

US Military Classifies Wikileaks As 'Enemy Of The United States' - mcantelon
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120926/23522220526/us-military-classifies-wikileaks-as-enemy-united-states.shtml

======
tptacek
Without commenting on this particular document, the military has an extremely
valid reason for criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active
servicemembers; people in the armed services are stewards of all sorts of
information that can't be leaked, and Wikileaks has a stated goal of
extracting as much intelligence from the US military as they can.

This "declaration" (it's a Techdirt story; someone could do us all a favor by
trying to verify what it actually means) comes in the wake of the most
grievous opsec breach in US history. The only reason we're not outraged by the
breach itself is that it got overshadowed by the subsequent disclosure to the
press. If it had been Israel that extracted this information and _not_
ransomed it to The Guardian, we'd be calling for heads to roll over it.

~~~
bo1024
Wikileaks is a journalistic organization. If someone in the US military emails
the New York Times a classified secret, that does not make the Times an "enemy
of the United States."

All this nonsense about "most grievous breach in opsec history" and
"extracting information" completely obscures the issue by putting the blame on
the wrong boot.

Hacking, spying, all these things can and should be declared illegal/wrong.
But publishing data that was sent to you by a willing informant is much less
clear-cut, and certainly doesn't warrant "enemy of the state" status from any
country claiming to respect freedom of the press.

The goal of news organizations is to find out information and make it public.
If you want to keep information private, fine, make it a criminal offense for
_your people_ to disclose that information to news sources. Case closed.

~~~
EvanKelly
The New York Times will parse and redact the information that they feel could
endanger people from any classified information that they may publish or use
in an article. They notably published the Pentagon Papers, which showed that
the US had been misled regarding Vietnam. This information did not endanger
anyone.

Wikileaks, at least with the initial major leak, does not redact or edit
information to protect anyone. This has been one of the reasons major
journalist outlets (such as NYT) didn't cooperate with them regarding the
initial leak.

They simply serve as a clearinghouse for leaked info. The government would
almost certainly be able to invoke prior restraint if they were able to take
wikileaks to a US court. They were not able to show this in the Pentagon
Papers case.

I'm not commenting on the "enemy of state" situation, but I did want to
clarify that major difference between an organization such as the NYT and
Wikileaks.

~~~
mtgx
So you think NY Times or other media shouldn't have exposed that video of the
army guys in helicopter gunning those unarmed men?

~~~
EvanKelly
I'm not sure how you attribute that belief to me.

I simply said that the New York Times and Wikileaks have different procedures
for dealing with information leaked to them.

I never said anything about what should or shouldn't have been exposed.

------
grandalf
While it's completely reasonable for the US to be concerned with preventing
breaches of classified information, the problem with the US reaction to the
horrors and gaffes revealed by Wikileaks is that there has been _absolutely
zero_ outrage about them, only the attempt to shoot the messenger.

This asymmetry has been a real awakening for me about the level of corruption
and moral bankruptcy of the US ruling class, and about the apathy and
complicity of the press and the citizenry in general.

I think we are already past the inflection point that historians will one day
view as similar to the turning points that led to Nazi Germany and other large
scale moral failings of humanity. There is a culture of denial and intentional
blindness to the consequences of US actions abroad and a terrible enthusiasm
for the leaders who initiate these kinds of things.

~~~
tokenadult
I have one friend (a United States citizen) who has spent much of his life
living abroad. He has been to dozens of different countries, including the
Asian country where I met him. He has not been back to any part of the United
States in the last five years, during which time he has been to multiple
countries of varied cultural and political background. His reaction to the
Wikileaks publication of United States diplomatic "cables" was that his
respect for United States diplomats increased enormously. That is my reaction
too. United States diplomats have to deal with other governments all over the
world, many much more treacherous and duplicitous than the United States
government has been even at its worst. Those of us who are Americans who have
been abroad, and who thus are especially aware of the consequences of US
actions abroad, certainly have our own criticisms of United States policy. We
also criticize the actions of United States persons who violate some United
States policies, to the harm of foreign persons. But if Wikileaks wanted to so
something both constructive for world peace and likely to elicit even more
surprised outrage, it should turn its attention to the classified documents of
China, of Iran, of Russia, of North Korea, of Belarus, of Venezuela, and of
various other dictatorial regimes around the world.

AFTER EDIT: The reply two levels down by pdonis correctly summarizes the
single standard I apply to all governments: they all ought to act morally,
they all fail to act morally from time to time, I oppose all of those
failures, and I would especially like to know more about the activities of
governments that don't subject themselves to the discipline of free and fair
elections, even if it means an organization like Wikileaks has to reveal their
secrets.

~~~
kkowalczyk
Given your eager defense of US I doubt you see how dangerous this kind of
reasoning is.

You basically said that US, in general, is a good guy and therefore it's
justified in doing illegal, immoral things and then hunting down those who
expose this behavior.

So exposing bad behavior of US government is bad and worthy prosecution but
exposing bad behavior of other governments, those you deem to be worse than
US, is good and worthy praise.

Please explain the rationale for that double-standard.

Please also tell me which which other country dropped two atomic bombs, fought
a prolonged, unprovoked political war (Vietnam) and invaded another country
based on evidence that is believed to be completely fabricated (Iraq) and
destroyed the lives of many creative people during McCarthy's communist witch
hunt.

This is not to say that other countries aren't worse but let's not blindly
wave patriotic flag and pretend that US government is immune to immoral,
corrupt behavior. This kind of blind patriotism is easily exploitable. One
thing that the "bad" governments have in common is that blind patriotism is a
main propaganda technique used by Nazi Party, North Korea, communist countries
to build us vs. evil them (except to them it's the jews or US is the "evil")
and explain away their bad behavior (because the other side is even worse).

~~~
pdonis
> You basically said that US, in general, is a good guy and therefore it's
> justified in doing illegal, immoral things and then hunting down those who
> expose this behavior.

That's not what he said. He said the US is, on balance, _less_ immoral than
the dictatorial regimes he named. Yet those other regimes don't get the
scrutiny the US does.

~~~
nitrogen
_Yet those other regimes don't get the scrutiny the US does._

For better or worse, the US puts itself in that position by acting as the
world police. The most visible nation will, of course, be under more scrutiny,
and rightfully so. The more power one has, the more safeguards need to be
available to ensure that power is used for good.

Also, Wikileaks posts leaks from countries other than the US.

~~~
pdonis
> For better or worse, the US puts itself in that position by acting as the
> world police.

To an extent, yes, this is a valid point. But I'm not sure "world police" is
the right term. The United Nations is supposed to be playing the role of
enforcing standards of civilized behavior on all nations, but it has failed
miserably. The US is more like one of the more civilized citizens who is
getting fed up with the stuff the less civilized citizens get away with
without being called on it by either the "authorities" (the UN) or the other
supposedly more civilized citizens. Which is not to say that the US always
does the "right" thing when it gets fed up like this; but in many situations
I'm not sure there _is_ a "right" thing to do. The sad fact is that there are
a lot of nations and a lot of people in the world who simply do not care about
upholding standards of civilized behavior.

> Also, Wikileaks posts leaks from countries other than the US.

Yes, this is true, and I didn't mean to imply that the US was the only country
being "targeted". As far as I can tell, Wikileaks is an equal opportunity
organization: they're willing to piss off anyone. ;)

------
ajays
Just out of curiosity: are the Russians classified as "Enemy of the US"? How
about the Chinese? Or the DPRK?

The Chinese military and government, for example, is way more actively trying
to get military secrets out of the US, and not for altruistic reasons either.
What makes them saints compared to Wikileaks?

~~~
tptacek
What do you think happens to a US servicemember who leaks military secrets to
Russia or China?

~~~
ajross
That's not the point. Wikileaks isn't a servicemember, they're the recipient
and conveyer of the leak. The point here is a double standard: if a SuperSpy
steals info and gives it to China, it's an "incident" that doesn't
meaningfully affect diplomacy. If JoeClerk emails the _same inforomation_ to
SomeDude on the internet, suddenly SomeDude is a ... enemy of the United
States?

Surely you see the problem here, right? It has nothing to do with security
processes.

~~~
tptacek
What does it matter who JoeClerk is mailing state secrets to? Clerks can't be
mailing state secrets to random people on the Internet!

~~~
ajross
Right. So punish JoeClerk, not SomeDude.

~~~
danielweber
That is what this is all about. The Air Force was dealing with an incident
involving JoeClerk (actually JaneClerk). Providing information to Wikileaks
was called _communicating with the enemy, 104-d_ (referring to the UCMJ) not
to go after WL, but to go after Jane.

------
danielweber
What TechDirt and the title suggest is that people communicating with
Wikileaks could be considered "talking with the enemy," the real restriction
is on _military personnel_. Maybe that's still bad, but we generally accept
that the military can place restrictions on people its soldiers are allowed to
talk with.

They refer to a FOIA request releasing a document from the Air Force, but the
link is to another news article, not the document. Anyone have the original so
we can read for ourselves?

 _EDIT_ derrida provides primary document below:
[http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-
FO...](http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FOI.pdf)

------
dmerfield
JFK made a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association in
1961. His discussion of the dangers of stifling transparency - often in the
name of public safety - seems as important today:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces>

~~~
ojiikun
Obama himself gave a speech before the UN just _yesterday_ extolling the
virtues of free speech:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-
obamas-2012...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-
obamas-2012-address-to-un-general-assembly-full-
text/2012/09/25/70bc1fce-071d-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_print.html)

~~~
tedunangst
The right to free speech does not imply the right to force people to speak.

~~~
TheGateKeeper
For people, yes. For government, it should be mandatory. The government's
military? Sometimes.

~~~
tedunangst
I partially (mostly?) agree, but for Obama to promote free speech while at the
same time claiming the government has the right to remain silent is not some
grand hypocrisy.

------
ajays
There is a lot going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. For
example: whatever happened to the BoA emails they were going to reveal? Isn't
it convenient that some "rogue" guy in Germany ran away with these emails?
Given Assange's background and technical capabilities, isn't it surprising
that he allowed it to happen?

~~~
tedunangst
They had backups in S3 but they were lost in the power outage caused by the
storm caused by the orbital bad weather gun.

------
tisme
It probably isn't the intention but that will serve as a validation of
wikileaks in the eyes of quite a few people.

------
thebigshane
Apparent Facts:

\- AF OSI (the Air Force's own little internal FBI-like agency) investigates
military members contacting Wikileaks / Julian Assange

\- AF OSI is alleging that some service-members may be punished under UCMJ
104-D Communicating with the Enemy / Aiding the Enemy for communicating with
Julian Assange

Unjustified Speculation:

\- The US Military or US AF considers Wikileaks an Enemy of the State.

\- The US Military is going to assassinate Julian Assange with a UAV drone.

Debatable, but likely (IANAL):

\- This particular investigation case (involving those service members) is
closed and it is unknown/classified regarding whether official charges were
filed.

\- UCMJ 104-D may also charge non-service-members for Aiding the Enemy (Google
is embarrassingly unhelpful confirming or denying this for me)

\- TechDirt is flame-baiting and fear-mongering (obviously their raison
d'être)

------
malandrew
I think it would behoove wikileaks to try and dump documents of countries that
the US considers hostile to suspect, such as Iran, Russia and North Korea.

So far Wikileaks has been releasing files that are largely from the US, but it
needs to be more neutral in releasing files from all countries.

Wikileaks' US focus it hurting it. Other countries like England, Russia,
Israel, China, India, etc. all deserve some time in the spotlight.

Personally, I would love to see more exposure of corruption by politicians in
countries like Brazil. Putting corrupt politicians in prison would do more to
bolster its image and support for it than its current crusade.

------
tvladeck
A major problem with this article is that it does not clearly define what
"Enemy Of The United States" means in this context. Who made this decision? Is
this a special status / designation with associated repercussions, or simply a
description used by an anonymous writer in the Air Force?

NB that I would not defend the latter case, but this article does not really
tell us exactly what the leaked paper implies about US policy towards
Wikileaks.

------
derrida
Primary source here <http://wikileaks.org/US-Military-Refers-to-Julian.html>

------
farinasa
More like an Enemy of the United States MILITARY. I personally like to be
informed about what my tax dollars are funding around the world.

------
ajays
It is interesting (in a sad sort of way) to see how this article is being
flagged into oblivion. Even though it has 130 points in 3 hours, it has been
relegated to page 3 of HN.

I would have assumed that this topic was of widespread interest, especially to
the HN community. But some folks seem to confuse what the "flag" button
means...

------
roothacker
Bombing the servers won't be a good idea now when GeoLocated has gained a lot
of popularity.

------
mtgx
As an enemy of US, being in the same category as al-Alqaeda and the Taliban
insurgents, does it mean that if the US military happens to see Assange
anywhere in the world, they have to shoot him on sight or send killer drones
after him? After all, according to them, he's just as dangerous as al-Qaeda.

~~~
tptacek
No, it does not mean that. The federal authorization to kill Taliban and AlQ
operatives arises from the 2003 Iraq AUMF; there isn't some doctrine that says
"if the military designates you as an enemy of the state they can kill you
with winged death robots".

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
"An enemy is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing,
capturing, detaining without trial, etc," - Marc Ratner, Assange's attorney

"Any person who ... aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with ... money. Any
person who ... without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or
gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any
intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death
or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may
direct." Punitive Articles of the UCMJ: Article 104—Aiding the enemy

"Scope of Article 104. This article denounces offenses by _all persons whether
or not otherwise subject to military law_. Offenders may be tried by court-
martial or by military commission."

~~~
tptacek
Oh, well if Marc Ratner says we're going to send the death robots after
Assange, I'm sold.

------
ChuckMcM
Sigh. Next up, imprisoning US "Dissidents".

~~~
tptacek
Please connect those dots for us.

~~~
marshray
Not saying the line is complete yet, but the NDAA looks like a connecting dot
to me.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but is this not what a steady slide into military
dictatorship would be expected to look like?

~~~
tptacek
The NDAA authorizes the President to kill members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
It can kill Americans only if they are providing material support to those two
organizations and only if they are on foreign soil. Those (very limited)
restrictions actually _narrow_ the powers granted to the executive under the
2003 AUMF. The NDAA actually made it _harder_ for the President to sic the
death robots on people.

~~~
marshray
This isn't usually how I hear the NDAA characterized. I'd be interested if you
had more I could read on this perspective.

Keep in mind that definitions of terms like "material support" give wide
latitude to interpretation. Last I heard there were people in jail under such
terms for donating money to what on the surface appeared to be an Islamic
charity.

I never ran a mirror, but I configured DNS record for wikileaks when it was
under DoS. Does this make me an "enemy of the state" too?

I think these are justified concerns and as an American it saddens me deeply
that I would even think to have them.

~~~
tptacek
Respectfully, Marsh (you know it's all respect with you & me, even though I
think you wear a tinfoil hat and you think I'm a tool of the status quo), you
believe this stuff because you only read about the NDAA from advocacy sources.

Material support has a specific definition. Your donation must be made
"knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for" an actual
terrorist attack. You cannot be killed by the death robots for donating to
Islamic charities.

What specific people do you believe have been unjustly imprisoned for donating
to Islamic charities?

~~~
marshray
_you know it's all respect with you & me, even though I think you wear a
tinfoil hat_

Oh absolutely. I'm in touch with with my inner tinfoil-hat-ness and am
secretly less off the deep end than my tweets would make it appear. (at least
that's what I tell myself :-)

 _and you think I'm a tool of the status quo), you believe this stuff because
you only read about the NDAA from advocacy sources._

No, I know you're too smart for that. This is why I'm interested in how you
came to your conclusion.

 _What specific people do you believe have been unjustly imprisoned for
donating to Islamic charities?_

This is probably what I was thinking of:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_Foundation_for_Relie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_Foundation_for_Relief_and_Development)
(note that I'm not saying this specific prosecution was just or unjust, only
that it supports the theory that prosecutions are possible under a definition
of "material support" which includes giving to what is ostensibly a charity).

~~~
tptacek
The law requires foreknowledge of an actual terrorist action that the donation
contributes to.

Moreover: I'm actually wrong here; the Obama Administration (which, recall,
was _pushing back_ on a far broader standard requested by the GOP-controlled
Congress) applied a stricter standard, of "substantial support", which I
understand to mean that not only do you need to have foreknowledge that your
contribution applied to an actual terrorist attack, but also that your
contribution actually has to have significantly enabled the attack.

