What is WikiLeaks' mission?

[billfish678]

@davidm

I don’t necessarily disagree. I’m just saying what they believe.

I have been reading that some U.S. diplomats are running into difficulties with their counterparts suddenly being reluctant to be frank with them and asking things like “are you going to write this down”?

Wouldn’t it be ironic if this led to less communications between governments and a less stable world?

This.

I’d bet good money that serious diplomats from any given country could agree on two things.

Publicly revealed communications inherently need to be very face saving and polite and things like that.

PRIVATE communications need to be frank, honest, and downright nasty when appropriate.

The two are incompatible with a “no secrets” mentallity.

I imagine diplomats around the world collectively shit bricks when contemplating a “no secrets” version of diplomatic communication.

[Baron_Greenback]

@davidm

Wouldn’t it be ironic if this led to less communications between governments and a less stable world?

It’ll lead to a review of how a Private First Class, even although he had a role in an intelligence function, managed to a) access 250,000 diplomatic cables without getting flagged up and someone stopping him, and b) copy and deliver them to a third party.

The blame here must be with Bradley Manning and whoever was in charge of security. A quarter of a million cables, and no flags? He got them to a third party? Good job. Manning is obviously going to jail, that’s straightforward.

If Wikileaks is being targeted for for this, then so should all the news organisations in receipt of the same files, and all those that have disseminated them. Bet that doesn’t happen.

[davidm]

@PunkyPoo

My own opinion is that he’s doing his best to bring down the US. This release is certainly bad for the security of our country. Since 9/11 we have stopped a number of incidents from ever happening, and have helped other countries stop them as well. This will have a negative impact in our ability to get good intel. Definitely a bad thing.

I’m not convinced of that. In the past, before this most recent release, and before the Afghanistan and Iraq releases, he’s released things that embarrassed a number of different countries, corporatations, and organizations.

I think they’re anti-secret and opportunistic. They release whatever is given to them. The reason we’re currently seeing all of this U.S. stuff is because of Bradley Manning. If someone in China or Russia had given them similar documents they’d probably be publishing them.

[thirdname]

Wikileaks publishes straightforward military secrets. They have published a number of manuals for US military equipment such as the JDAM smart bomb. That’s not whistleblowing or journalism. It’s espionage.

ETA: BTW, am I the only one disappointed that he cut his hair? He used to look like some sort of effete, European Bond villain. Now he looks ordinary.

[godix]

Wikileaks mission has always been, basically, to serve as a place for whistleblowers to release info. US government whistleblowers, company whistleblowers, other nations whistleblowers. Whatever. Wikileaks seems to support them all.

OTOH Julian Assange’s mission seems to be exploring exactly how large of a paranoid slimeball one man can become.

[davidm]

@thirdname

Wikileaks publishes straightforward military secrets. They have published a number of manuals for US military equipment such as the JDAM smart bomb. That’s not whistleblowing or journalism. It’s espionage.

Isn’t it interesting though that there was no real hubbub surrounding Wikileaks until the diplomatic cables release. I don’t recall hearing anyone call for assasinations. I don’t recall any sex charges. I don’t recall shutdowns of websites. I’m not saying this means anything. I have no idea why they waited till now. But it is an interesting aspect of it.

One wonders if it isn’t more about the supposed upcoming banking info release.

[Hampshire]

“No more secrets Marty.”

[BrainGlutton]

@davidm

I don’t necessarily disagree. I’m just saying what they believe.

I have been reading that some U.S. diplomats are running into difficulties with their counterparts suddenly being reluctant to be frank with them and asking things like “are you going to write this down”?

Wouldn’t it be ironic if this led to less communications between governments and a less stable world?

In the 1989 film Rude Awakening, holdover hippies at a commune in a Central American jungle get hold of a secret U.S. government plan to invade a country in the region, and they struggle to bring it to light. Turns out it was just a hypothetical plan, but the publicity it gets sparks public interest in a war the U.S. could win for a change, so, in trying to avert a war, the heroes have inadvertently started one.

It’s always funnier when it happens in real life!

[BrainGlutton]

@PunkyPoo

My own opinion is that he’s doing his best to bring down the US.

If this is his best, the U.S. is safe.

[Tom_Tildrum]

@davidm

Isn’t it interesting though that there was no real hubbub surrounding Wikileaks until the diplomatic cables release. I don’t recall hearing anyone call for assasinations. I don’t recall any sex charges. I don’t recall shutdowns of websites. I’m not saying this means anything. I have no idea why they waited till now. But it is an interesting aspect of it.

One wonders if it isn’t more about the supposed upcoming banking info release.

It’s so implausible that there would be a major outcry over a worldwide diplomatic embarrassment of unprecedented scale that in fact what must be happening is that everyone is conspiring to protect Bank of America, which by the way has subverted a Swedish prosecutor?

Don’t make me reach for my rolly-eyes. :p:D

[gonzomax]

Don’t you think there is something flawed about a system in which a private has access to thousands of “state secrets” and is able to dump them ? If not him, then someone else.

[Pierrot_Le_Fou]

New Yorker story on Assange and Wikileaks:

What Does Julian Assange Want?

[Assange] had come to understand the defining human struggle not as left versus right, or faith versus reason, but as individual versus institution. As a student of Kafka, Koestler, and Solzhenitsyn, he believed that truth, creativity, love, and compassion are corrupted by institutional hierarchies, and by “patronage networks”—one of his favorite expressions—that contort the human spirit. He sketched out a manifesto of sorts, titled “Conspiracy as Governance,” which sought to apply graph theory to politics. Assange wrote that illegitimate governance was by definition conspiratorial—the product of functionaries in “collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.” He argued that, when a regime’s lines of internal communication are disrupted, the information flow among conspirators must dwindle, and that, as the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. Leaks were an instrument of information warfare.

These ideas soon evolved into WikiLeaks.

[marshmallow]

@davidm

Wouldn’t it be ironic if this led to less communications between governments and a less stable world?

No, the clamping down and the potential for more clunky imperialism would be intended effects. The hope is that less internal communication will lead to some sort of degradation of the propaganda system. I think that’s wildly optimistic, but hey, have at it hoss.

Assange:

The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be “free” because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

@davidm

Isn’t it interesting though that there was no real hubbub surrounding Wikileaks until the diplomatic cables release.

I’m pretty sure they’ve been pissing off the DoD, the military and the government since the release of the Apache helicopter video laying waste to allegedly innocent Iraqis in 2007…this move just upped the ante and you’re seeing the response (and other things we aren’t seeing).

[Rand_Rover]

@davidm

I recall reading a statement describing exactly what their goals are. I think it was on their official website. I don’t want to go to that site from work but I can give you the gist from memory.

Basically they believe that there is a conspiracy of the wealthy and powerful to control the rest of us. Conspiracies, by definition, requiring conspiring. Conspiring requires communicating in secret. Wikileaks believes that if they remove their ability to communicate in secret then they’ve removed their ability to conspire, thus stopping, or at least damaging, the conspiracy.

So in their minds it isn’t about the particular secrets. It’s about secrecy itself.

This is my understanding as well. The WSJ did an opinion piece on this recently where they quoted from essays Assange had written, and the dude is basically an anarchist with a special hard-on for the US and a conspiracy theorist of the “it’s teh corporations, man” variety. His goal seems to be to make it impossible to run a government because no secrets can be kept. Seems to me that releasing secrets could lead to another world war. I think Assange doesn’t see this as a downside.

[davidm]

@Tom_Tildrum

It’s so implausible that there would be a major outcry over a worldwide diplomatic embarrassment of unprecedented scale that in fact what must be happening is that everyone is conspiring to protect Bank of America, which by the way has subverted a Swedish prosecutor?

Don’t make me reach for my rolly-eyes. :p:D

True, but I was responding to a post claiming that Wikileaks had exposed important military secrets. My main point was that if that military information was so important then why didn’t they go after Wikileaks and Assange then rather than waiting for diplomatic leaks. The point being that the military stuff must not have been that important.

The bank stuff was just an afterthought I threw in but you’re right about that.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@thirdname

Wikileaks publishes straightforward military secrets. They have published a number of manuals for US military equipment such as the JDAM smart bomb. That’s not whistleblowing or journalism. It’s espionage.

Your post seems to suggest that espionage is inherently wrong, or evil. I take it you feel the same way about the US intelligence establishment?

Personally, I am agnostic regarding Wikileaks. Assange will probably go to prison one day, and I won’t shed a tear for him - but nor will I shed a tear for any government which can’t keep a glorified blogger from uncovering all the skeletons in its closets.

[Ravenman]

Another story about the courageousness of Mr. Assange: promise to contribute to the leaker’s legal defense team, raise $1 million, sandbag on sending a penny to the leaker.

What a hero.

If only Wikileaks would post some documents about what its founders promised to PFC Manning, and where all the money is going…

[Marley23]

@davidm

Isn’t it interesting though that there was no real hubbub surrounding Wikileaks until the diplomatic cables release.

Please don’t confuse “I didn’t pay attention to them” with “nobody paid attention to them.” In July, they released 92,000 documents related to the Afghan War and got huge media coverage.

[Marley23]

I moved Ravenman’s post to this thread from the topic “Is Julian Assange a rapist?”