Jump to content

Wikileaks


Recommended Posts

I'm still not quite sure what wikileaks has done wrong. There seems to be a lot of angst, but not much info on what laws they've broken.

I'm on the same page as you brother! (make an entry in your log. this does not happen often :rolleyes: ).

I look at as part of the "they came for my XXX ... and I did not care .... then they came for me but there was nobody left to help" type thing. Gimme the truth and let me worry about what it means (after all what else are we supposed to do with our brains?).

Ben

  • Like 1
Link to comment

I'm still not quite sure what wikileaks has done wrong. There seems to be a lot of angst, but not much info on what laws they've broken.

I don't think it matters much if Wikileaks broke the law. The ones that clearly broke the law are the ones that provided classified information to them. There's not much question on this point. If one agrees to protect the information as a condition of having access, I don't think that an individual can then just decide not to abide by the law/his contract/etc. If there's a real specific instance of wrongdoing, the I might see releasing that information to an attorney in confidence who could then build a case. Just anonymously dumping massive amounts of classified and sensitive data to Wikileaks is the action of a disgruntled coward.

I'm putting on my flame suit now.....

Mark

  • Like 1
Link to comment

I don't think it matters much if Wikileaks broke the law. The ones that clearly broke the law are the ones that provided classified information to them. There's not much question on this point. If one agrees to protect the information as a condition of having access, I don't think that an individual can then just decide not to abide by the law/his contract/etc. If there's a real specific instance of wrongdoing, the I might see releasing that information to an attorney in confidence who could then build a case. Just anonymously dumping massive amounts of classified and sensitive data to Wikileaks is the action of a disgruntled coward.

I'm putting on my flame suit now.....

Mark

A contract is a promise and violation of a contract is just plain wrong.

Ben

Link to comment

I don't think it matters much if Wikileaks broke the law. The ones that clearly broke the law are the ones that provided classified information to them. There's not much question on this point. If one agrees to protect the information as a condition of having access, I don't think that an individual can then just decide not to abide by the law/his contract/etc. If there's a real specific instance of wrongdoing, the I might see releasing that information to an attorney in confidence who could then build a case. Just anonymously dumping massive amounts of classified and sensitive data to Wikileaks is the action of a disgruntled coward.

I'm putting on my flame suit now.....

Mark

I can honestly say I'm on both sides of the fence on this issue. What Wilileaks has been doing, to their credit, is doing the job the media is supposed to be doing but refuses to do. Our Founding Fathers here in the US explicitly gave us freedom of speach for the specific job of keeping an eye on things and putting the word out when they thought something wasn't right. On the other hand, I can see where the individual who discloses classified information is a disgruntled coward. But I don't see where this is the fault of Wikileaks.

  • Like 1
Link to comment

[...] If one agrees to protect the information as a condition of having access, I don't think that an individual can then just decide not to abide by the law/his contract/etc. [...]

A contract is a promise and violation of a contract is just plain wrong. [...]

How 'bout if you enter into a contract with me then find that I've broken the law? Is it reasonable for you to expect, when entering into the non-disclosure arrangement, that you will be bound to keep evidence of illegal activity secret?

Link to comment

I can honestly say I'm on both sides of the fence on this issue. What Wilileaks has been doing, to their credit, is doing the job the media is supposed to be doing but refuses to do. Our Founding Fathers here in the US explicitly gave us freedom of speach for the specific job of keeping an eye on things and putting the word out when they thought something wasn't right. On the other hand, I can see where the individual who discloses classified information is a disgruntled coward. But I don't see where this is the fault of Wikileaks.

:thumbup1:

Far from a flame war... Who would have thought that virtual group hug could develop on LAVA on any topic let alone wikileaks.

:beer_mug:

Ben

  • Like 1
Link to comment
How 'bout if you enter into a contract with me then find that I've broken the law? Is it reasonable for you to expect, when entering into the non-disclosure arrangement, that you will be bound to keep evidence of illegal activity secret?
No, and that's one point I wanted to make in my earlier post. If you have a real, legal or moral grievance, there are proper ways to try to right the wrongs. I'm not naive enough to think that is an easy course. I'm sure more than one person has sabotaged their career by taking this route when they were driven by conscience to do what was right. But I still think that an anonymous action whose only apparent motive is to indiscriminately embarrass and impede a company, government, or whatever does not meet this standard. I also think that any activity to try to muzzle Wikileaks is a waste of time - one, you'd probably be on legal shaky ground and two, someone else would be up and running with the same information available within 15 minutes.

Sorry about the thread derail...:oops:

  • Like 1
Link to comment

While not written in LabVIEW, wikileaks is pretty high-visibility. And I must confess, the whole story did obsess me when it came into thegreater public awareness. So a lot of stories I'm going to share with my fellow wireworkers.

As a general disclaimer, we are talking about conspiracies (both to the stories presented by wikileaks, the powers behind those stories and wikileaks itself). So even if you'd trust me, do not trust anything of the lines that follow. :ph34r:

Concerning the suspected leak of 'the cables' and other documents, 'Manning'. I recently found somewhere (I didn't bookmark) the chat-log where he was telling another intelligence officer (?) about leaking the cables (I do not know if it was him who wrote it, and to what extend does logs might have been altered in whichever direction). To me it seemd that he was going really mad. A young guy sitting in a bunker in Iraq with a computer going mad. Others are shooting some people when they go made, more just shoot themself when they go mad, even more abuse drugs and/or alcohol. And the madness of war produces a lot of madness in people.

This is a big questionmark for me, wether he is guilty of leaking (morally and legally).

Second point, the legal case of Julian Assange. I do not want to defend his person (*). He might be a guy I don't want to meet in private (see the statements of people who have been working in wikileaks). But the legal case against him has a lot of strange things happening (you can read this in most news media, so I don't go into the details; it's all speculations anyhow). The most interesting of all was the recent 'leak' of information about his wrong-doings to the public media, while he stated even his lawyers can't get the information about it.

I'm pretty sure he knows how to play the info-warefare game by now and don't trust him at all. But this attack (against Assange) was excellent. You see this at the small detail, that it was most likely the work of 'spin doctors', who are professionals in this kind of information warefare. Contrary, all media called it a 'leak' and where making jokes about it.

Third and Forth point are about what crelf identified as 'Angst'. I could be pathetic about the dawn of information age. The internet isn't a wall-street playgroung with dotcom-bubbles any more. It never really wasn't, but in the big perception it was a place to generate new markets, win or loose big money. This actually (as many new technologies in history) also fuelled the forces of 'chaos'. See the upraising in Irania recently. See the current upraising in Tunesia. A lot of this very heavy protests are communicated via twitter, facebook and other Web2.0 content. See wikileaks, I found statistics that in the phase of eruption of the wikileaks-cae, the twitter messages where 4-10 fold from the normal level (taking the weekend peak into account).

Going back to the pathetics, this is a real change in the world towards the information age. All the web2-0 technologies (from wikis to twitter) have made the technology available to the masses (not only geeks can produce a youtube video, almost everyone has 1000s of ways to express that his stupid dictator is an **** and many people in his country will actually read this).

While we all can very good see what is happening when we look at countries where it's not so nice too grow up, live, and did much too young, it's much more difficult to imagine the same uprisings in our neighbourhood. But the same change is around you. And one section of people are aware about this: those in power. Simply because a change in the world will mean a shift in power and if you have a lot of power you are more likely to be we less power afterwards.

The forth and adjected point is that this is 'planned' be Julian Assange.

Wow, heavy statement, drifiting to much into conspiracy theory now? I read an analysis of Julian Assanges thinking in a german newspaper (for those that can read german, check at sueddeutsche). It went back to blog entries or emails that he has (might have) written back in the 90s or even 80s in which he was identified with 'Crypto-Anarchism'. They actually formulate a plan to attack 'the state' (as a conspiracy) by leaking (-> wikileaks). So if this analysis about Assange and Asange's analysis are both (at least partially) corrct, he is attacking the state in an anarchistic-'terrorist' way.

(*) now the funny annotatin for the end. What I really like on Julian Assange: he represents the geek/nerd/hacker to the public (especially the women) at the moment (and his personal troubles are also due to his sucess in doing so). And I think he's pretty sexy. So I really think he is doing all of us (at least those that are single) a big favour at the moment. :cool:

Felix

Link to comment

Even if you signed a contract, you cannot protect someone or some organisation breaking the law... even if this organisation is the USA. It is too easy for some law-breaking organisation to hide behind the top secret label. As for Wikileaks, I guess they try to shut them down by any means even if Wikileaks didn't break the law Assange may be considered as an ennema of the state (I think those revelations greatly altered the way people sees America)

Link to comment

Video link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNd0ahj4hdw comments are in french but images speak for themselves...

I don't think people really like America fighting for petroleum (er... I meant freedom) in Irak,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6A6Et0KLNE

Anyway I'm working on acoustic microscopy with LabVIEW maybe one day it would be a high visibility application...:unsure:

Link to comment

Video link http://www.youtube.c...h?v=iNd0ahj4hdw comments are in french but images speak for themselves...

I don't think people really like America fighting for petroleum (er... I meant freedom) in Irak,

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=Z6A6Et0KLNE

Anyway I'm working on acoustic microscopy with LabVIEW maybe one day it would be a high visibility application...:unsure:

attmept #3 at replying (no not technical issue rather retracting)

Thanks for those links. I had not seen them.

Re:high visability

Quoting myself and adapting to this context... "The problem with writing perfect code is that chances are, nobody will ever see it!" Or in this case, "the problem with writting really cool apps is even I am not allowed to see it!"

Ben

Link to comment

For those that are interested more in the wikileaks issue, there is a relative recent documentary on wikileaks. It was produced before the cables, but includes the video 'Collateral Murder' posted above. It also gives some more information about what happend around this video (including wikileaks meeting the family of those killed in the video). You can find it on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPglX8Bl3Dc

Make sure you don't just watch the first part, it's split 5 or 6 (depending on the uploader) versions.

I am wondering why it had taken so long for this discussion to arise on the forums. I think it's one of the most significant events for global internet culture, effects of technology on mankind, ... (the stuff we as techies have something to say about).

Felix

  • Like 1
Link to comment

For those that are interested more in the wikileaks issue, there is a relative recent documentary on wikileaks. It was produced before the cables, but includes the video 'Collateral Murder' posted above. It also gives some more information about what happend around this video (including wikileaks meeting the family of those killed in the video). You can find it on youtube:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=lPglX8Bl3Dc

Make sure you don't just watch the first part, it's split 5 or 6 (depending on the uploader) versions.

I am wondering why it had taken so long for this discussion to arise on the forums. I think it's one of the most significant events for global internet culture, effects of technology on mankind, ... (the stuff we as techies have something to say about).

Felix

Speaking for myself only...

I feel violated when my posts are trashed. There have been a couple of interesting threads where interesting thoughts were exchanged right up till the inverse of "Kring's Law" was invoked and the thread shut down and deleted.

Addressing some of the different views fo events in the world is a delicate matter and the wrong set of words can stop or kill a thread dead in its tracks. So the last thing I wasnt to do is say something that ends up killing a thread.

Of cours if I had my way I would prefer to address the different views up front and deal and not skirt the issues. Take a look at how the Global Warming thread appeared to get heated but in the end it cooled down (pun intended).

And now that I brought that back up again...

Has anyone actually dug into the wikileaks themselves and can confirm on denigh what I had heard reported (I read it on the internet so it must be true).

1) There where WMD in Iraq. (T/F) ?

2) The Climate change thing was jsut global scam to redistribute wealth. (T/F) ?

I am NOT asserting the above statements are true. I do not know. But as far as #1 goes, I never did figure out why Sadam did not let the inspectors in since doing so would have been a saving move for himself and a way to "rub the nose" of the global community that was trying to enforce the UN's decision.

I sincerley hope I have not offened anyone and welcome any and all that would like to share their insight.

Ben

Link to comment

Has anyone actually dug into the wikileaks themselves and can confirm on denigh what I had heard reported (I read it on the internet so it must be true).

1) There where WMD in Iraq. (T/F) ?

2) The Climate change thing was jsut global scam to redistribute wealth. (T/F) ?

I am NOT asserting the above statements are true. I do not know. But as far as #1 goes, I never did figure out why Sadam did not let the inspectors in since doing so would have been a saving move for himself and a way to "rub the nose" of the global community that was trying to enforce the UN's decision.

I did some reading of the cables (but most of the information I got by various news options), so I can provide better reference in this section.

So I want to provide a pretty tough example of misinformation from the primary source.

Cable #08HAVANA103 states that Michael Moors film Sicko was banned in Cuba. His statement that this isn't true can be found here on his blog.

I couldn't find the cable in the guardians files any more, they did remove it due to the false information. But 213.251.145.96 is everywhere.

I like this example because Michael Moore is biased (supporting wikileaks), so it's not in his ideological interest to show that wikileaks might contain false information.

So even if I'd dig up something about your questions, can we believe it's true?

Felix

Link to comment

I did some reading of the cables (but most of the information I got by various news options), so I can provide better reference in this section.

So I want to provide a pretty tough example of misinformation from the primary source.

Cable #08HAVANA103 states that Michael Moors film Sicko was banned in Cuba. His statement that this isn't true can be found here on his blog.

I couldn't find the cable in the guardians files any more, they did remove it due to the false information. But 213.251.145.96 is everywhere.

I like this example because Michael Moore is biased (supporting wikileaks), so it's not in his ideological interest to show that wikileaks might contain false information.

So even if I'd dig up something about your questions, can we believe it's true?

Felix

Yikes! The only thought that comes to mind after reading your reply is what I believe was a quote by Pilate when being questioning Jesus (that I probably will quote incorrectly) "What is truth?" http://bible.cc/john/18-38.htm This may not be that far off since he was attempting to judge the truth himself. Another comment I heard recently is that "the truth does not have an agenda."

For my part I can believe what makes sense. If I can't get it fit into my warped modle of the world, then I have no place to hang the fact and it becomes trivia and does not play a part in my day to dat activities.

Interesting thoughts that I am still working on.

Take care,

Ben

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.