Wikileaks is claiming to have possession of thousands of pages of State Department diplomatic cables and is planning to release them in the very near future.
If Wikileaks Twitter feed is to be believed, the U.S. is briefing embassies all over the world over the pending release.
So, what’s about to happen. Something earthshaking? Something meh? Something in between?
I’m a big believer in transparency, but diplomatic communications? I’m not so sure.
So, is Assange a hero or a villian? Will the results of this be good, bad, mixed, inconsequential?
What’s in the 1.4 Gig encrypted “history insurance”? I’m guessing that it’s the cables and that the release will occur by a release of the encryption key.
What with the 5 million lost or deleted emails, the public is deserving of whatever transparency may yet be available in regard to the inner workings of team Bush.
I understand what you’re saying, but what if something in them damages current relations with allies? What if something in them reveals sources we’ve used to head off terrorist attacks? What if something damages the international economy (more than it’s already damaged)?
I’m not saying those things will happen, but they’re something to consider.
As I said, I’m a big believer in transparency, and I think anyone here would consider me to be liberal, but this makes me nervous.
ETA: Those emails were likely about questionable political activities, the questionable dismissal of U.S. attorneys in particular. That should definitely have been public. Diplomatic cables are different.
It will IMHO depend on the context, it is unfortunate but I would not be surprised to see messages where trash talk and opinions will be reported as facts or removed from context, one just has to remember what quote mining did to climate research with the stolen CRU emails.
After several investigations and with the context added, it has become clear that climate truthers misrepresented what it was in the messages, trash talk of scientists was not a crime and the investigations found that no crime or misrepresentation of the climate data had taken place. Even so, the denier media told many that the scientists were criminals.
What I’m saying is that the risk here is that many groups are poised to grab those cables and take things out of context.
In my case I will ignore any reports that do not include context or allow the readers to check what was really said.
GIGObuster, my understanding is that the original documents in their entirety will be released so anyone will be able to check out the context of quotes.
It’s not legal. Julian Assange, the guy who runs wikileaks, is on the run.
Doesn’t this seem at all one-sided to anyone? Wikileaks used to be about transparency anywhere. Now it seems to be on a mission to attack the American government or something. Or it’s just trying to shut down U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why isn’t it leaking diplomatic cables from Russia? Or China? or Japan? Or any number of other countries which must certainly have whistleblowers.
It’s not. Bradley Manning, an Army intel analyst who has reportedly admitted that he downloaded the diplomatic cables, has been charged with leaking classified materials.
To be fair, maybe it just appears that way because they received a huge dump from Manning. Maybe they haven’t received any similar leaks from those other countries. Then again, you could be right. Who knows?
IIRC it is for accusations of rape, not for the leaks. (The accusations are dubious also, but even if he falls he is not the only one minding the site)
I don’t think he’s ever been charged with anything related to wikileaks. He’s in legal trouble in Europe over a rape allegation.
Eh, is there any evidence that whistleblowers from Japan or anywhere else have given info to wikileaks and they’ve sat on it? We know exactly why this stuff is coming out of the US gov’t (leaked by a soldier with security clearance), I don’t think its particularly likely that there’s an equivalent whistleblower in other countries.
But in anycase, wikipedia has a page on notable leaks from wikileaks. They include leaks damaging Somalia,a Kenyan political leader, a Swiss bank, The British National Party, the UN, Scientologists, the Climate Research group in the UK, the Peruvian gov’t, Irans nuclear program, a UK oil company, an Icelandic Bank, the UK gov’t, a German city municipal gov’t. According to the same page, Assange has said upcoming leaks will damage the BP oil company and the Russian gov’t.
So the answer to your question is no, it doesn’t seem one sided.
One thing I find interesting is the timing of this. Wikileaks could have released this month ago. Why didn’t they? Certainly part of it is that they’re playing the media. A lengthy buildup period heightens interest. It’s all over the internet but, more importantly, it’s being discussed on TV news networks. This widespread knowledge will make it more difficult to distract people with other issues (or non-issues).
The whole affair - Assange on the run from questionable rape charges, breathless reports of the U.S. contacting foreign governments in an effort to ameliorate potential damage, a large mysterious encrypted file available for download - is like some kind of geopolitical thriller. How will it end?
But I wonder if there’s something more to this long drawn-out revelation process. Could he be timing it to coincide with some scheduled political event? I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. Is he taunting governments in the hopes that they will panic and do or say something that will end up making the revelations even more embarrassing?
I have to say that the apparent panic on the part of the U.S. is damaging in itself even if he never reveals anything. Wouldn’t it be something if he turned out not to have the documents he claims to have.
From what I’ve read, they don’t release potentially sensitive documents straight away. They give governments time to remove names/especially secret data from the documents before they are released. That’s how the US government knows the contents of the soon-to-be-released documents, for instance.
If it is, so what? You’re completely free to set up your own website releasing documents that the Russian government doesn’t want released. Not that it’s true what you wrote anyway. There’s tonnes of stuff on the Wikileaks website. You only hear about the American documents because a) you follow American news more closely, b) they’re currently the world’s largest power and c) currently involved in numerous wars where things governments and militaries shouldn’t be doing seem to happen every week.
Yeah, you’re simply wrong, there, Sam. The soldier who leaked the material broke the law, that’s true. But once it’s leaked wikileaks is under no aegis to maintain its secrecy.
They’re not US based so US law does not apply.
Even if they were there’s a certain body of law (by no means definitive, in my view) that prevents prior restraint against publishing
I suppose, if they wanted, the US government could attempt to block US servers from accessing wikileaks IP sets but good luck with that and the backlash it would cause.
Besides, as a (former) journalist, I’ll come out on the side of disclosure. In my experience 99 times out of 100 when a governmental entity, whether organization or official, wishes to control access to information the purposes are not in the best interests of the public.
Or, to use what my reporters used to call the ‘Wooley Doctrine’…
“Don’t want to be known as a cocksucker? Don’t such any cocks.”