Yeah, yeah, you can’t stop the free flow of information, not completely. But you can make it such a pain in the ass that only the really determined will bother, and if the number of really determined people is small enough, then repression wins. And you can make that number of determined people smaller by arresting a couple of them.
As is the case in China. So you can get around the Great Firewall. 99% of Chinese internet users don’t bother.
It’s one thing to be critical of a major coroporation or governmental agency and it’s another to attack the individual worker at such a place. It’s a sense of proportion, and we’ll have to see whether or not it plays out that way.
If it starts effecting the little guy (And I guess where you stand is a matter of your defintion of who is or is not a “little guy”) he’ll lose support.
Yeah, and if your nephew posted somthing that got significant media coverage and was sufficiently embarassing to the Chinese, he would be in real trouble. Being technically possible is one thing. If he had 200,000 friends on facebook, and he had some embarassing details about some Chinese official and he posted it, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.
If he is a foreigner living in China he may get away with expulsion, or even a severe talking to, but if he is a Chinese national, look out. Even if all that happens is that you lose your job and get blackballed, that would discourage 99% of the population. You don’t really need to worry about the other 1%.
ETA: or what Lemur said.
He is a kid who took a job teaching English because he thought it would be cool. Expulsion would make his day.
Here’san article analysing some Assange’s own essays (from 2006) on what he’s up to. In that author’s words:
Essentially Assange believes that national governments have been subverted and corrupted by special interests (he prefaces his first essay with Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Invisibile Government’ quote). The mission of wikileaks is to disrupt the conspiracies that underly this corrupt and illegitimate government by eroding the links between the conspirators. Again the quote zungzungu’s explanation.
So there you have it - Assange’s basic plan is to make it impossible for the exisitng conspiracies of power to operate because they will be so busy tightening their information security that the actors will be unable to communicate with each other.
Hmmmm . . . Any chance that might work? 
If it does, he really is a hero!
Fortunately for the world the internet and the asshole Assange wasn’t around the six months leading up to D-Day. God forbid that the machine be able to function.
Don’t forget we’re talking about things that would similarly affect all sides in a conflict.
Or “any” side. Meaning that the problem need not be dispersed equally. Another example is Operation Dessert Storm. All those countries conspiring against poor little old Iraq. The coalition forces had much more info at risk than the Iraq.
Well, what did you expect - they were hogging the ice cream!
I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Our adversaries tend to be much less lenient or concerned with human rights when it comes to wistleblowing against the state.
Alleged rapist Julian Assange is running out of wiggle room. The Brits appear to be aware of where he is and are waiting for Sweden to clarify their position regarding his arrest. Which Sweden has just done.
I shall tut-tut and perhaps even harumph-harumph when I hear of the unfortunate suicide of this fine investigative reporter. Probably going to take about another ten days.
:smack:
Took me a minute. That is one I have trouble spelling.
Really? I look forward to seeing the Al Qaeeda memos, complete with names of the mullahs involved in recruiting and fundraising. What would be the life expectancy of the source of that leak.
Sorry. It seems like it is a lot safer to leak US secrets than North Korean or Chinese secrets. Its probably safer to leak classified US documents than to collect newspaper clippings on the wrong topic in China.
So, uh, you’re agreeing with him, right?
I find myself strangely conflicted here.
If Assange’s hypothesis (that governments have been corrupted and taken over by special interest groups and are acting in ways that are detrimental to their citizens as a whole) is correct then his response seems morally justified (to me anyway).
Now I don’t want to believe that his hypothesis is correct. However, the events of the last decade (particularly those I’ll list below) seem to provide some evidence for Assange’s contention that the Western democracies aren’t acting in a way consistent with their professed values.
Things I think support Assange’s view:
[ul]
[li]The Iraq war from start to now (and probably Afghanistan since around 2003 as well).[/li][li]The bank bailouts around the world, where private losses have been mopped up with public funds.[/li][li]The byzantine system of taxation, in particular the strange deductions and credits targetted at specific industries.[/li][li]Increased surveillance of the populace as part of a generally increased growth of state control over the people.[/li][/ul]
None of the things seem beneficial to ordinary citizens and so unless there is some convincing counter evidence I must sadly conclude that Assange has a point.
Looked at this way, it sounds fine to me. Let’s apply the good old “if you are innocent you have nothing to hide” argument, just as it gets used on us. I was originally in the “don’t publish any military or security secrests/info that will get someone hurt or killed” camp, but this more and more seems instead to be a case of dishonest people who are butt hurt that they are finally getting caught, and less like anything that would affect the life expectancy of soldiers. if anything, their life expectancy could go up once the real dirt is found out.
Transparency.
I replied to the wrong message. Sorry.
corporate and government transparency is a good thing, whether voluntary or not. I vote hero.