U.S. warns Ottawa of WikiLeak release

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/24/wikileaks-ottawa.html

by kgarten • 16 years ago

90 73 16 years ago

cbc.ca

mrtron• 16 years ago

This is the type of positive political pressure news agencies should be putting on governments.

It shouldn't be just wikileaks - there are far too many reporters and far too few journalists.

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

If you're a media outlet and you don't want to lose your 'access' you should not be doing your job too well.

martythemaniak3• 16 years ago

Canada and the US have some of the most pliant media out there. It makes me want to throw up every time I see someone interview a power figure.

For example, last year our PM decided to prorogue parliament (ie, like ending a session of congress prematurely) because it was politically expedient. During his end-of-year, he got a soft-ball question and simply dismissed it as business-as-usual (even though it upset people and led to a fair bit of protesting). Meanwhile, people like Jeremy Paxman in Britain thrive on asking tough questions and calling politicians on their bullshit.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

Is the US just saying this so that when the actual leak comes out, it seems softer? Are they just making this up for some reason, or is the leak actually real? What kind of thing could possibly be leaked, and how badly will it damage international relations?

International espionage makes my head hurt.

mrcharles2• 16 years ago

Well, back in July, Wired quoted Manning as saying

“Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed,” Manning wrote. “It’s open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV format. It’s Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It’s beautiful, and horrifying.”

The article also says "a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”" ( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/ )

I think it's real, and I think it's bad. Time will tell though.

tomjen33• 16 years ago

Bad? Its great news, without allies the US can't really act internationally and they will have to stop invading other countries.

dfghjkhgbfd• 16 years ago

>What kind of thing could possibly be leaked, and how badly will it damage international relations?

Well it might be tricky politically for Germany to get behind the US if the leaks contain plans for a 'final solution' to the problem of muslims living in America.

Mostly it's just lots of governments that have opposed torture in public statements are going to be embarrassed when it's detailed how their security services stood there while the person was electrocuted then asked their questions. The UK just made a big payout to lots of Gimto inmates to avoid this coming out in court.

martythemaniak3• 16 years ago

Excellent. It used to be that you had to wait a generation or two to find out what actually transpired behind closed doors (example, Margaret McMillan's excellent book "Nixon in China"), but thanks to Wikileaks we can know merely years after the fact.

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

Here's to hoping that that time will decrease to 'near realtime' and that all governments will live in a glass cage.

Hopelessly naive ? Maybe, but I think that it would take something like that to get some honesty in politics.

oiujhygtyhuji2• 16 years ago

No it would just mean that more decisions are taken in bathrooms.

The reason things like cabinet meeting minutes are secret is that it does allow people to discuss issues honestly without just considering how it will play on the 6 Oclock news.

Imagine negotiating a sale at work if everything about it was published? All that would happen is that all emails and documents would become sanitized public statements and the real talking would be done off the record

arihelgason• 16 years ago

After Tony Blair had the Freedom of Information Act passed in the UK (2000), more discussions took place off the record and ministers began to avoid writing down minutes for meetings.

hugh37• 16 years ago

Hopelessly naive, yes.

What you're more likely to find is a situation where the less evil governments of the world (Canada, Britain, the US) have to live in glass cages while the more evil governments of the world (China, Russia, North Korea) can continue in secrecy. This I can only see being bad for the citizens of Canada, Britain and the US. All cynicism aside, changing the balance of power in the world away from the US Government and towards the Chinese Government is unlikely to be a positive move for the citizens of the US.

oiujhygtyhuji2• 16 years ago

A generation or two = amateurs

The British response if Napoleon had invaded the UK is still classified !

c1sc0• 16 years ago

Intriguing, source?

ajays• 16 years ago

Time to stock up on popcorn. This is going to be good.

When I think of the Internet, I see it as a worldwide communication medium that equalizes (or tries to) the distribution of knowledge. These leaks will be the Internet living up to this goal.

I hope WikiLeaks doesn't release these docs on Friday, as the coverage will be drowned out (in the US) by all this shopping BS. I hope they wait till things quiet down, and do it later next week.

mcantelon• 16 years ago

I would guess that Wikileaks understand the news cycle.

markeroon• 16 years ago

I feel the same way.

Most of the people in this thread who oppose the leaks appear to be American citizens. I feel that we Canadians have a right to know how US policy is affecting our country behind closed doors.

aneth3• 16 years ago

As much as I am in favor of government transparency, diplomatic channels have a very important need for privacy, and from the looks of it, this is really a senseless, destructive act by Assange and WikiLeaks. Diplomacy is incredibly complex and delicate. In particular when communicating with dissidents of foreign countries, it's often necessary to have complex and multi-faceted positions in private communications, some of which may be conflicting and offensive to one side or the other.

Take communications with North Korean or other dissidents as an example. On the surface, Kim Jong needs to think we are negotiating with him without trying to support opposition and bring down his government - otherwise he may become unstable and violent. We also however need to provide moral and material support to dissidents.

Shall we just be the fools and pretend that diplomacy is not a complex game? In a perfect world, maybe there would be no need for secrecy, but to think that diplomacy does not need some level of underhandedness, deception, head-fakes, and other manipulation is terribly naive.

We don't yet know what is going to be released, and perhaps some of it very well should be public, however if any of it damages our efforts to work with dissidents in oppressed countries, or has other destructive effects on the work of the State Department, there will be serious questions about whether real-time transparency is really what we want when it comes to diplomacy.

icegreentea2• 16 years ago

This. Furthermore, anyone's private conversations can make anyone seem like a jerk. I know there's that nice little saying... 'if you have nothing nice to say, then don't say it'. But frankly that's bullshit. At the very best, there's stuff in here that will make perfect rational sense, but still cause outrage amongst other countries. For example, as a Canadian I can easily see some angry faces over any report that shown that our decision to not participate in Iraq was dismissed as 'irrelevant'.

It's like how Alice and Bob are discussing Joe's crappy documentation in private in the context of having to work around it, and then suddenly Eve broadcasts that conversation through the world. Now Joe is probably pissed off at Alice and Bob, and the rest of the world is laughing at Joe. Even though Alice and Bob really did have to have that conversation.

Jach• 16 years ago

I don't think your metaphor fits. If I learned people really thought my documentation sucked, I'd fix it. As for countries, it's obviously not to be expected that North Korea's Great Leader or the Israelis and Palestinians will just "shut up and fix it", but I really don't think offering them monetary and weaponry bribes just to keep them at an "appropriate level of madness" is the kind of diplomacy I want our government to participate in, and any secrets that involve that ought to be revealed. Diplomacy is a complex issue and secrets leaking out can be damaging, but this is true about most government affairs.

hugh37• 16 years ago

* Take communications with North Korean or other dissidents as an example. On the surface, Kim Jong needs to think we are negotiating with him without trying to support opposition and bring down his government - otherwise he may become unstable and violent.*

Or rather, since I'm sure he already thinks that, he needs to not be able to prove that, or else he has an excuse to become unstable and violent.

Mind you, I'm less worried about the consequences with North Korea and more worried about the consequences with, say, China.

pyre3• 16 years ago

  > I'm less worried about the consequences with North Korea

Not if you're South Korea or Japan...

kurtosis• 16 years ago

Yes but isn't the possibility that your communications will be disclosed to the public by an anonymous insider already a part of this game? I don't see the naivety or idealism here - It just looks like standard journalism to me. WL has done a lot to make the "game" more interesting by making the possibility of insider leaks more credible than before. There are many reasons why an insider with the story to tell would rather talk to WL than a newsmedia reporter.

danenania• 16 years ago

This argument would hold more weight if US foreign policy actually had something to do with bringing freedom to subjects of oppressive regimes, but as it stands, the US government's actions are largely cynical, self-serving, supportive of some of the most oppressive regimes on the planet, and harmful to many millions of people around the world. They don't deserve sympathy.

JabavuAdams4• 16 years ago

This isn't just about US foreign policy. Let's take a different example that removes the interventionist "bad smell" of the NK example. Let's talk peace.

E.g. Imagine A and B want to negotiate a peace treaty. They represent large and diverse constituencies. Officially, they're not talking to each other -- there is ongoing violence, and hard-liners in both the A camp and the B camp will replace the A or B negotiators if they are deemed to be too soft.

So, there's a secret summit of A and B negotiators. Publicly, neither side can budge. However, because the talks are secret, the negotiators are free to make initial concessions to get the ball rolling.

How could making those talks public possibly be a good thing? It might actually scuttle peace and result in more violence.

It's easy for rogue elements to spoil a sensitive negotiation. There is a real need for secrecy in order to have productive negotiations on sensitive topics.

nhangen2• 16 years ago

Perhaps, but creating enemies of the US does more to damage its citizens than it does the government.

rbarooah3• 16 years ago

Can you name a government that isn't cynical, self-serving, and supportive of bad actions?

fleitz• 16 years ago

Necessity is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves.

martythemaniak3• 16 years ago

The blame rests squarely with governments abusing the trust that citizens normally give them. There has been a tendency over the last bunch of years of increasing government secrecy.

Here in Canada we've had a de-facto Information Minister for quite some time. Any government official that wishes to speak about anything must submit a request to the PM's Communications Director, who'll edit it, vet it and put an appropriate political spin on it. Whereas it was expected that Ministers, MPs and other government officials would stop by and chat with reporters after the daily parliamentary session, this is not allowed anymore. Everything is a scripted, fake photo-op and journalists frequently are only allowed to ask pre-approved questions. So what's the end result? We can't trust anything these people say, we can't get answers, we just get infantile bullshit thrown at us. It is not just Canada, the Washington Post's "Top Secret America" shows you have similar problems down south as well.

Maybe you're fine with the way things are, but I and many others certainly are not. The way to bring about change isn't to politely sit around saying you'd like something to change - you go ahead and do what you think is right. And I do hope Assange's latest leak hurts governments - maybe after they've been burnt enough times, they'll learn to be more open, transparent and accountable so that when they do actually need privacy, the people will trust them.

Now excuse me while I go donate a few bucks to wikileaks.

adrianb• 16 years ago

What good is chatting to the media if they will go, edit the interview and show whatever they want that fits their own agenda? I don't know if this is a problem in Canada but it certainly is in my country and I know that it is an issue in the US.

Personally, I can understand why the public figures would not want to talk to the media. However, I don't understand why they aren't finding new ways to communicate more directly with the public.

markbao• 16 years ago

+1. The ripple effects of releasing such documents are unknown. This is a completely reckless act by Assange/Wikileaks that puts their name above the safety of the citizens of the world.

rbarooah3• 16 years ago

We can't move towards a more perfect world without facing some painful truths, and the current state of affairs is pretty far from perfect. Secrecy and manipulation as mechanisms of power are good for the powerful and bad for everyone else and if it's possible for humanity to grow out of this way of being then we should take that chance, because the alternative is terrible.

tensor• 16 years ago

Without knowing what is being released, how can you possibly claim it is reckless? The U.S. warned Canada. Canada is hardly an oppressed nation that requires delicate communication.

At this point, all we can do is wait and see what is released.

zyb09• 16 years ago

Wow Hacker News... I did not expect this to be the most upvoted comment when I opened this thread. Underhandedness, deception, head-fakes a necessity, because that's just how things are?

Really?

Talk about throwing your ideology out of the window. Attitudes like this are never gonna change the world.

sidek• 16 years ago

I didn't agree with him, but I did upvote him. Why? While I may think differently, he argued well and added to the discussion.

jhpriestley2• 16 years ago

The foreign governments already know, more or less, which dissidents are being supported by whom. It doesn't take WikiLeaks to tell Kim Jong Il where his enemies are getting their M4s or whatever. Secrecy mostly gives governments the room to make deals with groups which the population finds objectionable: genocidaires, nazis, theocrats, thugs, etc. For example, Nixon secretly made deals with the Vietnamese communists to sabotage peace negotiations; Reagan was secretly dealing with the Iranian theocracy and with the Nicaraguan contras (who had a bad rep stateside due to rape, murder, and so on). It is in fact routine for the US government to make deals with violent extremists or autocratic governments, very often in direct opposition to democratic movements or governments.

Diplomacy is a very complex game, but you seem to be confused about which side the players are on. Politicians are on one side, you and I are on the other.

rapind2• 16 years ago

I disagree that deception is necessary in almost any (if any) situation.

I don't think anyone's actually being fooled by it. I highly doubt Kim Jong is under the impression that the US supports him or is even remotely sympathetic to his motives. It's just a game being played by both sides.

Most of the time we create our own complexity, and then build even more complexity on top of it. Eventually it becomes impossible to explain our motives for anything without attaching an enormous amount of context to it. Context which few people have the attention span to fully understand, so you can eventually do whatever you want via abstraction and just blame it on complexity. "Here's a 50 page legal document which clearly shows why I lied to you ok? Anyone who calls me a bad guy just lacks the proper context."

If our diplomacy practices are so complex that they require underhandedness, deception, head-fakes, etc. then it's time to refactor. I'm sure there's a certain level of necessary complexity, but not to the point where being dishonest is justified.

Honesty and transparency are practically a religion to me and this may come across a little zealous / attacking, so I apologize for that.

aneth3• 16 years ago

I'm sensitive to this viewpoint. However let's say you are running a company. There are a huge number of situations where secrecy is necessary. Negotiations with an aquirer, pending layoffs, legal wrangling, customer pipeline, etc. If someone got a hold of this information and released it in an untimely way, they would be fired and possibly prosecuted. I'm completely in favor of honesty and transparency but it is unfortunately not always the best policy.

nickpinkston• 16 years ago

Do you really think N. Korea doesn't know the long-term US position for NK is regime change? Don't be naive. Of course they do.

Yes - diplomacy is very delicate, and things like this can have bad short-term consequences. However, the long term could be arguably better in the same way pointing out security holes publicly makes companies fix it quickly.

It's the same analogy that supports legalization of insider trading - for which there is a solid argument for increased transparency even though there are short term negative consequences (insiders getting money w/ inside knowledge).

The case is that by having more transparency, even with short-term profiteering, the total good in the long term is maximized.

aneth3• 16 years ago

In follow-up, now that these documents are released, it was done in a much more responsible manner than I had expected. The complete documents were not released, and news agencies were allowed to "censor" portions that would seriously threaten people or security. I can say I generally support this as it was done.

kgarten• 16 years ago

I agree that diplomacy is highly complex, yet I'm wondering how much real damage will be done by Wikileaks revelations and how much good ... For me it's more about the mismatch between the public image and what's happening in secrecy. Ultimately, in a democracy, every action of the government should be open to public inquiry. maybe there is some information, in special circumstances, that cannot be released straight away. Yet, I personally believe, it is very little.

I just read an interesting article about these issues by Craig Murray a former British Ambassador. Submitted it also here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1951145

shaddi• 16 years ago

What happened to everything else that Wikileaks used to host? I remember when it first went live it was an actual Mediawiki site that had a lot of other whistleblower documents. Since this "War Logs" stuff went up I can't seem to find any of the old documents.

pyre3• 16 years ago

They didn't garner enough publicity, so they were cut loose as liabilities.

bbatsell• 16 years ago

My understanding is that they now only host the latest documents purportedly to cut hosting costs. Some argue that it's a bit of manipulation in order to garner more donations. You can google for mirrors of the old content.

motters• 16 years ago

I think that people rushing to issue denunciations of Wikileaks and defences of the behaviour of diplomats would be better advised to wait and see what information these particular documents actually contain.

joshes• 16 years ago

Potentially destructive? Yes.

Sometimes a broken, corrupted system needs a bit of destruction to be set in a better direction. Whatever Assange is sitting on must be damning, considering the way this is unfolding. I am intrigued to see where this goes.

forza• 16 years ago

Many of you have a US perspective on this, but it could be even more interesting for the rest of the world. I supposedly live in the most democratic country in the world, but that doesn't seem to prevent officials from breaking the law under US influence.

"Sweden investigating alleged U.S. spying" http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-06/world/sweden.us.investiga...

"New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05...

"SWIFT breaks EU law to comply with US law" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/swift_us_privacy_vio...

"US government behind Pirate Bay raid" http://www.thelocal.se/3969/20060602/

U.S. warns Ottawa of WikiLeak release

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