WikiLeaks, Information and
Systems
by prof. em. Kristo Ivanov, UmeŒ
university, (June 2011 rev. 111203)
What
follows is an analysis of an article by Massimo Calabresi in TIME Magazine on
"WikiLeak's War on secrecy" (printed in vol. 176,
No. 24, December 13, 2010, pp. 20-27) in terms of my doctoral dissertation
"Quality-control of Information" (1972) and its summary
with extensions in the book Systemutveckling och Rþttssþkerhet (1986, in Swedish, title to
be translated as "Systems Development and Rule of Law", in pdf-format
66MB). The purpose is to foster the application of a particular theoretical
approach and conceptualization of information and systems to issues where such
information displays its greatest complexity because of its technological,
social, and political context. The analysis will proceed by interpolating my
own text in italics within the text of the article, below.
WikiLeaks' War on Secrecy: Truth's Consequences
By MASSIMO CALABRESI Thursday,
Dec. 02, 2010
The Army says it was
a crime. When Private First Class Bradley Manning downloaded tens of thousands
of diplomatic cables to a CD-RW disc at an Army outpost in Iraq from November
2009 to April 2010, he broke 18 U.S. Code Section 1030(a)(1) — which criminalizes
unauthorized computer downloads. But this was no ordinary crime. When
This analysis is not made within the ambit of jurisprudence but
rather in terms of scientific rationality or philosophy of science. This
actualizes the scientific meaning of "authorization" beyond its
occasional, given, assumed formal legal meaning. From the point of view of
information science, authorization implies the action of an authorizer,
equivalent to an "expert" within the frame of a "Lockean
inquiring systems" as conceived by e.g. West Churchman in "The design
of inquiring systems" (1971, p. 99, please confer with my detailed index on this book
for all future references below). Consequently this also problematizes any
associate "criminalization" since the basic methodological issue is
who and how should authorize and how the legal text should be edited.
Criminalization by itself may lead to practical difficulties as it is shown
further below in this article. A scientific treatment of this is presented in a
Swedish doctoral dissertation by Claes Lernestedt "Kriminalisering:
Problem och Principer" (2003, in Swedish).
Manning allegedly
passed those electronic records on to self-described freedom-of-information
activist Julian Assange and his revolutionary website, WikiLeaks, he did
As in several other parts of this text by the author Massimo
Calabresi, as we will also see further on, there seems to be a tendency to
denigrate the person of Julian Assange, by means of diminishing words like, in
this case "self-described". It would not have been far-fetched to
assume that there is indeed a quite wide consensus in mass media and society in
describing Assange as being indeed a freedom-information activist without
adding "self-described". For instance, Wikipedia had no difficulty to describe him at
an early stage as both journalist and internet activist.
something much more
far-reaching: he caused governments to ask what is really a secret and to
assess how their behavior should change in an age when supposedly private
communications can be whizzed around the world at the stroke of a key.
WikiLeaks'
publication starting Nov. 28 of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables was the
largest unauthorized release of contemporary classified information in history.
It contained 11,000 documents marked secret; the release of any one of them, by
the U.S. government's definition, would cause "serious damage to national
security." In the U.S., the leak forced a clampdown on intelligence
sharing between agencies and new measures to control electronically stored
secrets. And diplomats from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the lowest
political officers worked to diminish the disclosures' impact on foreign
counterparts.
The repercussions of
the WikiDump are only beginning to play out. In Korea, the nuclear-armed regime
of Kim Jong Il learned that its longtime protector, China, may be turning on it
and is willing to contemplate unification of the peninsula under the leadership
of the South Korean government in Seoul. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
discovered through the leak that while his Arab neighbors were publicly making
nice, privately they were pleading with the U.S. to launch an attack against
Tehran's nuclear program. Whether that revelation weakens Iran's bargaining
position or whether it will encourage Iran's leaders to hunker down and be even
less cooperative in negotiations remains to be seen. What is plain is that in
Iran and elsewhere, the WikiLeaks revelations could change history.
But not all the
secrets now laid bare are as consequential. It is interesting — amusing,
even — to know that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi keeps a cadre of four
blond Ukrainian nurses, that a U.S. diplomat considers Kim Jong Il
"flabby" and that junior members of the British royal family have
maintained their unerring ability to stick a foot in their mouth. But none of
this can seriously be considered a threat to national security. As it turns
out, spuriously classified items like those are part of what has made WikiLeaks
possible. Treat them the way they deserve to be treated, and it might be easier
to keep the real stuff under wraps.
As the shades of
leaders long dead would surely say. For governments have been trying to keep
their intentions secret since the Greeks left a horse stuffed with soldiers
outside the gates of Troy, and they have been plagued by leaks of information
for about as long.
It is appropriate, at this stage, to question the use of sheer
word "government", without qualifying it about whether it should be
considered as "legitimate", often equated by us Westerners with
"democratic". It is a matter with important consequences for the
following discussions.
Some information
really should be secret, and some leaks really do have consequences: the Civil
War battle of Antietam might not have gone the way it did had Confederate
General Robert E. Lee's orders not been found wrapped around cigars by Union
troops a few days before. But in the past few years, governments have
designated so much
And so what? See above. Probably the evaluation of this example
would have been different according upon whether the evaluator had been a
confederate or unionist. I understand that there was no obvious legitimate
government, just as the case is today when comparing that time's USA-national
scene with today's international scene where it is not obvious that Assange
should only consider USA's national interests.
information secret
that you wonder whether they intend the time of day to be classified. The
number of new secrets designated as such by the U.S. government has risen 75%,
from 105,163 in 1996 to 183,224 in 2009, according to the U.S. Information
Security Oversight Office. At the same time, the number of documents and other
communications created using those secrets has skyrocketed nearly 10 times,
from 5,685,462 in 1996 to 54,651,765 in 2009. Not surprisingly, the number of
people with access to that Everest of information has grown too. In 2008, the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) found, the Pentagon alone gave
clearances to some 630,000 people.
As more individuals
handle more secrets in more places around the world, it naturally becomes
harder to keep track of them. But more than that, it diminishes the credibility
of the government's judgment about what should be secret. "When everything
is classified, then nothing is classified," said Supreme Court Justice
Potter Stewart in his judgment in the Pentagon papers case in 1971, when
documents detailing the U.S.'s involvement in Vietnam were leaked to the
Washington Post and New York Times. Then, said Potter, "the
system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless, and to be
manipulated by those intent on self-protection or self-promotion."
At this point the reader should note the introduction of the new
term "credibility". To begin with it should be referred back to the
previously implied "legitimacy", or "degree of democracy"
in the establishment of "government". That is, the greater is the
(democratic) legitimacy of the government, the greater its credibility. In
second place, in information science, credibility if not referred back to the
questioned "authorization-authority" should be related mainly to the
accuracy of information. In this respect credibility is just one among dozens
of other ad-hoc attributes of information, akin to those that were listed in my
doctoral dissertation cited above (p. 1.2 and appendix 1), and exemplified by
terms such as dependability, controllability, reliability, acceptability, and
such. The main message of the dissertation was that most if not all those
poorly defined terms could be subsumed under the more general term of accuracy,
meaning that the greater the accuracy, the greater is, in our present case, its
credibility.
Nor is it just that
governments are calling more things secret when they are really not.
Yes, indeed, but the main problem includes the scientific or
rational determination of what is "real".
That development has
happened at the same time as the information-technology revolution, which has
made the dissemination of data, views, memos and gossip easier than it has ever
been in human history. Put that together, and you have the potential for the
sort of shattering event that has just happened — especially when a
figure like Assange is around, determined to turn potential into reality.
Yes, but the potential of dissemination, paradoxically, has not
only the potential for the sort of "shattering" event, but also the
potential for a redeeming or rehabilitating event in the sense that it may pull
together multi-perspective and multi-cultural minds that can cooperate in
increasing the credibility of the information, or the credibility of its
classification as secret. (Quality-control of information, chap. 4-5).
The Australian-born
hacker turned fugitive political activist has launched a crusade predicated on
the idea that nearly all information should be free and that confidentiality in
government affairs is an affront to the governed. In the process, he has published
everything from a
video of U.S. troops killing civilians in Iraq to the documents behind
Here the text displays again the refined and sophisticated
slandering of the person Julian Assange in using the particular cluster of
words "hacker turned fugitive political activist has launched a
crusade", plus the tacit affirmation that he claims it is an affront to
the governed. If we assume that the not yet convicted Assange is to be assumed
innocent and in good will, and we imagine for a moment to look at things from
his point of view, we may imagine the following: it is the USA government that
has launched a "crusade" (president Bush initial expression that had
to be precipitously revised) against an invisible Iraqi government while
unavoidably targeting civilians. So, from this point of view it is the
confidentiality in military affairs (rather than pure governmental affairs)
that is an affront both to the unknowing American public and to the Iraqi
population. And finally, it was not only a matter or "killing
civilians" but, as the videos from the
helicopter attack show, also a matter of killing rescuers of wounded and dying
civilians who were trying to bear the bodies into a minivan where later were
found two wounded children.
the so-called
Climategate scandal to Wesley Snipes' tax returns. Assange is nothing if not an
equal-opportunity sieve; the possibility that he might possess a 5-gigabyte
hard drive belonging to a senior Bank of America official sent the bank's stock
price down 3% on Nov. 30. "This organization practices civil
obedience," Assange declared in an interview with TIME via Skype from an
undisclosed location where he is hiding from authorities seeking to question
him about rape allegations he denies. WikiLeaks "tries to make the world
more civil and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in the
opposite direction," he said.
The Way Things Once
Were.
The view that Assange is
doing the world a favor is not, unsurprisingly, how others view him. While
every President in the past 20 years has fought secrecy inflation — or
said they have — all have seen the need for a degree of confidentiality
and secrecy in government affairs. "In almost every profession,"
Hillary Clinton said on Nov. 29, "people rely on confidential
communications to do their jobs." But as more things get called secret and
more people have access to what is said to be secret and more of them know that
WikiLeaks is standing there (well, somewhere) ready to receive those secrets
like a slobbery Labrador catching any stick thrown its way, then the question
becomes, Can the U.S. government — or any government — rely on
confidential communications to do its business in the way that Clinton would
like?
Once again, there is a slandering language in describing
WikiLeaks (Assange) as a "slobbery Labrador catching any stick thrown its
way". To begin with it is not "any stick" since it must have some
potential public interest. Furthermore, it is not a matter of whether any
government can rely on confidential communication (where now confidential is
equated with secret) but rather whether this confidentiality is justified and
necessary. Harlan Cleveland, an American diplomat, educator, and
author who wrote two timely and relevant books on "The future
executive" (1972) and "The knowledge executive: Leadership in an information
society" (1985) also wrote in the magazine Operation Research (September-October
1973) an article on "Systems, purposes and the Watergate" which for
our purposes can be seen as a summary. He tersely suggests a key question when
in lack of an affirmative code of ethics: "If this action is held up to
public scrutiny, will I still feel that it is what I should have done, and how
I should have done it?". He maintains that "if your action depends
for its validity on its secrecy, watch out!" and "if your intended
line of action cannot be persuasively explained to the uninvolved, you better
look for a new line of action." In The Future Executive (pp. 115-120)
Cleveland presents analyses related to the so called Pentagon Papers in 1971 and
to the war in Vietnam, as to the earlier the Cuban crisis. He repeats the suggested question
"How will I feel if this advice is later held up to public scrutiny?"
and "Does this action of mine really have to be taken behind a curtain?",
concluding that if its validity depends on its secrecy, there is at least a
fifty-fifty chance that there is something wrong with the picture.
Not long ago, the
answer to that question would have been easy: yes. WikiLeaks could not have
existed during the Cold War. Back then, sensitive U.S. information was
This historical account appears to be defective, at least in the
sense that it does not mentions the famous case (see above) of the Pentagon
Papers, and all the diplomatic and organizational considerations presented by
Harlan Cleveland in "The Future Executive" (see also above). A
conspicuous example is Cleveland quotation "Eight and half years and
45.000 American deaths later [not to mention non-American deaths, my note] the
New York Times had concluded that it was all right to publish Top Secret
documents" (p. 116). The only difference in comparison with the WikiLeaks
case was that its role at the time was performed by mass media, or its Public
Executives who include, by definition, those self-appointed representatives of
people-in-general and organizers of the independent ways of mobilizing public
outrage (p. 120).
handled with a
diligence born of persistent Soviet attempts at espionage, just as Soviet
business was conducted with one eye open for those devious American snoops. In
Washington, paper copies of secrets were numbered, accounted for at the end of
the workday and stored in government-issue safes. Some documents were even
watermarked to indicate their origin and author and prevent reproduction (and
make their provenance easy to trace if someone was daft enough to try to copy
them). Wire transmissions — quaint! — were limited and, in the case
of very sensitive material, traveled only over proprietary networks using
encryption technology provided by the mathematicians at the National Security
Agency.
Then came the IT
revolution. At first, the U.S. government resisted its charms. In the
This may be defective writing of history. The U.S. government did
not resist its charms but, rather, misjudged the consequences of an IT
revolution that it enhanced by means of heavy investments in research,
including the establishment of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects
Agency Network, see below) that ultimately resulted in the Internet.
corporate world, the
evolution of the Internet and rapid data storage and retrieval made it possible
by the late 1980s to find and share information on an unimaginable scale. But
in government, agencies distrusted one another and often refused to share.
There was a long history of that: President Harry Truman and the CIA never
knew, for example, that the FBI and the Army had cracked the Soviet codebooks
after World War II. That interagency mutual suspicion continued until the
Berlin Wall fell — and beyond.
It had real costs
too. In 2005, the commission investigating the terrorist attacks of 9/11 found
that "poor information sharing was the single greatest failure of our
government in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks," as commission co-chair Lee
Hamilton put it in public testimony. The FBI, for example, had known that
al-Qaeda supporter Zacarias Moussaoui was attempting to learn to fly commercial
jets but failed to tell the CIA, even as the agency was desperately trying to
figure out the details of an airline plot it knew was coming. In the aftermath
of 9/11, intelligence sharing became an imperative.
In its response to
the new environment, the State Department created something that went by the
unlovely name of Net-Centric Diplomacy database, or NCD. The department stored
classified information on the database right up to the top-secret level.
Agencies across the government had access to State's information through their
own secure networks. The Pentagon's network, created in 1995, was called the
Secure Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, and was available to
everyone from top officers in the Pentagon to troops in the field helping to
track intelligence for their units.
It was one thing
— and a commendable one, within limits — to make it easier to share
information. But that development coincided with another one: the generation of
more secrets than ever. In 1995, Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12958, which
gave just
What is needed, at this point, is an analysis of WHY there was
that generation of more secrets than ever. It would be significantly
symptomatic if the reason for this were that lack of secrecy is that it would
have required extensive discussion and negotiation with lots of people, even
inside the government. But the lack of such discussion and negotiation by
itself decreases the credibility or rather the accuracy itself of the
information that is maintained in secret, all according to the earlier mentioned
principles of "quality-control of information". Even within
government itself there would be disagreement about the validity of the
information, explaining the difficulties mentioned above of "sharing"
information across agencies. And this would explain why at the same time as one
increased the number of secret documents also succumbed to the structural need
to obviate the above by making it available to a greater number of people, as
described further below.
20 officials,
including the President, the power to classify documents as top secret, meaning
their disclosure would likely "cause exceptionally grave damage to the
national security" of the U.S. But sneakily, the order also allowed those
20 selected officials to delegate their authority to 1,336 others. Nor was that
all: according to a 1997 bipartisan congressional report of a committee chaired
by the scourge of government secrecy, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, such
"derivative" classification authority was eventually handed to some 2
million government officials and a million industry contractors.
Consequently there is indeed a paradox: if the secret information
would have to be accepted as usable and therefore accurate (cf.
"quality-control of information") then it is presupposed that it had been
as widely discussed and negotiated before it was established and stored for
retrieval as usable and true. But then it would have been no "secret"
anymore. Secret then comes to mean the same as authorized, and truth,
technical, scientific or military truth, comes to be equivalent to the politics
which established authorizing administration according to the positivistic
doctrine of separation between politics and administration. See below.
(3 of 4)
The more government
officials are empowered to classify documents, of course, the more people doing
government work need clearances to look at it. In its deep investigation of
American secrecy earlier this year, the Washington Post found that some
854,000 people inside and out of government had top-secret clearance, the
highest classification. Ensuring all those people can be trusted isn't easy,
especially since the issuance of clearances has been flawed and lacked rigor.
The GAO sampled 3,500 of the investigative reports that officials use to
determine whether to give clearances for Pentagon personnel and found that 87%
"were missing at least one type of documentation required by the federal
investigative standards." The missing documents included information on
previous employment and complete security forms. Some 12% of the reports didn't
include a subject interview. Since 2005, the GAO has put the flawed clearance
process on its list of the government problems that pose the highest risk to
U.S. security — where it remains.
More damaging,
perhaps, is that a fundamental mistrust of government is a natural outgrowth of
secrecy inflation. As the number of secrets expanded in the 1990s, Moynihan
observed in his 1997 report, the imperative to keep them secret diminished.
Do not forget, however, the possibility of the other way round:
that the fundamental fondness for secrecy instead of open discussion and
negotiation is a natural outgrowth of mistrust of democratic government. This
is often expressed in terms that democracy "costs" too much, both in
sheer economic terms and in terms or risks of allowing that influence be
exerted by people and groups who are not qualified in terms of knowledge or
honesty or strength of character.
Because "almost
everything was declared secret, not everything remained secret and there were
no sanctions for disclosure," Moynihan wrote. And the more secrets leak,
the worse it is for government credibility: either they are important and the
sanctions are too minimal, or they are unimportant and the public believes
there's no point in keeping secrets at all. "When trusted insiders no longer
have faith in the judgment of government regarding secrets, then they start to
substitute their own judgment," says William J. Bosanko, head of the
Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives, which oversees
what gets classified. "And that's a big problem."
And why should this, applicable to "trusted insiders",
not be legitimately applied to the justification of WikiLeaks-Assange? Might he
not represent those who no longer have faith in the judgment of government
regarding secrets, and start to substitute their own judgment?
The Wizard from Oz. Not to Julian Assange it's not. Like him or not, the
WikiLeaks founder has now become so well known that he has the power to impose
his judgment of what should or shouldn't be secret.
Yes, but from his legitimate point of view the problem is that a
few influential people inside government have the power to impose their
judgment on what should be secret without submitting such judgment while
insulating themselves from democratic process or its correspondent in
organizational theory, going under the label of "participation". but
this is one important and unrecognized effect of "de-humanized"
technology, in the sense that the elimination of multiple human links in the
process of performing a task also implied less social cross-control. If it gets
easier for a small number of military personnel to "impose their judgement"
in deciding the killing a certain number of civilians without the interference
of mediating judgments, governmental or not, then it is also easier for
somebody like Assange to spread information without extensive social control.
Assange is a story in
himself. He was born in Townsville, Queensland, in 1971 to parents who ran a
theater company and moved more than 30 times before he turned 14. At one point,
reportedly, he, his baby half brother and his divorced mother fled her
boyfriend for years across Australia. In 1991, Assange was arrested with a few
other Australian teenagers and charged with more than 30 counts of hacking and
other related computer crimes. He studied mathematics at the University of
Melbourne but never graduated and has said he dropped out because his fellow
students were doing research for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency [ARPANET], the group that is widely credited with having
invented the Internet but that also helped produce advanced weaponry. Assange
became a talented programmer, developing in 1997 what he has said was a
cryptographic system for use by human-rights workers.
By early 2006,
Assange realized what an opportunity had been created by the confluence of
technology and expanded secrecy. Reportedly spurred by the leak of the Pentagon
papers, Assange unveiled WikiLeaks in December 2006. The idea was to serve as a
drop box for anyone, anywhere, who disagreed with any organization's activities
or secrets, wherever they might be. Originally, a handful of activists recruited
by Assange ran the website; it now has a full-time staff of five and about 40
volunteers, as well as 800 occasional helpers, Assange has said. Assange
remains nomadic, moving from country to country and frequently asserting that
he is being followed. An arrest warrant has been issued by Swedish authorities
who want to question Assange about allegations stemming from accusations
reportedly made by two women regarding rape, sexual molestation and unlawful
coercion. Assange denies the charges, but Interpol issued a "red
notice" on him.
In its first year,
WikiLeaks' database grew to 1.2 million documents, and according to its
website, it now receives 10,000 new ones every day. Among its list of millions
of publications are some impressive scoops: documents alleging corruption by
the family of Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, secret Church of Scientology
manuals and an operations manual from the U.S. detention center at Guant‡namo
Bay revealing a determination to hide prisoners from the International Committee
for the Red Cross.
Initially, Assange
was treated with benign neglect by the U.S. government, which seemed more
amused than concerned about his activities. Then came Bradley Manning. A
22-year-old who had trained as an intelligence analyst with the U.S. Army in
Arizona, Manning shipped out to Contingency Operating Station Hammer in Baghdad
last year. In May, Manning told a hacker based in Carmichael, Calif., that he
allegedly had access to both SIPRNet and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence
Communications System, JWICS, which is used by government officials and
contractors for the transmission of top-secret information. Previously, SIPRNet
users had been prevented from downloading data to removable media, as they are
on JWICS, but at some point Central Command removed that restriction,
Administration officials tell TIME.
In May, Manning told
his hacker friend that he had downloaded data to a Lady Gaga–labeled CD
and that he had given to WikiLeaks a video from Afghanistan, a classified Army
document on the security threat of WikiLeaks and 260,000 U.S. diplomatic
cables. The hacker turned him in, and Administration officials say Manning is
the only suspect in the cables case. His lawyer did not return calls requesting
comment. In late May, the U.S. military arrested Manning. But that was much too
late. By then, WikiLeaks had the cables.
Assange can talk big
— he gave TIME a lecture on the Founding Fathers — and may have
something of a martyr complex. But he has shown himself an exceptionally
talented showman. Frustrated that prior postings received little attention, he
has
These ("Assange can talk big" and what follows above)
are further examples of refined textual demeaning of the figure of Assange in
an article that obviously claims to convey factual information. "Talk
big", gave a "lecture", "martyr complex", and what
comes to amount to a "talented showman". As a reader I must assume
that TIME, in the best case with the purpose of capturing the sympathy of
readers who are critical of Assange and WikiLeaks, capitalizes over the fact
that Assange has neither academic qualifications nor political position in the
USA-establishment. This is supplemented some few lines later (see below) by
referring to his display of "autodidactic erudition", "launched
into a discourse", etc.
arranged embargoed
access to his more spectacular recent releases for the New York Times,
the Guardian in Britain, Der Spiegel in Germany, El Pa’s
in Spain and Le Monde in France. His release in April of a 2007 video
from Iraq shocked Americans. Of his latest effort, which he says is producing a
new, original story every two minutes, he tells TIME: "The media scrutiny
and the reaction from government are so tremendous that it actually eclipses
our ability to understand it."
The WikiLeaks founder
mixes radicalism with a heavy dose of autodidactic erudition. When asked about
Britain's hard-line Official Secrets Act, which once punished the disclosure of
virtually anything that one ever saw inside a British government office,
including the state of the cheese sandwiches, Assange wrote, "The dead
hand of feudalism still rests on every British shoulder; we plan to remove
it." When asked by TIME how he justified his actions, he launched into a
discourse on the "revolutionary movement" that produced the U.S.
Constitution and opined that the "Espionage Act is widely viewed to be
overbroad, and that is perhaps one of the reasons it has never been properly
tested in the Supreme Court."
Some day he may test
the assertion in person, as the U.S. government's benign neglect has given way
to real hostility. Congressman Pete King has called for WikiLeaks' designation
as a terrorist organization. On Nov. 29, Attorney General Eric Holder said
Justice is investigating the matter. But even if he could be caught,
prosecuting Assange would be hard, and Administration officials say that for
now the probe is primarily focused on Manning. "There's not a lot of
precedent there," says one. "And then there's the First Amendment
question of whether [WikiLeaks] is a media outlet."
Fixing the System.
In one way, President Obama agrees with Assange: he
too thinks there should be fewer secrets. On his first full day in office, Jan.
21, 2009, Obama issued a memo to agencies instructing them to embrace openness
and transparency. He then launched an interagency review of classification that
produced a Dec. 29, 2009, Executive Order requiring the millions of
"derivative" classifiers to receive regular training in what actually
needs classification or lose their clearance. The order also required agencies
to bring in outside experts to review classification guidance. Perhaps most
important, Obama's order forced those who classify information to identify
themselves on the documents they create. The main obstacle to classification
reform
In terms of theory of science and scientific methodology applied
to information this is a beautiful example of the application of a (USA-)
culturally conditioned "Lockean inquiring system" based on agreement
of "expert judgments" (Churchman, 1971, pp. 99, 110, 118-9, 198-9). That
is agreement among experts authorized by a "powerful authority" that
in our culture is equated to an authorization or legitimation by a perfect Democracy,
equivalent to earlier times' perfect God. What is most interesting is that this
kind of rationality that might be understood in a purely military tactical
context (where the democratic ideal is often hierarchical) and is applied at
the level of strategy and at the political level of analysis where conflict
calls for more advanced conceptions of rationality.
has been the Defense
Department, which one senior Administration official describes as
"hostile" to the effort, because of a reflexive belief that secrecy
protects the troops. To push back, Obama in July ordered all agencies to issue
regulations implementing his December 2009 order by the end of this year. The
Pentagon has produced a draft.
None of that makes
Obama and Assange allies. Quite the opposite. Obama is finding that rebuilding
the credibility of government generally is difficult; shoring up the
credibility behind government secrecy is even harder. Assange isn't making his
job easier. The
Shoring up the credibility of government behind secrecy" is not
only "harder" but outrightly, ultimately unjustified and dangerous
unless one embarks on the kind of considerations mentioned earlier with
reference to Harlan Cleveland, which, in turn, do not invalidate the ultimate
legitimacy of "leaks".
massive cable leak,
says Clinton, "puts people's lives in danger, threatens national security
and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared
problems." The leak has also led the U.S. to tighten, not loosen, its
security protocols.
This train of arguments ignores that those supporting WikiLeaks
have a different conception of "people", including for instance
civilian casualties in invasion and bombing of other countries, beyond what
they see as simplistic conceptions of "national security" and of with
whom, what problems are "shared". This leads to the question of who
and how will define what is "international" security, rather than
national, to which neither Assange (Australian national) nor his associates in
an international organization like WikiLeaks needs to subscribe to.
After consulting with
the White House in the run-up to the WikiLeaks dump, State temporarily cut the
link between its NCD database and SIPRNet. CentCom has reimposed its restrictions
on using removable media, is newly requiring that a second person approve the
download of classified information to an unsecure device and is installing
software designed to detect suspicious handling of secrets.
The requirement that "a second person approve" is a
significant hint at the need of cross-validation that ultimately introduces the
political dimension in an improper simplistic technical-administrative
(bureaucratic) conception of the whole problem, coloured as it is by the
historically and culturally dominant (particularly in the USA) positivistic,
Lockean, organization theory (e.g. Herbert Simon, "Administrative
Behavior", 1947) .
Whether all that will
work is an open question. "The world is moving irreversibly in the
direction of openness, and those who learn to operate with fewer secrets will
ultimately have the advantage over those who futilely cling to a past in which
millions of secrets can be protected," says a former
intelligence-community official. From the perspective of the U.S. government,
which has just seen the unauthorized release of 11,000 secret documents, it may
be hard to imagine what that world would look like. But at least one senior
government official seems comfortable with where things are headed. Defense Secretary
Robert Gates — no stranger to real secrets, since he served as CIA chief
and Deputy National Security Adviser under President George H. W. Bush —
shrugged off the seriousness of the cable dump Nov. 30. Said Gates: "Is
this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign
policy? I think fairly modest."
Not everybody is that
nonchalant, which is why the President's real goal is to find a balance between
keeping secret what should be secret, making transparent what should be
transparent and doing it all in such a way as to augment the effective conduct
of government. Potter Stewart had a go at defining such a balance in his
Pentagon papers opinion in 1971. "The hallmark of a truly effective
internal security system," the Justice said, "would be the maximum
possible disclosure, recognizing that secrecy can best be preserved only when
credibility is truly maintained." Wise words, from the heart of the
American establishment. Words that Assange admiringly cites on the WikiLeaks
website.
This fits perfectly (again) the conclusions of my dissertation "Quality-control of
information" where the quality or truthfulness of information is a
function of its being submitted to the strongest possible disagreement. This is
so because information does not come in "atoms" or
"molecules" but it brings with itself hidden contextual, systemic
presuppositions. When exposure to such disagreement it is not deemed possible
because of potential "costs" or risks (military-diplomatic) it should
still be assumed that (as in the case of WikiLeaks and according to Harlan
Cleveland's conception) IF a "leak" should occur a disagreement
should could be met with moral and public conviction, that is, with no shameful
embarrassment, on the international arena of world media. This underscores the
importance and stability of the fundamental theory of "information"
face to recurrent and late events connected to information and knowledge. It
has long been my conviction that the ultimate test of any theory in its
usability in commenting and reaching conclusions in face of historical and late
events.
==================
FOR ILLUSTRATION AND COMPARISON: Registered "echo" comments
for this article from Time's website (edited selection - no check of original
spelling
errors).
WikiLeaks
cables available live in a nicely formatted table, see them at http://www.dazzlepod.com/cable/
Friday
10 dec 2010, 08.28.14 GMT+01:00
Cycarax
Oh my, my. Maybe
there should be censorship of Journalism of Hysteria. How strange that
Julian Assange can be assumed to be so dangerous while FOX News remains
untouchable. I guess Massimo Calabressi must really be afraid of the
truth if he can tolerate FOX but freaks out over WikiLeaks. And tell me,
who gets to assign such terms as "rogue activist" - and
"WikiDump" - verification please!!! How many real journalists
work for FOX?
What's worse,
Calabressi hasn't even done the most cursory research that shows that
WikiLeaks' does not publish anything that is not verified by the New York
Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and El Pais - all very legitimate, mainstream
media. Most real journalists have already acknowledged there is nothing that is
really "news" about WikiLeaks' revelations - including the games
China is playing with North Korea.
Check your facts
people, do your research - I have. I do not just run screaming into the
night, that the sky is falling.
Thursday 9 dec 2010,
23.01.18 GMT+01:00
Dilli
I find this article a
bit biased and busy trying to cover up the impact. Among other things, this
article indicates that the leak is not so harmful to the US. If so, why the top
US leaders including Hillary Clintom are worrying so much about this case? Why
the US diplomats on almost all of the countries are holding press releases
about these leaks trying to calm down the countries' governments. If the
revealation of US spying on UN officials is not harmful, then US government is
just shameless. Shame on US!
Thursday 9 dec 2010,
15.24.28 GMT+01:00
Magaly
Briceno
In its landmark ruling
in the Pentagon Papers case, the U.S. Supreme Cout said ''only a free and
unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government''.
Wednesday 8 dec 2010, 23.51.27 GMT+01:00
Vito Tums
So True. Yet we are
further from this standard than ever.
Thursday 9 dec 2010,
00.29.51 GMT+01:00
mph
What you say makes
excelent sense. However, your writing sucks worse than Ronald Reagan's
sense of honor.
Wednesday 8 dec 2010,
19.06.57 GMT+01:00
Lich King
Wednesday 8 dec 2010,
14.03.00 GMT+01:00
Vito Tums
RE:
"Assange can talk
big — he gave TIME a lecture on the Founding Fathers"
Perhaps TIME could use
a lecture on the Founding Fathers. Along with a lecture on
journalism.
RE:
"and may have
something of a martyr complex. But he has shown himself an exceptionally
talented showman"
Using this back-handed
form of character assassination is really what the problem is in the modern
media. The man as a lot of poise under pressure but these remarks make it clear
that you have lost whatever journalistic objectivity and integrity that you
started with in the beginning of this story. I suggest that you stay to writing
tabloid pieces if this is your standard. Brand status is not a substitute for
good work. Maybe that's the problem. Journalists have lowered their standard to
that of tabloid news. Give the readers what they want with the least amount of
risk to the corporation.
In the documentary film
Òthe Most Dangerous Man in America. There is a scene in which EllsbergÕs
attorney relates the input of a psychologist concerning jury selection.
The psychologist tells EllsbergÕs attorney not to have middle-aged men that
have sacrificed principle for family or other reasons (i.e. corporate interest)
because they would resent a man of integrity such as Ellsberg. Clearly, sir you
fit this profile.
Wednesday 8 dec 2010,
07.57.59 GMT+01:00
Marcos
Ribeiro
The big picture is
clear: WikiLeaks promotes transparency, and this is a very beneficial trend. :)
During the process,
some local interests may be hindered, but this happens in every evolution
process. (In this case, the most hindered will be the political agents.)
These realities will
also lead to a better and stricter definition of what public matters deserve to
be kept secret.
Wednesday 8 dec 2010,
06.48.32 GMT+01:00
Iru
Margarita Verchere Olavarrieta
The problem is that the
employees of the goverment think that they are acting well, this
situation only demonstrates all really different. The strategy
diplomatic must be changed, when people doesn«t agree with them, they
react in bad way, and it isn«t the behavior, this only shows that people are
the reason.
Wednesday 8 dec 2010,
03.47.10 GMT+01:00
Iru
Margarita Verchere Olavarrieta
ÀEn quŽ est‡s
pensando...?
Wednesday 8 dec 2010,
03.42.50 GMT+01:00
Iru
Margarita Verchere Olavarrieta
I think that the
mundial situation was bad, Iran was going to atack USA, and North corea was
enemy of south corea, now the enemy from Iran is not USA now the problem will
be with the islamic people, and north corea will look for another
direction. all what is saying the USA goverment is not the truth. The situation
for USA will change will be better in some cases, and maybe the
diplomatic strategic will have to change because the method was using was
a desaster.
Wednesday 8 dec 2010,
03.42.07 GMT+01:00
JUAN DAVID
it was too late to
catch him, "Ideas are Bulletproof and people should not be scared of
Governments, governments should be scared of people " I'd like to see
Obama's answer next week.
This gentleman
definately is the man of the year!
Wednesday 8 dec 2010,
02.24.52 GMT+01:00
Dejan Dj
They are harmed. They
are afraid. The truth horrifies them. They panic, and as everyone in this
situation make mistakes. Like any regime caught in lies and manipulation, and
without a vision and ideas, resorts to violence. Shameless as they are they
think that by attacking "ad hominem" instead of answering questions,
they can evade the inevitable: avalanche of truth which has been launched.
Wednesday 8 dec 2010,
02.19.46 GMT+01:00
Tony
Magrathea
War on secrecy?
Being run by the politician that demanded Assange be taken from the person of
the year list.
Or the paypal, visa,
mastercard fiasco - you can donate to white supremacists but not wikileaks.
Wat on secrecy.
All praise and bow down to the first ammendment, except when a foreigner
embarasses our beloved politcians.
So will time be
attending the freedom of speech in press conference next May?
Wednesday 8 dec 2010,
01.01.03 GMT+01:00
kent cooke
also agree with
htun lin in the comments below. i'm wondering if the elite almost extinct
free press will do more investigative journalism in the swedish fish affair?
i find it ironic how the lazy press and their cowardly treatment seems to
be absent in sweden to question the authority or other citizens about the
relationship of u.s.;sweden diplomocy.
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
23.45.21 GMT+01:00
Magaly
Briceno
The truths are 'The
Cablegate'. Secrecy is the hidden contents from 'The Cablegate'. The freedom
went release and knowledge by all for 'The Cablegate'. The consequence is the
confinement behind bars of truth, secrecy and freedom.
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
22.15.39 GMT+01:00
Carlos
Garc’a Campillo
WikiLeaks' War on
Secrecy: Truth's Consequences - TIME -
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
20.50.17 GMT+01:00
Artur
Barrera
Secrecy? Shut your
mouth. Between two secrecy is peace of fears!
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
18.41.44 GMT+01:00
Htun Lin
Excellently written
article putting the whole "WikiLeaks" story in context.
I had to chuckle at
Congressman Ben King's assertion that "WikiLeaks should be classified as a
terrorist organization". Well, he IS *right* in a sense. Assange's
organization has no doubt struck terror in the hearts of all those rightwingers
who think their own terrorisms in the form of prisoner-tortures, unlawful
detentions, "renditions", wanton strafing of civilians as
"collateral damage"-- all these fascists who try to hide their own
human-rights atrocities-- who are now DESERVEDLY EXPOSED. (ps: The
'Times' editors should be a bit more careful in their choice of words. In
another article the headline reads: "Assange: China has potential
for Reform". What he REALLY said was "In a highly repressive
closed society like China, something like Wikileaks can have the potential for
reform in China" (Or something to that effect). He also DID NOT say
"Clinton should resign". What he really said was something
like: "To the extent that the Secretary of State perhaps aided and
abetted these foreign governments to commit these atrocities, it would call for
resignation if US laws were broken."
Finally, it has become
obvious, the REAL question is "What is a genuine secret?"
Something the President promised to figure out and reform when he entered
office. Did Assange help or hinder that reform effort, is a valid
question. But, as we now learn, if 1.2 million "analysts"
with clearance are deeming 54 million pieces of information "secret",
are they really "secrets", or are we simply living in a society
that's virtually Francoist in mentality?
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
17.24.02 GMT+01:00
atmat
So, Assange is exceptionally
talented 'showman'. The commentary on Assange's character comes and goes. What
about Pete King? No comments or characterizations on his remarks? Obama? No.
Clinton? Of course not!
Actually, I like the
the way much of USA mainstream media deals with the thing: They all move the
conversation to questions like: "How must USA government learn to encrypt
it's secret better." than how about actually changing the way policy's are
made? For everyones sake?
But noooooo, don't bite
the hand that feed us!
After all Kennedy gave
an excellent speech about free press. He ended up dead.
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
15.10.26 GMT+01:00
Jym Allyn
US Military regulations
state that it is illegal to obey an illegal order. That concept makes the
US military almost unique in human history.
As an Army Reserve
officer in 1974, my fear was that if Richard Nixon did not resign there would
be rioting in the streets. My biggest fear was
that I did not know
which side I would be on.
As a former Republican,
because of the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Halliburton-Cheney "war of
choice" in Iraq, I have come to the conclusion that the Republican party
has done more harm to our country in the last 10 years than the Taliban ever
did.
Or as Pogo said,
"we have met the enemy, and he is us."
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
14.54.39 GMT+01:00
Tom Binns
Hitler was Time man of
the year in 1938 but Time appear to have remove Assange from their poll for
2010. He was No.1.
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
14.35.18 GMT+01:00
Artur
Barrera
They have not removed
it, voting continues. http://tinyurl.com/322ym87
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
17.46.56 GMT+01:00
A Winrar Is
Me
If these nations are
democratic (which the United States of America is, a democratic nation), then
why is there secrecy? That defeats the purpose of being a democratic nation on
ALL levels.
*sigh* It's like the
Americans are becoming a Republic. I'm not American, as I've lived in Canada my
whole life, but I think that you guys need a government that isn't so goddamned
secretive and censoring. The US requested google take off 30 000 web pages so
far. Canada? We've requested 0.
Anyhow, mirror
wikileaks, release all information, because they can't do anything at this
point. Arrest Julian Assange if it pleases you (sorry Julian!), but there's
always going to be a backup. There's hundreds of mirrors of wikileaks already,
people have downloaded wikileaks, people are hosting it. It will never go away,
and the US government is pissed off.
tl;dr: american
government is butthurt because they cant stop wikileaks and they are becoming a
republic.
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
06.42.28 GMT+01:00
DISCORDIAN
SOCIETY
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270676204929
Tuesday 7 dec 2010,
00.29.53 GMT+01:00
cecilsealy
JUST SAYING. IF I HAD
THIS HUGH AMOUNT OF INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL IN COMPUTER WIZARDRY I WOULD GET MORE
SATISFACTION BEING A MODERN DAY ROBIN HOOD, A LOT MORE PEOPLE WOULD BE CHEERING
FOR YOU JULIAN. I WOULD NOT FOOL AROUND WITH STUFF THAT MAKES AN ALREADY
CYNICAL WORLD MORE PARANOID. YOU CAN'T FIGHT ENTRENCHED EVIL ALL ALONE MAN.
JUST SAYING. GOOD LUCK.
Monday 6 dec 2010,
22.25.19 GMT+01:00
Dejan Dj
THE REVOLUTION WILL BE
TELEVISED
Wikileaks is, and must
remain so, one needed, significant effort of the free world intelligence to
fight against the beast (read as Republicans, right Democrats, and
unfortunately Canadian Conservatives). This moment in history is so critical,
although not yet recognized as such, that it deserves to be called
UNPRECENDENTED. Wikileaks is UNPRECENDENTED case in the legal, judicial
meaning, as well as moral, and should be viewed from this perspective.
Monday 6 dec 2010, 22.20.46
GMT+01:00
Bobby
Little
why in the h--- the
world leaders are not putting a red alert out for the finance terrorist that
attacked the world governments? because they are the same group of
terrorist. now tha a so called outsider is exposeing all of them the( u s
a) along with the rest of the terrorist want to make Julian Assange the
villian. look at wall street put the red alert tag on them da-- it and
start arresting them. they have hurt more people in the whole world and
we the people are forced to reward them for what they have done to us all. wall
street even placed a bet that they could bring down governments.
Monday 6 dec 2010,
19.03.11 GMT+01:00
xdiesp
In one of his photos on
the article, shows a bit of crotch. :-[
Monday 6 dec 2010, 08.44.57
GMT+01:00
Fred Vidal
Assange, a fascinating
Villain that inspired me for a new Mike Fuller Book about Reality: The
Constitutional Name starring Don McKenzie, the hero of the Secret Name (http://fredvidal.wordpress.com/). Bad and Good are brother and sister as Ying and Yang but not of
the same family, one white, one black, how does it work ...to make them
understant that they are adopted by the USA! It worked for Ying, not for Yang!
Monday 6 dec 2010, 02.42.05
GMT+01:00
Antti
Heiskala
Julian's
Sweden Time
http://www.lapsenoikeus.info/julian-assange-sweden-time.html
Sunday 5 dec 2010,
20.37.11 GMT+01:00
Reza Taheri
Join the Wiki
movement! Lets unify and stand up for
our rights! Share this on your Facebook wall and lets be strong together.
Support for Wikileaks
and Julian Assange is support for Democracy, Freedom and Governmental and
Corporate Accountability.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001423800748#!/pages/Wikimovement/145568648826670
Sunday 5 dec 2010,
12.57.10 GMT+01:00
tito99
can WIKILEAKS pls let
us know who spread ISLAMIPHOBIA around the world???
is it NEOCONs or AIPAC
or EXREMIST CHRISTIANS of the bible belt or The MASONS or FOX NEWS???
ALL the above, i guess.
pls advise.
Sunday 5 dec 2010,
09.16.55 GMT+01:00
Alexander
of Dublin
Wikileaks is indeed
alive and well... there are too many mirrors to stop! List at http://www.noconscience.com
Sunday 5 dec 2010,
00.43.57 GMT+01:00
BenjaminF
Wikileaks is alive and
well. Just cut and paste this number in your URL bar to go to
Wikileaks: 46.59.1.2
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
22.05.20 GMT+01:00
Bennett
Williams
The truth is that our
government lies. Julian Assange brings this truth to light. He has shown the
world just how horribly corrupt and determined the United States is to start
and sustain endless war. Julian Assange deserves the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
21.42.40 GMT+01:00
Silvia
Giehle
It is dangerous to be
right when the government is wrong. - Voltaire
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
14.58.09 GMT+01:00
Magaly
Briceno
Do you want to know the
truth? It's very simple, look at the media and see who is covering this
Breaking news. Why has retired support to WikiLeads? So the system works. Only
that the lie is slowly oxidized and appears its nucleus, which is the truth!
Everyone is in against WikiLeaks. Abraham Lincoln could tell us: 'You have been
invited by WikiLeaks to the party of the powerful, by the powerful, for the
powerful'
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
14.14.10 GMT+01:00
Artur
Landerzon Barrera Garcia
Assange has shaken our
values and principles, has shown us that a lie leads to war. He shows us the
dirty side of politics. He teaches us what we thought: the fondation of pure
rock, are in truth secrets glued to each other with our human miseries. Now I
understand because us are in financial crisis and in bankruptcy. By them and
their lies.
U.S. it isn't washing
its hands like Pontius Pilate. U.S. is accusing. Definitely in the cradle of
freedom, the truth won't set us free.
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
12.03.36 GMT+01:00
Addy Yeow
WikiLeaks cables
available at mirror site in interactive table format http://bit.ly/fuZWnM
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
08.13.13 GMT+01:00
Anthony
Perone
Assange has had the gonads
to say out loud.."Hey! USGov. you're a bunch of
lying..cheating...bullying..crooks looking only after your own jobs." (He
can do this because we have a free press) By saying what we are all thinking,
he has tweaked our conciences..and it hurts.
If he's such a looney
why are the Times..The Guardian...and Der Speigel giving him so much space.
Maybe its because he is very far from looney and may be our last freedom
fighter.
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
06.32.21 GMT+01:00
Sylvain
Pimpare
Democracy can only exist
if the individuals have as much privacy as possible and the Government as
little.
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
05.39.05 GMT+01:00
Anthony
Perone
AMEN!
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
06.35.20 GMT+01:00
Magaly
Briceno
Which is worse for us,
we're not talking about a democracy. U.S. is a Republic.
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
15.20.44 GMT+01:00
Isa Mukhtar
MORE PLEASE ..... TELL
US THE RECKLESSNESS OF THE AMERICANS. IF IT WILL ONLY PUT THEIR LIVES AT RISK
HOW MANY LIVES WERE DESTROYED BY THEIR STUPID USE OF MIGHT.
Friday 3 dec 2010,
17.06.12 GMT+01:00
toofer
Truth and consequences
or lies and half-truth consequences? Fact or fiction? Choses secrets.
Friday 3 dec 2010,
17.05.38 GMT+01:00
indonesiali
Open our eyes, open our
mind, what's next information about this case. Good information !
http://villageofindonesia.blogspot.com/
Friday 3 dec 2010,
16.49.42 GMT+01:00
Artur
Barrera
Here again
Assange wikileaks.ch
Friday3 dec 2010,
14.08.03 GMT+01:00
Magaly
Briceno
@sunglasses You
know ''The Freedom of Information Act U.S.''http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(United_States) I haven't nothing to say because, I know everything.
You didn't read the article, if you really read it, you not will understand it
What is your problem with Jews? You are a conceited that does not
support an intelligent conversation of five minutes.
Friday 3 dec 2010,
13.51.26 GMT+01:00
Magaly
Briceno
The most wanted man in
the world: anarchy, atheism, eros, and himself.
If is true, I take my
leave of him, but not of his truth!
http://www.opentopic.com/FrontPage/news/1016.
Is this another attack?
Friday 3 dec 2010,
11.26.03 GMT+01:00
Edmund
Singleton
If WikiLeaks did not
exist I would try to invent something like it or betteer...
Friday 3 dec 2010,
11.15.49 GMT+01:00
Robin
Donald deVallon
The
"bloody"point with Amis izzz that they can quote almost anyone and
anything.. but nevertheless have a solid word to say....
Again.. From the
GripeVine & Donah..//
Hey... don«t you know I
am not Ami but Navajo ?? Gettisborough or none...
Friday 3 dec 2010,
10.34.29 GMT+01:00
Robin
Donald deVallon
Thanhhientech.. who or
whateffah you are-- or brabbel... You may be right..
From the GripeVine
& Donah..//
Friday 3 dec 2010,
10.28.54 GMT+01:00
Robin
Donald deVallon
So, what«s new amd by
what standard ?? Is anyting I say or ever claimed new or "secret"
when cyber machines that have recorded anything I sputtered along.. can be
scrutinized by "experts" so my soul can be bared without me or God
knowing anything and nothing about it ??? You don«t have to be reguarded
"stupid" but you are... cyberlike.... like it or not.. From the
GripeVine & Donah..//
Friday 3 dec 2010,
05.23.38 GMT+01:00
Yiannis
Yiannopoulos
"It feels
refreshing to see the strings every now and then..." said the puppet to
the marionettes!
Friday 3 dec 2010,
04.35.12 GMT+01:00
Brian
Templeton
Is there even an
investigation going on into the leaks. Or is this another Governement
"Alone Leakman" Theory?
Friday 3 dec 2010,
02.02.13 GMT+01:00
Magaly
Briceno
It is outrageous to us,
but the cover of TIME Dec. 13, 2010 reflects the truth ...http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20101213,00.html...
I shall to say like
Abraham Lincoln
''Now we are engaged in
a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and
so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We
have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those
who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting
and proper that we should do this.''
Gettysburg Address
delivered 19 November
1863
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
23.42.41 GMT+01:00
Brian
Templeton
DAY 4 of the Leak...
and not one Journalist has asked which organization, department, or even
Country in which the documents were allegedly leaked from, Who could have
possibly leaked the documents, and if the documents are indeed authentic.
Where do Journalists
get their degrees from again? Do they have degrees?
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
22.57.52 GMT+01:00
Avatar139
@Brian Templeton -
While I agree with your opinion regarding the sorry state of
journalism, in this case I think the reaction from various agencies and
officials to Wikileaks regarding Cablegate fallout, particularly the notice
issued to them that they are "in possession of classified
materials and should immediately destroy them" should be clear
enough indicator as to their authenticity even for the press.
As for the source, if
you actually RTFA it's been pretty well established at this point that Private
Bradley Manning was the primary source of the documents but given how
widespread the access was to SIPRNet (gotta love how even
the contractors were given access and people are so astonished about
the idea that something like this ends up happening :-D ) there
really isn't any to establish if he acted alone in this matter so there isn't
much point in making the inquiry about additional sources to the military.
To be fair they did ask
Assange in the interview about additional sources for the leak but he
(unsurprisingly to everyone but the dolt asking the questions) told Time
to go pound sound (and was much nicer about it than I would have been,
certainly)...
Saturday 4 dec 2010,
08.51.27 GMT+01:00
Bob Bobson
Man of the Year 2010:
Julian Assange
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
22.53.26 GMT+01:00
Arlyn
Lichthardt
Best article from TIME
I've seen to date on the subject -- nice reporting! Its only weakness is the occasional
equivocating: mixing opinion about Assange's personality with the stated goal
of Wikileaks: transparency, a target which it hits, unequivocally.
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
20.43.26 GMT+01:00
GoldenAh
The Wikileaks story
makes the government look silly, which isn't hard to do today. The TSA already
does a handy job of it.
It looks like much ado
about nothing.
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
19.04.24 GMT+01:00
TheComingDepression
More info on the
economy and the fraud committed daily: http://www.thecomingdepression.blogspot.com
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
19.03.56 GMT+01:00
Artur
Landerzon Barrera Garcia
What happens when we
confuse things?
You can't handle the
truth! Son.
duty, honor, patriotism,
justice and the rule of law
Jessep: You want
answers?:Kaffee: I think I'm entitled.:Jessep: You want answers?!:Kaffee: I
want the truth!:Jessep: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world
that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's
gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility
than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines.
You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's
death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque
and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep
down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you
need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these
words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a
punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a
man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide,
and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just
said, "Thank you," and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you
pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you
think you are entitled to!:Kaffee: Did you order the Code Red?:Jessep:
(quietly) I did the job I was sent to do--:Kaffee: Did you order the Code
Red?!:Jessep: (shouting) You're goddamn right I did
of Movie A Few Good
Men.
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
18.48.49 GMT+01:00
sarah
lafsar
see more news on time http://www.lafsar.com
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
18.35.25 GMT+01:00
dave
Will the powers that be
declassify information that has no cause to be classified or go to greater
extremes to keep information under wraps whether it deserves to be or
not? Transparency or circling the wagons?
Pressure Mounts on
Wikileaks Founder
Julian
Assange, founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, has come under fire
for his role in leaking some 250,000 US State Department cables to the public.
Some in the US have even made veiled comments calling for his assassination. http://www.newslook.com/videos/270955-pressure-mounts-on-wikileaks-founder?autoplay=true
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
17.52.28 GMT+01:00
Artur
Barrera
liberty, equality, freedom
of speech, a free press, the justice and Human Rights: 6, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19,
21, 28 and 29; that our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us thrown into the trash
because, they get angry that someone finds our dirty laundry. http://www.youthforhumanrights.org/
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
17.12.37 GMT+01:00
Jym Allyn
Did I hear someone say:
"YOU CAN'T DEAL
WITH THE TRUTH!"
Or is that too obvious.
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
16.42.05 GMT+01:00
April Jones
If the government hunts
down Julian Assange, I will lose all hope in my country being The Land Of The
Free. It will instead be The Land Of Big Government, throwing people in jail
for the rest of their lives just for exposing injustice. How corrupt and truly
tragic that would be. I've almost resolved to live abroad. I've already
resolved to work in other countries fighting injustice and poverty. I
wholeheartedly esteem people like Julian Assange very highly. He works to
expose injustice in hopes of cutting down corruption and human rights
violations such as war crimes/murders. That's not bad at all.... if I were
injustly murdered or someone in my family were, I'd hope that somebody would
expose the injustice whether it occurred from a single person or from a large
entity such as the government. What's wrong with the minds of people to not
understand the important of exposing crimes? How do the American people digest
a speech from the Secretary of State (who is shown to have been involved in
corruption and unethical diplomacy) who says that the man who exposed her
terrible wrongs is a terrorist??? Gosh, if that's so, then I can go do
something immoral and call whomever exposes my wrongs a terrorist! That's too
easy. And Big Governments all over the world want to frame this man. It's
obvious. The governments are combatting the exposure of injustice with more
injustice and corruption. Who would have ever figured??? I guess once something
is wrotten, it's always wrotten. So much for Land Of The Free. I never got to see
a Land Of The Free, only Land Of Big Government. I'm 26. Land Of The Free ended
before I got to see it.
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
16.19.43 GMT+01:00
Tung Teets
WikiLeaks is a HERO!
Good for them for lettting the TRUTH be known!
www.real-privacy.edu.tc
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
15.31.40 GMT+01:00
Jack H
Thomas
Man! this is the stuff
of cinema! Lets all remember that nothing upright and just is meant to be
hidden in the dark. The United States is supposed to be a beacon on a hill of
openly free democracy where government is run for the people, by the people. A
candle on a hill is not meant to be hid beneath a bushel. War plans is one
thing, but the fact that a helicopter crew mistakenly opened fire on civilians
surrounded by men with AK-47's in a war? Like Gates said, "Is this
embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I
think fairly modest." Some things like war (and a diplomat calling Kim
Jung Il flabby) are hard for a lot of people to stomach, but i feel like i'm in
the book 'the giver' and Julian is Jonas and is giving us the memories of old
and it is painful, but its much better than the community deciding what we
should or shouldn't know, or what we can or can't stomach.
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
15.08.40 GMT+01:00
Seph Bay
Julian Assange is like
Burger King bringing his stuff to McDonald's.
The United States has
the highest concentration of accumulated knowledge and the greatest repository
of knowledge in human history with the Library of Congress. There are 60 million
volumes in it, growing by 10,000 volumes a day.
If you think that
250,000 "leaked" documents would be "serious damage to national
security" of the USA, then you don't know anything about the genuine
principles of the freedoms of information, press, speech.
The USA has nothing
like Coca-Cola's secret recipe or Google's algorithm. How can Julian Assange or
Wikileaks "damage" America with the very thing that makes this nation
great, i.e. free information and knowledge?
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
14.58.35 GMT+01:00
Magaly
Briceno
Well, I'll tell you
about this. The Cablegates are the tip of the iceberg of what we've been doing
wrong. We have been watching democracy in other places. We have been demonized
by it. We put one's slippers in our feet and others do the work. Our
investments are in China, India and others, in creating jobs there. Our
countrymen suffer calamities because of lack of investment in our
country.
We forgot the use of
the fifth freedom, not adopted yet, that is the quintessence of the
American people. The freedom of failing by trial and error in the search for
invention and innovation in science and technology.
This matters more than
a leaked memo, always some leakage is unavoidable. What we are missing is
talent.
and better not could
finish this article, I quote:
"The hallmark of a
truly effective internal security system," the Justice said, "would
be the maximum possible disclosure, recognizing that secrecy can best be
preserved only when credibility is truly maintained."
Wise words, from the
heart of the American establishment. Words that Assange admiringly cites on the
WikiLeaks website.
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
14.28.31 GMT+01:00
Prakhar
Leaking information of
this kind will be detrimental in building the trust among diplomats which is
necessary platform for effective and productive diplomacy.
Let us understand the
underlying problem by a real life example. Do all of us live in a society where
we need to exhibit split personality? Do we all have secrets which are unknown
to our dear ones? But does that mean we are cheating them? So is this
confidentiality necessary in smooth running of our personal life? I feel I will
get a ÔyesÕ in reply with a smile.read full article.....
http://www.businessnbeyond.com/2010/12/stay-out-of-this-assange.html
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
13.09.56 GMT+01:00
Tanmay
No, I am not smiling.
And yes, you are an idiot. Such cloak and dagger tactics undermine your
reliability and trustworthiness. Once one of your lies get leaked, you are
screwed.
Contrast this to an
open and frank way of doing business. Everyone knows that you are what you say
you are, and actually trusts you more, rather than suspecting that you may be
scheming behind their backs.
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
13.43.27 GMT+01:00
Bob Bobson
diplomats don't trust
each other anyway
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
22.57.47 GMT+01:00
Rhea
Matudan
It might be good that
these leaks are happening. I see it as a refreshing look on how the rest of the
world actually operates and how false their public face is. I for one will be
happy to leave these despots to their own hells and stop policing the world. It
is time for the children to take care of themselves. It is time tohelp our own
people first, then, if some remains (NFW) we can help others.
We help Americans find
jobs and prosperity in Asia. Visit http://www.pathtoasia.com/jobs/ for details.
Thursday 2 dec 2010,
13.02.00 GMT+01:00
Artur
Barrera
cheese sandwiches ...no
matter what are the sandwiches, matter is that it no will be poison.If you play
to the secret and conceal the truth, you not expect by transparency, the
riddles will come soon. I always have felt that the security people exaggerates
it to justify their salaries!. We hate to all the paraphernalia of security
because its spending has been nakedness by a CD from Lady Gaga.