

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange hunted by pentagon over massive leak - jjames
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-10/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-hunted-by-pentagon-over-massive-leak

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pavs
Maybe this is true, I don't know how much of this is sensationalist. But
something to learn from previous experience. Right before the release of
Apache video, Julian claimed in his twitter that his men are being followed
and being watched by government agents then went silenced for 24 hours only to
come back and say that everything is fine. As we now know that nothing
happened to them, no one was killed, no one from Wikileaks was kidnapped or
arrested or attacked.

I think we need to show some healthy amount of skepticism towards Wikileaks as
well, it is also in their interest to generate as much noise as possible
before each release, they have successfully done so the last time and they
will most likely use the same recipe over and over again.

~~~
barnaby
While I agree that we should be skeptical towards the noise Wikileaks is
making, we should always be skeptical towards the noise any government is
making. Since Wikileaks is one of the best tools with which to take a
skeptical look at the hype generated by a government's PR machine(s) I think
it's great that news sources are rebroadcasting the noise being made by
Wikileaks.

~~~
pavs
I think our level of skepticism shouldn't vary from one entity to other. If
Wikileaks is intentionally lying about this incidents to drum of noise should
it not have any effect in their credibility? My problem is not Wikileaks or
Government, my problem is with treating entities and individual as if they are
above all scrutiny and skepticism. They have previously lied about their board
members (named Chomsky as a member, Chomsky says he doesn't know anything
about it. Including few other high-profile board members). Refuses to release
documents using cheap means like bit-torrent, but claims they need 600k/year
to keep running; when they have lawyers working pro-bono for them or non-
profit organization paying for some (if not all) legal costs. They removed the
list of non-profit organization that is paying for legal costs after they came
back online earlier last month, it might be still there, I couldn't find it.

Does the nature of their leaks makes them immune to criticism and valid
skepticism of their intentions and motives?

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hugh3
The article keeps using the word "whistleblower", which I think may be
inaccurate. A whistleblower is someone who breaks secrecy in order to expose
something that's wrong. But leaking 260,000 state department cables just seems
like leaking for the sake of leaking.

The ethics of this are, at least, peculiar.

~~~
rdtsc
You can figure out the ethics by thinking about the question : "Does the
leaked stuff pose a national _security_ risk or does it pose a national
security _embarrassment_ over basic human rights violations, waste,
carelessness and so on?".

> But leaking 260,000 state department cables just seems like leaking for the
> sake of leaking.

The original leak was probably just a leak for leak's sake. They already
caught that guy. However if any of these cables point to any embarrasing stuff
that is secret just to avoid the govt. from appologizing, and Wikileaks picks
it up after it was already exposed, then this becomes a whilstleblower issue.

I know legally they've sent the dogs after him because "if it is classified it
is classified and we are not the department to ask why it was classified", but
everyone else should automatically side with the govt.'s point of view if the
data points to some serious moral and ethical problems inside Pentagon.

~~~
hugh3
_"Does the leaked stuff pose a national security risk or does it pose a
national security embarrassment over basic human rights violations, waste,
carelessness and so on?"_

I have no idea, I haven't seen the leaked stuff. But where diplomacy is
concerned the line between "embarrassment" and "risk" is pretty thin,
especially where the embarrassment is to another country. There could easily
be things like candid discussions of personal weaknesses of foreign
dignitaries, diplomatic tricks played to fool other countries into doing
things, invoices for the hookers they hired to entertain the Saudi
ambassador... if these sorts of things become public they could turn allies
into enemies, and that's not good for anyone.

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someone_here
For anyone like me that was confused as to what "cables" are, they are
telegrams or messages... probably emails.

