

Wikileaks says it is under attack - colinprince
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11858637

======
Andrew_Quentin
So strange. You grow up all your life being told how great democracy is, how
we live under the rule and process of the law, how we are a tolerant and free
society which values free thinking, which values the right to speech, however
offending or off that speech may be.

As you grow up however, you kind of start realising that much of the above is
sort of true in theory, but not true in practice, especially if the freedom of
speech concerns a criticism of those who have more power than you. It is
because power corrupts that many people had to die to ensure that we today
live in relative freedom. It is because those in power have the means to
subvert criticism and silence such criticism that it has been necessary for
many to be shunned, called lunatics, heretics, traitors, or to die, so that
truth can be spoken to power, so that truth can be spoken to power in order to
preserve our liberty.

The right to free speech does not apply only to the dissemination of pictures
of cats. A society and its adherence to its principles are tested and shown
when power is seriously criticised, when power is or has the potential to be
seriously undermined, not, when someone writes about lolcats because people
even in North Korea can write about lolcats.

I am very amazed that people even consider an attack on wikileaks to be
'good', or that a real attack on the wikileaks founder would have been even
better, because, they consider the leak to be a potential attack on their own
percieved or real self interests, such as the image of their nation around the
world, or that the world may find out that real life is so much more
interesting that any fantasy book that can be written or any idealistic
principle that can be formulated.

I consider it amazing that anyone may even think of supporting an attack by
what may be a state actor, not because of any breach of law, but because it is
embarrassing to such state actor.

We are not children any more, and if our principles are to die with the
passing of our childhood, then we might need to consider the principles in the
first place, their truth, their applicability, whether our generation of grown
up adults wants to stand by them and continue supporting them. If we as the
people wish to turn a blind eye to government censorship, to dirty tactics by
governments through reputation damage by means of charges unsupported by
evidence, if we are going to eat up the effective propaganda (PR I read
somewhere began as an industry after the second world war and was based on the
effectiveness of Hitler's tactics) and blindly state that such an attack is a
good thing whether by anyone, let alone the government, simply because our
perceived interest may potentially be damaged or undermined, not because of
any reason of principle, not because we consider it to be an illegal activity
not even based on reasonable moral arguments, but simply and only because it
is a criticism which embarrasses, then something has gone badly wrong since
the time I was born and now that I have grown up.

Truth is Power. Suppression of truth allows power to corrupt. That is why we
have such principles of freedom of speech and such principles are not
quantifiable simply by our embarrassment when criticised, or even more
woringly, by the embarrassment of politicians.

~~~
nhangen
There's a difference between truth and security of truth. One reveals to all,
while the other protects by doing the opposite.

Managing information like this is not easy, and though it's easy to fault a
government for hiding and/or obscuring the truth, there are some things that
are better left unknown.

~~~
vaksel
From what I understand, Wikileaks is willing to work with the government in
order to hide the things that are truly dangerous...and not just secret
because someone did something illegal/unethical

~~~
zbanks
@nhangen: The government. They offered to collaborate in order to make sure
nothing bad would be released.

The government ignored them, however. What does that say?

~~~
nhangen
Well their stance is that his actions are unlawful and that he's dealing with
stolen information.

It's more complicated than you're presenting.

~~~
derefr
And they'll just keep being disadvantaged by unilaterally-leaked information
until they adopt a different "stance" (or until they shoot him.)

~~~
nhangen
Something tells me he's going to have an "accident."

~~~
GHFigs
And if he doesn't?

~~~
nhangen
Then his insurance rates go down?

------
btilly
I don't like Assange. However my belief is that the kind of stuff he is
leaking is similar to the kind of stuff that governments manage to figure out
about each other through spying anyways. Therefore the risk of injury is not
as big as the government would have you believe, but the risk of public
embarrassment is huge.

And incidentally, if you really believe in the first amendment, his actions
should be entirely legal. At this point he is part of the press, and the
government has no right to limit his free speech, or the freedom of the press.
OK, so I don't like him. But there is a well-known principal of constitutional
law that the important precedents are set by people who are hard to like.
Because if they were nice people, they wouldn't have been in court in the
first place. But by defending the rights of least likable people, we defend
everyone's rights.

If you want to compare it to something, compare to the publication of plans
for making a hydrogen bomb. The government tried to sue to stop publication,
and failed. Now you can find discussion of the subject on wikipedia at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller-Ulam_design>. Which matters more? The
Constitution, or the release of information that could kill tens of millions
of people? The actual ruling of the court was that the Constitution mattered
more!

~~~
nhangen
It's not as black and white as a first amendment issue. This isn't press, this
is sensitive and classified information.

He could play a much greater role in change were he to use this information in
a more strategic fashion than to recklessly publish 100% of it.

~~~
btilly
_This isn't press, this is sensitive and classified information._

In what way, at this point, is Assange not part of the press?

Remember, a large part of the Constitution is meant to provide checks and
balances to prevent government from being able to abuse its power. The proper
Constitutional role of the press SHOULD be to inform the public on the actions
of the government so that the public can get properly outraged about things
they do not agree with.

~~~
nhangen
I suppose you're right that he could be considered part of the press, and
there are no laws prohibiting the sharing of government secrets. But I'm
hesitant to proclaim anyone with a blog or government secret as a true member
of the media.

~~~
btilly
There actually are laws prohibiting the sharing of government secrets. Lots of
them. Bradley Manning, the suspected informant, is likely to go to jail for
this incident.

But once published, they are published.

As for whether random bloggers are members of the media, I agree that it isn't
a simple cut and dried situation. However at this point wikileaks is so
prominent, and is so frequently part of the information infrastructure that
more traditional media provides, that I believe it clearly is media.

~~~
nhangen
Well, there's a difference between sharing and publishing though right? In
this case, Bradley "leaked" them = illegal. Assange "published" them = freedom
of press?

~~~
btilly
Exactly.

------
trotsky
Any of the state actors unhappy with this release have undoubtedly looked at
the issue somewhat closely.

They'd know:

* a DDOS wouldn't change anything

* wikileaks has decent contingency plans, and are prepared for a lot beyond a simple denial of service

* It'd just get wikileaks in the news more in the run up to the release

Conclusion: Misguided amateur patriots or complete fabrication

~~~
deutronium
On the Wikileaks Twitter feed:

"Now is a good time to download some "history insurance"
<https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5723136/WikiLeaks_insurance> 1:04 AM Nov
26th via web"

Yes, you're right, even if the servers are down, they can leak the key via
twitter etc. to this file.

------
nhangen
I think Assange underestimates the power that this information wields, and as
a result is being reckless and potentially dangerous to those he's trying to
"protect" under the guise of freedom.

This is a dangerous game to play, especially for someone with little
experience doing so.

I don't know how I feel about the concept of Wikileaks itself, but I do feel
uncomfortable that this man seems to enjoy playing God.

Replace one tyrant with another and you end up in the same place.

~~~
AndrewMoffat
_> I do feel uncomfortable that this man seems to enjoy playing God._

You can't help but wonder if he is playing out some international hacker of
intrigue fantasy, but I think that even if he is, that mindset does more good
for his cause than it does harm.

~~~
nhangen
I'd like to hear why you think the latter portion of your statement is true.

The first part I can agree with, but I'm not sure how it helps...I think he's
in over his head.

~~~
AndrewMoffat
Self-image can be a powerful feedback loop that reinforces other qualities. I
think that the types of things he would value if his self image was of a
"persecuted international man of intrigue" would be things like vigilance,
perseverance, cunning, suspicion, and those would be helpful to his role @
Wikileaks due to the nature of his work.

My $0.02.

------
jacquesm
Before disparaging wikileaks and/or the person of Julian Assange for whatever
shortcomings they've got it would be good to contrast this with the opposite,
say a leak from inside the North Korean or Iranian regime.

Such a leak would be applauded and the perpetrator would be declared a hero by
those exact same governments that would like wikileaks to go away.

Don't shoot the messenger.

And realize that whatever your government does it does so in _your_ name too.
If it can't stand the light of day because it is illegal or embarrassing then
maybe it should not be done.

~~~
natnat
I suppose that's true if you consider the interests of Iran or North Korea to
be just as valid as the interests of the western world. If the U.S. and
Iran/North Korea were two equally evil governments fighting only for their own
self-interest, that would be the case. However, as much as I am disappointed
with the state of the U.S. right now, I think that what's good for America is
much better for the Hacker News crowd than what's good for North Korea or
Iran. While I don't support the way the U.S. government has been acting over
the past decade or so, it still supports free speech, free markets, and
democracy far more than its enemies.

Revealing private diplomatic information is not free expression, it is an
attack on the country. It gives an information advantage to that country's
adversaries and sours its relations with its allies. If wikileaks did the same
to North Korea, the U.S. would celebrate it not because it represents free
speech, but because it would weaken their government. There are some
legitimate government secrets, and diplomatic cables are one of them.

~~~
jacquesm
The interests of Iran or North Korea are from the perspective of their leaders
just as valid as our interests are to our leaders. All of them would condemn
wikileaks for publishing their information, regardless of which country you'd
be looking at. The same would go for China, Russia and pretty much every other
nation in the world.

Which ones you would think are 'valid' and which are 'invalid' apparently
depends on your own interests in the world, and not so much on the 'badness'
of that particular government. I would welcome total openness from _my_
government about stuff like this, I would hope for the citizens of those other
countries to do the same.

This is not an attack on any country, and to sketch it as such is not an
honest depiction of the facts, it is an attack at those that perpetrate
illegal acts in the name of all of us.

That 'if you've got nothing to fear, you've got nothing to hide' thing works
both ways.

Either we, the citizens of all those states have a right to privacy, or the
government does not have a right to privacy either. A society without privacy
will have zero privacy for everybody, and I think part of the anger and the
backlash against all this is that the governments are slowly waking up to this
and they don't like it much.

If your perspective changes depending on which nation you are from that's a
fair indication that you are probably wrong, if only because no nation is
'absolutely better in all respects' than any other.

Many North Koreans would agree with that statement about the US (of course,
they've all been brainwashed, right?).

~~~
philwelch
I think you're taking moral relativism too far when you compare the US with a
country like North Korea. I would actually say the US is "absolutely better in
all respects" than North Korea; care to name a respect in which North Korea is
better than the US?

~~~
jacquesm
They are probably not living under the illusion that theirs is the greatest
country in the world.

~~~
philwelch
Yes, I do suppose you're rather grateful you don't have to deal with obnoxious
North Korean tourists, or with jingoistic North Koreans posting on web forums.

------
ancymon
Anyone knows what's the point of stalling those "leakage"? It's becoming quite
annoying for me: all those newses about what it is going to be about or newses
about DOS attack. Why can't they just publish it already? Or maybe they should
setup wikileaksleaks.org for leaks about wiki leaks...

~~~
steveklabnik
They don't publish them immediately because they want a worldwide simultaneous
release with the New York Times, Der Speigel, and the Guardian.

~~~
Zakuzaa
Also called 'Embargo'.

------
tomjen3
It won't matter - the guy at the Guardian has already posted to twitter that
they will publish the papers even if wikileaks go down.

~~~
garply
Whoever is behind the attack should just DDOS all of the media sites that have
the leaked information.

In seriousness though, the attack probably will moderate the damage slightly,
as I imagine Wikileaks was going to publish all the raw documents on its site,
whereas the other sites will probably just give summaries of the important
points. Sure, Wikileaks will eventually come back up and have all the raw data
available, but the peak viewing time was going to be today. If I were trying
to minimize number of eyeballs viewing the raw documents, I'd take this
approach.

~~~
tmgrhm
I think the newspapers will link to full copies for perusal, but include
highlights/excerpts in their articles.

The biggest problem the DDoS creates, in my eyes, is that anyone reading about
the leaks will go to Wikileaks.org and find a dead page and then forget about
it, thus minimising their exposure to the other doings of Wikileaks.

------
hugh3
Assange is such an attention whore that I wouldn't put it past him to turn off
all his servers and send out a press release saying "Look at me, I'm under
attack!"

~~~
iwr
Let's wait and see. Besides, whore or not, the world is a better place due to
wikileaks.

~~~
citricsquid
How so? What changes have _actually_ happened because of the leaks that
happened? We'd all forgotten within a week.

~~~
vaksel
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Notable_leaks>

some of those had a little bit of impact

~~~
hugh3
The one with most direct consequences I can see was that a police officer got
sacked because he was a member of the British National Party.

How the hell can that be legal? Are police officers banned from joining all
political parties or just the BNP?

~~~
davnola
Membership of BNP is incompatible with being a police officer because it's
incompatible with the police force's equal opportunities policy. Police
officers are contractually obliged to follow the policy. Rightly or wrongly
(rightly imo) that's the justification for sacking him.

Membership of, say, the Green Party, does not conflict with the officer's
obligations.

~~~
yters
How does someone's party affiliation keep the police force from following its
equal opportunities policy?

~~~
antipaganda
The BNP is an overtly racist party. If you join them, it is assumed you follow
their policies and general belief structure. Those policies and beliefs are
incompatible with what the police are ordered to do as part of their jobs.

It's better than a policy of ignoring the beliefs of your officers, isn't it?

------
DanielBMarkham
I can't say I have a lot of pity for Wikileaks.

I feel -- and you guys are welcome to trash me on this and I'm sure you will
-- that taxpayers have paid billions of dollars to our government to perform
diplomacy. And diplomacy always involves the keeping of secrets. It did 500
years ago, and it will 500 years from now.

So no matter how much arm-waving you want to do about freedom and truth,
nations still have to have secrets. And while I oppose the secrecy state that
we've created, it's the taxpayers that have created it, not wikileaks. It's
our monster to tame. Assange neither represents us nor has our best interests
in mind.

Assange is no representative of freedom or honor in my book. In my book he's a
low-life self-promoting pimp of anarchy, and I imagine what goes around will
certainly come around to him.

If you want to leak a few documents about the Iraq war as part of informing
the public that it's not going well, then fine, more power to you. Hell I'll
contribute to your defense fund. The truth has to be free. But if you're going
to dump all the state department cables from countries all over the planet on
the internet, then you have attacked my country. And while I'm all with you
and fully support getting to an open society, that doesn't even begin to
forgive an act of war like this.

This discussion has gotten to absolutes -- people are arguing that
_everything_ needs to be open. Other people are arguing that _everything_ must
be secret. The truth is that neither position is going to work, and I have to
say I'm pretty pissed at Assange at taking such a serious issue like openness
and crapping all over it. He's done more harm to his own cause with this than
his opponents could ever help to accomplish. For the next ten years we'll have
story after story trickle out about what harm this has caused. It will make a
nice backdrop to even further draconian security measures.

There is a space between anarchy and the security state. Let's find that spot
and live there.

~~~
vaksel
I feel like they are allowed to keep their secrets provided they don't make
something secret just because it might make them look bad or because it's
illegal.

Remember, everything they do...they do in our name.

~~~
jbester
By law, information may not be classified merely because it would be
embarrassing or to cover illegal activity. Information may only be classified
to protect national-security objectives/interests.

I imagine this release is more contentious since it undoubtedly contains
sources, methods, and likely personal opinions of the diplomatic corps and the
clandestine services operating under the guise of the diplomatic corp.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
My guess is that to the average person nothing much of import will be revealed
-- but I could be wrong. In either case, I don't think the short-term fallout
is important.

What's completely insane (in my view) is that the diplomacy corps of the
United States may have just been damaged beyond repair. It could take a
generation or more to recover from this, and it could hurt a hell of a lot of
people. Even if you hate the United States, that's a lot of collateral damage
on the path to openness. There are a lot of very serious things going on in
the world, and people have spent their entire lives getting into position to
help nations come to agreement over various things. These do sneaky things,
sure, but they also prevent wars. Getting rid of them by exposing all of their
reports and identities is whacked, not to mention the damage to foreign
governments when it comes out who has been secretly helping whom.

The far-reaching impact could truly be mind-boggling in scale. And it wouldn't
surprise me at all to see it all being greeted with silence from around the
world -- there's really no point in anybody making a spectacle of reacting.

I can't help but feel that this is going to be very destabilizing to a lot of
nations. And U.S. secrecy is not going to be affected at all. If anything it
will just increase to more insane levels beyond where it already is.

~~~
lukeschlather
I think there's a lot of value in all our cards being on the table, for
everyone. We are playing at just about every table, and this is not a zero-sum
game.

I think one of the most important things to recognize here is that we're not
the only ones whose cards have been revealed. It sounds like there's
verification the Chinese government was behind the attacks against Google,
Yahoo and the rest. That's a big deal, and it could hurt China.

I also think that in general, having a clear understanding of US goals makes
it easier to come up with creative solutions that benefit all. It does also
potentially make it easier to screw the US over - but frankly that's difficult
to do, and I'd say given the power the US wields, any direct action against US
interests comes with strong likelihood that it's a net negative for both the
opposing power and the US. Win-win situations, when you can come up with them,
carry far less risk. But you can't come up with win-win situations when people
are holding their cards close to their chest.

------
dabeeeenster
Looks like the Guardian have gone live with this already...

<http://grab.by/grabs/1f0906251076b904622300ccf4496b71.png>

------
danenania
"The US state department has said the release will put many lives at risk."

Yes, because the US government clearly has great concern for unnecessary loss
of life :-/

~~~
yters
It does. Especially under McChrystal there were numerous deaths of American
soldiers due to the very restrictive ROEs.

------
zeeone
Off topic, but I had to ask this: Am I the only one here that thinks that this
upcoming leak will pose a threat to the national security and should be
stopped?

~~~
aw3c2
The national security of what country? I suspect it could improve the security
and life of some affected countries. If there was no exploitation and shady
operations that seriously harm others, there would not be such excitement in
the US government.

~~~
zeeone
The national security of all countries involved. Sensitive diplomatic
information is often better handled by diplomats. Unleashed to the masses, it
may cause unnecessary aggression, maybe even riots somewhere. Not to mention
that it puts a lot of people's lives at risk.

~~~
blueben
Best handled by diplomats? Because us unwashed masses can't handle the truth,
public debate just second-guesses those who are in charge, and we should
really leave the important things to the ruling class?

~~~
zeeone
Just take a walk in the mall today and tell me if you think _those_ people are
ready to handle the truth.

~~~
aw3c2
This discussion could circle for ages.

Maybe _those people_ are like they are because they are living in a glittery
facade world based on ignorance for too long?

------
madair
national security has a direct-line relationship to the bottom line of u.s.
startups... we get to witness the dividing of those who will make an atom
bomb, and those who will not.

(i.e. if your business depends on imperialism, you are an imperialist. now
consider oil and hegemony)

