US Military Classifies Wikileaks As 'Enemy Of The United States'

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120926/23522220526/us-military-classifies-wikileaks-as-enemy-united-states.shtml

by mcantelon • 14 years ago

147 168 14 years ago

mtgx4• 14 years ago

As an enemy of US, being in the same category as al-Alqaeda and the Taliban insurgents, does it mean that if the US military happens to see Assange anywhere in the world, they have to shoot him on sight or send killer drones after him? After all, according to them, he's just as dangerous as al-Qaeda.

tptacek28• 14 years ago

No, it does not mean that. The federal authorization to kill Taliban and AlQ operatives arises from the 2003 Iraq AUMF; there isn't some doctrine that says "if the military designates you as an enemy of the state they can kill you with winged death robots".

mathieuh• 14 years ago

Tell that to Obama.

blauwbilgorgel• 14 years ago

"An enemy is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial, etc," - Marc Ratner, Assange's attorney

"Any person who ... aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with ... money. Any person who ... without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct." Punitive Articles of the UCMJ: Article 104—Aiding the enemy

"Scope of Article 104. This article denounces offenses by all persons whether or not otherwise subject to military law. Offenders may be tried by court-martial or by military commission."

dmerfield• 14 years ago

JFK made a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961. His discussion of the dangers of stifling transparency - often in the name of public safety - seems as important today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

ojiikun• 14 years ago

Obama himself gave a speech before the UN just yesterday extolling the virtues of free speech:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-obamas-2012...

tedunangst9• 14 years ago

The right to free speech does not imply the right to force people to speak.

001sky3• 14 years ago

relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

Edit: This just goes to show what you say != what you do

lifeisstillgood• 14 years ago

The phrase that comes to mind is Noblesse oblige

I am probably looking with rose tinted spectacles, but post WWII there seemed to be a ruling class who tried to live up to noble words.

These days the ruling class see gutter fighting as an acceptable response, lining your pockets with contracts as due payment and constitutions as inconvenice not guidance.

If you are a 600-pound gorilla, sticking to the queensbury rules is not likely to affect the outcome. But it will affect how trusted you are the next fight you get into.

tisme2• 14 years ago

It probably isn't the intention but that will serve as a validation of wikileaks in the eyes of quite a few people.

ChuckMcM12• 14 years ago

Sigh. Next up, imprisoning US "Dissidents".

tptacek28• 14 years ago

Please connect those dots for us.

marshray5• 14 years ago

Not saying the line is complete yet, but the NDAA looks like a connecting dot to me.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but is this not what a steady slide into military dictatorship would be expected to look like?

ChuckMcM12• 14 years ago

Certainly, historically the US has gone after the folks who allowed confidential or classified information to get out of their, not the people who received it.

In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, which published them and embarrassed the administration, in '72 Woodward and Bernstein would get information from Mark Feldt (aka "Deep Throat") which would they go on to publish and it toppled the Nixon administration.

In both of those cases neither the New York Times or the Post, the journalists, or the editors of those papers was ever in danger of criminal proceedings, much less military action.

How Wikileaks got their information is not known, it is clear that Julian Assange was not the source of the leak, he merely benefited from it.

So the line goes like this:

1) A government that prosecutes people who leak their information.

2) ... to a Government that prosecutes people who publish the information leaked to them.

3) ... and next up ... prosecuting individuals who express influential opinions based on documented knowledge of otherwise classified material.

Do you really think this country would have tolerated President Johnson declaring the New York Times and its journalist Neil Sheehan "enemies of the US" ?

grandalf7• 14 years ago

While it's completely reasonable for the US to be concerned with preventing breaches of classified information, the problem with the US reaction to the horrors and gaffes revealed by Wikileaks is that there has been absolutely zero outrage about them, only the attempt to shoot the messenger.

This asymmetry has been a real awakening for me about the level of corruption and moral bankruptcy of the US ruling class, and about the apathy and complicity of the press and the citizenry in general.

I think we are already past the inflection point that historians will one day view as similar to the turning points that led to Nazi Germany and other large scale moral failings of humanity. There is a culture of denial and intentional blindness to the consequences of US actions abroad and a terrible enthusiasm for the leaders who initiate these kinds of things.

knowaveragejoe5• 14 years ago

Aside from Collateral Murder, what shocking revelations have come to light as a result of the leaks? Not saying they don't exist, but speculating perhaps some of the 'revelations' weren't so shocking or were even publicly known.

tptacek28• 14 years ago

Collateral Murder was not a shocking revelation. The Washington Post ran a transcript of that video, scene for scene, a year before the video was released. The video only shocked people who don't read.

grandalf7• 14 years ago

Some that I think are most significant:

- The complicity of US forces in turning over captive Baathists to the provisional Iraqi officials for nearly certain torture.

- The revelation that information was classified only to prevent bad news from getting out about the progress of the war effort. This counts as propagandizing the American people.

- Lying about civilian death tolls.

- ISI complicity with the Taliban.

tokenadult• 14 years ago

I have one friend (a United States citizen) who has spent much of his life living abroad. He has been to dozens of different countries, including the Asian country where I met him. He has not been back to any part of the United States in the last five years, during which time he has been to multiple countries of varied cultural and political background. His reaction to the Wikileaks publication of United States diplomatic "cables" was that his respect for United States diplomats increased enormously. That is my reaction too. United States diplomats have to deal with other governments all over the world, many much more treacherous and duplicitous than the United States government has been even at its worst. Those of us who are Americans who have been abroad, and who thus are especially aware of the consequences of US actions abroad, certainly have our own criticisms of United States policy. We also criticize the actions of United States persons who violate some United States policies, to the harm of foreign persons. But if Wikileaks wanted to so something both constructive for world peace and likely to elicit even more surprised outrage, it should turn its attention to the classified documents of China, of Iran, of Russia, of North Korea, of Belarus, of Venezuela, and of various other dictatorial regimes around the world.

AFTER EDIT: The reply two levels down by pdonis correctly summarizes the single standard I apply to all governments: they all ought to act morally, they all fail to act morally from time to time, I oppose all of those failures, and I would especially like to know more about the activities of governments that don't subject themselves to the discipline of free and fair elections, even if it means an organization like Wikileaks has to reveal their secrets.

grandalf7• 14 years ago

I also do not consider the diplomatic cables particularly significant, their release mainly creates personal embarrassment to the diplomats who must apologize in person to the victims of their petty and rude remarks found in the cables... in general nothing revealed was outside the bounds of what is reasonable to discuss if one assumes the conversation will be private (humans are gossipy, petty creatures). They do reveal a somewhat unflattering aspect of diplomacy, but nothing that any realist wouldn't have already imagined.

The meat is in the Iraq and Afghan war logs, so it sort of irks me when the diplomatic cables are discussed b/c they are mostly just gossip column material.

kalms• 14 years ago

They already have. Here's an example: http://wikileaks.org/syria-files/

kkowalczyk• 14 years ago

Given your eager defense of US I doubt you see how dangerous this kind of reasoning is.

You basically said that US, in general, is a good guy and therefore it's justified in doing illegal, immoral things and then hunting down those who expose this behavior.

So exposing bad behavior of US government is bad and worthy prosecution but exposing bad behavior of other governments, those you deem to be worse than US, is good and worthy praise.

Please explain the rationale for that double-standard.

Please also tell me which which other country dropped two atomic bombs, fought a prolonged, unprovoked political war (Vietnam) and invaded another country based on evidence that is believed to be completely fabricated (Iraq) and destroyed the lives of many creative people during McCarthy's communist witch hunt.

This is not to say that other countries aren't worse but let's not blindly wave patriotic flag and pretend that US government is immune to immoral, corrupt behavior. This kind of blind patriotism is easily exploitable. One thing that the "bad" governments have in common is that blind patriotism is a main propaganda technique used by Nazi Party, North Korea, communist countries to build us vs. evil them (except to them it's the jews or US is the "evil") and explain away their bad behavior (because the other side is even worse).

tptacek28• 14 years ago

Without commenting on this particular document, the military has an extremely valid reason for criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active servicemembers; people in the armed services are stewards of all sorts of information that can't be leaked, and Wikileaks has a stated goal of extracting as much intelligence from the US military as they can.

This "declaration" (it's a Techdirt story; someone could do us all a favor by trying to verify what it actually means) comes in the wake of the most grievous opsec breach in US history. The only reason we're not outraged by the breach itself is that it got overshadowed by the subsequent disclosure to the press. If it had been Israel that extracted this information and not ransomed it to The Guardian, we'd be calling for heads to roll over it.

derrida4• 14 years ago

> Wikileaks has a stated goal of extracting as much intelligence from the US military as they can.

I've followed this for quite sometime and I do not recall this ever being a stated goal of Wikileaks. It is a stated goal of theirs to publish anything a whistle-blower sends them. If the US military has the most to fear it might be because they have the most to hide in regards to warcrimes etc.

Primary Source here: http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FO...

Original article was in the Sydney Morning Herald. This is a rewrite of a rewrite of the documents.

tptacek28• 14 years ago

The US has the most to fear because the US leaks like a sieve.

If the countries with the most evil militaries had the most to fear, we'd all be remote desktopping into the laptops of Syrian generals right now.

bo10243• 14 years ago

Wikileaks is a journalistic organization. If someone in the US military emails the New York Times a classified secret, that does not make the Times an "enemy of the United States."

All this nonsense about "most grievous breach in opsec history" and "extracting information" completely obscures the issue by putting the blame on the wrong boot.

Hacking, spying, all these things can and should be declared illegal/wrong. But publishing data that was sent to you by a willing informant is much less clear-cut, and certainly doesn't warrant "enemy of the state" status from any country claiming to respect freedom of the press.

The goal of news organizations is to find out information and make it public. If you want to keep information private, fine, make it a criminal offense for your people to disclose that information to news sources. Case closed.

tptacek28• 14 years ago

A US Army information assurance agent downloaded gigabytes of state secrets and mailed them to a foreign national. Your willingness to call that a "nonsensical" breach says more about your biases than mine.

EvanKelly4• 14 years ago

The New York Times will parse and redact the information that they feel could endanger people from any classified information that they may publish or use in an article. They notably published the Pentagon Papers, which showed that the US had been misled regarding Vietnam. This information did not endanger anyone.

Wikileaks, at least with the initial major leak, does not redact or edit information to protect anyone. This has been one of the reasons major journalist outlets (such as NYT) didn't cooperate with them regarding the initial leak.

They simply serve as a clearinghouse for leaked info. The government would almost certainly be able to invoke prior restraint if they were able to take wikileaks to a US court. They were not able to show this in the Pentagon Papers case.

I'm not commenting on the "enemy of state" situation, but I did want to clarify that major difference between an organization such as the NYT and Wikileaks.

_djo_2• 14 years ago

If you want to keep information private, fine, make it a criminal offense for your people to disclose that information to news sources. Case closed.

It already is, that's why Bradley Manning is in detention, the only problem is that it's selectively enforced largely because it's not easy to figure out the source of each leak.

abraxasz• 14 years ago

I believe that what is meant by "criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active servicemembers" is not that Wikileaks should be considered an enemy of the US, but rather that "leaking secrets to Wikileaks" should be criminalized.

The same should hold for communicating confidential information to any newspaper, I don't believe that Wikileaks should be singled out here.

ChuckMcM12• 14 years ago

Exactly, see my 'connecting the dots' response below. I get it that the US is pissed off that people are sending Wikileaks classified information, the Nixon administration was really pissed off by Woodward and Bernstein's revelations and the Johnson adminstration was in a tizzy over the release of the Pentagon papers, but they didn't turn around and declare the papers and the journalists 'enemies of the state' now did they?

slurgfest5• 14 years ago

So, if I mean to do espionage against the US military, all I have to do is gather lots of information, and publicly dump part of my findings in order to become a "news organization".

nostrademons2• 14 years ago

It wasn't clear whether the classification means only that U.S. servicemembers are subject to punishment for contact with Wikileaks, or whether the general public is as well. It's one thing to tell employees who are entrusted with state secrets that they should not divulge them to someone who's going to plaster them on the NYTimes; it's another to tell members of the general public that they can't talk to or express support for Wikileaks for fear of criminal sanctions. The latter seems a gross violation of freedom of assembly.

ajdecon• 14 years ago

IANAL. However, I don't believe that the US military can impose criminal sanctions on civilians, only their own personnel. (With specific exceptions for being called in to deal with specific emergencies, etc.)

From the article TechDirt links to: "Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with "communicating with the enemy", a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death."

So far I haven't seen anyone link to the document itself, so it's all third-hand.

mtgx4• 14 years ago

So you think it's fair that Bradley Manning has been in prison way past the legal amount, without a trial? You seem to imply that everything the Government is doing now to Wikileaks is fair game.

Manning (if true) and Wikileaks, exposed war crimes. Should they not be exposed? Should the exposing of war crimes be punishable more than the war crimes themselves?

mcantelon2• 14 years ago

>The only reason we're not outraged by the breach itself is that it got overshadowed by the subsequent disclosure to the press.

Why be outraged by the breach? It's good to know of double-dealing by one's government. And most of the US info WL has leaked is pretty low level in terms of classification. Other state intel agencies likely already had unauthorized access to the cables, for example.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

> people in the armed services are stewards of all sorts of information that can't be leaked

It's much more complicated than that.

One could credibly defend there is a lot of information that should be made public because doing so is in the best interest of the people of the United States (never forget government != people). Hiding things such as war crimes, torture, extraordinary rendition, aid to dictators and other kinds of assorted undue intereference in internal affairs of sovereign nations goes against the interests of the people.

If, for no other reason, it may make the government better represent the ideals of its people. That can't be a bad thing.

ryusage• 14 years ago

Reading the link that the techdirt article is based on, the document is about an analyst with Top Secret clearance who had been actively expressing support for Wikileaks. The document suggests that he could be charged with "communicating with an enemy" if he had leaked secrets to Wikileaks, and because it mentions no other organizations, some people are taking this to mean that Wikileaks itself is considered an enemy of the United States.

That same article, though, mentions that Bradley Manning was charged with this exact thing - but the enemy he is accused of communicating with is specifically Al-Qaeda, not Wikileaks. Apparently, they consider Wikileaks an intermediary for communicating with terrorists.

smokeyj• 14 years ago

> the military has an extremely valid reason for criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active servicemembers

Surely leaking classified information was already a crime.

derrida4• 14 years ago

Primary source here http://wikileaks.org/US-Military-Refers-to-Julian.html

danielweber6• 14 years ago

What TechDirt and the title suggest is that people communicating with Wikileaks could be considered "talking with the enemy," the real restriction is on military personnel. Maybe that's still bad, but we generally accept that the military can place restrictions on people its soldiers are allowed to talk with.

They refer to a FOIA request releasing a document from the Air Force, but the link is to another news article, not the document. Anyone have the original so we can read for ourselves?

EDIT derrida provides primary document below: http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FO...

farinasa• 14 years ago

More like an Enemy of the United States MILITARY. I personally like to be informed about what my tax dollars are funding around the world.

ajays4• 14 years ago

Just out of curiosity: are the Russians classified as "Enemy of the US"? How about the Chinese? Or the DPRK?

The Chinese military and government, for example, is way more actively trying to get military secrets out of the US, and not for altruistic reasons either. What makes them saints compared to Wikileaks?

tisme2• 14 years ago

That they then do not turn around and inform the general public.

tptacek28• 14 years ago

What do you think happens to a US servicemember who leaks military secrets to Russia or China?

ajays4• 14 years ago

We are not talking about leaking here; by declaring Wikileaks to be EOUS, _any_ contact with them is verboten. FTA: "the military is effectively declaring that any contact with Wikileaks or its supporters could be deemed "communicating with the enemy" -- which can be punished severely (even death)."

While our military is free to make port calls, joint maneuvers, etc. with PRC?

chimi2• 14 years ago

False analogy. Last I checked, Wikileaks doesn't have a seat at the UN Security Council...

ajross2• 14 years ago

That's not the point. Wikileaks isn't a servicemember, they're the recipient and conveyer of the leak. The point here is a double standard: if a SuperSpy steals info and gives it to China, it's an "incident" that doesn't meaningfully affect diplomacy. If JoeClerk emails the same inforomation to SomeDude on the internet, suddenly SomeDude is a ... enemy of the United States?

Surely you see the problem here, right? It has nothing to do with security processes.

ChuckMcM12• 14 years ago

What happens to a senior government official that leaks military secrets to the New York Times ? (the 'yeah we did stuxnet' is the most recent one that comes to mind)

Iran is clearly an enemy, I am sure there is at least one person in an official capacity in Iran that reads the New York Times, there for leaking information about Stuxnet to the Times is equivalent to leaking it to Iran.

So the New York Times is an 'enemy of the US' ? I am too dense to figure out how you arrive at the conclusion that this is OK for Wikileaks and not then also required to put the Times on that list.

ajays4• 14 years ago

There is a lot going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. For example: whatever happened to the BoA emails they were going to reveal? Isn't it convenient that some "rogue" guy in Germany ran away with these emails? Given Assange's background and technical capabilities, isn't it surprising that he allowed it to happen?

knowaveragejoe5• 14 years ago

Indeed, has there been any more coverage of this? I didn't hear about some rogue guy in Germany.

tedunangst9• 14 years ago

They had backups in S3 but they were lost in the power outage caused by the storm caused by the orbital bad weather gun.

roothacker• 14 years ago

Bombing the servers won't be a good idea now when GeoLocated has gained a lot of popularity.

tvladeck• 14 years ago

A major problem with this article is that it does not clearly define what "Enemy Of The United States" means in this context. Who made this decision? Is this a special status / designation with associated repercussions, or simply a description used by an anonymous writer in the Air Force?

NB that I would not defend the latter case, but this article does not really tell us exactly what the leaked paper implies about US policy towards Wikileaks.

thebigshane• 14 years ago

Apparent Facts:

- AF OSI (the Air Force's own little internal FBI-like agency) investigates military members contacting Wikileaks / Julian Assange

- AF OSI is alleging that some service-members may be punished under UCMJ 104-D Communicating with the Enemy / Aiding the Enemy for communicating with Julian Assange

Unjustified Speculation:

- The US Military or US AF considers Wikileaks an Enemy of the State.

- The US Military is going to assassinate Julian Assange with a UAV drone.

Debatable, but likely (IANAL):

- This particular investigation case (involving those service members) is closed and it is unknown/classified regarding whether official charges were filed.

- UCMJ 104-D may also charge non-service-members for Aiding the Enemy (Google is embarrassingly unhelpful confirming or denying this for me)

- TechDirt is flame-baiting and fear-mongering (obviously their raison d'être)

ajays4• 14 years ago

It is interesting (in a sad sort of way) to see how this article is being flagged into oblivion. Even though it has 130 points in 3 hours, it has been relegated to page 3 of HN.

I would have assumed that this topic was of widespread interest, especially to the HN community. But some folks seem to confuse what the "flag" button means...

malandrew• 14 years ago

I think it would behoove wikileaks to try and dump documents of countries that the US considers hostile to suspect, such as Iran, Russia and North Korea.

So far Wikileaks has been releasing files that are largely from the US, but it needs to be more neutral in releasing files from all countries.

Wikileaks' US focus it hurting it. Other countries like England, Russia, Israel, China, India, etc. all deserve some time in the spotlight.

Personally, I would love to see more exposure of corruption by politicians in countries like Brazil. Putting corrupt politicians in prison would do more to bolster its image and support for it than its current crusade.

US Military Classifies Wikileaks As 'Enemy Of The United States'

Related Stories