I wonder if the attacks on websites that ‘cut off’ Wikileaks will help or hinder things from the Wikileaks point of view. At present www.mastercard.com is down after being attacked by the assembled masses for ‘crimes against Wikileaks’.
I’ll put my money on Israel. The Mossad assassinates people all the time.
Strange attitude. Assange is an Australian living in Europe. Can you explain how we have jurisdiction and what American laws he broke?
I don’t understand why you are confused on this point. I am pretty sure anyone who read my post and comprehended it can tell which side of the issue I came down on. Nevertheless, I will spell it out: Yes, some secrets are validly kept. Those of non-criminal private individuals who are not subject to a broad public accountability (unlike, say, an elected governmental representative) come to mind.
I don’t necessarily agree with everything your average ‘open government’ activist/supporter believes (though I am not wholly unsympathetic either) but I felt it was necessary to point out that your argument is terrible. If some information ought to be public then all of it ought to be? Take that into an introductory course on logical argument and see where it gets you, seriously. You will need a few extra premises if you want to draw a valid conclusion. You have utterly failed to take into account the differences in the types of information; the generators of the information and to whom they are responsible; and the relevance/worth of the information.
Do you have any thoughts on the difference between the levels of accountability to the general public of a government and that of an everyday/average individual?
I still don’t understand why the New York Times (or the Washington Post, etc.) hasn’t gotten shut down, nor why nobody seems to be asking for that to happen. Wikileaks hasn’t published anything that wasn’t also published in major newspapers. For some reason, the papers get a pass and people call for Assange’s head on a pike.
I’m going to assume it’s because these people don’t want to be seen as fascists, so it’s easier to pretend Assange isn’t a journalist than to go after a newspaper that has case law on their side proving they are legally in the right, from the Pentagon Papers case during the Vietnam War.
First, the New York Times has actual lawyers who will challenge any actual action to shut them down.
Perhaps more importantly, the NYT has a big corporation with lots of money and influence behind it, so no politician wants a real fight with them (a pretend fight, calling them ‘liberal press’, sure, that doesn’t really hurt the owners of the Times, but trying to actually shut down the Times will make it a real fight). Likewise, Visa doesn’t want to fight the NYT, either.
And then, related to point two, the Times is a big corporation, owned by rich people. They don’t want a fight either. The Times has already demonstrated that it doesn’t mind keeping the Government’s secrets (say, with the warrantless wiretapping that the Times knew about but sat on). So there’s really much less need to fight the Times, since they’ll buckle when something important happens.
And finally, of course, a lot of the calls don’t really care about the issue – they’re just bashing a convenient target to whip up the ‘I hate hippies, intellectuals, Europeans, and anybody who doesn’t tell me I’m a perfect snowflake’ crowd. The New York Times is a good target for that, but some jet-setting young blond European with a French name is even better.