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In Soviet Russia ... no wait, seriously ... in Soviet Russia, when they tried to control copy machines and fax machines, people used typewriters, pen and ink, a

In Soviet Russia ... no wait, seriously ... in Soviet Russia, when they tried to control copy machines and fax machines, people used typewriters, pen and ink, and good old sneaker net to create and distribute their samizdat.

eru 16y ago
They also cut musical records into X-Ray plates.
bonaldi 16y ago
This works both ways. When everyone can see the communiques, the communiques go offline.
- sedachv 16y ago
  That's exactly what Assange wants to do - make it more inconvenient for people in power to collude in secret. What's really working both ways here is the samizdat analogy. Wikileaks is the next logical step after samizdat in the fight against tyranny.
  - bonaldi 16y ago
    Depends on how much you trust them, really. What you call collusion is, for them, co-operation. There were a lot of powerful internal voices in the security industry against the kind of online information-sharing that makes a leak like this possible. The reason they were overruled was because 9/11 in particular showed how badly joined up the information services were. Now the pendulum will swing the other way again, inevitably. I'm not yet convinced this a great outcome. Shouldn't diplomatic staff be able to send back accurate assessments of political figures in countries where the US has interests? If internal comms are sanitised for potential public exposure, who benefits? The "taking on tyranny" rhetoric surrounding wikileaks is overheated, too. Assange is taking on the softest Western governments; the ones who will go after him with arrest warrants. Were he actually to take on tyranny he knows he'd end up in a London clinic with radiation poisoning.
    - sedachv 16y ago
      "Shouldn't diplomatic staff be able to send back accurate assessments of political figures in countries where the US has interests? If internal comms are sanitised for potential public exposure, who benefits?" Why do you think Wikileaks is only about the US? Right now the cables leaked out are from the US, but the point is to do this to every government. Everyone opposed to statism and nationalism benefits. "Were he actually to take on tyranny he knows he'd end up in a London clinic with radiation poisoning." Except Litvinenko wasn't interested in revealing state secrets, but in making schemes with Russian oligarchs. Which is probably why he's the only Soviet or Russian defector to have died under suspicious circumstances since 1959.
      - bonaldi 16y ago
        "Why do you think Wikileaks is only about the US? Right now the cables leaked out are from the US, but the point is to do this to every government. Everyone opposed to statism and nationalism benefits." I think a dog only barks because that's all I've heard it do. I think you're choosing a "point" that chimes with your hopes, not the facts. Your "benefits" too need made more explicit. I'm opposed to nationalism and don't see any short or long-term benefits for me, here. Doing actions contrary to the welfare of a national state doesn't automatically amount to a benefit for anti-nationalists. On the contrary, there are serious questions to be asked about what this will do to things that actively help nations to work together, such as diplomatic backchannels. Severing those is no more laudable, and far more potentially lethal, than when TC posted Twitter's internal emails. As for 1959, your answer's a little fine in its splitting of the hair -- the KGB went after plenty in its time, including assisting in the bizarre murder of Markov, and the "suicide" of Shevchenko's wife. There were also the many sentenced to death that had to be hidden by the CIA. Lets not start on the Stasi, either. If your point was that tyrannies don't murder their citizens for treason, you'll have a tough sell. That's why actually taking them on is a lot harder than taking on a government that -- as the cables are showing -- is actually relatively close to plain-speaking in its dealing with other nations. A lot of the embarrassment has come from second-hand revelations about what other countries have been lying about.
        16y ago
stevenbedrick 16y ago
I'm reminded of the scene in "The Lives of Others" where the Stasi typewriter guy is giving a presentation in which he details exactly what model and make of typewriter every writer and journalist in East Berlin uses.

eru 16y ago

They also cut musical records into X-Ray plates.

bonaldi 16y ago

This works both ways. When everyone can see the communiques, the communiques go offline.

sedachv 16y ago
That's exactly what Assange wants to do - make it more inconvenient for people in power to collude in secret. What's really working both ways here is the samizdat analogy. Wikileaks is the next logical step after samizdat in the fight against tyranny.
- bonaldi 16y ago
  Depends on how much you trust them, really. What you call collusion is, for them, co-operation. There were a lot of powerful internal voices in the security industry against the kind of online information-sharing that makes a leak like this possible. The reason they were overruled was because 9/11 in particular showed how badly joined up the information services were. Now the pendulum will swing the other way again, inevitably. I'm not yet convinced this a great outcome. Shouldn't diplomatic staff be able to send back accurate assessments of political figures in countries where the US has interests? If internal comms are sanitised for potential public exposure, who benefits? The "taking on tyranny" rhetoric surrounding wikileaks is overheated, too. Assange is taking on the softest Western governments; the ones who will go after him with arrest warrants. Were he actually to take on tyranny he knows he'd end up in a London clinic with radiation poisoning.
  - sedachv 16y ago
    "Shouldn't diplomatic staff be able to send back accurate assessments of political figures in countries where the US has interests? If internal comms are sanitised for potential public exposure, who benefits?" Why do you think Wikileaks is only about the US? Right now the cables leaked out are from the US, but the point is to do this to every government. Everyone opposed to statism and nationalism benefits. "Were he actually to take on tyranny he knows he'd end up in a London clinic with radiation poisoning." Except Litvinenko wasn't interested in revealing state secrets, but in making schemes with Russian oligarchs. Which is probably why he's the only Soviet or Russian defector to have died under suspicious circumstances since 1959.
    - bonaldi 16y ago
      "Why do you think Wikileaks is only about the US? Right now the cables leaked out are from the US, but the point is to do this to every government. Everyone opposed to statism and nationalism benefits." I think a dog only barks because that's all I've heard it do. I think you're choosing a "point" that chimes with your hopes, not the facts. Your "benefits" too need made more explicit. I'm opposed to nationalism and don't see any short or long-term benefits for me, here. Doing actions contrary to the welfare of a national state doesn't automatically amount to a benefit for anti-nationalists. On the contrary, there are serious questions to be asked about what this will do to things that actively help nations to work together, such as diplomatic backchannels. Severing those is no more laudable, and far more potentially lethal, than when TC posted Twitter's internal emails. As for 1959, your answer's a little fine in its splitting of the hair -- the KGB went after plenty in its time, including assisting in the bizarre murder of Markov, and the "suicide" of Shevchenko's wife. There were also the many sentenced to death that had to be hidden by the CIA. Lets not start on the Stasi, either. If your point was that tyrannies don't murder their citizens for treason, you'll have a tough sell. That's why actually taking them on is a lot harder than taking on a government that -- as the cables are showing -- is actually relatively close to plain-speaking in its dealing with other nations. A lot of the embarrassment has come from second-hand revelations about what other countries have been lying about.
      - 16y ago

stevenbedrick 16y ago

I'm reminded of the scene in "The Lives of Others" where the Stasi typewriter guy is giving a presentation in which he details exactly what model and make of typewriter every writer and journalist in East Berlin uses.