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US Military Classifies Wikileaks As 'Enemy Of The United States'
- mtgx 14y agoAs an enemy of US, being in the same category as al-Alqaeda and the Taliban insurgents, does it mean that if the US military happens to see Assange anywhere in the world, they have to shoot him on sight or send killer drones after him? After all, according to them, he's just as dangerous as al-Qaeda.
- tptacek 14y agoNo, it does not mean that. The federal authorization to kill Taliban and AlQ operatives arises from the 2003 Iraq AUMF; there isn't some doctrine that says "if the military designates you as an enemy of the state they can kill you with winged death robots".
- mathieuh 14y agoTell that to Obama.
- blauwbilgorgel 14y ago"An enemy is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial, etc," - Marc Ratner, Assange's attorney "Any person who ... aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with ... money. Any person who ... without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct." Punitive Articles of the UCMJ: Article 104—Aiding the enemy "Scope of Article 104. This article denounces offenses by all persons whether or not otherwise subject to military law. Offenders may be tried by court-martial or by military commission."
- tptacek 14y agoOh, well if Marc Ratner says we're going to send the death robots after Assange, I'm sold.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dmerfield 14y agoJFK made a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961. His discussion of the dangers of stifling transparency - often in the name of public safety - seems as important today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces
- ojiikun 14y agoObama himself gave a speech before the UN just yesterday extolling the virtues of free speech: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-obamas-2012-address-to-un-general-assembly-full-text/2012/09/25/70bc1fce-071d-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_print.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-obamas-2012...
- tedunangst 14y agoThe right to free speech does not imply the right to force people to speak.
- TheGateKeeper 14y agoFor people, yes. For government, it should be mandatory. The government's military? Sometimes.
- tedunangst 14y agoI partially (mostly?) agree, but for Obama to promote free speech while at the same time claiming the government has the right to remain silent is not some grand hypocrisy.
- 001sky 14y agorelevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra Edit: This just goes to show what you say != what you do
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
- tisme 14y agoIt probably isn't the intention but that will serve as a validation of wikileaks in the eyes of quite a few people.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 14y agoSigh. Next up, imprisoning US "Dissidents".
- tptacek 14y agoPlease connect those dots for us.
- marshray 14y agoNot saying the line is complete yet, but the NDAA looks like a connecting dot to me. I'd love to be proven wrong, but is this not what a steady slide into military dictatorship would be expected to look like?
- tptacek 14y agoThe NDAA authorizes the President to kill members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It can kill Americans only if they are providing material support to those two organizations and only if they are on foreign soil. Those (very limited) restrictions actually narrow the powers granted to the executive under the 2003 AUMF. The NDAA actually made it harder for the President to sic the death robots on people.
- marshray 14y agoThis isn't usually how I hear the NDAA characterized. I'd be interested if you had more I could read on this perspective. Keep in mind that definitions of terms like "material support" give wide latitude to interpretation. Last I heard there were people in jail under such terms for donating money to what on the surface appeared to be an Islamic charity. I never ran a mirror, but I configured DNS record for wikileaks when it was under DoS. Does this make me an "enemy of the state" too? I think these are justified concerns and as an American it saddens me deeply that I would even think to have them.
- tptacek 14y agoRespectfully, Marsh (you know it's all respect with you & me, even though I think you wear a tinfoil hat and you think I'm a tool of the status quo), you believe this stuff because you only read about the NDAA from advocacy sources. Material support has a specific definition. Your donation must be made "knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for" an actual terrorist attack. You cannot be killed by the death robots for donating to Islamic charities. What specific people do you believe have been unjustly imprisoned for donating to Islamic charities?
- grandalf 14y agoWhile it's completely reasonable for the US to be concerned with preventing breaches of classified information, the problem with the US reaction to the horrors and gaffes revealed by Wikileaks is that there has been absolutely zero outrage about them, only the attempt to shoot the messenger. This asymmetry has been a real awakening for me about the level of corruption and moral bankruptcy of the US ruling class, and about the apathy and complicity of the press and the citizenry in general. I think we are already past the inflection point that historians will one day view as similar to the turning points that led to Nazi Germany and other large scale moral failings of humanity. There is a culture of denial and intentional blindness to the consequences of US actions abroad and a terrible enthusiasm for the leaders who initiate these kinds of things.
- knowaveragejoe 14y agoAside from Collateral Murder, what shocking revelations have come to light as a result of the leaks? Not saying they don't exist, but speculating perhaps some of the 'revelations' weren't so shocking or were even publicly known.
- tptacek 14y agoCollateral Murder was not a shocking revelation. The Washington Post ran a transcript of that video, scene for scene, a year before the video was released. The video only shocked people who don't read.
- s_henry_paulson 14y agoSurely you don't believe that everyone reads the Washington Post?
- tptacek 14y agoThe Washington Post reported an event in excruciating detail, but its later disclosure by Wikileaks is a "revelation" because nobody reads the news?
- tptacek 14y agoWithout commenting on this particular document, the military has an extremely valid reason for criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active servicemembers; people in the armed services are stewards of all sorts of information that can't be leaked, and Wikileaks has a stated goal of extracting as much intelligence from the US military as they can. This "declaration" (it's a Techdirt story; someone could do us all a favor by trying to verify what it actually means) comes in the wake of the most grievous opsec breach in US history. The only reason we're not outraged by the breach itself is that it got overshadowed by the subsequent disclosure to the press. If it had been Israel that extracted this information and not ransomed it to The Guardian, we'd be calling for heads to roll over it.
- derrida 14y ago> Wikileaks has a stated goal of extracting as much intelligence from the US military as they can. I've followed this for quite sometime and I do not recall this ever being a stated goal of Wikileaks. It is a stated goal of theirs to publish anything a whistle-blower sends them. If the US military has the most to fear it might be because they have the most to hide in regards to warcrimes etc. Primary Source here: http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FOI.pdf http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FO... Original article was in the Sydney Morning Herald. This is a rewrite of a rewrite of the documents.
- tptacek 14y agoThe US has the most to fear because the US leaks like a sieve. If the countries with the most evil militaries had the most to fear, we'd all be remote desktopping into the laptops of Syrian generals right now.
- derrida 14y ago> If the countries with the most evil militaries had the most to fear, we'd all be remote desktopping into the laptops of Syrian generals right now Are you suggesting people are not? Assad's personal emails, Minister of the Interior's personal emails, Defence Minister... and so it goes: all of it http://wikileaks.org/syria-files/ http://wikileaks.org/syria-files/
- derrida 14y agoPrimary source here http://wikileaks.org/US-Military-Refers-to-Julian.html http://wikileaks.org/US-Military-Refers-to-Julian.html
- danielweber 14y agoWhat TechDirt and the title suggest is that people communicating with Wikileaks could be considered "talking with the enemy," the real restriction is on military personnel. Maybe that's still bad, but we generally accept that the military can place restrictions on people its soldiers are allowed to talk with. They refer to a FOIA request releasing a document from the Air Force, but the link is to another news article, not the document. Anyone have the original so we can read for ourselves? EDIT derrida provides primary document below: http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FOI.pdf http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FO...
- farinasa 14y agoMore like an Enemy of the United States MILITARY. I personally like to be informed about what my tax dollars are funding around the world.
- ajays 14y agoJust out of curiosity: are the Russians classified as "Enemy of the US"? How about the Chinese? Or the DPRK? The Chinese military and government, for example, is way more actively trying to get military secrets out of the US, and not for altruistic reasons either. What makes them saints compared to Wikileaks?
- tisme 14y agoThat they then do not turn around and inform the general public.
- tptacek 14y agoWhat do you think happens to a US servicemember who leaks military secrets to Russia or China?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ajays 14y agoWe are not talking about leaking here; by declaring Wikileaks to be EOUS, _any_ contact with them is verboten. FTA: "the military is effectively declaring that any contact with Wikileaks or its supporters could be deemed "communicating with the enemy" -- which can be punished severely (even death)." While our military is free to make port calls, joint maneuvers, etc. with PRC?
- tptacek 14y agoWhat do you think happens when a servicemember in the US is discovered to have been communicating with the intelligence services of China, or, for that matter, France and Israel?
- nostrademons 14y agoThe article implies that it's not just "a servicemember of the US", but "anyone". Big difference there.
- ajays 14y agoThere is a lot going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. For example: whatever happened to the BoA emails they were going to reveal? Isn't it convenient that some "rogue" guy in Germany ran away with these emails? Given Assange's background and technical capabilities, isn't it surprising that he allowed it to happen?
- knowaveragejoe 14y agoIndeed, has there been any more coverage of this? I didn't hear about some rogue guy in Germany.
- tedunangst 14y agoThey had backups in S3 but they were lost in the power outage caused by the storm caused by the orbital bad weather gun.
- roothacker 14y agoBombing the servers won't be a good idea now when GeoLocated has gained a lot of popularity.
- tvladeck 14y agoA major problem with this article is that it does not clearly define what "Enemy Of The United States" means in this context. Who made this decision? Is this a special status / designation with associated repercussions, or simply a description used by an anonymous writer in the Air Force? NB that I would not defend the latter case, but this article does not really tell us exactly what the leaked paper implies about US policy towards Wikileaks.
- thebigshane 14y agoApparent Facts: - AF OSI (the Air Force's own little internal FBI-like agency) investigates military members contacting Wikileaks / Julian Assange - AF OSI is alleging that some service-members may be punished under UCMJ 104-D Communicating with the Enemy / Aiding the Enemy for communicating with Julian Assange Unjustified Speculation: - The US Military or US AF considers Wikileaks an Enemy of the State. - The US Military is going to assassinate Julian Assange with a UAV drone. Debatable, but likely (IANAL): - This particular investigation case (involving those service members) is closed and it is unknown/classified regarding whether official charges were filed. - UCMJ 104-D may also charge non-service-members for Aiding the Enemy (Google is embarrassingly unhelpful confirming or denying this for me) - TechDirt is flame-baiting and fear-mongering (obviously their raison d'être)
- ajays 14y agoIt is interesting (in a sad sort of way) to see how this article is being flagged into oblivion. Even though it has 130 points in 3 hours, it has been relegated to page 3 of HN. I would have assumed that this topic was of widespread interest, especially to the HN community. But some folks seem to confuse what the "flag" button means...
- malandrew 14y agoI think it would behoove wikileaks to try and dump documents of countries that the US considers hostile to suspect, such as Iran, Russia and North Korea. So far Wikileaks has been releasing files that are largely from the US, but it needs to be more neutral in releasing files from all countries. Wikileaks' US focus it hurting it. Other countries like England, Russia, Israel, China, India, etc. all deserve some time in the spotlight. Personally, I would love to see more exposure of corruption by politicians in countries like Brazil. Putting corrupt politicians in prison would do more to bolster its image and support for it than its current crusade.