good and that there be minimal self-enrichment. I so far see little evidence of serious breaches here.
  • whynow 16y ago
    The best part about reading these cables is seeing that the USG uses Google to search for information before anything else and references searches in Classified cables.... "(S) Note: A quick google check revealed several companies with the name INSULTEC in the title - these may or not be affiliated. Based on the information provided by source (currently in Iran, where he frequently travels), one possible candidate could be "INSULTEC Chitral Ltd." " http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/03/09BAKU179.html http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/03/09BAKU179.html
    • Natsu 16y ago
      For a moment, I thought you were going to say that someone was using Google trends to see if there were any interesting trends in people searching for information about how the leaks had spread and which of them were interesting to whom. Of course, someone is probably doing that now....
  • bcroesch 16y ago
    I was struck by a pretty similar sentiment (and was somewhat surprised by it). Maybe more negative pieces will subsequently come out, but I was surprised to find myself thinking that some of the leaks may actually be helpful in producing a unified, multi-state agreement on how to approach the situation in Iran. I couldn't believe that it was actually other countries asking the US to bomb Iran.
• zemaj 16y ago
  It seems to me that Wikileaks is disruptive to Governments in the way that Napster was disruptive to the Music Industry. While Wikileaks may not survive in the mid term, I believe what it represents may have far reaching, long term consequences. The internet has democratised information to the point that an unhappy individual with mid level trust in an organisation can expose the organisation's "sensitive" information globally with very little effort and thought. Before the internet an individual could expose this information, but the barriers were much higher. To be a whistle blower you could only influence people immediately near you socially. To reach higher you had to filter your information through news organisations. While there are cases of this happening, the information was still continually at risk of being censored. Would this cable information have been released if a whistle blower took it directly to the NYT, or even a collection of newspapers? With our current online structure of Twitter, Blogs and peer file sharing it makes sensitive information immediately accessible to millions with no chance of it being censored. To me Wikileaks represents the start of something hugely disruptive to our way of life. It's not possible to scale an organisation beyond several people while maintaining complete trust in each of them. When every piece of information is at risk of being exposed, what position does this place governments in? Is it possible for the current structure of the us government with its extensive lobby groups, international secrets and security through obscurity to continue? I think its still too hard to see how the bits will fall here, but I do think we're in for an interesting decade :)
  • skore 16y ago
    > but I do think we're in for an interesting decade Very much agree with this. Every time I see what Assange and Wikileaks are doing, I cannot help but think: "Hey, looks like this decade just got a whole hell lot more interesting". The biggest challenge right now is how the sheer amount of information and the responsibility of having access to it will change our society. Many of those in the "there is a reason for all this secrecy" camp border on blissful ignorance and while I disagree with them, there is something to be said for the human desire for just that. So, to me, the most interesting thing is not that all this information sharing is happening, but whether or not the people will be up to the challenge.
  • wslh 16y ago
• hrq 16y ago
  This may be a silly question, but what is a "cable"? Is this like a telegram or is it just another name for emails? I see here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526#Part_1 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526#Part_1 that there's some structure to these documents, but what transport are they being sent by?
• Aloisius 16y ago
  I'm a little confused as to why people think dumping cables from American embassies would show the US in a negative light or contain some sort of revelation that the US is engaged in anything illegal. These are cables from the American point of view of the rest of the world. If anything, it is going to show foreign leaders/countries far more negatively than the Americans.