Wikileaks Vows Release '7x the Size' of Iraq Leak 491
CWmike writes "WikiLeaks has promised to release a load of information seven times bigger than the Iraq War Logs, which raised the Internet group's profile around the world and caused some nations to take notice of the issue of leaks of top-secret documents online. In a note on Twitter, WikiLeaks said, 'Next release is 7x the size of the Iraq War Logs. Intense pressure over it for months,' and asked supporters to continue donating to the cause. WikiLeaks did not say what the new release of information would be about."
NO! (Score:4, Funny)
WikiLeaks did not say what the new release of information would be about."
Oh no!
Not my top secret award winning BBQ Ribs recipe!
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Re:NO! (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh no!
Not my top secret award winning BBQ Ribs recipe!
Mod parent +1 Saucy
Re:NO! (Score:5, Funny)
Not as bad as the trouble Duke's going to be in for releasing the Bushes baked beans recipe.
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Re:NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't that happen recently in the Capitalist/Corporatist world?
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Where? You're not talking about the US, are you? Sorry, but when more than half of your federal budget goes towards social services, you no longer get to call yourself a capitalist country. I'm not sure that there ARE any more capitalist countries, except for maybe Somalia :p
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Re:NO! (Score:4, Informative)
For FY2009 Military is 23%
Military budget and total US federal spending [wikipedia.org]:
"Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 28–38% of budgeted expenditures and 42–57% of estimated tax revenues."
To say that around half of your tax is spent on the military is about right. And then there is the Department of Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security etc. which are don't appear in the military budget.
Of the defense budget, some of that is paying off debt from previous wars, and things like pensions.
Not true; these are not part of the military budget. Military budget of the United States [wikipedia.org]:
"This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by NASA."
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I'm not sure that there ARE any more capitalist countries, except for maybe Somalia
What a great idea, let's buy all the fucking libertarians and dog-eat-dog capitalist weenies a one-way ticket to Somalia.
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That's a silly definition of capitalism. Every dollar any government spends is a social service. Defense? Social service. Police? Social service. Etc.
The metric concerning money should not be percentage of the federal budget that is social services expenditures; the metric should be percent of income that is kept by private actors. As capitalism is about private ownership of the me
Leaky, and 7 times bigger! (Score:2)
Have All The Other Pages Been Read Yet? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Not by slashdotters. They don't even RTFA, sometimes not even RTFS.
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Wait, what were we talking about?
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I think it would help Wikipedia's image if it didn't - they're getting typecast.
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I think your definition of "embarrassingly large" is embarrassingly small.
Re:Have All The Other Pages Been Read Yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
We're not talking about mistakes made in the heat of battle.
Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where does "idiots with good intentions possibly causing harm" fall in to the Good or Bad scale?
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:4, Insightful)
Free speech is causing harm!
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Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I don't think they are idiots, and I'm also not sure they have good intentions. I mean what they are doing may be somewhat dangerous and certainly stirs shit up, but that doesn't make it idiotic. Doing things for the public good, even at risk to yourself, can be something very noble and necessary. So brazen perhaps, but not idiots in my opinion.
However I'm also not sure they have good intentions. To me it seems like Wikileaks is more of an ego stoke sort of things for Assanage. Leak pretty much any and everything, just to be important.
What I mean by that is it is quite clear that not all those diplomatic messages had anything to further the public good by being released, and certainly not enough to outweigh releasing classified material. There is just no way that all of them were:
1) Things people didn't already know.
2) Things they really needed to know.
3) Things that didn't have the potential to cause harm to innocents if released.
4) Things where the public's need outweighed the government's right to keep things secret.
I'm not saying some weren't I have read them, though if there were any like that in there nobody has pointed them out to me, I'm saying not all were. That Wikileaks dumped them all out says to me that it was more of an ego stoke "Look how badass we are," kind of thing more than a "Wow this is really important and the public really needs to know this," kind of thing.
So personally I think they aren't idiots, but aren't well intentioned.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
That Wikileaks dumped them all out says to me that it was more of an ego stoke "Look how badass we are," kind of thing more than a "Wow this is really important and the public really needs to know this," kind of thing.
Interesting.
Why would your gut reaction to an NGO transparently presenting facts, instead of selectively filtering and editorialising, be "an ego stroke"? For me, it's the exact opposite. I see ego stroking in media organisations to the extent which they don't reveal their raw data and instead try to present me a filtered, massaged, sexed-up commentary.
But then, perhaps you're assuming that the United States military has some kind of ethical high ground by default? Me, I look at the world since 2003 with the awareness that the US President began a major war of choice, which is a war crime, by point-blank lying to the United Nations - and the people responsible for this disaster have never been prosecuted. So my assumption is that the United States military has lost all its credible need for secrecy and the people need to know the full extent of their crimes so even if it's too late for justice to be done, at least awareness of the awfulness of what was done in our name won't be buried forever.
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Would depend on what facts they were presenting. No matter what they'd never be presenting the whole story, nobody ever has the whole story. But let's say, for example, the facts they were presenting were my facts. All my personal information, my medical records, my tax records, my e-mails, my letters, etc. I'd be pretty fucking pissed. There is stuff in there that isn't for everyone to know, it is private. What's more it is stuff that is not of public interest, releasing it is not for the public good. Some
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Iraq leak showed that Danish soldiers were patrolling with a few token British soldiers, so that the Danish soldiers would not have to capture anyone. This was done because there was worries that prisoners captured by the Danish forces could not be handed over to the Iraqis. It was known that the Iraqis tortured and killed prisoners who had been handed over.
So basically the Danish forces knew full well that they were complicit in torture, and the government felt it could avoid blame by just bringing British soldiers with them -- enabling them to truthfully say "no, we have not handed prisoners over to the Iraqi forces" when asked in Parliament. And the excuse of the Danish soldiers? "We were just following orders". Right, I wonder where we heard that one before.
Unfortunately members of the Parliament are immune to prosecution in Denmark, so we cannot try them for war crimes. Maybe once the government changes, but I bet the new government won't allow it, just like George Bush hasn't been indicted even though we have his written confession.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've yet to have someone show me the information that was not previously publicly known, that came to light because of this, that was so important for the public to know.
The Iraq War leaks [wikipedia.org] provided details of 15,000 previously unknown civilian killings, along with the location and circumstances. That kind of information is invaluable to the Iraq Body Count Project.
That Wikipedia article contains many more "previously unknown or unconfirmed events that took place during the war". One that stands out is:
A number of the documents, as defined by Al Jazeera English, describe how US troops killed almost 700 civilians for coming too close to checkpoints, including pregnant women and the mentally ill. At least a half-dozen incidents involved Iraqi men transporting pregnant family members to hospitals.
I can't recall the U.S. military admitting to killing 700 civilians.
And what about this leaked report:
"On May 14, 2005, an American unit “OBSERVED A BLACKWATER PSD SHOOT UP A CIV VEHICLE,” killing a father and wounding his wife and daughter, a report said, referring to a Blackwater protective security detail.
The military never publicised that soldiers had observed Blackwater contractors shooting up civilian vehicles. Or the numerous other indiscriminate killings by Blackwater [nytimes.com] that the troops observed. What about this incident report, after contractors drove into a neighborhood in the northern city of Erbil and began shooting at random, setting off a firefight with an off-duty police officer and wounding three women:
"“It is assessed that this drunken group of individuals were out having a good time and firing their weapons,”"
Did the military ever voluntarily reveal that drunken contractors had gone out to have a good time shooting in a civilian neighbourhood, resulting in women being harmed?
There have been civilian casualties and the government knows. To this I can only say: DUH! It is war, it is nasty business.
Well, it wasn't supposed to be a war. The war was supposed to have been won, and this was supposed to be a peacekeeping and nation building operation. The troops and contractors and other actors are not meant to be operating under war time rules of engagement. But the leaks show that, amongst many individuals, there is a disregard for life and the rule of law.
The gunship video. If you think that's a war crime, it only shows your ignorance of the rules of war. I see nothing in that video illegal.
I've already commented on the legal issue. [slashdot.org] It is not as clear cut as you seem to think. But here's the most important issue: it is not for you or I to determine whether these men are guilty or innocent. That is a job for judges in a military court. Where is the prosecutor in this case? In any reasonable judicial system, a prosecutor would decide whether or not to pursue a court case against these individuals, and he would have to justify this decision to the public. Consider if an identical situation happened in the United States - a group of individuals, some armed - but in a state where open-carry is legal - are shot up by a police/army helicopter. A group of passing "Good Samaritans" stop to help a few minutes later, and they also get shot up. And not only is there no prosecution, there is not even an attorney general giving a reason for not pursuing a prosecution. At the very least, that is what we would expect from a civilised society that follows the rules of law.
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I disagree. By your own metrics:
>1) Things people didn't already know.
People knew there was torture and civilian deaths in Iraq, prior to the lead nobody had any idea of the true scale of it. Iraq Bodycount added more than 15000 to their number based on that particular leak. There had been isolated reports (Abu Ghraib) and such - but the reality of torture as a near-daily occurrence by the Iraq Army and the regular and frequent deaths of civilians at road-stops was not truly known before.
>2) Things th
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
> The government has no right to keep secrets.
Yes and no. Leaving aside the rather massive issue of where rights come from, there is still a little more nuance here.
First, clearly there are times when information can't or shouldn't be publicly disseminated. Perhaps the name of a teen who was raped should be withheld from the local papers; perhaps prosecutors should not tell the media everything they know about an investigation so that they will not contaminate a jury pool; perhaps police officers should withhold a lurid detail from the description of a crime so as to tell the real criminal from a copycat or imposter.
There are more controversial areas of secrecy: the placement of agents within foreign governments or industry; cryptanalysis techniques developed at NSA that make cracking certain codes easier, or the mere fact that an old code has been cracked; the exact position of every defensive emplacement in Korea; the technology used in the F-22. The public dissemination of this information at the time it is acquired will, to some extent, compromise our ability to predict or respond to threats to the nation.
That being said, I agree that the government should not be able to keep any secret indefinitely, and that in the meantime, all government secrets should be subject to civilian oversight. Anyone who legitimately encounters classified information should also be able to bring an action against the government arguing that the information should be public, if they believe it is being classified erroneously, negligently, or with reckless disregard of the people's interest in knowing the information. A jury should be used, and the procedure should be sealed unless the claimant wins, or after a default period of several decades. Some other procedural safeguards should also be employed.
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Where does "idiots with good intentions possibly causing harm" fall in to the Good or Bad scale?
Well, that's a more charitable description of the Bush Administration than I'd have proposed, but I suppose reasonable people can disagree.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:4, Funny)
"Bad" is attempting to see the world through such a simplistic lens .. oh, wait..
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps part of the problem making such a determination is the asymmetric nature of their leaks. They haven't been leaking any secrets from the Taliban or Al Quaida.
It's more a function of the people involved in the leaks and the amount of digital information available to send electronically than any editorial bias, but nevertheless, the benefactors of such leaks tend to be the same people rather than being evenly distributed.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Interesting)
Aljazeera != Aljazeera (Score:5, Informative)
Careful, it is important to discriminate the Aljazeeras on the internet.
There is "english.aljazeera.net", which is a more or less factual, reliable news source from an arab perspective (think arab CNN). This is the "real" Aljazeera with the global TV channel.
Then there is "aljazeera.com", which is a trashy islamist/extremist propaganda website disguised as a news outlet (think FoxNews).
Re:Aljazeera != Aljazeera (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9019 [charlierose.com]
In fact he said the opposite, that the network used to focus on serious news and now focuses too much on opinion pieces and lighter news segments for more appeal.
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Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Interesting)
Something I've often wondered is if they had some sort of damning stuff about the Israelis or say Putin if they would be as keen to release it. The US is more about character assassination and working the propaganda angles. Mossad will just kill you and the KGB(or whatever three letter acronym they're using these days) will find a creative way of killing you.
Assrange should take a lesson from Gerald Bull. Eventually, if you piss off enough of these people, one of them will come for you. And in the end, the only question will be, whom actually did it with enough plausible deniability for all.
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Mossad will just kill you and the KGB(or whatever three letter acronym they're using these days) will find a creative way of killing you.
More than likely they would killed the person who leaked to Wikileaks, not members of Wikileaks. Because of this, it's unlikely they would receive anything to leak about countries like that.
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heya,
The KGB is the FSB these days, I believe (more or less).
And yeah, they will find a creative way of killing you - whether it's stabbing you with a poisoned umbrella, or poisoning you slowly so you die from radiation sickness, in excruciating agony...lol.
It's kind of funny, all these silly DOWN WITH THE US IMPERIALIST jokers going around about how evil the US is - if the US were actually half as evil as you say they are, and half the cock-brained conspiracies you talk about were true, then you'd probably
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Firstly, their alleged "war diaries" were nothing more than public domain knowledge, covering a rife of friendly-fire incidents, and well-document US military screw-ups
Then why did US military get so upset? And why was Assange arranged to be character-assassinated while in Sweden?
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"It's kind of funny, all these silly DOWN WITH THE US IMPERIALIST jokers going around about how evil the US is - if the US were actually half as evil as you say they are, and half the cock-brained conspiracies you talk about were true, then you'd probably be lying in a shallow unmarked grave somewhere instead of ranting on like you do."
Or even abducted, waterboarded at a US run facility, and then eventually chucked in a CIA plane, and flown to somewhere like Morocco to be more brutally tortured, before bein
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't you quote the rest of what he said, he explains right there in what he meant. If you have a problem with it, address that.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:4, Informative)
I think this is a distraction. Wikileaks is about more than just the 'US v. *' set of conflicts; if you look back at the past several years you can see a number of reports they've made that have entirely to do with individual non-US corporate concerns, domestic issues in a host of countries, etc.
The stuff you hear now is largely due to the size (both of the apparatus and the leak) and that the bloodied nose is the US, and therefor important.
Leaks are Symmetric (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps part of the problem making such a determination is the asymmetric nature of their leaks....It's more a function of the people involved in the leaks
No - it is more a function of how best to release the information to stop the organization. If you worked for the Taliban et al and were disgusted at their behaviour your best bet to stop that behaviour would be to secretly leak information to western governments who will then act to stop attacks. If you released it via Wikileaks your own organization would know that the information has been released and switch the attack to somewhere else and after an attack the information is public anyway.
Compare that to someone disgusted with the behaviour of a western government. The only people to whom these governments are somewhat accountable is their electorate. Hence, to stop the behaviour you are unhappy with the only choice you have is to leak the data publicly so that their electorate get to see it and demand an explanation and changes. So I would argue that the leaks might well be symmetric but that the terrorist leaks are more effective when kept secret and western government leaks more effective when made public.
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Among geeks and freedom-of-information activists, the consensus is "good", although some of their decisions are criticized from different angles (they redact too much, they redact too little, they publish too soon, they delay too long, etc.)
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Funny)
I believe Wikileaks fits the chaotic-good alignment.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're marked funny, but I think that's spot-on.
They do things which they believe are in the best interests of humanity in general.
They do some diligence (some argue not enough) to sanitize it so people don't get further endangered as a result.
They feel that Not Acting harms more than acting, so they act and release information in the interests of disclosing corruption, false propaganda, or things which are Unknown to the public at large.
They do this despite knowing that it will get them on the shit-lists of influential governments. They seem to try to stay legal, but it appears that they are willing to publish things which you or I would be unable to get away with publishing.
This anthropomorphizes Wikileaks a bit more than I probably should. It seems like their modus operandi is "Expose corruption and lies, even if it's against the law someplace", but that may just be my perception. They're like Robin Hoods of the information age.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I was only half joking. It does really fit them well.
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Wrong. They care about doing what they think is good. What they don't care about is if you agree with what they think is good.
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Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. They care about doing what they think is good. What they don't care about is if you agree with what they think is good.
Practically no one ever considers themselves "the bad guy" even guys like saddam hussein, idi amin and the khmer rouge all rationalized their actions as somehow being for the greater good.
Personally, I think wikileaks is well over the line into the territory of "good" -- I'm just saying the argument that someone thinks they are doing good doesn't necessarily make it so.
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And the US government would be best described as Lawful-Evil. Pick your sides.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Informative)
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Sorry, but your information is outdated. They are no longer [thelocal.se] with PRQ. Admittedly, that news is from only two days ago.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends on your personal views.
There are those who are of the opinion that these leaks are costing lives of both Western and Middle Eastern Soldiers AND Citizens - and thus releasing this information to the public essentially gives it to our enemies who then use it against us. That these leaks are causing more deaths than necessary. Opposing that some people view that essentially partaking in this conflict, by either signing up with the army or aiding with it's intelligence you've already forfeited your right to reasonable safety. The idea being they could have stopped being an informant at any point and moved far far away - so being an informant is similar to volunteering to be a soldier.
There are those who are of the opinion that the public needs to be made aware of what our military and government are doing. That indecent acts against humanity are not justified by the goal of national security. Those who think that by exposing what is going on during the wars might bring them to an end sooner, similar to the Vietnam war. There are those who think that the safety of themselves and their family are best left up to the military, and that there are some necessary evils. They might believe that those under harm from our military are rightly deserved so based upon their previous acts of violence or terrorism.
So - evaluate it how you will, theres a reason why this contraversial issue is contraversial. Make up your own mind about it.
It essentially boils down to whether you believe in the War on Terror or not.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Insightful)
It essentially boils down to whether you believe in the War on Terror or not.
In other words, it essentially boils down to whether you're an indoctrinated drone or not. All that the government has proved lately is that terrorism works. The people lose many of their freedoms in exchange for a false sense of security, and they just accept it.
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And all they have is their opinion, because even the Department of Defense was forced to admit [slashdot.org] that the facts do not back that position.
So that's one leg of your dichotomy taken out. All that's left is that Wikileaks is doing a good thing. Funny, who would have thou
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:4, Funny)
That argument was used to not nuking Japan in WWII.
Agreed. The non-dropping of the unatomic bomb was one of the key nonevents of WWII. We all don't have Groves and Oppenheimer to thank that the Manhattan Nonproject never did happen.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:5, Funny)
You're really trying to get the dust kicked up early, aren't you?
Alternatively... with my meager research (reading Slashdot and other sites), I can't figure out which is the superior text editor. Vi or Emacs?
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So with my admittedly meager research (reading Slashdot and other sites), I can't figure out if the Wikileaks people are good guys or bad guys. Which is it?
You can't figure it out? You like governments and corporations around the world keeping secrets from citizens at their expense?
The only problem with this years Nobel Peace Prize is that Wikileaks was a better candidate for it. (Tianmen Square was limited to China, while Wikileaks has the potential to change the world.)
For Wikileaks to possibly be in a "bad" category, it would have to do something bad. By what twisted reasoning can you find anything that Wikileaks has done somehow fit into the categor
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Neither. They have an idea that the world is better for seeing its ills - an ethical proposition with a big set of moral upsides and downsides.
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"I can't figure out if the Wikileaks people are good guys or bad guys"
The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Re:Good Guys or Bad Guys? (Score:4, Insightful)
So with my admittedly meager research (reading Slashdot and other sites), I can't figure out if the Wikileaks people are good guys or bad guys. Which is it?
It's subjective, but in general when they reveal the cost of civilian life in the war that the government has tried to conceal that is generally viewed as them being the good guys. Conversely when they name informants/defectors within the enemy forces they would generally be viewed as bad.
Sometimes secrecy is necessary and other times it is not, it seems both sides want to for an absolute on this though.
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Donating (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikileaks accepts donations by mail. If you're paranoid, and you should be, buy a postal money order with cash and drop it in a mailbox. No return address!
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Wikileaks accepts donations by mail. If you're paranoid, and you should be ............
The subject at hand is donating to a website that publishes information not in favor by the U.S. government.....
"and you should be"
Whoever was behind 9/11, mission accomplished.
Re:Donating (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Donating (Score:4, Informative)
In the US, the justice department has this handy legal billy club called RICO...
Probably not if you're donating $5 or $10, but if you were donating a large sum of money, say $10,000, then....
Other countries have Security Services...some of which are known for their ruthless efficiency.
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Kinda strange to see someone mention government agencies and "efficiency" in the same sentence.
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Re:Donating (Score:5, Informative)
That is, if you compare them to real-world standards (private industry and other governments), instead of an idealized standard of perfection. (E.g. people who carp about medicare fraud without ever considering that insurance fraud affects all insurers).
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I'm puzzled why you think that illustrates inefficiency? What it illustrates is 1) changing demographics, and 2) refusal of voters to elect representatives who will put taxes and benefits in line with each other. It would be "inefficiency" if the government had collected enough taxes to pay the benefits, but wasted it on sales commissions or management overhead or something, but that's not the case.
Aging demographic
Re:Donating (Score:5, Funny)
Other countries have Security Services...some of which are known for their ruthless efficiency.
Not to mention, fear, surprise, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.
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No, just that the FBI would create a file on you, and your name would figure on various watch list. All of these would have nothing to do with your donation though, which would be a mere coincidence.
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While at the moment I don't believe so. There is a possibility for problems. Given the US is able to classify this organization as one which is opposed to their military efforts, you might find that such acts meet the loose definition of sponsoring terrorism.
Without putting in effort (this is Slashdot), I recall that Wikileaks previous payment processor had a similar problem, where political pressure had been put on them along these lines. Though, not as harsh as it could be, as if they were a real terroris
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Osama wouldn't want to give away the address of his cave now would he?
Is this that mysterious "protection" file? (Score:2)
If so, I suspect this will be very interesting....
No it will be dangerous. (Score:2)
If he releases something like that hes just going to take his situation from bad to worse.
Maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
Poor old Marat (Score:2)
Judy Collins, "Marat/Sade". I sense parallels between Wikileaks and the fugitive newsman from the French Revolution. Sometimes you just have to put your shoulder to something bigger than yourself.
Top Secret? (Score:4, Informative)
which raised the Internet group's profile around the world and caused some nations to take notice of the issue of leaks of top-secret documents online
Have any of the documents leaked been Top Secret? According the reports I've read, the highest level of classification in these leaks has been Secret.
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Top Secret isn't even high as classification levels go. My wife and I both had TS clearances in the Navy, and we were just mid-level NCO's.
That probably because TS is more protected (Score:3, Informative)
The higher the classification, the more that is done to protect the data. For example Confidential data, which is a level of classification, basically just means "Don't show this to anyone k?" You don't have to have a security clearance to see it. Secret requires a clearance, however it isn't as hard to get as higher level ones. There are also technical safeguards taken for the data, but not as much as some others. At Top Secret is starts to get pretty serious. The background check is much more intense, as
Let's just say this leak involves Ron Jeremy... (Score:2)
...and leave it at that.
I Wrote Some of the Leaks (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm not sure I'd want to show up for an International arrest warrant if a government official that still retains a fair bit of clout was calling for my treatment as an enemy combatant [antiwar.com]. I'm sure that a trip to Guantanamo Bay would be completely off the table, right?
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here's what I want released, while we're in a release anything kinda mood... How about someone release the documents we captured from saddams oval office? They were referred to as the harmony docs, and were being translated by the FMSO. Remember the october surprise in the 2004 NYTimes: "bush leaks saddam's nuke primer on web"? I saw many of those docs... WMD specs, bio/chem training manuals, evading un inspectors. How 'bout releasing those?
Well, you could visit Argentina and ask Saddam himself. It was his double that was hanged. He was spirited away to Argentina and took up residence in Hitler's old villa.
Re: just stop it now. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sick and tired of rape jokes. Rape is not funny. Just don't.
The other day I overheard a 12 year old repeat a rape joke from family guy. It takes a lot to appall me but that did.
Here you go, lazy prick. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.thelocal.se/19376/20090511/ [thelocal.se]
Discussions of rape nowadays use examples of women who are asleep, or have taken drugs or drunk too much alcohol, in order to argue that they cannot properly consent to sex. If they feel taken advantage of the next day, they may call what happened rape. The Daphne project’s Sweden researchers propose that those accused of rape ought to have to ‘prove consent’, but attempts to legislate and document seduction and desire are unlikely to succeed.
I'm sure
Re:I really hope it's not more US stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
You've proved your point - the US is far from perfect.
Where "far from perfect" equals "war criminals". But this is really illustrative of the ultimate futility of what Wikileaks is doing. Most Americans don't give a shit if the military is committing atrocities, either out of sheer apathy or because they actually approve of murdering civilians who are the wrong color and religion. And of those who do care and disapprove, there are people like you, who are tired of being bothered by unpleasant facts.
At the end of the day, if it involves fewer than six million Jews, hardly anyone gives a shit. And quite likely no one would give a shit about those six million Jews if the survivors and their descendants didn't work overtime to make sure that people remembered. Do you know who the other half to two-thirds of the victims of the Holocaust were? Or that they even existed?
The fundamental misconception that Julian Assange and his supporters -- including, to some extent, myself -- have about the world is the same belief that Anne Frank might have been disabused of when she was murdered in the camps: that despite everything, people are basically good. The truth is that, despite everything, hardly anyone can be bothered to pay attention unless it's painfully obvious that it affects them. And people being murdered on the other side of the planet seldom falls into that category.
The next leak is going to be seven times as large? Great. It's still going to be outweighed by public apathy by several orders of magnitude.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How about YOU go and find some secrets from PRC, Russia, Iran or NK and send them to Wikileaks?
Isn't that what OSS proponents do? As in "write your own patch"?
I mean, really, we are sitting here in our lazy asses, doing nothing. Yet you have the gall to complain about Wikileaks not giving out what you want to see?!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wikileaks has leaked plenty about other governments, as well as corporations local and foreign. Heck it used to be the case that the majority was non-US. I've not looked in a while, but that could still be the case.
The problem is that its the US leaks that get all the Attention in the US news (not to mention that much of what they have on other governments just is not as "juicy" as some of the US leaks).
If you have have a copy of the Taliban's membership roster, or North Koera's nuclear plans, or something
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's easy to pick on democracies. I'd love to see them blow the lid on countries like Iran, Syria and North Korea. They are consistently targeting the wrong guys.
That rather depends on the citizens of Iran, Syria or North Korea doing something about it, don't you think?
Wikileaks aren't fucking International Spies R Us.