

WikiLeaks to Release 400,000 Secret Documents as Funding Concerns Loom - Garbage
http://mashable.com/2010/10/15/wikileaks-to-release-400000-secret-documents-as-funding-concerns-loom/

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dctoedt
Sometimes public release of secret documents serves a useful purpose. But I'd
be more impressed with WikiLeaks if it would also obtain and release secret
documents from the Taliban, al Quaeda, etc. Except _that_ would probably
result in Julian Assange having his head cut off, wouldn't it -- something he
likely won't admit he needn't worry about with the Pentagon.

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ojbyrne
He's Australian, and the Australian army is in Afghanistan, so he could be
charged with treason. Apparently they don't have capital punishment for
treason in Australian, but life imprisonment still seems like a deterrent to
me.

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cromulent
There's been some commentary in Australia about him one day being charged for
treason, for endangering the lives of Australian defence force personnel.

In my non-expert, poorly formed, and probably soon-to-be-corrected opinion,
this is a long bow to draw. Currently, the Taliban are actively trying to kill
Australian soldiers. I'm not sure how you could endanger their lives further
without releasing operational plans or secrets giving information about the
future, not about public events of the past. The laws seem to be about
collaboration with the enemy, which is not what he is doing.

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ojbyrne
I also am ill-informed on this topic, but i have heard that the Afghanistan
leaks included the names of Taliban informers, which would put them in danger,
and make it harder to recruit informers in the future. That would seemingly
jeopardize Australian soldiers, and could be characterized as collaboration
with the enemy.

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kmfrk
>That’s not all, either; Wikileaks claims that its funding has been blocked
because it has been placed on watchlists for both the U.S. and Australian
governments. It can no longer accept donations through Moneybookers, the site
that collected the organization’s donations. PayPal suspended Wikileaks’
account earlier this year.

Maybe WePay can help him out? :)

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Daishiman
At some point you have to ask, what the hell is the Pentagon doing that their
security policies allow this number of documents out?

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hugh3
If I were the Pentagon I'd be hard at work making up fake secret documents and
leaking them to wikileaks.

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smokeyj
Good think history leaves a trail. The last batch of documents were cross
verified, I assume they'll do the same for this batch.

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hugh3
I have no idea how an operation the size of wikileaks can do any kind of
verification on four hundred thousand documents.

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bcl
This serves no useful purpose other than to pump up his ego. As much as some
may dislike it there are valid reasons for having secrets and protecting them.
WikiLeaks' last document dump endangered lives, what will this one do? I find
the involvement of mainstream media like the NYT to be disgusting and
bordering on treason.

I am not opposed to exposing abuses, but a massive dump like this isn't about
exposing any specific issue. I hope it ends up being a flop like their so
called 'collateral murder' video ended up being. But given the size of this
leak I can't help but think there could very well be real collateral damage
from it.

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cromulent
Given that the document release has not taken place, it may be premature to
judge it as serving no useful purpose.

I agree that there are valid reasons for me having secrets and protecting
them.

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hugh3
I'm afraid I've never looked at wikileaks until now, and right now it seems to
be down, so I don't know much about it.

But can someone explain to me in what sense it's a wiki if they sit on and
release documents rather than just letting anyone add anything at any time? Or
is the "wiki" part of the name meaningless?

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cromulent
I believe that it is in no sense a public wiki any longer.

According to Wikipedia, the original Wikileaks "about" page read: "To the
user, Wikileaks will look very much like Wikipedia. Anybody can post to it,
anybody can edit it."

Not for some time, though. Everything is vetted.

