

U.S. warns Ottawa of WikiLeak release - kgarten
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/24/wikileaks-ottawa.html

======
mrtron
This is the type of positive political pressure news agencies should be
putting on governments.

It shouldn't be just wikileaks - there are far too many reporters and far too
few journalists.

~~~
martythemaniak
Canada and the US have some of the most pliant media out there. It makes me
want to throw up every time I see someone interview a power figure.

For example, last year our PM decided to prorogue parliament (ie, like ending
a session of congress prematurely) because it was politically expedient.
During his end-of-year, he got a soft-ball question and simply dismissed it as
business-as-usual (even though it upset people and led to a fair bit of
protesting). Meanwhile, people like Jeremy Paxman in Britain thrive on asking
tough questions and calling politicians on their bullshit.

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martythemaniak
Excellent. It used to be that you had to wait a generation or two to find out
what actually transpired behind closed doors (example, Margaret McMillan's
excellent book "Nixon in China"), but thanks to Wikileaks we can know merely
years after the fact.

~~~
jacquesm
Here's to hoping that that time will decrease to 'near realtime' and that
_all_ governments will live in a glass cage.

Hopelessly naive ? Maybe, but I think that it would take something like that
to get some honesty in politics.

~~~
hugh3
Hopelessly naive, yes.

What you're more likely to find is a situation where the less evil governments
of the world (Canada, Britain, the US) have to live in glass cages while the
more evil governments of the world (China, Russia, North Korea) can continue
in secrecy. This I can only see being bad for the citizens of Canada, Britain
and the US. All cynicism aside, changing the balance of power in the world
away from the US Government and towards the Chinese Government is unlikely to
be a positive move for the citizens of the US.

~~~
nostromo
> less evil governments of the world (Canada, Britain, the US) have to live in
> glass cages while the more evil governments of the world (China, Russia,
> North Korea) can continue in secrecy

A main reason those governments are less evil is because they already live in
glass cages.

~~~
hugh3
That's right; they live in glass cages to a precise extent defined by
democratically-formed law. If I wanted the government of my country to stop
keeping secrets, I could form a party and run for parliament on a platform of
radical transparency (all government data to be made public, from sensitive
diplomatic communiques and military research to your next door neighbour's tax
returns) and if people actually _wanted_ that they could have it.

~~~
mattmanser
But you would never, ever win.

People care about their local school. Their rubbish being collected. Their job
being secure.

Abstract stuff like radical transparency is too complicated a platform to run
on and not only that it's a single issue that can't win votes.

That's why democracy's pretty weak compared to an altruistic dictatorship. But
better than any other form of realistic government out there.

~~~
hugh3
Leaving aside the problem of single-issue parties, the point remains that if
radical transparency were a vote-winner it would get implemented. But it's not
a vote-winner because people don't want it; not only does no political party
advocate it, but there's no grassroots movement calling for diplomatic
communiques and tax returns to be made public. It's just not an idea which
anyone takes seriously or wants.

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ajays
Time to stock up on popcorn. This is going to be good.

When I think of the Internet, I see it as a worldwide communication medium
that equalizes (or tries to) the distribution of knowledge. These leaks will
be the Internet living up to this goal.

I hope WikiLeaks doesn't release these docs on Friday, as the coverage will be
drowned out (in the US) by all this shopping BS. I hope they wait till things
quiet down, and do it later next week.

~~~
mcantelon
I would guess that Wikileaks understand the news cycle.

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shaddi
What happened to everything else that Wikileaks used to host? I remember when
it first went live it was an actual Mediawiki site that had a lot of other
whistleblower documents. Since this "War Logs" stuff went up I can't seem to
find any of the old documents.

~~~
bbatsell
My understanding is that they now only host the latest documents purportedly
to cut hosting costs. Some argue that it's a bit of manipulation in order to
garner more donations. You can google for mirrors of the old content.

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joshes
Potentially destructive? Yes.

Sometimes a broken, corrupted system needs a bit of destruction to be set in a
better direction. Whatever Assange is sitting on must be damning, considering
the way this is unfolding. I am intrigued to see where this goes.

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motters
I think that people rushing to issue denunciations of Wikileaks and defences
of the behaviour of diplomats would be better advised to wait and see what
information these particular documents actually contain.

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forza
Many of you have a US perspective on this, but it could be even more
interesting for the rest of the world. I supposedly live in the most
democratic country in the world, but that doesn't seem to prevent officials
from breaking the law under US influence.

"Sweden investigating alleged U.S. spying"
[http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-06/world/sweden.us.investiga...](http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-06/world/sweden.us.investigation_1_swedish-
law-swedish-authorities-stockholm?_s=PM:WORLD)

"New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action"
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2005/05...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html)

"SWIFT breaks EU law to comply with US law"
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/swift_us_privacy_vio...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/swift_us_privacy_violation/)

"US government behind Pirate Bay raid" <http://www.thelocal.se/3969/20060602/>

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steveklabnik
Is the US just saying this so that when the actual leak comes out, it seems
softer? Are they just making this up for some reason, or is the leak actually
real? What kind of thing could possibly be leaked, and how badly will it
damage international relations?

International espionage makes my head hurt.

~~~
mrcharles
Well, back in July, Wired quoted Manning as saying

“Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be
revealed,” Manning wrote. “It’s open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV
format. It’s Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It’s
beautiful, and horrifying.”

The article also says "a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000
classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost
criminal political back dealings.”" (
<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/> )

I think it's real, and I think it's bad. Time will tell though.

~~~
tomjen3
Bad? Its great news, without allies the US can't really act internationally
and they will have to stop invading other countries.

~~~
mrcharles
I meant bad for the US, though I question the validity of calling what may be
a massive international clusterfuck "great news".

~~~
d2viant
You're absolutely right. Contrary to what parent claims, the US and our allies
do a lot of good around the world that is made possible by having strong
international diplomacy with other countries.

~~~
pyre
If there _are_ 'criminal' political back-dealings, then don't the people
perpetrating them, bear some responsibility? Otherwise we end up in the 'too
big to fail' position where anything bad these people do will always be
covered up, and they basically get a blank cheque to do what they please. (by
'people,' I mean the specific politicians/diplomats/etc involved).

~~~
hugh3
After reading this thread I've come to the conclusion that it's ethical to
leak secret government documents (from a democratic country) if and only if
the document provides evidence of someone in the government behaving
illegally.

Random dumps of four hundred thousand random government documents, however
obtained, don't cut it.

------
aneth
As much as I am in favor of government transparency, diplomatic channels have
a very important need for privacy, and from the looks of it, this is really a
senseless, destructive act by Assange and WikiLeaks. Diplomacy is incredibly
complex and delicate. In particular when communicating with dissidents of
foreign countries, it's often necessary to have complex and multi-faceted
positions in private communications, some of which may be conflicting and
offensive to one side or the other.

Take communications with North Korean or other dissidents as an example. On
the surface, Kim Jong needs to think we are negotiating with him without
trying to support opposition and bring down his government - otherwise he may
become unstable and violent. We also however need to provide moral and
material support to dissidents.

Shall we just be the fools and pretend that diplomacy is not a complex game?
In a perfect world, maybe there would be no need for secrecy, but to think
that diplomacy does not need some level of underhandedness, deception, head-
fakes, and other manipulation is terribly naive.

We don't yet know what is going to be released, and perhaps some of it very
well should be public, however if any of it damages our efforts to work with
dissidents in oppressed countries, or has other destructive effects on the
work of the State Department, there will be serious questions about whether
real-time transparency is really what we want when it comes to diplomacy.

~~~
danenania
This argument would hold more weight if US foreign policy actually had
something to do with bringing freedom to subjects of oppressive regimes, but
as it stands, the US government's actions are largely cynical, self-serving,
supportive of some of the most oppressive regimes on the planet, and harmful
to many millions of people around the world. They don't deserve sympathy.

~~~
JabavuAdams
This isn't just about US foreign policy. Let's take a different example that
removes the interventionist "bad smell" of the NK example. Let's talk peace.

E.g. Imagine A and B want to negotiate a peace treaty. They represent large
and diverse constituencies. Officially, they're not talking to each other --
there is ongoing violence, and hard-liners in both the A camp and the B camp
will replace the A or B negotiators if they are deemed to be too soft.

So, there's a secret summit of A and B negotiators. Publicly, neither side can
budge. However, because the talks are secret, the negotiators are free to make
initial concessions to get the ball rolling.

How could making those talks public possibly be a good thing? It might
actually scuttle peace and result in more violence.

It's easy for rogue elements to spoil a sensitive negotiation. There is a real
need for secrecy in order to have productive negotiations on sensitive topics.

~~~
tomjen3
You comment assume that the hardliners are wrong, and that the negotiators
should talk behind their backs. Without knowing what they talk about, how can
you know that?

~~~
JabavuAdams
That's not the point -- it's symmetric. Replace "hardliners" with
"conciliators", if you like.

The point is that what people can say publicly is often much less than what
they might concede privately.

This causes deadlocks, and offers griefers the ability to scuttle publicly-
made plans.

UPDATE> > Without knowing what they talk about, how can you know that?

Essentially, they'll talk differently if they know everyone's listening, so
that information is not as useful as you think.

