Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080202627.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

by jacoblyles • 16 years ago

61 197 16 years ago

petercooper2• 16 years ago

I've been surprised recently how many worldly people have been cheering Wikileaks and think what they're doing is OK. This isn't a judgment on anyone - just surprise. I'm as big an infojunkie as anyone ;-)

Is there significant support amongst the intelligentsia for nixing laws like the Espionage Act and Official Secrets Act that the government and military rely on?

briandoll• 16 years ago

"Is there significant support amongst the intelligentsia for nixing laws like the Espionage Act and Official Secrets Act that the government and military rely on?"

It's not that there is widespread support for nixing those laws, but since the US government has been using those laws rather broadly (most notably during the invasion of Iraq), I'd say there is support for revising those laws.

Laws that protect secrets are a sort of Schrödinger's cat, though, in that in order to decide if they are a secret, you have to know the secret. So all government declared secrets are both secrets and non-secrets at the same time.

It will be a long time before the Iraq invasion documents are declassified, far too long from now to consider it ammo for those that want a more transparent government.

I'm not defending Wikileaks nor their supporters necessarily, but I would guess that this is the link of thinking with exposing (some of) these documents. For some documents, clearly they are exposing things just to provoke people and draw media attention, for which they have been insanely successful.

mbrubeck• 16 years ago

Naming it "Wikileaks" was excellent for PR. People's first associations will be with efforts like Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, which have a significant amount of goodwill.

DanielBMarkham8• 16 years ago

I am struck by four things.

1) Wikileaks is really pissing people off. I don't mean the nicey, lets-go-protest-down-at-the-student-union kind of protest. I mean people who are not normally angry with anybody else in the world talking about throwing him in jail and/or killing him. Devil or Angel, that's a whole heap of pissing off he's accomplished.

2) Assange has more power than many 3-star generals, yet he's just some guy running a web service. That's awesome if you're Assange, but for the rest of us, we have to live with the world that results with whatever he decides to leak or not.

3) Anarchy is not the same as openness. Openness says I demand full insight into what my government is doing. If not me personally, then somebody I elected or appointed. Anarchy says any type of secret is bad and open air always beats secrets. Governments can't function without secrets -- even your local small town has to have secret meetings to discuss personnel issues and such. Wikileaks is, to my mind, opposed to this cornerstone of government. That's anarchy.

4) If Assange wants to play this game, he should think long and hard about where it's going to lead him. Right now he's having a field day because records are centralized and available electronically. But for every move there is a counter-move. I know if I were running a covert op anywhere in the world there's no freaking way I'd put anything on a computer anywhere. If he would rather have millions of little secrets offline and out of sight, that's what we're going to get. Which makes the entire intelligence community even harder to manage for those folks managing it. Is that better than what we have now? It's the exact opposite of what he says he wants.

There's a certain amount of cocky self-promoting asshole about Assange. As much as I want the maximum amount of liberty, freedom, and openness, this isn't the way to make it happen.

kiba4• 16 years ago

Some crypto-anarchists and agorists would like to have a few words with you.

DanielBMarkham8• 16 years ago

Hey I'm a systems guy -- technology systems and people systems. If you have a good idea for how a system of people would work to govern themselves, I'm game.

Is there an example -- in the entire history of the planet -- of a government which had no need for secrecy? Sounds cool if it would work.

mquander2• 16 years ago

OK, then propose another way.

If there's a gate, there's a gatekeeper. There is no doubt in my mind that I would rather have Julian Assange and the Wikileaks staff be that gatekeeper than the U.S. government and military, who have a track record of keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own misconduct.

zaphar4• 16 years ago

    U.S. government and military, who have a track record of
    keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own
    misconduct.

This is true. However Assande and Wikileaks have put over a hundred peoples lives directly in danger through their leaks as well as potentially thousands more. Which effectively puts them all the way on the other end of the spectrum. Your saying that putting 100's of peoples lives at risk in the interest of shining a light on Government secrets is acceptable. Are you sure that's what you mean to say?

Theres nothing wrong with pointing out that one way is just as bad as the status quo. Telling people they can't object without proposing a solution won't change the fact that your solution is still wrong.

abstractbill• 16 years ago

I know if I were running a covert op anywhere in the world there's no freaking way I'd put anything on a computer anywhere. If he would rather have millions of little secrets offline and out of sight, that's what we're going to get.

I don't think that's what would happen. Forcing people not to keep electronic records of secrets they wanted to maintain would make it a hell of a lot more work to make things secret. If millions of things are currently secret, and on computers, I think you would wind up with more like tens or at most hundreds of thousands of secrets if they had to be not kept on computers. That might be a good thing.

mcantelon11• 16 years ago

>1) Wikileaks is really pissing people off

This is because what they're doing is effective. Ineffective things don't piss people off and trigger military disinfo campaigns. The author of the WPO blog article is an AEI member, a player in the neocon agenda: not some random pundit.

>2) Assange has more power than many 3-star generals

I'm fine with that. Assange isn't killing people. 3-star generals are.

>3) Anarchy is not the same as openness... Governments can't function without secrets

Government can function with much less secrecy than it currently does. WL is serving a public need in challenging a growing regime of secrecy that blossomed under Bush and that Obama has failed to reign in.

>4) If Assange wants to play this game, he should think long and hard about where it's going to lead him... If he would rather have millions of little secrets offline and out of sight, that's what we're going to get.

Opsec has a cost. The more expensive it is to keep the secrets needed to maintain questionable military practices, the less chance these practices will continue.

>There's a certain amount of cocky self-promoting asshole about Assange. As much as I want the maximum amount of liberty, freedom, and openness, this isn't the way to make it happen.

I'll take a self-promoter over a murderer any day.

rick8888• 16 years ago

"I'm fine with that. Assange isn't killing people. 3-star generals are."

Yes he is. The information he released in the latest round of "secrets" gave away informants to people that can (and will) kill them.

If he gave information about locations of jews to the Nazis, would we say it was freedom of information?

"Government can function with much less secrecy than it currently does. WL is serving a public need in challenging a growing regime of secrecy that blossomed under Bush and that Obama has failed to reign in."

That's because Obama knows the importance of secrets.

"I'll take a self-promoter over a murderer any day."

Wikileaks failed to remove actual names. I don't see a difference.

tptacek7• 16 years ago

When you call those prosecuting the US/NATO side of the conflict in Afghanistan "murderers", you run the risk of implicitly taking the side of US/NATO's adversaries, who in this case are the Taliban.

Here's what I'm wondering: when did it become fashionable to stick up for the Taliban? The Taliban aren't the Sandinistas. The Taliban aren't the North Vietnamese Army. They aren't even Hezbollah.

It is conceivable --- even directly observable --- that countries can survive and thrive led by any of those movements, however much we may disagree with their politics and practices and the mechanisms they used to take power. Say what you will about Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but women can go to medical school in Iran and (presumably) Lebanon.

I've read a little bit about the history of Afghanistan leading up to the Taliban. I know it was a disaster, and I know the Taliban took root in part because they managed to impose some semblance of order over a country governed essentially by banditry. But as near as I can tell, the Taliban is objectively evil. Apart from consolidating the warlordism in Afghanistan, what possible virtue can there be to defending them?

Outing innocent informants and getting them killed --- which I know hasn't been reported to have happened yet --- is bad no matter where it happens. But I don't have much of a moral qualm about directly opposing, say, the Iraq war. But I don't understand how you can construct a worldview that permits you to cheer on something that assists Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who may be the closest thing the Earth has to an actual comic book supervillain.

There's a lot of secrecy and dissembling and corruption in the world. You have to choose your battles. Wikileaks chose a really crappy one this time.

lionhearted• 16 years ago

> I'll take a self-promoter over a murderer any day.

How is crap like this getting upvoted? New Guys, here at Hacker News we vote up and down based on intelligent, civil, primarily unemotional comments. Calling out "neocons" and randomly throwing "murderer" around is not what we vote up here. Please think, a lot of us are ex-Reddit and we don't want Hacker News to become Reddit, or else we'd be at Reddit.

mkramlich7• 16 years ago

> "Assange isn't killing people. 3-star generals are."

For me this single point is one of the most powerful and clarifying.

OpieCunningham6• 16 years ago

1) I'd hardly refer to many or any of the people calling for his head as "people who are not normally angry with anybody else in the world". Most of these people are professional anti-something, whether that something is a group, government, philosophy or what have you. And generally they are as unhinged in that regard as they are in regards to Wikileaks.

2- Many of the rest of us unfortunately have to live with the decisions of 3+ star generals. I'm not sure why Assange is any more of a threat than they are - indeed, in my view it is quite the opposite: the generals are responsible for more death than a deranged Assange could dream of if he were to dream of such a thing.

3- There is zero chance the Wikileaks will gain access to and release all secret information. So fear of anarchy is nothing more than a trope. Considering the amount of information marked as secret by the gov't that actually appears to show the gov't in a negative light vs. information of genuine safety for human life, this Wikileaks release is but a drop in the bucket. This emphasizes the canard of "anarchy".

4- Perhaps the gov't should think long and hard about what it elects to withhold from the public. Assange is not responsible for gov't openness. If the gov't decides to increase the amount of information it withholds, perhaps you should think long and hard about who you are voting for.

Assange's personality is essentially meaningless. He's not running for public office.

MaysonL• 16 years ago

The history of the US government with respect to keeping secrets is really appalling. See the history of the original "state secrets" Supreme Court decision:

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a030953states...

baddox2• 16 years ago

Wikileaks publishes leaked information. They don't steal information. By the time information gets to Wikileaks, it's already been leaked. Wikileaks just tries to verify the information, determines the value in publishing it, tries to protect their sources and the people the leak might affect, then perhaps publishes the leaked information. What they're doing is precisely journalism.

rick8888• 16 years ago

"What they're doing is precisely journalism."

Journalists have a responsibility. If a couple of people have leaked information, the likelihood of anybody actually seeing the information is close to zero. Wikileaks has a huge audience that now includes most major media outlets in the US. This is the difference.

peterwwillis• 16 years ago

it's not wikileaks' job to filter what gets leaked. that's the job of the leaker.

you have to understand, there's very little cause to leak classified documents. most people who have classified jobs would be retarded not to assume they could get caught. if they have some matireal which they object to, they weigh it against the possibility of manning's fate (which could be death, or just lots of torture). if it's worth the risk, they leak it.

this wild west of anarchy where every secret gets leaked will not exist. but important, controversial things (or whatever could sway the balance of power of any given government) that are worth the risk, will be leaked. for the first time in the history of the world the powerful are afraid of keeping secrets. and that's OK with me.

mr_eel4• 16 years ago

1) It's difficult to gauge the general sentiment, but as you say a lot of people have got het up. I see that as a good thing personally.

2) That's a good point. Wikileaks has the potential to leak material which is more damaging than it is beneficial. The question is if you think that risk is worthwhile. I do.

3) Anarchy encompasses a wide variety of political thought. You are being reductive. Besides, there is nothing to suggest Wikileaks is an anarchist organisation. Also you are incorrect when you suggest that they are opposed to all secrets. Assange himself has repeatedly said that there is often a legitimate need for secrecy.

It's not a question of the need for secrecy, it's a question of it's abuse.

4) This makes little sense to me; information doesn't need to be on a computer for it to be leaked. All it takes is one person with access and motivation.

"As much as I want the maximum amount of liberty, freedom, and openness, this isn't the way to make it happen."

What is the alternative then? As it stands, governments have little motivation to become more transparent; the opposite is true in my opinion.

DanielBMarkham8• 16 years ago

1) I don't think this is a good thing overall, but I am happy people are angry. When the Afghan intelligence services kill Assange, we'll know how far you can push folks. That'll heat some up more -- maybe enough for things to change.

2)I believe the question you are asking me is "Do you think that some random schmuck on the internet should have the power to decide what remains secret and what doesn't?" For which I have to say no. As much as I love movies with the underdog and the little guy beating the giant opponent, as much as I love movies where somebody fights the system and wins, I can't support these decisions being made by some guy I never met. To think otherwise seems insane to me -- as I understand it the basic argument would be that things are so bad now that any type of release of docs is good. I'm not ready to go that far. Yet.

3) See above

Abuse as viewed by whom? Assange? The average 15-year-old internet reader? Oliver Stone? Call me an idiot, but wouldn't you want some kind of orderly process for releasing docs, even if you were for releasing all of them? What kind of half-assed system is this?

4) Sure it makes sense. All you have to do is start delegating and telling folks to keep no written records. Presto-chango, your "secrets" disappear. No docs, nothing to leak.

I think there are a lot of options -- a constitutional amendment comes to mind first. Make it a crime to keep any secrets longer than a certain period of time. All sorts of options there.

I feel uncomfortable because the arguers seem to want to push towards either supporting all sorts of crazy secrecy or supporting some system whereby random people email secret information to some asshole overseas who posts it on his website. Surely there has to be some middle ground here. I'd like to get rid of 99.9% of the currently classified documents. I'd like to streamline the intelligence agencies and programs. I'd like to impose criminal penalties on intelligence agencies which abuse their trust by over-classifying information.

But fuck-all if I want Assange playing peek-a-boo with national security items -- even if it's .1% of the total. It's wrong on so many levels that it'd take another post to list them all. I am perfectly capable of realizing how bad the problem is without having to cling to Assange as some kind of life-preserver -- the only way to safety. That's not happening.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

> Besides, there is nothing to suggest Wikileaks is an anarchist organisation.

"Leaking is inherently an anti-authoritarian act. It's inherently an anarchist act." - Julian Assange

- http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/22/2933892.htm

(note, I don't think this is a bad thing)

derefr3• 16 years ago

> Governments can't function without secrets -- even your local small town has to have secret meetings to discuss personnel issues and such.

That's just proof that governments can't function without immediate secrets. Nothing needs to stay a secret after its immediate usefulness has expired. As soon as you've fired the personnel you were having issues with, publish the minutes of the meeting where it was decided.

grandalf4• 16 years ago

You've had a lot of insightful comments about this isssue, and although I tend to disagree with your conclusions, I think the quality of your analysis/argument has been superb.

I'd respond with only two points:

First, if Assange makes it harder to keep things secret, then less will be kept secret. This will have good and bad consequences, but I think it's safe to say that strict control of information (secrecy + focused propaganda) is a tool that despots rely upon heavily. That open democracies rely upon it can be viewed (as you seem to view it) as a necessity, or (as I view it) as an excess.

Assange is risking his own skin by doing this. Surely one or more of the governments could/would arrange for his assassination. Which is why this essay puzzles me. This sort of right wing critique will fuel the fire that has helped Assange publicize his mission, and will have the effect of making wikileaks just go away much harder.

Keep in mind that so far the secrets being leaked are not particularly revealing in terms of their information content. The harsh words by government officials are because the leaked information might cause the public to question its propaganda message about the war.

What I have come to realize from all of this is just how tightly intertwined a war effort is with propaganda, and to a lesser extent secrecy. Assange just may put a huge hole in the ability of modern governments to do easily achieve the level of secrecy/propaganda necessary to get a comfortable, complacent yet principled people to approve of mass slaughter.

DanielBMarkham8• 16 years ago

I upvoted you because I agree all the way to your last sentence, and your reply works with or without it.

Here's an interesting thought experiment. What if Assange were releasing secrets about how the agriculture department did experiments in the 50s that ended up killing farmers? Hell, everybody would be hailing him as a hero. How about if he were releasing docs about how people were killed because they threatened to release secrets about something back in the 80s? Same deal.

You can keep playing this game, with various subject matter. But at the end of the day you get (I think) to two points.

1) Assange is a political figure, making political statements by what he chooses to release or not (no matter all the hoopla over theory, the underlying point is very political as you can easily see by the comments in this thread), and

2) Assange is using leaks to take on a current issue that involves the difficult decision to go kill a bunch of people (mass slaughter as you call it, but whether good or evil, it's a damn serious thing)

That makes him more than a newspaper. He's more like his own nation-state. As such, and since he is interjecting himself into the middle of a war, I would be curious as to what kind of Navy and Army he has -- or where his UN representation is. Nation-states get to play with the big boys because they can take the punches. I don't think he can.

Assuming the Afghan war is "mass slaughter" and that some terrible evil is being confronted, this system of governmental control does not work. It's not a matter of how bad the U.S. is, or how bad the war is, or how bad anything is. You can't fix it by playing the Wikileaks game.

That means that the argument is over. Assange loses. For those wanting change, he ain't it. For those wanting truth, he ain't it -- you're only going to get what fits his model of truth. For those wanting change , he ain't it. The remedy is worse than the disease.

That's why I engaged on this thread. This _is_ a systems issue. We could turn the tables 180 degrees on the Afghan war -- I could oppose and you support -- and my comments would still hold. It's not a matter of how bad the war is or how governments use information to control public opinion. Great topics, sure, but this is about that. Getting folks thinking about the particulars of the information distracts them from the larger picture by making them emotionally, well, irrational.

And I hate to say this, because I know it will just heat things up, but I'm done here, and it relates to your comment about war and propaganda, so one final thought: I think you have to decide whether or not you are at war with the status quo. Not just angry about stuff, but at war with it -- willing to have people killed to support your position. If you are, then you support the leaks, wave your hands around and stamp your feet and talk about civilians killed and how it justifies Assange. This -- the idea that informants and such killed is unprovable and/or irrelevant, is war talk. If you are not at war, then you can still support ending the war -- just on different terms than using Wikileaks.

I will protest with you, I will write editorials, I will call for constitutional change. I'll go and march. But I am not at war with this country. I do not support risking lives of informants and operatives simply because I might be morally outraged at the war. I am morally outraged with many parts of what my country does, and I feel in many ways it is hurting its own citizens in awful ways in a misguided effort to create the perfect society. I am a staunch libertarian. But I will not support the deaths of others to advance my personal views -- the only place for that sort of support for violence is the polls.

pradocchia2• 16 years ago

Which makes the entire intelligence community even harder to manage for those folks managing it. Is that better than what we have now?

Is a smooth-functioning, well-managed intelligence community in my interest?

If intelligence shape policy, then perhaps. Does it? Some argue it's the other way around: policy shapes intelligence, and you get the intelligence that policy dictates (cf. Iraq).

If that's the case, I could certainly do with a less efficient intelligence apparatus.

Groxx2• 16 years ago

>3) Anarchy is not the same as openness. Openness says I demand full insight into what my government is doing. If not me personally, then somebody I elected or appointed.

So you're OK with the status-quo? And what if it gets worse? Say, significantly worse. They're still the people you elected.

Without someone doing something like this, can you know what's really happening? I for one don't trust all the however-many-thousands/millions working for governments to behave responsibly, so there must be some kind of oversight. And without the oversight being managed by people outside such a chain (ie, the public), there's always the recursive "who's watching the watchmen" question.

At some point, the only people who can determine if their government is acting in their best interests are the people who the government is supposed to be working for. I'd rather have some way of knowing what they're up to than to "take their word for it". Their word has failed rather spectacularly many times.

Ardit2013• 16 years ago

I see that your opinion has changed quite drastically from only a few days ago when your comment was a resounding cry against such vast secrecy as exposed by Washington Post, or was it WSJ.

I am growing by the day to learn that the united state has become or maybe always was a Phireha (I can't quite find the spelling of the word). The opinion formers there are so poisonous and it seems quite effective. The atmosphere also is contaminating and very divisive. A "commentator" there has the freedom to say any lie whatever, even blatant lie. It is, or at least the impression, is awful.

Now to the business at hand. I suppose much of the above paragraph was aimed at your first point "the people". These are the same people who voted Bush back in 2005. Among them there is probably a good deal of people who want freaking Palin for president. Who probably have no idea whatever what is contained in those leaks, hardly have read them - has anyone? - and well the commentators are not called opinion formers for no reason, they have formed the opinions of these people.

How on earth can people who "are not normally angry with anybody" be so - not angry - no, no not cuddling angry - not angry in the - lets go and protest in the student union way - after which point I thought you were gone follow with but out on the street seeking for blood - but how on earth can these very nice people who are so unbothered about such things as going to an illegal war - that is Iraq - re-electing the person who took them to war - that is bush - put up with Mr Guitmo, be fine with the comments of Mr Thiesen that they can just override international law - but not fine at all with being told that their government has actually been lying a lot to them.

You see Pakistan apparently is our ally. That is what we are told, and nothing else, so I thought that Pakistan is a good guy, helping us you see, I did not know that they are engaged in some sort of double game, playing nicely with both sides.

Maybe the public shouldn't know that. Why bother them right? Its not like the "commentators" can make them think day is night.

But let us move on. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom said what was described in a newspaper that we all knew this - though I did not know - he said it in public, he said - Pakistan is playing nicely with the terrorists. Do you know what happened? Oo, people got angry, The Ministry of Truth, that is the Foreign Ministry, said you can not say things like that, you have to be diplomatic, that is, not say it in public, lest the little children are worried.

Its a joke! The whole response to the leak, which has been slowly building up, is a joke. But beyond this joke, something is actually happening. Although the White House might say there is nothing new here, and then go on to say, but hey man this not new thing is very damaging, a lot is new, and I think decisively new.

Besides all the sarcasm I used with the PM event, there is actually great power from words coming from his mouth. Now everyone knows what we supposedly all knew - yet I did not know and I am very certain the general public did not ether - that Pakistan is playing a double game.

Also, we get the president of Afghanistan saying it clear and bluntly - or was it perhaps some official from Pakistan "getting back" to the PM - that Afghanistan is a mess and the coalition forces are really just making a mess and nothing is getting anywhere and basically you guys are rubbish - that is the US, UK etc.

So, a new awareness is slowly but decisively shifting the opinion of "the people" against this war and just want us to get out.

Now in regards to secrecy. Without the names of the informers - which in defence to wikileaks how are they to know that they are informers - is there anything else that deserves the secrecy in those leaks? If not, then why were they kept secret in the first place? To save embarrassment perhaps - it was the previous guy who dun it not me - or just to keep the public misinformed or uninformed about things which the public is supposed to authorise through the general elections.

Sure you need some secrecy, wikileaks says that they did take much information out of the leaks which they considered worthy of being kept secret and had the knowledge to arrive at such consideration, but many things should not be kept secret, especially by the government.

Finally, why does the way Julian presents himself have anything to do with anything? Are you perhaps a bit jealous that the guy has managed to acquire so much power and is actually quite intelligent to have done so?

Also, why is it not the way to make it happen? I think to the contrary, when you get people really angry when you expose the truth then you know full well that it is exactly the way to make it happen.

DanielBMarkham8• 16 years ago

My position on both issues is consistent. You do not have to support some crazy intelligence apparatus to realize that Wikileaks is whacked. It's not an either-or situation. The intelligence and secrecy thing is extremely bad and something must be done immediately. AND Wikileaks is an awful thing and the operators probably should be arrested and imprisoned. Both of these things can be true at the same time.

Pakistan has been playing the double game all along. It's not new information.

But see, your entire discussion is about the political content of the leaks. My discussion is that the system is broken and lets go fix it. Your discussion is all about this particular thing that makes you so angry.

It's like Assange has managed to troll the world's media, interjecting a whole load of noise. Trolls are great because they drop content that is so emotionally laden to the room that the room is unable to process it. If Assange had leaked information just as important but not as emotionally-laden, say something about nuclear secrets or something, nobody would care. But now we have to go off on a multi-month conversation about the Afghan war, which is very important, no doubt, but has jack-shit to do with the process of having some website dump secret docs. You are all being terribly distracted here.

Let's say he manages to end the war without killing more people (about as likely as him becoming Santa Claus, but I know this is the feeling). Next year we have the same systemic problem of too many agencies. And we'll still have Assange.

Hell, it's almost like he's feeding off the problem, not solving it.

You have to ask yourself the serious question -- am I supporting Assange because I am angry at the intelligence agencies, secrets, and Afghan war? Or am I supporting him because of what he is doing, his business model? It's the guys who do things you'd like to do, with goals that you share, that you should be looking the most circumspectly at. Always suspect people and news reports that agree with your worldview.

Synthetase• 16 years ago

"The Web site must be shut down and prevented from releasing more documents -- and its leadership brought to justice."

The latter imperative might be achievable.

The former is the height of delusion.

patrickaljord• 16 years ago

> The latter imperative might be achievable.

It might be, but so might putting a replacement online a couple of days later.

sliverstorm• 16 years ago

'The latter' would be 'leadership brought to justice'. Read carefully.

mahmud2• 16 years ago

FWIW, this guy and his employer earn their living by foaming in the mouth "for America".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

jquery• 16 years ago

Maybe you could elaborate on what you mean by "foaming at the mouth"? I read the wikipedia article you linked to and nowhere was that mentioned.

mahmud2• 16 years ago

He is someone whose job is to find/conjure-up all sorts of enemies and threats facing the United States. His employing think-tank takes a political leaning that's so far to the right, that they see nothing in this world that isn't a "vital interest" or a "mortal enemy". They see the world through the lenses of a globalized Monroe Doctrine. They profit materially from pain they inflict upon people; either emotional pain in the fear they evoke in the American masses, or the real physical pain in others when they launch recreational wars.

So, this hired-mouth can cry foul all he wants. Those old enough to exist before the Iraq invasion remember similar tunes. As for his opinion, it's nothing but an invoice line-item; commissioned by the Gun and Oil interests, draped in a flag and fig-leafed with God.

ShabbyDoo• 16 years ago

"The United States has the capability and the authority to monitor his communications and disrupt his operations."

So, a member of the American Enterprise Institute is privy to the US Government's electronic spying capabilities? And, he's complaining about the release of intelligence-related secrets? I don't actually think he knows for sure that Wikileaks' communications are monitorable, but the statement is laughable.

drhodes• 16 years ago

It would turn into an encrypted Wack-a-mole, evolving the state of the art for information dissemination. The author clearly believes that the DoD has magic computers, or the equivalent of a digital nuke.

steveplace• 16 years ago

Yes, I will engage in a little ad hominem, only to give context to the author's surrounding beliefs:

Marc A. Thiessen served as a speechwriter for United States President George W. Bush (2004-2009) and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (2001-2004)

The argument is very well laid out and I'm not qualified to mount a case against his claims; however, it does have a slight political tinge to it.

msredmond• 16 years ago

Commentary is really scary for his lack of understanding of the actual law that could be applied to this (whether or not you agree with what was done, there's a difference between that and what's legal/what's not). For a great breakdown of whether or not its legal, see http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/07/26/pentagon-papers-ii-on-wi...

electromagnetic2• 16 years ago

The thing that concerns me is how panicked governments seem to be over the release of documents and their reaction is insane (IE seemingly trying to block out all free speech and free right to publication, etc) that I can't help but wonder what they're not wanting to be leaked.

Someone without secrets doesn't worry about things being leaked. What secrets do these governments have that are huge to the point that they seem to be wanting to violate their own laws to block this guy.

amanfredi• 16 years ago

You don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide, eh?

electromagnetic2• 16 years ago

Not particularly no, it's a nice thing to have and it certainly helps as a private citizen, however this is generally confusing anonymity with privacy. I'm comfortable sharing things online because I'm anonymous, because I'd prefer people in my personal life not know about certain things. However I don't keep this information to myself for an illicit benefit, however people don't have a reasonable expectation or justification to know what I'm doing at 10pm on a wednesday night. My boss does have a reason to know what I'm doing at 10am on a Wednesday, in fact he showed up at my job site - didn't concern me, because I wasn't doing anything I shouldn't have been.

However I have a reason and a reasonable expectation to know what my government officials are doing, or at least be able to appoint someone to supervise them. Yet I'm told 'tough shit' because my government for as far as I can see is embezzling my money to areas of government I have no legal rights to even have a trustworthy official even monitor them.

Security Intelligence Services is watchdogged, but why aren't members of my parliament as closely watched as fucking spies! Spies have a lot to hide, and they have justification to hide it, my MP does not have a reason to hide things from me because they got my vote.

thewileyone• 16 years ago

Well isn't that the same policy that governments are trying to impose through wiretapping our phones, emails, etc.?

vincentpants• 16 years ago

Wikileaks is the only place in the world where you can be a whistleblower without the threat of censorship or persecution. Sounds like two of the best things to happen to democracy in a long time.

petercooper2• 16 years ago

.. until you're suspected of being the whistleblower, of course: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10529110

tbrownaw• 16 years ago

Meh, just go pick a wireless hotspot to upload it to any of the file-share sites and post links on 4chan/Fark/Reddit/etc. Or send it to Cryptome.

mr_eel4• 16 years ago

"Its reason for existence is to obtain classified national security information and disseminate it as widely as possible -- including to the United States' enemies."

That is _not_ their stated goal. They aim to expose and distribute material of interest to the public, not national security information in general.

"These actions are likely a violation of the Espionage Act, and they arguably constitute material support for terrorism."

Yes, 'likely' and 'arguably'. Except that it's difficult to see how the Espionage Act applies to a group outside of the US. Also material support for terrorism actually means supplying _materials_ i.e. money, weaponry or physical goods. Which they obviously are not doing.

"On Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told ABC News that Assange had a "moral culpability" for the harm he has caused."

Oh please. This is coming from people who have been involved in the direction of military actions that have needlessly killed civilians. They don't have the moral high-ground here. Additionally; I'd like to see this harm quantified in some way. Thus far there has been much talk about damage, but no evidence.

I'm all for holding people to account, but these kinds of statements seem like FUD to me.

"Assange is a non-U.S. citizen operating outside the territory of the United States. This means the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring Assange to justice..."

Well firstly, lets establish what law he has broken shall we? That is a rather extreme option, with it's own set of complications.

This article is full of lots of tough talk, but blithely ignores the complications of international law and dipolmacy. It also fails to ask one simple question; does the Obama Admin. see it in their best interests to arrest Assange?

fleitz• 16 years ago

I mean pretty soon he'll start doing things like exposing secret tapes of the president ordering break ins. If that happens the WaPo will have to ask Bob Woodward to start doing journalism again.

Wikileaks is the best thing to happen to freedom since the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI.

b-man• 16 years ago

I would like to see how this guy would react if it was an American citizen leaking information about random_enemy_country. Should the federal authorities of said country have the right to violate foreign soil?

mkramlich7• 16 years ago

Exactly. The level of hypocrisy is astounding. It is well-known that the US has been spying on other countries for a long time. There is a track record of involving citizens of foreign countries to engage in acts which are considered treasonous by their own countries standards and, if they had been our own citizen, treason in our own as well. What the US calls "treason" against itself would just be called "smart intelligence gathering" by the other country.

rmc• 16 years ago

It is well-known that all countries has been spying on other countries for a long time. The USA is not special here. Just about all countries spy on each other and have done for millenia.

mixmax• 16 years ago

As a European this comments really pisses me off "In other words, we do not need permission to apprehend Assange or his co-conspirators anywhere in the world." The political hatred the US has gotten from around the world stems largely from the idea that the US can do whatever it pleases wherever it pleases.

Also

"The United States has the capability and the authority to monitor his communications and disrupt his operations. " Julian Assange is a good hacker, he made the first free portscanner (precursor to Nmap), co-invented Rubberhose deniable encryption and wrote the Usenet caching software NNTPCache. I highly doubt the United States is monitoring his activity.

isamuel• 16 years ago

Yeah, the idea that the U.S. should blow apart its international alliances to apprehend someone whose activities are protected under American law is slightly insane. Then again, the author has a history of such things.

adin• 16 years ago

I hope not. Unfortunately the US doesn't have the best "track record" for respecting other countries laws. Off the top of my head the "extraordinary rendition" program and the SWIFT data records comes to mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05... http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-tortur... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/15/swift_processing_hal...

agentultra• 16 years ago

I'm far more threatened by Mr. Thiessen's implication that surveillance should be the sole domain of government than I am of Assange's attempts to thwart such secrecy.

Governments should not have unchecked powers of surveillance. We all know the myriad ways that can go wrong. Somebody has to be watching these people and that's just what WL is doing.

Don't trust anyone to have your best interests at heart.

baddox2• 16 years ago

I laughed when the author cited a US law claiming the United States' ability (specifically the FBI) to legally violate international law. That's like me citing my own personal law that says I may legally violate state laws and burglarize any house I want to.

die_sekte3• 16 years ago

There's a US law about invading an international court to free US citizens.

There are a bunch of reasons why the US is hated by quite a few people, most of which boil down to: (a) many US presidents are war criminals (b) the US is a very big "western" nation that likes to start wars (c) the US doesn't play nice with international standards and organizations.

caf• 16 years ago

More specifically, it'd be like the Russians citing a Russian law that allowed them to go in to the US and arrest Marc A. Thiessen.

mattdonahoe• 16 years ago

The US has decided that it is ok with the FBI breaking international law. It's like your parents being ok with you breaking the rules at your friend's house, or town curfew.

JabavuAdams2• 16 years ago

Yeah, me too.

The point is that states sometimes need to do these dirty things, but they shouldn't try to make retarded legal arguments to justify them. Yeah, it's illegal. Okay, so use your special forces and shut up already.

Actually, I believe my exact words were "It's like saying that the Sovereign of Sovereignia can ass-rape anyone he chooses, because there's a Sovereignian piece of paper that says it's okay."

itistoday• 16 years ago

Wikileaks, like Wikipedia, is one of the healthiest things to come out of the internet. The service it provides to the United States and the rest of the world is invaluable. The only group I see threatened here is that great "military-industrial complex," and that's fine by me.

beloch• 16 years ago

I work in cryptography. This field has taught me something rather applicable here:

It is far better to know your secrets are in the hands of your enemy than it is to not know when they are in the hands of your enemy.

If your secret stuff is released on Wikileaks, you know about it. You can take steps. e.g. Evacuate your informants before the Taliban whack 'em. If the Taliban get their hands on a list of CIA informants, without the CIA knowing, those guys would be screwed. As it stands they've got a fighting chance.

Wikileaks or sites like it are now a fact of life. If the CIA disappears Assange into some banana-republic torture-hole or simply assassinates him, his fate would most likely be leaked to Wikileaks successor. The cat is now out of the bag.

The U.S.'s only real option here, aside from investigating how that data was leaked in the first place, is to attempt to improve their ability to cope with leaks when they do happen. Time often makes all the difference, so they would be well served by developing a relationship with Assange. e.g. "You give us a 48-hour heads up when you leak something from us and we'll forgo atomizing your brains with precision guided explosives." It's not like Assange would have a choice if presented with such a deal. However embarrassing his assassination might be for the U.S., it will ensure that the next Wikileaks plays ball.

DjDarkman• 16 years ago

Assange is a hero to democracy, the government dirty secrets must be uncovered!

Those informants aided the war, they aided civilian slaughter that many US troops did for fun, so I guess if they get killed, they had it coming.

The war is [supposably] over, why does the US need to have so many secrets? Are they embarrassed that their army is full of sadistic murderers?

These short sighted people that write articles like this eat propaganda.

damoncali• 16 years ago

I get the sense he thinks this a big political game. (after all, war is just the imposition of political policy via force).

Having spent some time with the folks he is pissing off, I don't think it's an understatement to say that he may just get himself killed.

mkramlich7• 16 years ago

That will be the ultimate proof of whether he's truly a threat to any powerful interests. If he suddenly disappears or has an accident one day, that will likely be the other shoe dropping.

gloob4• 16 years ago

I find it bizarre that so many people suddenly care so much about the lives of a couple hundred civilians in Afghanistan. Between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed, and nary a tear was shed by a reporter anywhere, but suddenly God knows how many people are out for this fellow's blood.

The world's a funny place.

SkyMarshal• 16 years ago

Informant > Civilian. To those people at least.

fuzz579• 16 years ago

I think that the old adage "One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic" is quite applicable here.

pradocchia2• 16 years ago

> but suddenly God knows how many people are out for this fellow's blood.

It's propaganda, in aggregate. The stated rationales don't matter. All that matters is that the idea gets lodged in the public mind, that Wikileaks is a legitimate threat, an enemy of the state, a rogue organization. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. It doesn't matter, so long as enough people believe it.

Why I don't know. What's the next play? When I heard the term "cyber warfare" in the past, I wouldn't have thought of this, but here we are.

takeshee• 16 years ago

Interesting Op-Ed, but I think it's criticism is misplaced. Wikileaks in this case is a provider, much like YouTube. Although their intended goal is to bring to light embarrassing and/or immoral actions by governments, they have no contractual obligation to the United States. Holding them accountable for information provided by 3rd parties seems a stretch at best, and if successfully prosecuted, all news media should be wary.

The op-ed's criticism should really be placed on the provider of these documents, and those that decided he could be trusted with a security clearance. He had a contractual agreement with the government, was informed of the consequences of breaking his oath, broke it, and should be prepared for the consequences.

The government knows the best way to prevent future cases like this: prosecute the leaker to the fullest extent they can. If the leaker is executed as a traitor, everyone with clearance during war-time will carefully consider breaking their oaths knowing that it will cost them their lives. Harassing and intimidating publishers will have little to no effect on future leaks, and is probably a waste of the governments time to pursue.

Chirag• 16 years ago

Knowing is always better than not knowing.

Ardit2013• 16 years ago

Perhaps. That we do not know.

binspace• 16 years ago

Wow, that article had government propaganda written all over it. Now I'm really glad somebody is standing up and exposing some questionable secrets.

America should be a government for the people by the people. I'm sorry, but hiding murders of children is not for the people.

adrianwaj• 16 years ago

I hope Wikileaks can leak things about "Palestine" regarding where and who are benefiting from all its aid - not that anyone will care that much. Is there a disproportionate focus on the USA? China's another country that could use some leakage.

mkramlich7• 16 years ago

That article was so full of double standards it was hilarious. Many of the things he accused WikiLeaks of doing, the US military is also doing, and often more directly and at a higher level of magnitude. Also, at the end I noted the author works for AEI. Not surprising.

jokull• 16 years ago

First of all, why were 91,000 documents secret? I wouldn't really know, but isn't that something like half of all the significant events in the war so far? Doesn't that make this whole operation kind of veiled from the public eye? THIS is what Wikileaks is exposing; the fact that routine events in this war are being kept secret for no apparent reason, not just a few justified occurrences where secrecy is necessary. It should be the burdon of the governing bodies to justify making something a secret, but from these documents it looks like they're slapping a "confidential" sticker on every other file just for the heck of it.

tlerce• 16 years ago

Bizarre how he so broadly paints the world with America's laws.

elblanco19• 16 years ago

What I think everybody has lost site of is that Afghanistan, pre 9-11, was a country that facilitated an environment that allowed people who would normally be local village thugs to turn into James Bond villains that rammed airliners into buildings on the other side of the planet killing thousands of civilians drinking their morning lattes.

The Afghan war was most certainly not a war of colonial aggression or some bullshit diversionary war in the wrong country and nobody has floated any realistic options other than occupying the country as way to prevent more buildings from being knocked down. It's not even entirely clear that even that minimal goal has been accomplished.

The point of all this wasn't to spread Democracy to the oppressed people of Afghanistan and give them clean water and schools. It was to eradicate an environment that facilitates and encourages people to plan and execute complex operations intent on killing us as part of an insane world domination plan to bring forth a new Caliphate on this Earth in order to establish a particularly hard-line version of Islam on humanity.

It just so turns out that our best estimate of what will stop the festering insane world domination cancer that grows there is a nice dose of Democracy, schools and economic growth. Perhaps that's wrong and misguided, but I have yet to hear of a plan that doesn't include "better government and stronger economy" that has any chance of working. And you can't have those things without some semblance of security. And you can't have security against people who want to establish a global Caliphate through a plan of killing and terrorizing civilian populations without killing a few of those assholes in return.

I mean, what's the alternative? Go door to door and politely pass out flyers asking them nicely to stop having aspirations of killing the infidel to cleanse the world? I wonder how long the Peace Corps would last amongst people who's idea of a reasoned response to "let's drill a well for the village" is to cut their head off with a dull knife and send a video of the decapitation to their family.

I'm not sure I really understand how to have a productive debate concerning this issue with people who think that the proper response to 9-11 should have been a shrug of the shoulders and enhanced sanctions.

I don't think anybody wants us to be at war there -- the ass end of the Earth. It's not like we're getting any material benefit from it -- quite the contrary in fact. But I objectively think that anybody who holds naive ideals that you can execute an invasion, conduct security operations, stabilization initiatives and nation building in such an inhospitable, economically hopeless part of the world and not end up with dead civilians is a moron. And I most certainly haven't heard of a reasonable plan that would exclude such unfortunate casualties. Cries for NATO to get out are never followed by a plan for what to do after that that would prevent the social and economic degeneration of the country into what we had to deal with in the late 90's and early 2000s.

To be perfectly honest, nobody really cares if Afghanistan soft crashes into a fractured state of tribal warlords who kill far more civilians than any occupation force could ever hope to do. Afghanistan will never be an advanced industrialized society.

What we all care about is if they soft crash back into a regime that supports complex and grandiose terror operations outside their borders. And due to woeful mismanagement the entire conflict, it's not clear where they'd land, but it's not likely to be a peaceful agrarian society.

OpieCunningham6• 16 years ago

Plenty of people have floated and tested ideas other than occupying the country as methods of preventing "more buildings from being knocked down". Indeed, nearly all terrorist plots that have been prevented have used these methods: investigative policing.

For someone seemingly so versed in the issue, I'm surprised of two things:

1- That you're apparently unaware that there are two primary schools of thought re: anti-terrorism. One is grand military force and the other is investigative tactics. The former is nearly beyond cost prohibitive (some might argue it IS cost prohibitive), of a highly questionable efficacy, and results in orders of magnitude more civilian deaths than the instigating cause (9/11). The latter has been demonstrated to be highly effective at preventing attacks.

2- That you're equally unaware that the killing of families in far off lands results in an increased number of surviving family/friends who take up arms in opposition to those responsible. There is now a wealth of information spanning years detailing the primary motivating factors of insurgents, most of which revolves around revenge for the death of family/friends and little of which has anything at all to do with Caliphates.

And lastly, it is the definition of naive to believe that "we're not getting any material benefit" from the war. You may not be, but many corporations have massive financial benefits and most politicians have re-election benefits (both pro-war and anti-war politicians, though primarily the pro-war variety).

elblanco19• 16 years ago

1. Without going into particulars of military vs. softer responses, how then do you propose we conduct an investigative policy of counter-terror activities in a country hostile to our investigators without first establishing an environment a softer policy can survive in?

2. I'm certainly not unaware of that. All possible effort should be made to not kill innocents as it does indeed feed the terror machine. I would certainly like to see persons responsible for indiscriminate civilian deaths dealt with. But unless you are aware of a method, technological or otherwise, of identifying bad civilians from good civilians in a population a priori to bad civilians doing bad things, and of removing those people from the face of the earth without endangering the room full of people they shield themselves with, sometimes innocents will simply be caught in the cross-fire.

It's sad, it's unfortunate, but it happens. Apparently your decades of counter-terror experience says something different, please share an actual operational plan from intelligence gathering to final capture/kill of a notional bad-guy if that's not the case.

Outside of your naive and fantasy filled ruminations on how to conduct counter-terror operations, you do seem to be entirely ignorant of the reasons why we are conducting operations in Afghanistan in the first place and it had everything to do with establishing a Caliphate.

"Like the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, of Iran, Osama bin Laden made his anti-Western passion and plans clear in print years before gaining prominence through a frontal assault against America and its friends. The Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad, a multivolume guide to paramilitary and terrorist activity, written by his followers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, signaled bin Laden's intention to wage an anti-Western campaign far beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The encyclopedia was probably compiled and published in Peshawar, Pakistan, in late 1992. Because it doesn't provide a date or an exact place of printing (an intentional wartime evasiveness pervades the writing), one must make guesses about its provenance based on the text and on conversations with Pakistanis, Afghans, and Arabs. The encyclopedia, "one of the Sources of Energy for the faithful," was designed to transfer the knowledge and spirit gained from the "first brick of Islamic justice"—the successful war against Soviet communism—to a larger, more important campaign against the West, which bin Laden's statements have referred to only as kufr ("unbelief"), a classical-Islamic way of denoting geography by faith. The next jihad against America and its Muslim allies would, the authors of the encyclopedia prayed, lead to "the establishment of a castle of the Muslims, a [new] Caliphate"—a reference to the ruling politico-religious office of Islam's "golden age." For many fundamentalists, if not for the common man, the caliphate remains, at least sentimentally, the ideal geopolitical expression of Muslim universalism—an empire free of Westernized nation-states, where the shari'a, the holy law, reigns supreme, thus guaranteeing the union of Church and State and the brotherhood and strength of the faithful.

The aim of the encyclopedia and many smaller paramilitary and terrorist manuals that have appeared since 1992 is to democratize terrorism, to give to any true believer a portable guide to waging holy war worldwide. The encyclopedia has been found in print or on CD-ROM wherever al Qaeda has sent its cadres. Bin Laden and his followers also sought to accomplish philosophically what the Shi'ite Ayatollah Khomeini aspired to but never achieved: taking Islamic radicalism mainstream by forcing and dominating the discussion of holy war among the various strains of Sunni fundamentalism, which has become a significant force in every Middle Eastern country. Though unquestionably the most influential Muslim of modern times, Khomeini could never transcend the seventh-century division of Islamic society into those who recognize the legitimacy of the caliphal succession to the Prophet Muhammad (the Sunnis) and "the party of Ali" (the Shi'a), who believe that only Muhammad's son-in-law and his descendants can rightfully rule the Islamic world."

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/01/gerecht....

It's just money spinning around the drain. What I mean by not gaining material benefit is that it's not like NATO troops are returning home with chests full of loot like returning Roman armies on the frontiers. There's no new input of valuables into the economies of the nations participating in Afghan counter-terror operations.

Groxx2• 16 years ago

Is it just me, or is The Washington Post getting worse?

tzm• 16 years ago

The reaction to WL seems to be driven more by fear and a lack of control. I question whether the blowback from leaks is greater than the unintended consequences and misguided efforts of military action as a whole.

This issue is the result of what you could consider a natural process as access to information becomes more efficient. Just an observation.

Ardit2013• 16 years ago

I am not American, so I do not know this author, but wow, this guy is evil!

From Wikileaks, I mean Wikipedia:

Marc A. Thiessen (born 1967) served as a speechwriter for United States President George W. Bush (2004–2009) and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (2001–2004). He is the author of the 2010 New York Times bestselling book, Courting Disaster.

"Thiessen's first book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack" - I think the title is probably all you need to know about him and the book.

"...a former military interrogator, and author of How to Break a Terrorist, characterizes Thiessen's book as "a literary defense of war criminals"

"...many Catholic thinkers strongly disagree with Thiessen's assertion in the book that <strong>waterboarding</strong> is permitted by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church." <i>Emphasis Added</i>

"Thiessen's promotional tour for Courting Disaster included a confrontational interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour and an interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show"

Man if he is shouting at John Stewart, you know the guy is evil.

He is all that I and am sure most Americans by their univocal rejection of the last government despise. He stands for all that made the last decade so dark. He is the f* criminal.

Now as to the article. I am amazed. Override International Law? What on earth! What is he somewhat superior than everyone else? Does he think the US is so great that it can afford to pick a fight with freaking Europe? Or is International Law applicable only to others, or is law for that matter applicable only to others?

Man this guy is not only Evil, but an enemy of the people. If the Devil did exist and took the form of man, it would resemble him like a mirror image.

rrc• 16 years ago

Whether it's terrorism or leaks, neocons - like this author - appear to frequently endorse head cutting as an effective method of battling hydras.

Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

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