
All officially released cables including content - WikiLeaks - edo
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/
======
lionhearted
I wonder what happens the first time that there's a credible link to someone
dying as a results of Wikileaks leaking a document.

You know, if you keep leaking any and all classified information you can,
inevitably some informant or logistics route or defensive position is going to
get routed or assassinated. It's just a matter of time - while the government
does some bad stuff, I'd reckon the majority of classified documents are
classified for decent reasons. It's not just a bunch of wild animals running
the show.

And when an operative or informant or ally or supply team or soldier or law
enforcement officer eventually gets killed as a result of a leak, I wonder
what the government's response will be.

Edit: Knock off the downvoting and make a reply. There's an informant in the
Chinese politburo who is risking his life to protect the dissidents that the
Chinese government targeted with the Google attacks. His life is at risk now.
If you have _any_ credible argument for why releasing _any_ information
related to the man, let's hear your argument. Because I think his life is at
risk, and that's a bad thing. If you disagree, let's hear your reasoning of
why it's okay to do that.

~~~
mcantelon
>You know, if you keep leaking any and all classified information you can,
inevitably some informant or logistics route or defensive position is going to
get routed or assassinated.

Risky business is risky.

>It's not just a bunch of wild animals running the show.

They did unilaterally invade Iraq, killing, by their own records, tens of
thousands of civilians in the process. They may not be animals, but their
hands are far from clean.

~~~
lionhearted
Did you read any of the leaks? It's talking about how there's an American
informant in the Chinese Politburo... you know the Chinese are going to be
looking for him now. What are they going to do to him and his family if they
find him?

What happens if friendly politicians in Yemen are bombed by al-Qaeda when
their role in counter-terrorism comes out? What if their wives and children
are beheaded on television, as has happened in the past?

Leaking war documents to show what's happening - questionable.

Leaking anything and everything possible, with no particular objective in mind
- reckless and insane.

~~~
mcantelon
>It's talking about how there's an American informant in the Chinese
Politburo... you know the Chinese are going to be looking for him now. What
are they going to do to him and his family if they find him?

You don't think the Chinese knew that already?

>Leaking anything and everything they can, with no particular objective in
mind - insanity.

They are not leaking everything they can. Wikileaks is not releasing all
cables and if you actually read the cables, sensitive names are redacted. They
also offered to talk to the US authorities, which could have allowed them some
say in what got released, but US authorities refused.

~~~
lionhearted
> You don't think the Chinese knew that already?

Dude, cantelon, drop the partisan stuff and think for a second. A single
offhand mention like, "Donated to informant's mother's pension fund" might be
enough to identify an informant, round up him and his family, and torture them
to death.

I get it. You're in favor of Wikileaks and don't like the U.S. government. But
they're doing reckless crazy stupid shit here. Everyone regardless of politics
should be able to see that, if you look at the summaries of what they
released.

~~~
mcantelon
>But they're doing reckless crazy stupid shit here. Everyone regardless of
politics should be able to see that, if you look at the summaries of what they
released.

Looking at things objectively isn't "partisan stuff". I'm hearing the same
hysteria that accompanied the Afghan War Diary release, yet noone was ever
able to point out one life lost because of that leak. Wikileaks is doing even
more this time to mitigate any fallout and their work is going to save many
lives in the long term. For example: the next time the US decides it wants to
invade another country they might find it harder to justify.

Anti-Wikileaks hysteria reminds me of the way child porn has been used to
justify the creation of state censorship mechanisms: an attempt to use edge
cases to justify protecting the interests of the status quo.

~~~
lionhearted
> Looking at things objectively isn't "partisan stuff".

It's okay to dislike the U.S. government, be pro-Wikileaks, and think
Wikileaks still did some stupid stuff here.

> For example: the next time the US decides it wants to invade another country
> they might find it harder to justify.

And the next time they try to negotiate nuclear disarmament with Pakistan, the
Pakistani negotiator has to be worried about looking weak publicly. I can't
believe I'm defending the U.S. government here, I'm quite a critic of it. But
they actually do do lots of good stuff. Working to protect Google and internet
infrastructure and working for nuclear disarmament are good things. Working to
take out people who blow up buses of school children in Israel is a good
thing.

You can be a critic of the U.S. government and think Wikileaks is being
reckless here. The positions aren't incompatible.

~~~
pavs
possibility of disarmament Pakistani nuclear is the funniest thing I have read
in some time. In case you don't know USA is _heavily_ investing on Pakistan
and training them how to secure their nuclear facilities.

How about the so-called terrorist who have been funded by USA government in
the first place?

Securing internet infrastructure has less to do with the "good stuff" and more
to do with self preservation. As for Nuclear disarmament, USA don't really
have a moral high ground telling other countries to not produce nuclear
weapons when they are sitting on the one of the largest nuclear stockpile (and
actively developing new generations of nuclear weapons) and the only country
in the world to have used nuclear weapons during a war.

You can cherry pick "good stuff" USA government did, but the end up day if
were to draw a line and sum up the "good stuff" and the bad stuff the
government did, the bad stuff overwhelms what you claim to be "good stuff".

~~~
lionhearted
> possibility of disarmament Pakistani nuclear is the funniest thing I have
> read in some time. In case you don't know USA is _heavily_ investing on
> Pakistan and training them how to secure their nuclear facilities.

So I take it you didn't actually read the articles or dispatches at all? This
was the _very first part_ of the New York Times summary:

> A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United
> States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove
> from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American
> officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In
> May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing
> to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani
> official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they
> certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear
> weapons,’ he argued.”

~~~
pavs
This has nothing to do with disarmament.

~~~
lionhearted
Trying to remove weapons-grade uranium that you're afraid can be used in
nuclear weapons doesn't have anything to do with disarmament? C'mon dude.
Seriously.

Anyway, I'm done here. I'm getting my morning started in Malaysia, and I need
a little extra time to make sure there aren't any dispatches likely to cause a
storm this morning in Kuala Lumpur.

~~~
gwern
Unless your national leader is one of those discussed in the first batch of
leaks, I don't see Malaysia mentioned in any of the upcoming topic-specific
leaks, so you'll have a breather:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8165041/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8165041/Embarrassment-
for-Coalition-as-Wikileaks-prepares-to-release-secret-US-papers.html)

------
dotBen
I think it's interesting that Wikileaks have been 'late' on actually releasing
the cables directly to the public. At the time of writing only 219 cables are
available out of what is supposed to be 250k+.

Sure, that could be because of the DDOS attack but it looks as though this
leak is taking place via a new server at cablegate.wikileaks.org which
presumably anyone DDOS'ing wouldn't have had prior knowledge about to route
attacks against.

It has meant that the newspapers (who were given pre-public access to the
dumps) have effectively "leaked" the information as NYTimes and Guardian have
started publishing the details before Wikileaks actually does the leaking.

I'm wondering if there was an agreed embargo when Wikileaks was supposed to
actually "press the button". I further wonder if this will negatively effect
the relationship between Wikileaks and the media going forward. Interestingly,
Guardian which always prides itself on having data driven processes on stuff
like this, has only released the metadata so far [1] -- I guess so that they
are not the ones to do a complete leak before Wikileaks.

[1]
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/29/wikileak...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-
cables-data)

------
jedbrown
View-source:

    
    
        ​<a href='/classification/1_0.html' title='unclassified'>CONFIDENTIAL</a>
        <a href='/classification/2_0.html' title='secret'>CONFIDENTIAL//NOFORN</a>
        <a href='/classification/3_0.html' title='confidential'>SECRET</a>
        <a href='/classification/4_0.html' title='secret//noforn'>SECRET//NOFORN</a>

~~~
y0ghur7_xxx
care to explain?

~~~
aptimpropriety
As the NYT explained it - I believe the classifications organize the cables
into degrees of secrecy. 'Top secret' is the highest secrecy in the US Gov't,
so I would imagine 'secret' is therefore more secret than 'classified'.
'Noforn' apparently means 'this should not be seen by foreign [individuals'.

~~~
tbrownaw
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_U...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_States)

The classification levels are "Top Secret", "Secret", and "Confidential".
"Classified" just means that it's been assigned to one of those levels.

------
ck2
Apparently while we are busy getting fondled by the TSA, this is what the rest
of the world was ignoring:

 _North Korea secretly gave Iran 19 powerful missiles with a range of 2,000
miles. The missiles, known as the BM-25, are modified from Russian R-27s,
which were submarine-based missiles carrying nuclear weapons_

How insanely scary is that?

~~~
rorrr
So what? US (and other countries) has much worse missiles. US is the only
country who used nuclear weapons in war.

Why do you fear Iran so much? US, Russia, China seem much more dangerous from
the point of view of the weapons.

Iran is being bullied by the US for no real reason. Even if they were building
nuclear weapons, it's their right. A bunch of countries have them.

~~~
AaronI
The issue most likely is not the weapons themselves, but who controls them. A
stockpile of weapons are only dangerous in the "wrong" hands. If Iran is being
bullied, as you put it, then it's not just by the U.S. Quite a few other
countries apparently feel those weapons would essentially be in the "wrong"
hands if Iran acquires them.

------
vgurgov
Can someone who support this release care to explain this. I seriously don't
understand how can publishing someone's conversations be good.

1) How should communication with foreign embassies be done? Publicly via
twitter?

2) Do you think that absolutely all information that gov has and exchange
should be public? If not who should decide which info can be published?

3) What if somebody from Google get all you gmail conversations and publish
it? If you dont like this idea, please explain why you support somebody
publishing gov conversations then?

Thank you.

~~~
rorrr
Transparency. There's a lot of important shit going on without public's
approval. Do you want to live in a world where important things are decided by
a bunch of corrupt politicians with no oversight?

~~~
alnayyir
Of course not, but Wikileaks is an adversary with an agenda, not an
independent government oversight organization with the peoples' interests in
mind. Certainly not that of residents of the US.

We need oversight and transparency concerning policy, prevention of the
violation of constitutional and human rights, and any actions that violate the
sovereignty of our allies and friends.

Not transparency of every communique between our embassies.

~~~
GFischer
Remember as well that some of us in "foreign countries" want some oversight of
the U.S. as well.

I sometimes joke that we're second-class citizens, much like in Rome (1) -
we're affected by what the U.S. decides (as a kind of "world government"), but
we cannot vote on it.

1) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship>

~~~
alnayyir
The "[don't] violate the sovereignty of our allies and friends." clause covers
your concerns.

I'm not advocating US unilateralism. Your comment was apropos of nothing in
what I said. Your rhetoric is misplaced.

~~~
GFischer
Sorry, I didn't want to sound that way.

What I wanted to convey is that Wikileaks is interesting for people outside
the U.S. that are not necessarily enemies of the U.S.

I don't know which organization should provide some oversight, I guess the
United Nations would be the closest (despite it being a bloated bureaucracy,
it does manage some useful activities sometimes)

~~~
alnayyir
I'd rather see that kind of oversight facility independent of the United
Nations.

Interesting is a pretty shallow rationale for what's being done. They have an
agenda and I'm not going to pretend Wikileaks is some kind of openness nerd
savior. I had hoped they were the counter-balance I was seeking, but it's
clear from the manipulation of releases and footage that Wikileaks is hellbent
on attacking the US and its allies.

------
moon_of_moon
Interesting that November 2008 is missing.

~~~
gwern
No kidding. What were the diplomats' reactions to Obama's being really truly
elected? What last minute orders came down from the Bushies? What new !orders
were issued by Obama's newbies?

------
edo
Only 219 cables released so far. It is mind-boggling to think how much there
still is left, although WikiLeaks presumably started off with some of the most
juicy bits to get press coverage.

------
Mithrandir
I think Wikileaks main site is down.

"It works!

This is the default web page for this server.

The web server software is running but no content has been added, yet."

Going to their IP 88.80.13.160:

We are sorry,

WikiLeaks is currently underoing scheduled maintenance. We will be back online
as soon as possible. For status updates you can follow our twitter feed.

You can still visit our IRC channel:

    
    
        * Using the web interface available here
        * Using regular IRC client, connect to chat.wikileaks.org SSL port 9999

------
Mithrandir
<http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Support>

"Not Found"

There's irony for you.

------
ilitirit
Why weren't they able to get there hands on Classified content? I bet that
would make for good reading.

------
gcb
what is "the cables"?

~~~
gasull
Diplomatic communications.

~~~
gcb
thanks. but i'm a little more in the dark about their physical representation.

Is it email? analog audio via oceanic cables?

the wikipedia page is blank now. but it's history show that someone described
it simply as "oceanic cable" sometime.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_cable>

~~~
gasull
It's a transcript, an official record, of a diplomatic communication. The
communication itself might have been by email, voice or anything. A cable is
its official transcript.

[http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2010112519014...](http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101125190143AA6w8IS)

