Shodan has this silly thing about being loyal to his country.
Shodan gets to be right when the government starts paying my bills.
Shodan is not the only person in the thread who feels himself obligated to be loyal to his country. Somebody Me tooed him upthread. I forget his name.
Meh. I tend to ignore what poets have to say about politics; it saves me from getting “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” stuck in my head 24/7.
Damn you!
There is one thing I wonder about, and I have not seen it talked about…
Now that Wikileaks apparently has shown itself to be serious about what it does, if enough governments end up pissed, what prevents them from simply arranging things to feed utter disinformation to Wikileaks, under the guise of genuine documents that have been leaked?
At least, that is what I would do if I were part of any of those governments: Arrange things so that, in the end, it is impossible to ascertain what is true or not among the things that Wikileaks publishes, thus damaging (possibly irreparably) its reputation for “passing the unvarnished truth”.
Classic disinformation strategy, WWII vintage. I am sure that the relevant governments have the werewithal to organize something of the sort if need be, and to do it reasonably well.
I don’t think they care about disinformation. That is, they are only publishing stuff that is supposed to embarrass people, governments and so forth. Thus, if anyone tried to feed them something not embarrassing, they simply wouldn’t use it.
Plus how are you supposed to prove that the disinformation they got fed was false?
For diplomatic and defense purposes, the government already does.
The Wikileaks people allege that governments shouldn’t be able to keep *anything *secret. There should be, in their alleged opinion, no such thing as private communication for any government function. Any reasonable adult knows that this is false.
See above. The Wikileakers believe that everything should be made public, so that governments will be accountable to the world for their actions. Therefore, in order that the Wikileakers are accountable to the world for their actions, everything about them should be made public.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, I am sure that the governments can produce disinformation that looks like juicy tidbits of embarrassment.
And, of course, showing that it is false is not something immediate. Let some time pass, and at some point things will begin appearing from Wikileaks that contradict each other. Document A says “X”, and document B, also coming from Wikileaks, says “Not X”.
After some time, it becomes impossible to know whether something coming from Wikileaks is true or not. That destroys Wikileaks, because they are supposed to provide “authentic confidential documents”.
If it becomes clear, by simple internal consistency, that there are planted documents among those being made public by Wikileaks, their reputation/usefulness/whatever you want to call it is tarnished. To all practical purposes, Wikileaks would be no more if, with time, it transpires that you cannot determine whether what they make public is true or whether it has been planted. And, even if just a fraction of what they publish is demonstrably planted (by looking, again, at things like internal consistency), it lays a pall of suspicion over everything else coming from Wikileaks…
I don’t know; as I said, this is the course of action I would have taken if I had been part of any government angry enough at Wikileaks. Just an idle Gedankenexperiment.
No, it does not follow at all. Are you really suggesting that you believe that because diplomatic cables have been leaked, the details of Assange’s bank account should also be leaked? You don’t see any division between different types of data?
If you’re only suggesting that the internal structure and information on the accounts of Wikileaks should be leaked, well … yes, I agree. As does Wikileaks, which hosts the information on its site.
Err, they do? Says who? Why are all these diplomatic cables being leaked through selected newspapers, who redact truly sensitive information, like the names of spies and informants, for instance, prior to their release beforehand if Wikileaks believes that there should be no government secrets? Further, why does Wikileaks itself use four different experts to vet each leak for information that really does need to be kept secret before releasing it? Isn’t this pretty contradictory to what you wrote?
Yes, that is what I am saying, Congratulations on learning to read - I am sure it will stand you in good stead when you reach adulthood.
Yes, they do. I say so. As mentioned, any reasonable adult says the same thing. Anyone who says otherwise, therefore, is not a reasonable adult. See how it works?
No, actually it confirms what I said. If the Wikileakers want governments to be accountable for their actions by publicizing every detail, then Wikileaks must also be accountable by the same means and held to the same standard.
The US government is accountable to the voters, ultimately. If this Assange asshole and the traitor who violated his oath to release the documents want to hold governments to a standard they are not willing to abide by themselves, then they are hypocrites. If Assange and Co. think it is OK to force governments’ hand by leaking the documents, then it is equally OK to leak any information about A and Co. QED.
No one gets to set himself up in absolute authority over me without my foreknowledge and consent. If Assange wants an un-appealable authority to decide what is secret under the auspices of the USA and what is not, let him get himself appointed to the Supreme Court. Until then, he does not get to claim he is acting in my interests. He isn’t.
And as mentioned, it would just too bad if something unfortunate happened to him, outside the law from whose protection this unpleasant person has absented himself.
Regards,
Shodan
Thanks for succinctly summarising why the continued existence of Wikileaks is an imperative.
Like I asked you once before, please cite whose law Assange has absented himself from. Certainly not that of America’s. He’s an Australian national, currently residing in the UK, owing no fealty to America. The US, for all its embarrassing bluster, has literally no hope of getting him extradited to the US to stand trial. Further, any trial in the US is likely to go rather badly for the prosecution by all accounts.
Yes. Well, should something happen to Assange, you and the rest of the “violence as a first resort” crowd can cream yourselves briefly, but will probably have to put up with similar sorts of annoyances until the implementation of your Utopian police state.
We all deal with things in our own way, I suppose: when I find out I’m being lied to, I get angry at the liar, and not at the one who exposed the lie. When I find out that my government—which unlike Assange’s bank statement, is designed to operate with my informed consent— is behaving badly while keeping me in the dark, I consider ways in which we might prevent the bad behavior and deception from happening again, rather than ways to ensure that next time, the truth remains safely hidden from me.
For all the grousing about Big Government, no one is quicker than the so-called conservative to assume a docile position at the ankles of dear old Uncle Sam, basking in the warmth of a flickering firelog with a big, comforting blunderbuss resting across his pin-striped thighs. Tell us the story about the time you spread freedom and kept us safe, Uncle!
If something happens to Assange, the people who know the encryption key to that 1.39GB encrypted torrent that’s already been downloaded by people around the world* will make sure it doesn’t stay encrypted for very long.
*(The Pirate Bay alone lists 205 seeders and 50 leechers. This means that at the very least 205 people have all of it, 50 will in short order, and unknown numbers have it and aren’t sharing right now.)
It’s almost science fiction, except it makes perfect sense from a pragmatic standpoint.