Wikileaks

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

If the US really wanted him dead he would be sleeping with the fishes already. Look how the Israelis handled their shit.

[Park Life 71]

If the US really wanted him dead he would be sleeping with the fishes already. Look how the Israelis handled their shit.

 

I agree. The hoo ha around him is imo state sponsored but not serious in the sense that it makes hijm a cause celebre and a safe source to reveal more worthless inofmation, inidispersed with sensitive material briefing against our enemies ie Iran etc. Notice nothing of any great porport against Israel.

 

 

One of the Chez's links shows documentation about spying on higher education esp Mulslims in the UK as it is here in Germany, to subvert or co-opt renegade movements with more well funded avenues and paymasters. YOu could explain this to young muslims till your blue in the face and yet they continnue to chat about politics in amongst their liking of fashion and brands on facebook. You counn't make it up.

Edited December 29, 2010 by Park Life

[Rob W 0]

Well I'm AMAZED that young Moslems "continue to chat about politics in amongst their liking of fashion and brands"

 

Why look how serious we are on this board - latest General Posts...................

 

 

Frankie Boyle at it again

Hangovers

Wikileaks

What mood are you in and why?

What are you listening to

Is it acceptable for a man......

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Best Xmas Present / Worst Present

[Happy Face 29]

Last week, Aaron Barr, a top executive at computer security firm HB Gary Federal, boasted to the Financial Times that his firm had infiltrated and begun to expose Anonymous, the group of pro-WikiLeaks hackers that had launched cyber attacks on companies terminating services to the whistleblowing site (such as Paypal, MasterCard, Visa, Amazon and others). In retaliation, Anonymous hacked into the email accounts of HB Gary, published 50,000 of their emails online, and also hacked Barr's Twitter and other online accounts.

 

Among the emails that were published was a report prepared by HB Gary -- in conjunction with several other top online security firms, including Palantir Technologies -- on how to destroy WikiLeaks. The emails indicated the report was part of a proposal to be submitted to Bank of America through its outside law firm, Hunton & Williams. News reports have indicated that WikiLeaks is planning to publish highly incriminating documents showing possible corruption and fraud at that bank, and The New York Times detailed last month how seriously top bank officials are taking that threat. The NYT article described that the bank's "counterespionage work" against WikiLeaks entailed constant briefings for top executives on the whistleblowing site, along with the hiring of "several top law firms" and Booz Allen (the long-time firm of former Bush DNI Adm. Michael McConnell and numerous other top intelligence and defense officials). The report prepared by these firms was designed to be part of the Bank of America's highly funded anti-WikiLeaks campaign.

 

The leaked report suggested numerous ways to destroy WikiLeaks, some of them likely illegal -- including planting fake documents with the group and then attacking them when published; "creat[ing] concern over the security" of the site; "cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters"; and a "media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of wikileaks activities." Many of those proposals were also featured prongs of a secret 2008 Pentagon plan to destroy WikiLeaks.

 

One section of the leaked report focused on attacking WikiLeaks' supporters and it featured a discussion of me. A graph purporting to be an "organizational chart" identified several other targets, including former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8 Lee, Guardian reporter James Ball, and Manning supporter David House. The report claimed I was "critical" to WikiLeaks' public support after its website was removed by Amazon and that "it is this level of support that needs to be disrupted"; absurdly speculated that "without the support of people like Glenn, WikiLeaks would fold"; and darkly suggested that "these are established professionals that have a liberal bent, but ultimately most of them if pushed will choose professional preservation over cause." As The Tech Herald noted, "earlier drafts of the proposal and an email from Aaron Barr used the word 'attacked' over 'disrupted' when discussing the level of support."

 

In the wake of the ensuing controversy caused by publication of these documents, the co-founder and CEO of Palantir Tech, Alex Karp, has now issued a statement stating that he "directed the company to sever any and all contacts with HB Gary." The full statement -- which can be read here -- also includes this sentence: "personally and on behalf of the entire company, I want to publicly apologize to progressive organizations in general, and Mr. Greenwald in particular, for any involvement that we may have had in these matters." Palantir has also contacted me by email to arrange for Dr. Karp to call me to personally convey the apology. My primary interest is in knowing whether Bank of America retained these firms to execute this proposal and if any steps were taken to do so; if Karp's apology is genuine, that information ought to be forthcoming (as I was finishing writing this, Karp called me, seemed sincere enough in his apology, vowed that any Palantir employees involved in this would be dealt with the way they dealt with HB Gary, and commendably committed to telling me by the end of the week whether Bank of America or Hunton & Williams actually retained these firms to carry out this proposal).

 

* * * * *

 

My initial reaction to all of this was to scoff at its absurdity. Not being familiar with the private-sector world of internet security, I hadn't heard of these firms before and, based on the quality of the proposal, assumed they were just some self-promoting, fly-by-night entities of little significance. Moreover, for the reasons I detailed in my interview with The Tech Herald -- and for reasons Digby elaborated on here -- the very notion that I could be forced to choose "professional preservation over cause" is ludicrous on multiple levels. Obviously, I wouldn't have spent the last year vehemently supporting WikiLeaks -- to say nothing of aggressively criticizing virtually every large media outlet and many of their leading stars, as well as the most beloved political leaders of both parties -- if I were willing to choose "career preservation over cause."

 

But after learning a lot more over the last couple of days, I now take this more seriously -- not in terms of my involvement but the broader implications this story highlights. For one thing, it turns out that the firms involved here are large, legitimate and serious, and do substantial amounts of work for both the U.S. Government and the nation's largest private corporations (as but one example, see this email from a Stanford computer science student about Palantir). Moreover, these kinds of smear campaigns are far from unusual; in other leaked HB Gary emails, ThinkProgress discovered that similar proposals were prepared for the Chamber of Commerce to attack progressive groups and other activists (including ThinkProgress). And perhaps most disturbing of all, Hunton & Williams was recommended to Bank of America's General Counsel by the Justice Department -- meaning the U.S. Government is aiding Bank of America in its defense against/attacks on WikiLeaks.

 

That's why this should be taken seriously, despite how ignorant, trite and laughably shallow is the specific leaked anti-WikiLeaks proposal. As creepy and odious as this is, there's nothing unusual about these kinds of smear campaigns. The only unusual aspect here is that we happened to learn about it this time because of Anonymous' hacking. That a similar scheme was quickly discovered by ThinkProgress demonstrates how common this behavior is. The very idea of trying to threaten the careers of journalists and activists to punish and deter their advocacy is self-evidently pernicious; that it's being so freely and casually proposed to groups as powerful as the Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, and the DOJ-recommended Hunton & Williams demonstrates how common this is. These highly experienced firms included such proposals because they assumed those deep-pocket organizations would approve and it would make their hiring more likely.

 

But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I've written many times about this issue -- the full-scale merger between public and private spheres -- because it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.

 

That's what this anti-WikiLeaks campaign is generally: it's a concerted, unified effort between government and the most powerful entities in the private sector (Bank of America is the largest bank in the nation). The firms the Bank has hired (such as Booz Allen) are suffused with the highest level former defense and intelligence officials, while these other outside firms (including Hunton & Williams and Palantir) are extremely well-connected to the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government's obsession with destroying WikiLeaks has been well-documented. And because the U.S. Government is free to break the law without any constraints, oversight or accountability, so, too, are its "private partners" able to act lawlessly. That was the lesson of the Congressional vesting of full retroactive immunity in lawbreaking telecoms, of the refusal to prosecute any of the important Wall Street criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis, and of the instinctive efforts of the political class to protect defrauding mortgage banks.

 

The exemption from the rule of law has been fully transferred from the highest level political elites to their counterparts in the private sector. "Law" is something used to restrain ordinary Americans and especially those who oppose this consortium of government and corporate power, but it manifestly does not apply to restrain these elites. Just consider one amazing example illustrating how this works.

 

After Anonymous imposed some very minimal cyber disruptions on Paypal, Master Card and Amazon, the DOJ flamboyantly vowed to arrest the culprits, and several individuals were just arrested as part of those attacks. But weeks earlier, a far more damaging and serious cyber-attack was launched at WikiLeaks, knocking them offline. Those attacks were sophisticated and dangerous. Whoever did that was quite likely part of either a government agency or a large private entity acting at its behest. Yet the DOJ has never announced any investigation into those attacks or vowed to apprehend the culprits, and it's impossible to imagine that ever happening.

 

Why? Because crimes carried out that serve the Government's agenda and target its opponents are permitted and even encouraged; cyber-attacks are "crimes" only when undertaken by those whom the Government dislikes, but are perfectly permissible when the Government itself or those with a sympathetic agenda unleash them. Whoever launched those cyber attacks at WikiLeaks (whether government or private actors) had no more legal right to do so than Anonymous, but only the latter will be prosecuted.

 

That's the same dynamic that causes the Obama administration to be obsessed with prosecuting WikiLeaks but not The New York Times or Bob Woodward, even though the latter have published far more sensitive government secrets; WikiLeaks is adverse to the government while the NYT and Woodward aren't, and thus "law" applies to punish only the former. The same mindset drives the Government to shield high-level political officials who commit the most serious crimes, while relentlessly pursuing whistle-blowers who expose their wrongdoing. Those with proximity to government power and who serve and/or control it are free from the constraints of law; those who threaten or subvert it have the full weight of law come crashing down upon them.

 

* * * * *

 

What is set forth in these proposals for Bank of America quite possibly constitutes serious crimes. Manufacturing and submitting fake documents with the intent they be published likely constitutes forgery and fraud. Threatening the careers of journalists and activists in order to force them to be silent is possibly extortion and, depending on the specific means to be used, constitutes other crimes as well. Attacking WikiLeaks' computer infrastructure in an attempt to compromise their sources undoubtedly violates numerous cyber laws.

 

Yet these firms had no compunction about proposing such measures to Bank of America and Hunton & Williams, and even writing them down. What accounts for that brazen disregard of risk? In this world, law does not exist as a constraint. It's impossible to imagine the DOJ ever, ever prosecuting a huge entity like Bank of America for doing something like waging war against WikiLeaks and its supporters. These massive corporations and the firms that serve them have no fear of law or government because they control each. That's why they so freely plot to target those who oppose them in any way. They not only have massive resources to devote to such attacks, but the ability to act without limits. John Cole put it this way:

 

One thing that even the dim bulbs in the media should understand by now is that there is in fact a class war going on, and it is the rich and powerful who are waging it. Anyone who does anything that empowers the little people or that threatens the wealth and power of the plutocracy must be destroyed. There is a reason for these clowns going after Think Progress and unions, just like there is a reason they are targeting Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald, Planned Parenthood, and Acorn. . . .

 

You have to understand the mindset- they are playing for keeps. The vast majority of the wealth isn't enough. They want it all. Anything that gets in their way must be destroyed. . . . And they are well financed, have a strong infrastructure, a sympathetic media, and entire organizations dedicated to running cover for them . . . .

 

I don't even know why we bother to hold elections any more, to be honest, the game is so rigged. We're a banana republic, and it is just a matter of time before we descend into necklacing and other tribal bullshit.

 

There are supposed to be institutions which limit what can be done in pursuit of those private-sector goals. They're called "government" and "law." But those institutions are so annexed by the most powerful private-sector elites, and so corrupted by the public officials who run them, that nobody -- least of all those elites -- has any expectation that they will limit anything. To the contrary, the full force of government and law will be unleashed against anyone who undermines Bank of America and Wall Street executives and telecoms and government and the like (such as WikiLeaks and supporters), and will be further exploited to advance the interests of those entities, but will never be used to constrain what they do. These firms vying for Bank of America's anti-WikiLeaks business know all of this full well, which is why they concluded that proposing such pernicious and possibly illegal attacks would be deemed not just acceptable but commendable.

 

 

 

UPDATE: Several new items to note: (1) Salon's Editor-in-Chief, Kerry Lauerman, has an excellent response to all of this on behalf of Salon; (2) The CEO and COO of Berico -- the third company whose name appears on the report (along with Palantir and HB Gary) -- has now issued a statement [link fixed] condemning the proposal as "reprehensible" and also severed all ties with HB Gary; and (3) Bank of America has issued a carefully worded statement to USA Today, denying that they ever saw or have any interest in the proposal and claiming they never hired HB Gary to do this work (though they don't say whether they hired Berico or Palantir, the firms that were coordinating the proposal, to do similar work, nor whether Hunton & Williams did); I'll look forward to hearing from Palantir's CEO, as promised, on those questions.

 

 

 

UPDATE II: The New York Times this morning has a fairly thorough account of this matter that is worth reading. While Bank of America continues to deny involvement in these proposals, its law firm, Hunton & Williams -- one of the most well-connected law firms in Washington -- refuses to comment, and that firm appears to be a key link in all of these efforts.

 

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...igns/index.html

 

Must be bad for business, getting hacked...when you're an internet security firm

Edited February 13, 2011 by Happy Face

[Park Life 71]

We’ve seen your internal documents, all of them, and do you know what we did? We laughed. Most of the information you’ve ‘extracted’ is publicly available via our IRC networks," Anonymous wrote in a statement posted to HBGary's site on Sunday. "So why can't you sell this information to the FBI like you intended? Because we're going to give it to them for free."

 

HBGary cofounder and security researcher Greg Hoglund confirmed on Sunday evening that the latest attacks were sophisticated compared to the group's past shenanigans. "They broke into one of HBGary’s servers that was used for tech support, and they got e-mails through compromising an insecure Web server at HBGary Federal," Hoglund told KrebsonSecurity. "They used that to get the credentials for Aaron, who happened to be an administrator on our e-mail system, which is how they got into everything else. So it’s a case where the hackers break in on a non-important system, which is very common in hacking situations, and leveraged lateral movement to get onto systems of interest over time."

 

As for the 60,000 e-mails that are now available to anyone with a torrent client, Hoglund argued that their publication was irresponsible and would cost HBGary millions of dollars in losses due to the exposure of proprietary information. "Before this, what these guys were doing was technically illegal, but it was in direct support of a government whistle blower. But now, we have a situation where they’re committing a federal crime, stealing private data and posting it on a torrent," Hoglund said.

 

It's unlikely that Anonymous cares about what Hoglund thinks, though. Several of the company's e-mails indicated that Barr was looking for ways to spin its info about Anonymous as a pro-HBGary PR move, which Anonymous took special issue with. The group warned HBGary that it had "charged into the Anonymous hive" and now the company is "being stung."

 

"It would appear that security experts are not expertly secured," Anonymous wrote

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

'What I really detest about the UK is there is a certain mid-brow squeamishness in the population,' he said.

 

'It would rather destroy an entire revolution, and keep a country in dictatorship, than risk being blamed for the tiniest thing.

 

'When you are dealing with the fate of nations you cannot take the principle of "Do No Harm" and look through a microscope. You have to look at the total surroundings.'

 

'We are not squeamish and we will not condemn a nation to dictatorship simply because we are aware of a certain cloying middle class squeamishness view in the UK.'

 

 

Latest quotes from the Assman. Apparently doesn't apply to Afghanistan or Iraq though, the silly prick.

Edited June 4, 2011 by Kevin S. Assilleekunt

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

I joined WikiLeaks last November as a staffer for a three-month stint. Culture shock came just a few days in, when Julian Assange gathered core staff and supporters at Ellingham Hall, a manor house owned by the Frontline Club founder and WikiLeaks supporter Vaughan Smith.

 

Around the dining table the team sketched out a plan for the coming months, to release the leaked US diplomatic cables selectively for maximum impact. Phase one would involve publishing selected – and carefully redacted – high-profile cables through the Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais. Phase two would spread this out to more media organisations.

 

But clearly a large volume of cables would remain, of little interest to any media organisation. Several at the meeting – myself included – stressed these documents, which would probably number hundreds of thousands, could not be published without similar careful redaction. Others vehemently disagreed.

 

Johannes Wahlström, Swedish journalist and son of antisemitic WikiLeaks activist Israel Shamir, shouted: "You do realise the idea of not putting ALL of these cables up is totally unacceptable to people around this table, don't you?"

 

Julian took Wahlström's their side. One way or another, he said, all the cables must eventually be made public.

 

There were further disillusioning incidents. During December 2010, a period where WikiLeaks was struggling to muster even a $10,000 donation to the defence fund of Bradley Manning, the US soldier alleged to have leaked the cables, Assange nevertheless privately promised several thousand Australian dollars to fund Juice News, the makers of humorous pro-WikiLeaks YouTube videos.

 

Julian's arrest loomed, on allegations of sexual assault. Aware he would need money to post surety, he scrabbled for sources of cash. He attempted to access WikiLeaks funds, received through donations.

 

He approached the Wau Holland Foundation, which manages the bulk of WikiLeaks' finances, to ask for substantial funds – for "the future of WikiLeaks". Quite properly, it refused, as Julian's personal legal action was not one of the stated purposes of the donations.

 

Assange also tried to obtain the cash held by WikiLeaks' Icelandic division, asking the directors to sign a form authorising the transfer of their (much smaller) coffers.

 

When I asked one of them whether such a transfer was legal, he replied "I have no idea" – but signed anyway.

 

In the event, Julian mustered funds from celebrity backers. But trying to use WikiLeaks' precarious resources to fight a personal legal action was, to my view, morally indefensible.

 

WikiLeaks is not a conventional organisation. It has no board, no governance, and no effective rules. In such a febrile environment, and with Julian so central to the organisation's ability to function, it's not hard to see how such decisions came to be seen as correct.

 

So I decided to grit my teeth and carry on. Dismay mounted, however, with the arrival of Israel Shamir, a self-styled Russian "peace campaigner" with a long history of antisemitic writing. Shamir was introduced to the team under the pseudonym Adam, and it was only several weeks after he had left – with a huge cache of unredacted cables – that most of us started to find out who he was.

 

Press enquiries started to trickle in. A little research revealed his unsavoury history, but I was told Julian would be unwilling for WikiLeaks to publish anything critical of Shamir. Instead, shamefully, we put out a statement simply distancing WikiLeaks from him.

 

There followed even more damning allegations. Shamir had been seen leaving the interior ministry of Belarus, an eastern European dictatorship.

 

The next day, the country's dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, boasted he would start a Belarusian WikiLeaks showing the US was funding his political rivals.

 

Scores of arrests of opposition activists followed the country's elections – but Shamir wrote a piece painting an idyllic picture of free, fair, elections in a happy country.

 

Human rights groups demanded answers, amid fears that Belarus may have received material from the cables. No answers were supplied. Julian would not look into the matter.

 

For an organisation supposedly devoted to human rights, the apparent lack of concern when faced with such a grave charge was overwhelming.

 

My trips to WikiLeaks' HQ became far less frequent, and I attempted to leave the organisation early. This was refused. I was cornered for several days and asked to sign a gagging agreement.

 

Supporters were asked to "apply psychological pressure" to encourage me to sign, evidencing a growing cultlike ethos at the centre of the group.

 

I was disturbed and conflicted. I still found the organisation's aims were in many ways laudable, the financial and legal pressures unjust, and its publishing pattern far more responsible than it received credit for.

 

I couldn't support its internal culture, its lack of accountability, willingness to lie publicly, and crucially its failure to condemn Shamir. I supported the organisation's principles, but not its methods.

 

The final straw for me came on Friday. By drawing attention to, and then publishing in full, the unredacted cache of documents, WikiLeaks has done the cause of internet freedom – and of whistleblowers – more harm than US government crackdowns ever could.

 

Before the first publication of carefully redacted cables, human rights activists, NGOs, and organisations working with victims of horrific crimes contacted WikiLeaks begging us to take steps not to publish any names. To be able to assure them details would be protected was an immeasurable relief.

 

These cables contain details of activists, opposition politicians, bloggers in autocratic regimes and their real identities, victims of crime and political coercion, and others driven by conscience to speak to the US government. They should never have had to fear being exposed by a self-proclaimed human rights organisation.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/0...leave-wikileaks

 

Be interesting to see what happens as a result of the unredacted leak. Assange blames the Guardian for putting a password in a book which lead to the leak, but the Guardian claims they were guaranteed it was a temporary pass and measures would be taken to secure the info (seems highly plausible). At the same time you can understand how Assange would drop a bollock with the whole situation surrounding him (and because he probably spends a few hours pouting in the mirror everyday), but they really should have made sure that data was secure.

Edited September 3, 2011 by Kevin S. Assilleekunt

[Park Life 71]

The intelligencia across the board with their free flights and free library cards and consulate cars on tap will play up till he is nailed.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

..... Right mate.

 

20 minute profile of Manning on the Guardian website as well, he's being tried this month, unless they've postponed

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011...eaks-iraq-video

 

Feel sorry for the lad: 5', gay, joins the military. He would have got an absolute hounding. Sounds like he was losing it when he made the leaks. Hope he doesn't get 52 years.

Edited September 3, 2011 by Kevin S. Assilleekunt

[LeazesMag 0]

ah. This thread has started up again. Good.

 

I'm away for a few days, maybe it will be interesting when I get back....

[Park Life 71]

..... Right mate.

 

20 minute profile of Manning on the Guardian website as well, he's being tried this month, unless they've postponed

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011...eaks-iraq-video

 

Feel sorry for the lad: 5', gay, joins the military. He would have got an absolute hounding. Sounds like he was losing it when he made the leaks. Hope he doesn't get 52 years.

 

Love they way they totally ignored all the psych reports that he was unstable and deeply unhappy.

 

"Here have a bigger gun"...

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

They took his gun off him, needed a computer whizz instead of all those Mexicans browsing Youtube and 2 girls 1 cup.

[Happy Face 29]

A series of unintentional though negligent acts by multiple parties -- WikiLeaks, The Guardian's investigative reporter David Leigh, and Open Leaks' Daniel Domscheit-Berg -- has resulted in the publication of all 251,287 diplomatic cables, in unredacted form, leaked last year to WikiLeaks (allegedly by Bradley Manning). Der Spiegel (in English) has the best and most comprehensive step-by-step account of how this occurred.

 

This incident is unfortunate in the extreme for multiple reasons: it's possible that diplomatic sources identified in the cables (including whistleblowers and human rights activists) will be harmed; this will be used by enemies of transparency and WikiLeaks to disparage both and even fuel efforts to prosecute the group; it implicates a newspaper, The Guardian, that generally produces very good and responsible journalism; it likely increases political pressure to impose more severe punishment on Bradley Manning if he's found guilty of having leaked these cables; and it will completely obscure the already-ignored, important revelations of serious wrongdoing from these documents. It's a disaster from every angle. But as usual with any controversy involving WikiLeaks, there are numerous important points being willfully distorted that need clarification.

 

Let's begin with the revelations that are being ignored and obscured by this controversy. Several days ago, WikiLeaks compiled a list of 30 significant revelations from the newly released cables, and that was when only a fraction of them had been published; there are surely many more now, including ones still undiscovered in the trove of documents (here's just one example). The cable receiving the most attention thus far -- first reported by John Glaser of Antiwar.com -- details a "heinous war crime [by U.S forces] during a house raid in Iraq in 2006, wherein one man, four women, two children, and three infants were summarily executed" and their house thereafter blown up by a U.S. airstrike in order to destroy the evidence. Back in 2006, the incident was discussed in American papers as a mere unproven "allegation" ("Regardless of which account is correct . . "), and the U.S. military (as usual) cleared itself of any and all wrongdoing. But the cable contains evidence vesting the allegations of Iraqis with substantial credibility, and that, in turn, has now prompted this:

 

Iraqi government officials say they will investigate newly surfaced allegations that U.S. soldiers shot women and children, then tried to cover it up with an airstrike, during a 2006 hunt for insurgents.

 

An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Ali Al-Moussawi, said Friday the government will revive its stalled probe now that new information about the March 15, 2006, raid has come to light.

 

As usual, many of those running around righteously condemning WikiLeaks for the potential, prospective, unintentional harm to innocents caused by this leak will have nothing to say about these actual, deliberate acts of wanton slaughter by the U.S. The accidental release of these unredacted cables will receive far more attention and more outrage than the extreme, deliberate wrongdoing these cables expose. That's because many of those condemning WikiLeaks care nothing about harm to civilians as long as it's done by the U.S. government and military; indeed, such acts are endemic to the American wars they routinely cheer on. What they actually hate is transparency and exposure of wrongdoing by their government; "risk to civilians" is just the pretext for attacking those, such as WikiLeaks, who bring that about.

 

That said, and as many well-intentioned transparency supporters correctly point out, WikiLeaks deserves some of the blame for what happened here; any group that devotes itself to enabling leaks has the responsibility to safeguard what it receives and to do everything possible to avoid harm to innocent people. Regardless of who is at fault -- more on that in a minute -- WikiLeaks, due to insufficient security measures, failed to fulfill that duty here. There's just no getting around that (although ultimate responsibility for safeguarding the identity of America's diplomatic sources rests with the U.S. Government, which is at least as guilty as WikiLeaks in failing to exerise due care to safeguard these cables; if this information is really so sensitive and one wants to blame someone for inadequate security measures, start with the U.S. Government, which gave full access to these documents to hundreds of thousands of people around the world, at least).

 

Despite the fault fairly assigned to WikiLeaks, one point should be absolutely clear: there was nothing intentional about WikiLeaks' publication of the cables in unredacted form. They ultimately had no choice. Ever since WikiLekas was widely criticized (including by me) for publishing Afghan War documents without redacting the names of some sources (though much blame also lay with the U.S. Government for rebuffing its request for redaction advice), the group has been meticulous about protecting the identity of innocents. The New York Times' Scott Shane today describes "efforts by WikiLeaks and journalists to remove the names of vulnerable people in repressive countries" in subsequent releases; indeed, WikiLeaks "used software to remove proper names from Iraq war documents and worked with news organizations to redact the cables." After that Afghan release, the group has demonstrated a serious, diligent commitment to avoiding pointless exposure of innocent people -- certainly far more care than the U.S. Government took in safeguarding these documents.

 

What happened here was that their hand was forced by the reckless acts of The Guardian's Leigh and Domscheit-Berg. One key reason access to these unredacted cables was so widely distributed is that Leigh -- in his December, 2010, book about the work he did with WikiLeaks -- published the password to these files, which was given to him by Julian Assange to enable his reporting on the cables. Leigh claims -- and there's no reason to doubt him -- that he believed the password was only valid for a few days and would have expired by the time his book was published.

 

That belief turned out to be false because the files had been disseminated on the BitTorrent file sharing network, with that password embedded in them; Leigh's publication of the WikiLeaks password in his book thus enabled widespread access to the full set of cables. But the key point is this: even if Leigh believed that that particular password would no longer be valid, what possible point is there in publishing to the world the specific password used by WikiLeaks or divulging the types of passwords it uses to safeguard its data? It is reckless for an investigative reporter to gratuitously publish that type of information, and he absolutely deserves a large chunk of the blame for what happened here; read this superb analysis by Nigel Parry to see the full scope of Leigh's culpability.

 

Then there is Domscheit-Berg and "Open Leaks." Last year, Domscheit-Berg left WikiLeaks and started a new group to great media fanfare, even though his group has not produced a single disclosure. Instead, he and his thus-far-inaccurately-named group seem devoted to only two goals: (1) cashing in on a vindictive, petty, personality-based vendetta against Assange and WikiLeaks; and (2) bolstering secrecy and destroying transparency, as Domscheit-Berg did when he permanently deleted thousands of files previously leaked to WikiLeaks, including documents relating to the Bank of America. It was Domscheit-Berg who removed the files from the WikiLeaks server, including (apparently unbeknownst to him) the full set of diplomatic cables.

 

That act by Domscheit-Berg, combined with the publication of its password by Leigh and the dissemination of the files to "mirror sites" by well-intentioned WikiLeaks supporters after cyber-attacks on the group, all combined to enable widespread, unfettered access to these diplomatic cables. Once WikiLeaks realized what had happened, they notified the State Department, but faced a quandary: virtually every government's intelligence agencies would have had access to these documents as a result of these events, but the rest of the world -- including journalists, whistleblowers and activists identified in the documents -- did not. At that point, WikiLeaks decided -- quite reasonably -- that the best and safest course was to release all the cables in full, so that not only the world's intelligence agencies but everyone had them, so that steps could be taken to protect the sources and so that the information in them was equally available.

 

Serious caution is warranted in making claims about the damage caused by publication of these cables. Recall that Adm. Michael Mullen and others accused WikiLeaks of having "blood on its hands" as a result of publication of the Afghan War documents, but that turned out to be totally false; as Shane noted today in the NYT: "no consequence more serious than dismissal from a job has been reported." Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates mocked claims about the damage done by WikiLeaks as "significantly overwrought."

 

That said, there's little doubt that release of all these documents in unredacted form poses real risk to some of the individuals identified in them, and that is truly lamentable. But it is just as true that WikiLeaks easily remains an important force for good. The acts of deliberate evil committed by the world's most powerful factions which it has exposed vastly outweigh the mistakes which this still-young and pioneering organization has made. And the harm caused by corrupt, excessive secrecy easily outweighs the harm caused by unauthorized, inadvisable leaks.

 

 

 

UPDATE: Several noteworthy points that have arisen from the discussion in the comment section (which is particularly worth reading today) and elsewhere:

 

(1) David Leigh appears in the comment section and responds, though he doesn't really address any of the criticisms I voiced; my reply to him is here;

 

(2) the information contained in the cable about the killings in Iraq was actually published previously in this report, though the WikiLeaks release has obviously drawn substantially more attention to it, as evidenced by the reaction of the Iraqi Government (on a positive note, it's very possible that the attention being drawn to this incident may thwart the Obama administration's efforts to have Iraq agree to keeping U.S. troops in that country beyond the 2011 deadline, as citizens tend to get angry when foreign armies murder their fellow citizens in cold blood and then air-attack the house where it happened to destroy the evidence);

 

(3) in terms of assessing harm from publication of the cables, recall -- as several commenters noted -- that the U.S. Government has known about the leak of these cables for more than a year and thus had ample time to warn anyone identified in them of this risk; that doesn't excuse any wrongdoing, but it does reduce the likelihood of serious harm; and,

 

(4) one of the newly released cables reveal that Israel, according to what it told the U.S., attacked what it claims were Hamas members in Gaza with drones, and accidentally killed 16 people inside a mosque during prayer time. You won't hear very many people condemning WikiLeaks for "putting civilians at risk" devote much of their attention to this revelation either.

 

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...eaks/index.html

Edited September 3, 2011 by Happy Face

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

But it is just as true that WikiLeaks easily remains an important force for good.

 

That article would be a lot better if the writer dropped the weighty bias, the agenda, and included some objective analysis of the current state of Wikileaks as an organization--the article wasn't without interest, but those factors left a sour taste. It's clear as day that Wikileaks is in something of a quagmire, and as ever its future remains in doubt. It has also thus far been a failure with regard to exposing the less open societies it originally intended to, along with the US: we've seen comparatively little from China, et al, which is understandable given the nature of those governments, but nevertheless a failure.

Very easy to say all that, and not particularly profound, but that's why I was hoping for some analysis from an article dealing with these issues, instead of the super-defensive tone ('ok, wikileaks were at fault for this little bit, but America has an unquenchable thirst for Iraqi blood!'); and the great effort to assign most of the blame to David Leigh when it is clearly WL who have dropped the bollock was just an exercise in spin, and perhaps a pointless one given we don't know if anything particularly bad will happen as a result of the unredacted leak. Again it's just another case of unadulterated wikileaks worship, instead of a recognition that, like everything, it is not wholly a force for good, rather a combination of good and bad with the balance potentially swaying in either direction. Clearly the scales are now starting to tip toward the latter and I personally think Assange is terrible for WL right now. They need to be able to operate independant of his ego and agenda, not to mention the baggage he brings with an international criminal case hanging over him. They never needed a lightning rod, they just need high-quality leaks.

[Happy Face 29]

The 30 top stories so far from the last leak have plenty on China...

 

http://wikileaks.org/30-new-revelations-from-wlfind.html

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

They were just diplomatic cables that weren't even highly-classified. Nothing big on the workings of that regime in Darfur and elsewhere. The Chinese would have executed Manning by now though, so the lack of info from there isn't surprising.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

The Assman now has his own TV show on Russia Today.

 

US cables released by WikiLeaks in December 2010 paint a dismal picture of Putin's Russia as a "virtual mafia state". Has Assange read them? It seems extraordinary that Assange – described by RT as the world's most famous whistleblower – should team up with an opaque regime where investigative journalists are shot dead (16 unsolved murders) and human rights activists kidnapped and executed, especially in Chechnya and other southern Muslim republics. Strange and obscene.

 

I wonder if his acolytes' collective boner has softened at all after this moral lapse? #rhetorical

Edited April 17, 2012 by Kevin S. Assilleekunt

[Happy Face 29]

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/18/attacks_on_rt_and_assange_reveal_much_about_the_critics/singleton/?mobile.html

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

It's easy to deflect criticism, it takes a strong person to stand by their principles. Assange hasn't.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Kevin S. Assilleekunt

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

HF is like a man stuck down a toilet who laps up whatever shit is propelled at him by Salon and Assange. I hope it tastes good, STAT-MAN.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Kevin S. Assilleekunt

[Happy Face 29]

Clearly you prefer interviews with Amy Winehouse's dad to pass for your news.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

Another non sequitur from the self-proclaimed 'STAT-MAN'. Two can play at that game.

 

HF, a man who cries because Bradley Manning was kept in isolation without due process for a prolonged period, but if the same thing happened to BERNARD Manning, he would have remained silent. Your silence is deafening, 'STAT-MAN'.

[Happy Face 29]

Did you read the article? Anderson Cooper has you just where he wants you. Lamenting Mr Winehouse and how he'll survive without his daughters income.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

Did you read the article? Anderson Cooper has you just where he wants you. Lamenting Mr Winehouse and how he'll survive without his daughters income.

 

I read the article, never seen a CNN broadcast. I've seen excerpts from CNN on the Daily Show, I don't watch US network news. I've seen Fox the most, but that's mainly clips watched for comedy purposes as it's so ridiculous. The tv news I watch the most is the Beeb followed by Al Jazeera. Mainly I read from a variety of sources on the internet. The article does not negate the very valid criticism of Assange for his move to RT, it doesn't adequately address it, and nor will his devotees, who are as narrow-minded in their world-view as the people they criticise.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Kevin S. Assilleekunt

[Happy Face 29]

What's obscene about opposing Russian foreign policy on Russian state TV?