WikiLeaks Sues the Guardian Over Leak 289
An anonymous reader writes "WikiLeaks complaining of a leak is hard to get one's head around. That it's suing The Guardian — its great ally — is even harder. That The Guardian did such a ridiculous thing to warrant litigation in the first place almost defies belief."
Update: 09/01 04:59 GMT by S : Changed the first link to point to the statement on WikiLeaks' website. The Guardian has denied the allegations, saying, "Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours."
Thed saying holds true... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no honor amongst thieves.
Either you support leaks or you do not. Selective leaking is simply propaganda dressed up to look pretty.
"[Americans] learned in Earth's final century..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wikileaks should be happy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that wikileaks can't be trusted with keeping the UNREDACTED versions safe, they will lose a lot of sources.
Re:Thed saying holds true... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of leaking is to expose malfeasance. The point of redacting the leaked material was to limit collateral damage to those who had not acted poorly. You only leak what you need to leak in order to expose the bad acts and bad actors, but no more than that.
WikiLeaks' act of leaking the original (redacted) leaks and their suit against this new (non-redacted) leak are a consistent stance from the point of doing the most good while avoiding the most damage. But oh, to live in your simple world...
Food for thought (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFA:
Wikileaks complaining of a leak?
Yes, and damned well they should unless your moral views are very shallow.
How many US politicians are laughing at the Wikileaks/Guardian partnership exploding so spectacularly?
I'd say it's the CIA laughing. This is incredibly valuable for them. They lose some secrets, but they discredit the messenger (And anyone who tries to replace them) to prevent future leaks. If I was running the CIA, I'd certainly run a program to discredit Wikileaks. A few rape allegations here, an ideological schism in the organization alleging untrustworthiness, some unveiling of sources to make future sources afraid...
Does Wikileaks finally realise there's a need for secrecy/privacy in the world?
Finally? They've said that all along. That's why they were redacting the documents in the first place.
Does privacy/secrecy all boil down to where someone draws an arbitrary line in the sand?
Yes. The world is a fuzzy place and doesn't lend itself to simple morals where you can divide things into the dark side and the light side. At some point it just comes down to someone looking at the situation and doing what they feel is right.
Should a lack of privacy/secrecy be all or nothing?
Of course not. In general, I believe that the larger an entity is, the less privacy they deserve.
Is Wikileaks cementing views that it is or isn't an organisation of journalists who are guided by traditional journalistic ethics?
They publish the truth and protect sources who need protection. They've pretty much always been in that camp.
Re:Thed saying holds true... (Score:4, Insightful)
is the identity of the original leakers also subject to your postulate on selective leaking?
It certainly is part of Assange's. I can only ever assume that it was the papers that heald him back. His redactions are a joke after all.
is there any category of information that should not leak?
Many say no. But claiming special dispensation on a leak .. that is just delicious.
-Seraphim
Re:Wikileaks should be happy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Assange is on record stating that he doesnt think there should be ANY secrets at all. A large number of slashdotters have reinforced that belief.
Why the hypocrisy all of a sudden?
Idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who in their right mind would think it okay to publish a password and publish the correct one? They could have published the same book with a fake password all the same, yet obviously it was the password.
As for it being temporary, it wasn't an access password, but a decryption password. And in the eyes of the law, why would what Wikileaks said even matter if non-disclosure was part of their arrangement?
Re:Thed saying holds true... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of leaking is to expose malfeasance
So every one of those diplomatic cables exposed malfeasance? Tsvingarai is guilty of malfeasance?
WikiLeaks' act of leaking the original (redacted) leaks and their suit against this new (non-redacted) leak are a consistent stance from the point of doing the most good while avoiding the most damage.
Assange doesnt think there should be any secrets, and has a known axe to grind with the US. There may be other reasons for why he leaks the way he does, but one only has to see the edits that he did to "collateral murder" (or even the title he gave it) to see that hes hardly some noble unbiased source.
Re:Idiots. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am guessing that the choice of password played into this. Had it been random, nonsensical and dull it probably wouldn't have been published, but "CollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#" has descriptive value.
I remember hearing or reading about an idea that involved identifying a leaker by seeding different people with documents that contained juicy, unique phrases to tempt journalists into quoting them directly, thereby identifying the source of the document.
This isn't the same, but having a password that has meaning in relation to the contents of the documents certainly adds some risk. A pass phrase should be context free.
Re:Thed saying holds true... (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand them well. I would never cede their understanding to Julien Assange however. His *version* of them never involves himself, or perhaps always or only involves himself. If your life blood is "leaks" then you had best be squeaky clean yourself, and open. He is not. At least Robin Hood admitted he was a thief.
NYT: Nixonian henchmen of today (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, the NYTimes - The Nixonian henchmen of today [salon.com]
Apparently, faced with hundreds of thousands of documents vividly highlighting stomach-turning war crimes and abuses -- death squads and widespread torture and civilian slaughter all as part of a war he admired for years and which his newspaper did more than any other single media outlet to enable -- John Burns and his NYT editors decided that the most pressing question from this leak is this: what's Julian Assange really like?
Re:Wikileaks should be happy... (Score:3, Insightful)
How exactly do you propose they change a password in a file has already been downloaded by thousands of people?
Mixed feelings (Score:2, Insightful)
On one hand, their anger is understandable. Even when your business is to reveal secrets, you need to also keep some secrets (ask any reporter with an anonymous source). It sounds hypocritical, but it really isn't. You can argue all you want about whether some military secrets endanger national security or the safety of civilians, but it should be clear that, for example, evidence of military or political wrong-doing is in the public interest, while access information to private computers or bank accounts is not (even if the person is guilty of wrong-doing). And on another level, a journalist publishing information given him by a confidential source is fulfilling his journalistic duty, while a journalist publishing information the source told him not to publish (which may possibly identify the source) is breaching trust.
On the other hand, taking this to court is completely fucking retarded. It kills any remaining relations with the newspaper, harms their relations with the other papers, hurts public opinion (because of the appearance of hypocrisy), draws public attention to the very matter they wanted to keep confidential (Streisand effect), and has no chance of stopping the damage.
Also, as the article says, what the hell was the point of publishing the passphrase in the first place?
Re:Password (Score:4, Insightful)
To me it shows that the whole Wikileaks/Guardian set up was a gaggle of amateurs dabbling in information that they did not know how to handle.
Either this data is highly sensitive and needs great care in handling, which they demonstrated they were unable to do, or it isn't and there is no need for the encryption etc. Wikileak's claim that it is mostly not sensitive, should be public, and they are the self-appointing ones to set it free. This debacle demonstrates that they handled it like it was entirely sensitive, shouldn't be made public, and they are not the ones to be trusted to do it.
Their own actions make a nonsense of their claims.
Re:Thed saying holds true... (Score:2, Insightful)
The point of leaking is to expose malfeasance. The point of redacting the leaked material was to limit collateral damage to those who had not acted poorly. You only leak what you need to leak in order to expose the bad acts and bad actors, but no more than that.
WikiLeaks' act of leaking the original (redacted) leaks and their suit against this new (non-redacted) leak are a consistent stance from the point of doing the most good while avoiding the most damage. But oh, to live in your simple world...
BULLSHIT
Wikileaks is awfully selective about what they term malfeasance and who they target with their leaks. They don't have the guts to actually leak things about Russia or China - because they know they'd end up with a 9mm-hole-induced headache.
They target they US because:
1. Assange is a bog-standard anti-American, sheltered, coddled, ignorant Western leftist twerp, albeit with enough charisma to set up Wikileaks (and play around with his adoring girls..). Don't think so? Follow his history.
2. They know the US plays nice - they won't wind up with the aforementioned 9mm headache.
Re:only confirms (Score:4, Insightful)
This only confirms what kind of hypocrits the wikileaks guys are.. Leaking other people's secrets is ok, but if you leak theirs....
Using a firearm to defend others is ok, but it makes you a hypocrite if you protest others using a firearm to commit murder.
Re:Thed saying holds true... (Score:4, Insightful)
"If Wikileaks is going back to just leaking raw data then I don't blame them, they were better off that way not getting fucked by a media" ... "I don't believe Wikileaks is anything like perfect, it has many problems, but they were better off just leaking data" [Emphasis mine].
Aside from a slight sympathy with people in general, who cares if Wikileaks gets "fucked" or what Wikileaks are better off doing? Surely the important thing here is the exposure of malfeasance, while doing your best to protect the innocent? If the promotion of Wikileaks becomes more important than the actual leaks, you have just proven the parent post's point. And if the newspapers don't print what Wikileaks want them to print, they can always release the information themselves as well.
As a side note I'd rather see Assange and Wikileaks get fucked than some innocent who just happens to be put in danger due to his identity being revealed by Wikileaks. At least Assange made the concious choice to put themselves in the spotlight for this.
Re:Thed saying holds true... (Score:4, Insightful)
You only leak what you need to leak in order to expose the bad acts and bad actors, but no more than that.
And who gets to decide who are the "bad" actors and who are the good ones? What gives WikiLeaks the right to be my judge and jury? No investigation, no trial, no chance for rebuttal, just BAM, and your name is attached to something "bad" that may or may not have happened, or that you may or may not have had anything at all to do with.
Your innocence in this case is not relevant. Getting the opportunity to defend yourself is not important. The lives of your family, your wife, kids, parents, distant cousins who you never met, may be the price for the "bad" things that some document says you did.
Sorry, but a right to fair trial and an investigation into the allegations are a basic, fundamental, global human right. WikiLeaks has stripped that basic human right from everyone whose name is on any document that has ever been leaked by them.
Re:Thed saying holds true... (Score:4, Insightful)
"You only leak what you need to leak in order to expose the bad acts and bad actors, but no more than that."
Okay so it would be okay for someone to post that you are cheating on your mate, downloading porn, and or that you like to dress up as a little girl and have Rupert Murdoch spank you with a fish? I am sure that many people would find thing that you do to be bad acts.
"The point of redacting the leaked material was to limit collateral damage to those who had not acted poorly." And you trust a private group with no public oversight to do this more than a democratically elected government? Really?
Even using your own rules Wikileaks fails I will go back to your rules.
"You only leak what you need to leak in order to expose the bad acts and bad actors, but no more than that." So why did wikileaks leak a list of locations of important contractors? I am talking about parts makers. What bad act and bad actors where exposed? Why did they release pager data from 9/11 of private people paging their loved ones that they where ok? What bad acts and actors where involved in those?
Wikileaks has failed.
They failed by your rules.
They failed in basic security by giving out a password to sensitive data.
They have failed to redact data that could get people hurt.
They have failed to present the data without bias.
" But oh, to live in your simple world..." it seems that you do as well.
Re:Wikileaks should be happy... (Score:0, Insightful)
If you'd have read anything about this incident, you'd already know this wasn't the case... you assume stupid shit man.