
Oops Wikileaks: Informants Who Aided U.S. Named in Classified Reports - donohoe
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/informants-who-aided-u-s-named-in-classified-reports/?src=twr
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jacquesm
Not oops wikileaks, oops US that can not keep their secrets bottled up and/or
convince their personel that it is to every bodies advantage to keep those
secrets safe.

This really is collateral damage, but of a different kind than the one where a
village gets blown up in order to get a few insurgents. (and creating a whole
pile of new insurgents in the process).

Don't blame the messenger, wikileaks really is just a dumb pipe (in spite of
their aspirations), the person that leaked this carries the responsibility,
both the good _and_ the bad, and his superiors carry the responsibility for
allowing that person access when they apparently could not trust him.

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drcode
Another news organization would have withheld their names, so your "blame the
leaker" argument doesn't seem very convincing.

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jacquesm
In spite of their ambition to be seen as a 'news organisation' I don't agree
with that.

Wikileaks is just a dumb pipe that vets information for basic correctness and
then throws it before the wolves.

They shouldn't change the data in any way because that would mean a measure of
editorial control and hence responsibility, also, once you start censoring
some of the data you are on a slippery slope.

What they did with their collateral damage video was utterly stupid, it has
reduced their status tremendously in my opinion. Their latest play to become
the CNN of leaked data is a further move away from what they stood for.
They're now actively turning themselves in to an anti-war propaganda machine.
Maybe we need one, I don't know but wikileaks was an invaluable resource the
way it was, it has become strongly tainted.

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drcode
I agree that their past editorialism hurts their credibility. As you say, it
really undercuts the "big dumb pipe" argument as a defense whenever there is
collateral damage from leaked information.

I really hope Julian Assange can figure out how to navigate the many
minefields involved in a site like wikileaks.

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drcode
I really like wikileaks in principle, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that 6
months from now the Obama administration will give a report naming some random
Afghan, exposed in the wikileaks files, who was killed by the Taliban in
reprisal.

That will be the beginning of the end of wikileaks.

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nphase
Hopefully nobody gets killed over this...

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viggity
Whoever leaked this is guilty of treason, and if any of the informants get
killed over this, the leaker should executed.

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mynameishere
Does "wikileaks" provide any service beyond promoting the material it is
given? I mean, if I wanted to leak classified data, I can think of lots of
ways that would be as technically effective and much, much safer than handing
it to wikileaks.

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mkelly
Their strategy, as I recall, is to make sure the information remains available
even when it's politically unpopular. E.g., they provided info about Kaupthing
when some media in Iceland was gagged:
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikileaks#Ban...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikileaks#Bank_Julius_Baer_lawsuit)

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tomjen3
Not really, it is not wikileaks job to care about either side of the war. Just
because the western powers favor one side, doesn't require wikileaks to do the
same.

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grandalf
So I imagine that this gives the moral high ground back to the US Government?
(sarcasm)

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cma
Preliminary statement from the government, without giving detailed
independently verifiable information that could be used to confirm the safety
claims; I guess we'll have to wait on a leak to know whether this was a real
concern or part of an anti-wikileaks strategy.

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pvg
"A search by The New York Times through a sampling of the documents released
by the organization WikiLeaks found reports that gave the names of dozens of
Afghans credited with providing credible information to American and NATO
troops."

~~~
HNer
they continued 'But the 75,000 documents WikiLeaks put online provide
information about possible informants, like their villages and in some cases
their fathers’ names. '

