WikiLeaks

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
Jeff, now the report is that Assange had intercourse without a condom with the one woman while she was asleep and that he forced the other woman to have sex without a condom. If I woke up and found that a guy had fucked me without a condom while I was asleep, how do you think I would feel about that? If that is what happened, that's sexual assault in my book.

I don't know the origin of the "report" to which you are referring, but the information that I described came from the Swedish police report which has been leaked. I can think of any number of scenarios that I would consider sexual assault. But, we need to base this discussion on the most reliable information at hand. Can you provide any kind of support for the allegations you describe?

I agree that charges of sex crimes shouldn't be minimized because one agrees politically with the accused. Nor should the principle of innocent until proven guilty be tossed out just because such charges are made.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:1) Has WikiLeaks "dumped" 250,000 unedited documents on the Internet? No. ... So far, less than 200 documents have been published.

According to a screenshot of the WikiLeaks homepage on Wikipedia, WikiLeaks has released 20,000 files and has made available an archived copy of all of them.

That is all the documents in WikiLeaks' history. Not the number of the documents released in CableGate. The "archived copy" is encrypted and is simply an insurance policy. Without the password, the archived copy is useless.

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:2) Is Julian Assange a rapist? Not by most definitions of the term...

Are you well versed in the legal definition of rape in Sweden? Me neither.

Are you well versed in the English language? If so, consider the meaning of "by most definitions of the term".

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:4)Obama has ordered US Governmental agencies to prevent their employees from viewing the documents. One Department warned employees that their computers would be "scrubbed" if they were caught viewing the documents. Employees with security clearances have been warned that their clearances could be in danger if they were caught discussing the documents on Facebook.

This is required for all federal employees and information systems. Materials deemed as requiring Secret Clearance are not allowed to reside on systems which are not secure. You are not allowed to have a Secret document saved on your work computer or a department's server if that computer/server is not secured. You can't even view a Secret document over non-secure networks since it would require transmitting the information over said network. In addition, no federal employee is allowed to view materials unless they have the proper level of security clearance. This isn't something Obama came up with out of the blue; it's how our national security systems and regulations operate and have operated for some time.

The documents have been published in newspapers. They can hardly be considered "secret" at this time. The same people using the same computers can read the same documents by going to the newspaper websites. They can go home and reach the WikiLeaks website. Can you provide a single example of something like this happening before? It hasn't even happened with previous WikiLeaks leaks. Why are you making excuses for the government interfering with the rights of a free press?

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:The Government has pressured private companies into cutting ties with WikiLeaks, resulting in Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa dropping services to WikiLeaks.

The Government has done this? Please provide your sources.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/08/operation-payback-mastercard-website-wikileaks

"PayPal's vice-president of platform, Osama Bedier, told an internet conference the site had decided to freeze WikiLeaks' account on 4 December after government representatives said it was engaged in illegal activity.

"[The US] state department told us these were illegal activities. It was straightforward," he told the LeWeb conference in Paris, adding: "We ... comply with regulations around the world, making sure that we protect our brand."

Beyond that Joe Lieberman has been bragging about how he got Amazon to dump WikiLeaks.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:Caution, if you have a security clearance, you may not want to post in this thread.

I'm surprised that the subject of WikiLeaks has not come up here so far. So, I'll be the first to start. I'm am appalled by the reaction of the US Government and many Americans to the latest documents made available by WikiLeaks. The amount of misinformation being spread is ridiculous. It's as if no one has any regard for the truth. Here are a few items of which most people are probably not aware:

1) Has WikiLeaks "dumped" 250,000 unedited documents on the Internet? No. WikiLeaks has allowed several news organizations including the New York Times and The Guardian to select a handful of documents to publish. The news organizations redact the names of individuals who might be endangered by the publishing of the documents and then publish the documents themselves. Only after the news organizations have published the documents does WikiLeaks post the documents on its own website. The documents WikiLeaks publishes include the redactions made by the news organizations. So far, less than 200 documents have been published.

2) Is Julian Assange a rapist? Not by most definitions of the term. Last August, Assange was invited to speak in Sweden. The woman who invited Assange to speak also invited him to stay in her apartment. The night before his speech, they had consensual sex and the condom broke (this turns out to be important). The next day during his talk, Assange met another Swedish woman. Subsequently, he spent the night with her and they had consensual sex at night and in the morning. At night, they used a condom, but not in the morning. While the two women did not know each other prior to this, they met subsequent to their encounters with Assange. A week or so afterwards, they went to the police station to ask advice as to how they might force Assange to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. The second woman reported that she had asked Assange to use a condom and he had not. This led to a "rape" charge. When the first woman told her story, it led to a second sex crime charge. Neither woman suggests that Assange forcibly had sex with them. The first woman has previously posted an article on the web encouraging women to seek legal revenge against men who scorn them.

3) Has WikiLeaks broken any laws? It doesn't appear to have. At any rate, it has done nothing different than the New York Times.

4) What has been the US Government reaction? The US Government has reacted without regard for the law. While the released documents are available on the Internet and available to any enemy of the US, the US Government has sought to restrict access by US citizens. Obama has ordered US Governmental agencies to prevent their employees from viewing the documents. One Department warned employees that their computers would be "scrubbed" if they were caught viewing the documents. Employees with security clearances have been warned that their clearances could be in danger if they were caught discussing the documents on Facebook. The Government has pressured private companies into cutting ties with WikiLeaks, resulting in Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa dropping services to WikiLeaks. All of this without a single legal charge or court order.

5) What is the funniest thing you have seen in the past week? This press release from the US Department of State:

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/12/152465.htm

After all the actions taken against WikiLeaks, the DOS announces plans to host "World Press Freedom Day". The Press Release says the following:

"New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information."

6) Have the WikiLeaks documents endangered sources or revealed methods used by US intelligence agencies. To date, not a single individual has said to have suffered harm as a result of the leaked documents. Secretary of Defense Gates has testified before Congress that the documents have not revealed key intelligence information.

The Bush Administration set many precedents in its total disrespect for the law. But, at least at that time Democrats and liberals complained about it and there was some push back. The Obama administration has taken lawlessness to new heights with little in the way of criticism. WikiLeaks has not been charged with a single crime. Not a single court ruling has been issued regarding the organization. All that is happening is no different than the type of things that happens in societies such as China or Saudi Arabia. Mike Huckabee even said that Assange should be put to death. Can you imagine the outrage if a North Korean politician had called for killing a US journalist? WikiLeaks may or may not have revealed US secrets. But, the organization has certainly caused the US to reveal its true nature as a state with little to no regard for the rule of law.

I don't think the first statement is true. According to this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/29/AR2010112905421.html the news organizations were given the whole 250,000 documents. And I believe that they are all up on Wikileaks now. As for point 3, I think that NY Times has been far more selective in what it has posted.

I am generally for whistleblowers as a way to keep our government honest. For instance, the Iraq information posts were fair game. And to disclose something significant like Saudi Arabia's position on Iran, etc. seem also to be reasonable.

But my concern with Wikileaks now is that they published information without regard to any particular purpose. Was it necessary to publish the entire list of global sites critical to national security? Did that serve to keep government honest?

Is it necessary to publish disparaging comments from a diplomat about one or another political figure? OK, it makes sense to publish the information about Karzai. The guy is on the take, it is not a surprise to people following the region, and I think it is reasonable to disclose that the U.S. has direct knowledge of this. But is it really valuable to post a diplomatic cable that Silvio Berlusconi is a party boy? The whole freaking world knows it, Berlusconi knows it, and he knows that everyone else knows it. All he would expect is that a negotiating partner have the decency not to say it in a public forum.

I would like to see more from them on how/why they select information for publication.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
I don't think the first statement is true. According to this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/29/AR2010112905421.html the news organizations were given the whole 250,000 documents. And I believe that they are all up on Wikileaks now. As for point 3, I think that NY Times has been far more selective in what it has posted.

That's what I said. The news organizations have selected a handful of documents to publish. WikiLeaks has not dumped 250,000 documents on the Internet. There is an encrypted archive containing them, but that is useless with out the password. Obviously, the NYT is only publishing a subset of documents and WikiLeaks is republishing subsets from the NYT plus the other news organizations. Hence, the NYT is more selective. But, the principle is the same. If you are confused about the number of documents released, go here:

http://213.251.145.96/cablegate.html

The number has increased since I last checked and it's now 1095. A far cry from 250,000.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Jeff, now the report is that Assange had intercourse without a condom with the one woman while she was asleep and that he forced the other woman to have sex without a condom. If I woke up and found that a guy had fucked me without a condom while I was asleep, how do you think I would feel about that? If that is what happened, that's sexual assault in my book.

I don't know the origin of the "report" to which you are referring, but the information that I described came from the Swedish police report which has been leaked. I can think of any number of scenarios that I would consider sexual assault. But, we need to base this discussion on the most reliable information at hand. Can you provide any kind of support for the allegations you describe?

I agree that charges of sex crimes shouldn't be minimized because one agrees politically with the accused. Nor should the principle of innocent until proven guilty be tossed out just because such charges are made.

I heard it on NPR but I don't know where they got it from. I also saw information from a police report that was leaked but the person reporting on it also said that portions had been redacted. What's been pissing me off is that the person referring to the police report also made the usual assertions that people point to to prove that nothing serious had happened such as saying that one of the women went out and got Assange breakfast. I have direct experience with survivors of sexual assault. You can't make the assumption that nothing serious happened just because the woman got him breakfast. I want to see the whole police report and I want to hear directly from the women themselves. But in the meantime, people shouldn't be dismissing this as if nothing happened -- just as we shouldn't be assuming Assange is guilty -- until we know more.

[Anonymous]

This is a man who doesn't hide the fact that his main goal is to cripple the US and dismantle it.

For that, I find no desire to defend his actions.

[Anonymous]

I think that we should separate the sex charges from what is going on now. If the charges were in Britain I would be suspicious. But I don't think that Sweden is going to railroad him to satisfy the United States, and I don't think they have the same interests at stake in Wikileaks. This is the country that, up until recently, was piracy heaven. They don't have the same perspective about protecting information.

[Anonymous]

I dunno, but it seems that if wikileaks was really concerned about human rights, then they would be going after China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and a multitude of nations in Africa where humans rights do not exist. Instead they target the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a man who doesn't hide the fact that his main goal is to cripple the US and dismantle it.

For that, I find no desire to defend his actions.

He is an anarchist going after the biggest fish.

Anarchy just makes the abuses smaller-scale. Instead of the stuff the US gov't does, we'd be paying the local strongman five cows for the right to deflower our wives and thus ensure that his thugs won't burn down the house a week from now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think that we should separate the sex charges from what is going on now. If the charges were in Britain I would be suspicious. But I don't think that Sweden is going to railroad him to satisfy the United States, and I don't think they have the same interests at stake in Wikileaks. This is the country that, up until recently, was piracy heaven. They don't have the same perspective about protecting information.

You see, Julian Assange is doing Good Things. Therefore, we must overlook his personal foibles.

It's like how conservatives want us to ignore the fact that Rushbo is a drug addict, or college kids idolizing Che despite the 1000s who died at or directed by his hand.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

You see, Julian Assange is doing Good Things. Therefore, we must overlook his personal foibles.

Are you aware that Assange has not even been formally charged with a crime? Nobody is suggesting that his personal foibles -- if they exist -- be ignored. But, one hopes that people not be tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, but rather courts of law.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You see, Julian Assange is doing Good Things. Therefore, we must overlook his personal foibles.

Are you aware that Assange has not even been formally charged with a crime? Nobody is suggesting that his personal foibles -- if they exist -- be ignored. But, one hopes that people not be tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, but rather courts of law.

I'd make the same point to you, Mr. Steele -- you argued upthread that the U.S. Government has failed to follow the law, but have provided no support for that claim.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
I'd make the same point to you, Mr. Steele -- you argued upthread that the U.S. Government has failed to follow the law, but have provided no support for that claim.

I am sure that there are any number of legal violations that, for instance, relate to Hillary Clinton's interfering with WikiLeaks' legal business practices. Since I am not a lawyer, I can't cite section and paragraph of the law. But, if you owned a business and a letter from Hillary Clinton that was not based on a court order or legal ruling prevented you from processing credit card transactions, I am sure that you would hire a lawyer who would not have the same short-comings that I do.

Second, I am told by a lawyer for whom I have great respect that Obama's efforts to prevent US citizens from reading WikiLeaks' website constitute unlawful prior restraint.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I'd make the same point to you, Mr. Steele -- you argued upthread that the U.S. Government has failed to follow the law, but have provided no support for that claim.

I am sure that there are any number of legal violations that, for instance, relate to Hillary Clinton's interfering with WikiLeaks' legal business practices. Since I am not a lawyer, I can't cite section and paragraph of the law. But, if you owned a business and a letter from Hillary Clinton that was not based on a court order or legal ruling prevented you from processing credit card transactions, I am sure that you would hire a lawyer who would not have the same short-comings that I do.

Second, I am told by a lawyer for whom I have great respect that Obama's efforts to prevent US citizens from reading WikiLeaks' website constitute unlawful prior restraint.

My guess is that "any number" probably equals zero, and I'm pretty confident that the First Amendment issues are at least debatable in this context. I'm open to correction if anyone has more specifics, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that we should separate the sex charges from what is going on now. If the charges were in Britain I would be suspicious. But I don't think that Sweden is going to railroad him to satisfy the United States, and I don't think they have the same interests at stake in Wikileaks. This is the country that, up until recently, was piracy heaven. They don't have the same perspective about protecting information.

You see, Julian Assange is doing Good Things. Therefore, we must overlook his personal foibles.

It's like how conservatives want us to ignore the fact that Rushbo is a drug addict, or college kids idolizing Che despite the 1000s who died at or directed by his hand.

I didn't say that. In fact I wrote a post critical of Wikileaks. My point is that the merits of Wikileaks should be debated on its own. It is a more important subject than debating some charges in sweden that we know precious little about. He could be innocent, guilty, or maybe it's a frame-up to take him down. If we want to debate a rape case on another thread, fine. But Wikileaks will go on without him. So is it right or wrong?