
U.S. must stop spying on WikiLeaks - Details on intimidation attempts - dsplittgerber
http://wikileaks.org/#spying
======
SamAtt
I've recently read a good book that I think is insightful here. It was written
by a Bush Administration official and is called "How the CIA Kept America Safe
and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack."

No matter how you feel about the obvious pro-Bush slant this book is worth
reading for two reasons...

1\. The author actually spent time talking to the CIA people who carry out
Ops. He got to ask them "why do you do this?" and "why does this work?"

2\. The information shared wasn't available until the Obama administration
declassified it. So it gives an unprecedented look into how intelligence
agencies work and how much of their work is simply psychological.

After reading the book my opinion is they're screwing with Wikileaks. Again,
the real expertise the CIA has built up over the years is in how to get people
to think what the CIA wants them to think. In this case I believe they want
this editor to think he's being spied on at every turn.

Increased paranoia, especially on someone who is already prone to it, will
eventually drive a person over the edge. As this post shows his instinct is to
fight back in public meaning the more paranoid they can make him the more
likely it is he'll start ranting in public and (they hope) discredit himself.

~~~
jacobolus
Except that the author of said book is totally full of shit, and his book has
been ripped to shreds:

[http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/03/29/10032...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/03/29/100329crbo_books_mayer)

~~~
ja2ke
Ugh sorry, I just accidentally downvoted this while trying to upvote it. Sorry
again. Thanks for the link!

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dailo10
Did anyone else draw a parallel to the current Internet censorship in China?

There are differences of course, but they are both instances in which the
government feels threatened by the power of information that the Internet
gives the individual.

~~~
ErrantX
Yes, and no. Because while clearly there are parallels in that they feel
threatened I think that, ultimately, there is a line which the US currently
hasn't crossed (e.g. stifling media reports about wikileaks, snatching them
and imprisoning them on fluff charges, human rights abuses etc.).

Additionally what scares them is the handing out of classified material; which
isn't quite the same as stifling criticism of the government etc. Whatever
your feeling on whether it _should_ be classified or not they have an
obligation to reasonably mitigate information they consider secret.

There is a very very fine line and, if true, I feel it's being extremely
closely tread on this occasion.

(just to add: I support both sides in this, so sorry if I am sat on a fence
somewhat :D)

~~~
rdtsc
> Ultimately, there is a line which the US currently hasn't crossed

If US government is killing civilians in various countries and is
orchestrating arrests of minors, morally it is not really rising above China
by much. Yeah, it is not sending 'guidelines' to the media, because there are
other methods of influencing what gets published and what doesn't -- namely
intimidation of journalists and sources, appeals to the owners of media
corporations and so on.

> Additionally what scares them is the handing out of classified material;

Well what kind of classified material? Yes, if these are nuclear launch codes,
or frequency hopping codes of military radios, they would have a valid reason
to detect the source of the leak. I think most of us and most US citizens
would agree with the government doing that. But these are videos of
slaughtering of civilians. At this point, the CIA should be appologizing and
not running around arresting and following people. There are now showing their
true face (well to the rest of us who didn't know it yet).

> Whatever your feeling on whether it should be classified or not they have an
> obligation to reasonably mitigate information they consider secret.

That is what I have a problem with -- "an obligation". Obligation to who?
Government? Why should we have an obligation to them that trumps our moral
sense of right and wrong? Luckily there is someone there, who is an actual
human being, with a moral sense, that knows that killing innocent people is
wrong no matter how many classification layers get slapped on top of it. That
is why these leaks happened. Someone put their job, freedom (and life?) at
risk because they felt that the "obligation to hide murder under the carpet"
is wrong.

~~~
ErrantX
> Well what kind of classified material?

Any classified material. I don't think they should be discriminative based on
some ill specified metric; if _they_ feel the material should be classified
then _they_ should attempt to keep it so. If Wikileaks feels it should be
public then _they_ should attempt to make it so. Therein we have the makings
of balance.

> Obligation to who? Government? Why should we have an obligation to them that
> trumps our moral sense of right and wrong?

 _We_ certainly don't have an obligation, that's silly. _They_ have an
obligation to stand by the laws they impose. Otherwise whats the point :)

~~~
arohner
And _They_ have an obligation to do what's in the best interest of the
_citizens_ of this country.

Classification is useful only so far as it improves our well-being. Nuclear
launch codes and radio frequencies fall under this. Keeping something
classified because it embarrasses a gov't official or maybe costs him a job is
not.

~~~
GHFigs
Reality is not so clear cut. There is a huge span of information which is
useful to potential enemies without directly being a risk to people's lives.

For instance, in the Army counterintelligence report that Wikileaks recently
published one of the classified items (much of the content of the report was
actually unclassified information) lists certain countries that were believed
to have the capacity to hack Wikileaks. Now, if you were (say) North Korea,
then your presence or absence on that list tells you something about what the
US knew about your cyberwarfare capabilities. If you were the US, leaking this
information undermines your desire to not reveal all you know, and might even
reveal something about your own intelligence capability.

I've intentionally chosen a fairly benign example because my point is not that
_this_ information is so valuable, but that classification of information does
not simply break down into "nukes" and "embarrassing".

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caffeine
I want to help them out by writing software, but I live in a CIA-infested
country (the UK) and these reports make me genuinely afraid of reaching out.
While I greatly admire their courage and respect their cause, I'm not really
brave enough to sacrifice myself for the greater good.

~~~
ErrantX
I've reached out as number of times to them and never had a reply... which
kinda sucks

~~~
Vivtek
Yeah, same here. I'd guess they have no end of volunteers, probably about
0.05% of whom actually end up panning out.

~~~
wizard_2
I've worked with non profits (habitat for humanity, etc) who were too busy to
take on more help. Each untrained helper needs resources to be trained. If
you're lucky they need of unskilled labor (or untrained labor - skilled is the
wrong word) but if they don't then you probably wont get a call back.

I've started some of the work unsolicited. Advertising and fundraising to be
precise. I kept them in the loop and eventually they want to be involved.

Organizations often need to put more work into allow people to help them but
they often need to put more work into everything.

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krschultz
Alright, has anyone actually read some of these documents.

Check out the US'govt report about WikiLeaks posted on WikiLeaks.

<http://file.wikileaks.org/file/us-intel-wikileaks.pdf>

Am I the only one that after reading it agrees with the government?

Specifically WikiLeaks posted classified documents showing troop equipment
allocation and anti-IED jamming equipment specs. What possible purpose does
this serve? There is nothing embarrassing/illegal about what our troops are
carrying and how they are fighting IEDs, but there is a lot of extremely
valuable intel for the enemy in those documents. Honestly the guys at
WikiLeaks are lucky as hell they live in a country where they are not strung
up for treason already. You would not be seeing Tweets from these guys in many
parts of the world.

Frankly I don't WANT to help WikiLeaks. If you are endangering my friends
actually deployed, what is the purpose of leaking this stuff? To show how good
your sources are? So the guys running WikiLeaks value their journalism cred
and their own ego over the lives of people actually relying on IED jammers to
work?

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tbrownaw
"We freely admit to doing illegal stuff, and the government needs to stop
trying to figure out what we're up to." Yeah, that makes sense...

~~~
cmelbye
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
-- Henry David Thoreau

~~~
tokenadult
That's easy for Thoreau to say when he lives alone in the woods. And that
peaceful place in the woods was only his to live in because earlier English-
speaking settlers in North America had gained that land from the aboriginal
inhabitants.

~~~
olefoo
Thoreau spent a year in the woods, but he was not an anchorite by any stretch
of the imagination. Besides being a civil libertarian he was also an
accomplished engineer who developed pencil making machinery and built milling
equipment.

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oscardelben
Does anyone know if there's an archive of documents released by wikileaks?
I've not been able to find them through the website's homepage.

~~~
metamemetics
<http://mirror.wikileaks.info/>

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DanielBMarkham
I've got some very mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, the more open the society is the better it is for everybody.
Wikileaks performs an impressive and valuable service by allowing a place for
information to get published.

On the other hand, even in a perfect world, hell if everything should be out
in the open for everyone. There are lots of examples, going back as far in
history as you'd like, of state secrets serving a necessary and important
role. Even averting war.

So my question to the wikileaks folks is this: where's the line? Would you
publish anything, and the more secret the better? Or is there some kind of
rule you use? Would you publish nuclear launch codes? The identities of spies
in countries that would execute them for it?

There is way, way, way too much secrecy in the world, especially among U.S.
Agencies. They classify anything they want, and the biggest reason is
political CYA. Having said that, I can't give carte blanche to Wikileaks
either. Before I support them, I need to know what standards they have.

Even more serious, this isn't bean bag, guys. A country pays a few billion to
keep something secret and you blow the whistle? You might want to make sure
your life insurance is up to date.

So is wikileaks there for the leaks? Or there for the public? I don't think
the two goals are the same thing.

~~~
ytinas
>Would you publish nuclear launch codes?

Afaik, wikileaks has never been about publishing launch codes. It's about
revealing cover ups and there should be no government cover ups. If they are
trying to hide something they've done then it's probably because it's illegal.

~~~
Estragon
IOW, if you're not doing anything wrong, you can't have anything to hide? :-)

~~~
analyst74
There is a difference between personal privacy (which does not affect others)
and government secrecy (which affects many people).

If the military/police force killed people, whether those people are
terrorists or civilians, the deed should be reported and let the public decide
whether it's good or bad.

Maybe the public decide killing a few civilians in a war is acceptable and
voted in agreement, who knows?

~~~
Silhouette
And what about government employees with access to sensitive information who
can't keep the secrets they agreed to when they signed up? Do you think the
public should get to know who they are so they can decide whether the leakers
can still be trusted to hold government jobs?

------
pqs
The problem of Wikileaks is that it is centralised and, therefore, is
vulnerable. Freenet offers a much more resilient approach. It is true that
Freenet is not yet easy enough, but it is just a java application which almost
anyone can run. Of course, writing wikileaks.org on the browser bar is easier
and faster than installing Freenet, but it puts lives in danger. By the way,
there is a wikileaks mirror on Freenet. It might be better to do the other way
round, wikileaks should be a mirror of the freesite.

<http://freenetproject.org/>

update: of course, the lives in danger are those of the editors of wikileaks.

~~~
kierank
How do you know it's centralised?

~~~
pyre
It has a centralized structure. There is a hierarchy of responsibility, etc.
There is an 'entity' to attack, whether it's the servers, or the
editors/leaders/etc. Which is different from something that is truly
distributed where each person is -- for all intents and purposes -- equal to
anyone else in the group.

~~~
pqs
That's it. If the server is down, goodbye wikileaks. If the bank accounts are
seized, goodbye wikileaks. If the leaders are imprisoned, good bye wikileaks.

Freenet offers a more resilient architecture.

~~~
kierank
They don't just have one server in one location. They're not stupid.

~~~
pqs
Ok, then they have 10 servers on 10 locations. That's not resilient enough.

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nihilocrat
If they supposedly have the video, why don't they just release it?

~~~
ErrantX
From the article:

 _Some of the new interest is related to a film exposing a U.S. massacre we
will release at the U.S. National Press Club on April 5_

Personally I'm willing, for the moment, to take on faith everything posted so
far (and that they have a video of some kind) - we'll see what happens April
5th.

~~~
nihilocrat
I'm okay with waiting, but I'm just wondering why a site that's about leaking
things is holding a carrot in front of us.

I have a strange feeling that the video is not as juicy as we're lead to
believe, and it's just a publicity stunt, which is why I'm posing the question
to HN.

~~~
lallysingh
The submitter can request Wikileaks to hold onto a document until a specific
date.

~~~
DougBTX
Clearly we need a WikileaksWikileaks

~~~
p0ppe
Such as <http://www.wikileak.org/> ?

