If the United States is so upset with Julian Assange and Wikileaks for continuing to expose its stash of 200,000+ purloined U. S. diplomatic cables, why aren’t they trying to extradite the guy to face trial in the U. S.? I can think of at least four reasons.
First there’s the problem of actually convicting the guy, which is doubtful. While the Department of State might well be able to extradite Assange, either before or after his date-rape trial in Sweden, they are unlikely to gain a conviction in most U. S. courts. What’s the charge? Violating the Espionage Act outside the United States as an Australian citizen who isn’t accused of having stolen anything? That won’t stick. If it sticks for awhile it won’t continue to stick on appeal. If you charge Assange, how do you not also charge the New York Times?
The second reason is that even if the charge could be made to stick, such a trial would provide Assange for several weeks with a global pulpit. There could be no better venue to air his views about U. S. government secrecy. Of course the government might try to conduct the trial, itself, in secret, but that, too, is doubtful. I think this is the major reason why no extradition attempt has yet been made, since a public trial could be very embarrassing for the U. S. If a trial compromises U. S, national security, as I’m sure they’d claim, the stronger legal precedent is actually in favor of not pressing the Assange case whether he’s guilty or not.
The third reason why Julian Assange isn’t being brought to trial is because the whole episode hasn’t been all bad for the U. S., at least as far as it has gone so far. The cables released have been of modest import and, while embarrassing, have also shown a generally responsible and active U. S. diplomatic corps that’s more-or-less on the job.
No diplomatic sexting so far.
It’s not bad enough to get any diplomats sent home but it is enough to get America’s opponents to sit up in their chairs, which is actually good.
Finally there is Assange’s threat of dumping his entire 1.3-gig document stash on the Net from a dozen or more locations simultaneously, which the U. S. does not want, nor can it technically defend against. You can bet that bac- channel negotiations are ongoing concerning that stash, possibly through the news agencies that are involved. Assange is plenty powerful in this, going toe-to-toe with governments — heady stuff for a geek.
Many people think that security breaches of this sort will lead to a crackdown on free speech over the Internet. Certainly there will be bluster about that, but look at the U. S. government’s initial administrative response — telling the military and government employees they can no longer carry USB flash drives. How hopeless is that? Very. It’s a ban that is almost impossible to enforce. First there is the broad issue of what even constitutes a flash drive. Most smartphones certainly qualify, yet the new regs reportedly make no mention of them.
Bluetooth devices don’t even need to be attached. Nor does the Sheevaplug media server in our minivan, which synchronizes automatically with our home network over WiFI from the driveway. While Shrek is what’s being transferred to our parking lot, who is to say it couldn’t be sensitive e-mails or documents?
This is a problem that is difficult to defend, especially retroactively. We’ll see more documents that shouldn’t be secret made secret even if the excuse is to hide the real stuff in a haystack, which isn’t good policy. We’ll see stricter penalties and maybe even attempts to make data self-destructing, which is a clever idea unless, of course, it backfires.
The fact is that times have changed and we as a nation can probably take one of two practical positions. Like my Mom recommends, if we can’t find anything nice to say we shouldn’t say (or record) anything at all. Or (this is my personal preference) we as a nation can say, “Screw it. We’re the super-power, remember? ”
I like your mom’s recommendation.
The ban on USB keys is very much enforceable within the USG computer networks, because they control the hardware and software. In previous cases where a ban like this was in place, they simply disabled all the USB ports on every computer. A more nuanced approach could be to set a network-wide administrative policy that prevents users from saving data to external devices or perhaps even connecting them. And in many classified environments you can’t bring any personal electronic devices into the building, let alone connect to the network.
But there is a real negative impact from banning removable storage. There are many, many different classified networks which are all isolated from each other for security reasons. It is not uncommon, especially in an operational environment such as mission planning in Afghanistan, for a person to have logins for a dozen or more classified networks, and the information to do their job scattered across them. The proliferation of USBs keys occurred precisely because of the need to get data from one of these system onto another to accomplish a mission-related task.
I would bet that many of the really secret stuff is already stored on US governement owned external USB media and held under lock and key when not explicitly being used. In such a case banning USB drive use may cause more problems than it solves.
Well apparently much of the currently leaked information was smuggled out on a Lady Gaga CD . . . so banning USB keys would not even have stopped this. Also, you know how information can be piggybacked on image files? Well information can be piggybacked on all kinds of other information, including audio files too, and even printed pages. Xerox PARC developed a technology called glyphs that appear as a light grey background on a printed sheet (which can contain regular print in the “foreground’). Scanning that sheet reads the glyphs and extracts the data stream.
The only way to stop a facility from leaking would be to make the facility completely incommunicado, and that would mean the facility wouldn’t be very useful.
Why is the government so upset about some mundane diplomatic gossip? Because they probably know what was smuggled out on that Lady Gaga CD by now, and some of it may be considerable more important that what we’ve seen to date.
My American government is acting indignant over this whole thing – but it is they who failed to protect our national secrets. And it is they who are acting – dare I say it- evil. They aren’t representing American values and they got caught.
The information that was leaked is just astounding. It is more than just diplomats saying the darnedest things. They are taking positions clearly not in the American interest.
As Americans we should be ashamed what our government is doing in our name. Call me naive, but we are suppose to be the “good guys”. Instead, we are allowing multinational corporations to hijack our moral compass. The vast majority of “evil” in these leaks tie directly to the interests of global corporations.
We have become the “bad guys”. As a former service member, this behavior is not what I signed on to protect and defend.
The story shouldn’t be about some Australian who leaked government documents – after all those documents came from an American soldier. The story should be about the security gaps in our government and we must address about a decade worth of scandals that were uncovered.
There are no mulligans in national security. People need to be punished for what occurred, and I’m not talking just about the defector soldier. I’m talking about the crimes that were committed by our government. Nobody is above the law.
“. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
I think all external media, including CDs, were banned in the same order. Perhaps the real problem is the lack of understanding what should be secret from what can be declared “secret.” I read somewhere, probably at wired.com or slashdot, that the number of people who could access the stuff Manning swiped is in range of 500,000 to 1.5 million! If that many people can access your stuff, it’s not “secret,” it falls under the classification of “not widely known.” In other words, if the number of people who can access your secrets equals the number of people who read and admired the works of the late science fiction writer Fritz Leiber, you’re screwed.
The term is “steganography”.
What exactly does “screw it, we’re the super power, right?” mean ? Nothing I hope
It means that true power doesn’t have to be paranoid or we’ll all soon be signing loyalty oaths before every meal. These kind of deterrents simply don’t work in the long run, and with the current terror climate well into its second decade and two very old wars taking place overseas, the long run is all we’ve got.
I think every power should be paranoid. Paranoid that if they do something bad, eventually they will get caught and those involved prosecuted. I believe that there are many examples of crimes being committed in the leaked documents and many examples of our government acting in the interests of the few – not the interests of our nation.
If governments behave within the framework of the law, they should have nothing to fear. Although the leaked documents certainly are a diplomatic nuclear bomb that will have long lasting effects, I think it was worth it. We now know what our government is doing behind closed doors – in our name.
If we allow our country to do bad things on our behalf, then we too are bad people. We can no longer claim ignorance. We are Americans and we should stand for something. We really should live up to the brochure – and what we make ourselves out to be.
I don’t want to tell my kid that our government consists of bad people doing bad things to innocent people, and that it is his job to be a tax payer and look the other way. I want him to grow up thinking that we Americans stand for something and we won’t tolerate evil people leading this nation.
The problem isn’t that our government got caught doing bad things. The problem is that they are doing bad things. I’m not a very religious person, but if you read many of the leaks the face of evil shows its ugly head.
Our nation truly has lost its way. Shame on us all. Just read the leaks. Read what we are doing. For a “Christian nation” I’m really shocked that so many people are just scratching the surface of this story and sweeping the real problems under the rug.
Or as Thucydides put it, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” That’s fine, with one caveat . . . both ancient Athens and the USA are democracies, and the people of those nations may not like what is being done in their name.
That is what Assange wants to collapse – not the US per se – but the conspiracy of deception between the power elites and the people the ostensibly represent.
You think so? Even if that’s what Assange actually said he wanted to do, it very obviously isn’t what he ever intended to do.
Think of it this way. If Assange wanted to collapse the conspiracy of deception, then he’d simply publish the material that he has and he has accomplished his goal. He hasn’t done that despite the fact that he has the perfect opportunity.
Instead, he has withheld almost all of the documents and is only threatening to release them in case something bad happens. In other words, what he really is doing is trying to broker some kind of deal, and in exchange he is going to keep all the important documents hidden. Here’s the thing: nobody knows for sure exactly what he’s got, so how is anybody ever going to know that he is going to release everything that he stole? But I can tell you right now: the only reason he withheld anything is because he intends to withhold everything.
To me that’s proof-positive that he’s in this solely for his own self interest / selfish interests, and that he never had any intention of releasing any important documents. In the final analysis, Assange is nothing but a self-serving, blackmailing rapist. Case closed.
If he is, what you say he is, then no amount of blackmail/blood money will do him any good. The US would hunt him down and… and then we would need another set of xxxxleaks to let us know that they actually did hunt him down and…. If you see what I mean. Assange must know, if not before, now, now that he has “secrets” that it would be pointless to individually hold the US Government to ransom.
Also you underestimate the mindset of many “geeks” – most of them have secrets – many secrets, and a lot of power/knowledge at their fingertips, but it was soldier, not a geek, that stole the info. If geeks were a serious problem we would know everything about everything (and they couldn’t silence them (us) all…).
He has said exactly that:
http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYspXgSQTy4
“Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist
behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of
thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of
politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use
these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective
action.”
and
“Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes,
we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite not merely for preferment or favor within the regime but as the primary planning methodology behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.”
and
“How can we reduce the ability of a conspiracy to act?
We can marginalise a conspiracy’s ability to act by decreasing total conspiratorial power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively to, its environment.
We can split the conspiracy, reduce or eliminating important communication
between a few high weight links or many low weight links.”
“You think so? Even if that’s what Assange actually said he wanted to do, it very obviously isn’t what he ever intended to do.”
The goals of Assange matter little and I hope that he releases all documents that won’t truly harm national security or get Americans killed. This is no longer about him. The real question is now that the cat is out of the bag, where do we go from here?
Many of the leaks have nothing to do with troop movements – it’s just the dirty workings of our government on behalf of various special interests. I’m more interested in the leaks having to do with things other than the military. Our government is able to do bad things and cover them up because they blindly label everything classified.
I want open government – especially when it comes to issues of trade and economics. I see a need to keep some things secret – like military movements and capabilities. But the CIA is clearly meddling in foreign affairs and putting our nation at risk. It was they who meddled in Afghanistan to begin with, created a monster (OBL) which put events in motion responsible for a terrorist attack and two wars.
The CIA is a problem and they need to be seriously reformed. They aren’t an agency that passively gathers intelligence. They are actively meddling in world events setting the stage for more terrorist attacks. They are in the business of picking sides and propping up dictators – and even if you are OK with that they regularly get it so horribly wrong. The CIA is an inept bunch – remnants from the Cold War.
If I have learned anything from the leaked information it is that we cannot trust our own government. They aren’t good, and the sooner people realize this the sooner we can form a more perfect union – by electing the SOBs out of office and reforming the system.
both ancient Athens and the USA are democracies, and the people of those nations may not like what is being done in their name.
It was probably not your intention to equate the two democracies, but it’s interesting that you’ve mentioned Athens.
I think that very often democracies come down to the system that is employed to determine who is worthy of getting the vote. In this respect, I think that Athenians had arguably the better system than today’s U.S..
With some updates (such as that pesky little “males only” detail), I could see it working [much] better. I quite favor giving the vote only to people who have served a full military term, have seen actual combat, put their life on the line for their country, are used to getting things done. Would it be perfect? Heck no. But better than what’s in place now.
The problem with “everybody and their dog gets to have a say” is probably obvious. Without any quality control the vote will start leaning to short-term self-gratifying goals and falls subject to disinformation and empty promises.
P.S.: Yes, I read “Starship Troopers”. But don’t go blaming Mr. Heinlein, I have a brain of my own, no need to borrow his. And it wasn’t his original idea to begin with.
The problem with this whole issue is the people who were entrusted to keep things secret violated their sworn duty. I suggest we find two or three of these treasonous perpetrators and execute them. Send a strong, hard, message that the oath they took has meaning and consequence.
THE PROBLEM is in our definition of what’s a secret, which is way too much. That something is petty or embarrassing doesn’t justify it being called a secret.
Sure, execute some traitors, but be careful of that definition of treason. The standards for military behavior properly held at Nuremberg would to many misguided Americans look like treason today.
Or as Thucydides put it, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” That’s fine, with one caveat . . . both ancient Athens and the USA are democracies, and the people of those nations may not like what is being done in their name.
That is what Assange wants to collapse – not the US per se – but the conspiracy of deception between the power elites and the people the ostensibly represent.
Posted above in wrong thread . . .
The USA is not a democracy. Read our documents of origin.
“THE PROBLEM is in our definition of what’s a secret, which is way too much. That something is petty or embarrassing doesn’t justify it being called a secret.”
I agree with that 100%. They are covering their tracks by calling everything a state secret.
I think the American people will soon “get it”. As more and more details emerge from what was leaked, Americans are going to demand real changes. The FBI should be pouring over these documents and charging people with criminal activities – and I don’t just mean the people who leaked the documents.
The era of closed government needs to be over. The kind of things we are finding in these documents should be embarrassing to every American.
1. Bob, it looks now like the USG wants to get Assenge on a conspiracy charge. Still hard to prove, since all they have is Mannings claim he was working with someone who identified themselves as Assange.
2. Bill Fink. The problem with your solution is that it would decimate the official DC population, because DC leaks like a sieve, and always has. And it’s not low-level types like Manning. It’s Congressional staffers and Pentagon program managers. Heck, even NSA gets leaky when one of their programs needs supporting. The difference is that they do hand-crafted one-at-a-time piecework, while Manning (or whoever) brought modern IT tools to the process. Besides, to do what you want, you’d have to have an entire government organization dedicated to plugging leaks. You could call them the ‘plumbers’ or something.
The US is punishing the suspected leaker, the guy who (allegedly) uploaded the data to Assange, very severely right now. No trial, he’s sitting in jail under very unpleasant circumstances that closely resemble torture.
The unfairness of this is that if Assange was publishing Russian secrets, he’d be dead by now. So Assange picks on the US instead.
No, Assange “picks on” any dishonest government whose citizens decide to leak information to him. You could say it is to the United States’ credit that they produce more citizens than other nations do who believe that incriminating information should not be kept secret. Remember, the information being released isn’t military plans, or the location of secret bases, or blueprints for laser weapons. It’s diplomatic cables. Most of it is diplomatic gossip, stuff diplomats have dug out of local papers, or hearsay they’ve reported to have something to say in their cables and big note themselves. We knew, or suspected, most of this stuff. It’s embarrassing, sure, to be shown up as hypocrites and liars, or in a few cases as dumb and incompetent, but does anybody really think it’s a surprise to any foreign government?
Assange didn’t pinch any of this stuff, it was given to him and he’s distributing it, after screening out any that might actually be dangerous. As are major respectable newspapers all over the world. Does the US government really want to be seen to be attacking the rights to free speech of people all over the world?
I hope that this is why they’re not trying to extradite him – because they realise that their reputation would be damaged worse by trying to anti-democratically (and probably unsuccessfully) shut people up than it would by just living with the release of the cables. By all means, tighten the security (incomprehensibly lax at the moment!) so this may not happen again, but this time – the horse has bolted.
This problem is so easy to solve it ridiculous. It’s the same as your IRS records, just log who views them and don’t allow 250,000 to be viewed at the same time!
Its scary that supposedly secret documents are available for mass download by a Private without a single audit trail.
Its the DBA that needs to be charged, not Assenge!
Every data base has to be administered. It cannot be kept secret from the administrator and still work. The man who has been charged was an administrator. For the system to work, someone has to have the power to review large portions.
A search for terms, which is used to find revelant information will often “touch” (read) a large number of documents. 250,000 is not really a lot on a big system. The US Government is one of the largest IT systems known.
Sorry, but this kind of thing can only be limited, not prevented. Any attempt to prevent this kind of thing would do more damage than it would prevent. (I think Bob said that?)
It’s the people who are the problem. As with any mis-behavings that occur at any job, fire or jail them and replace them with people who don’t leak and who can keep their mouths shut. I admit the diplomatic cables are embarrassing to us all in that these are the “public face” of our nation presented to foreign nations. And what kind of usefulness that could possibly have in diplomatic relations other than a diplomat has a hot nurse taking care of him, nothing wrong with that. Craptastic information about buxom blonde nurses, which makes me want to shout an Animaniacs’ “Hellllloooooo nurse”, should not even be recorded as per Bob’s mom and it seems that we are hypocrites about privacy as long as it’s our privacy that we are not violating.
Hmm… let’s just imagine that someone passed a cache of secret Chinese diplomatic cables to an American citizen, who then published them.
The Chinese government is highly embarrassed, and senior members of Chinese government openly call for the American publisher of the leaks to be assassinated. (Oh, the horror, the horror on US TV!)
The person who actually leaked the cables is held for 5 months in solitary confinement without charge or trial. (How typical of a dictatorship!)
The Chinese decide they want to extradite the publisher of the cables to China, because he has violated Chinese laws, and the Chinese constitution. (They want what? But he isn’t even Chinese!)
So how is this case different? Because might is right, and the American Empire can do what it pleases?
Per USB Keys and removable storage – Brian W got it right, and it is pretty much useless to ban as there will just be another method introduced to continue the SneakerNet approach – or waivers will be signed for those environments if they were not in place already (which is highly likely).
Per Wireless, BlueTooth, and phones – well, that’s a nonissue to start with as:
1. Peoples personal phones are not allowed in Classified environments.
2. Wireless technologies are not allowed in Classified environments except as designed into the environment – which means radio devices specifically designed for USG use using specific protocols designed for the USG, not bluetooth or any other 802.x standard.
Thus since they are already banned from the environment there is no need to mention them in any updates on what is not allowed.
My understanding is as follows:
1. Assange has “Secret” data – not, “Top Secret”. There will be no particularly important information released by Assange.
2. The Feds are considering eliminating ALL portable media devices from use at government facilities – other than than highly locked down goverment controlled devices. Think iTunes and iPhones on encryption system steroids.
On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing some of the 251,000 American diplomatic cables in their possession, of which over 53 percent are listed as unclassified, 40 percent are “Confidential” and just over six percent are classified “Secret”.
Assange has no “Top Secret” documents.
Bob makes a pretty big assumption right at the start as well – that extradition would be an option. Firstly, if the possible charges look a bit shonky in the US, they’ll be even less likely to stand up as the grounds for an extradition – the treaties involved in international extradition are fairly constrictive around what does and does not constitute grounds for extraditing “because we want him” is not valid grounds.
Secondly, the EU has a lot stronger views on human rights, specifically the treatment of prisoners. The extradition agreements require them not to send someone into inhumane treatment. The conditions that Bradley Manning are currently being held under meet the EU definitions of cruel treatment and torture.
This doesn’t rule out the CIA’s patented rendition techniques, but this case is slightly too visible for them to try that.
Additionally, these “secrets” at that level off classification are accessible by thousands of people in the various beaurocracies of the US. Pretty much any international intelligence organisation who is even vaguely interested has had copies of all the relevant cables since shortly after they were sent. The only people they are secret from is the public.
“Bob makes a pretty big assumption right at the start as well – that extradition would be an option.”
Actually, he is pretty much right. You should take a look at the current US-UK extradition treaty sometime.
Right now it is being used by the US Govt to get its hands on Gary MacKinnon (look it up). The treaty boils down to “If we want somebody, we don’t have to show evidence of why we want him but you must hand him over”.
The Blair government foolishly signed the treaty into law while Congress refused to ratify it. The end result is that the US can get hold of UK citizens without presenting evidence, but the opposite can’t happen since AFAIK it has still not been ratified by the USA.
>>shown a generally responsible and active U. S. diplomatic core that’s more-or-less on the job.
That’s supposed to be “corps” … bring back the copy editors.
dmc
What this really means is the smartest people in government do not write anything down. Why? Because if they do some jerk like Julian Assange will release it. The real reason is if they write it down and get called in by some congressman who miss understands it, he loses his job. The big problem is there are no written records of a staggering amount issues because if you do you will get in trouble.
Ollie North shredded what he wrote. He should have gone to jail. No evidence no jail.
I do pity the future historians. We already do not learn from history. Now there will be no history to learn from.
Well this has been going on for a few weeks now . . . at first I was skeptical about Assange’s strategy (collapsing the conspiracy of the power elites vs. the people), but I guess I wasn’t getting it. I think I get it now:
1. First off, the network being attacked has to be conspiratorial. Conspiratorial networks, by their nature, have secrets. Secrets are what make it a conspiracy. Hollywood gossip is not a good analogy, because the Hollywood gossip network is not conspiratorial in nature.
2. Exposure of the secrets destroys the conspiracy. It does so by cutting key ‘high weight’ communication links (high level diplomat or secretary of state level), by making them unreliable, and by cutting many ‘low weight’ links (like Bradley Manning), also by making them unreliable. A conspiracy depends on it’s network links. The usb key policy is an example of degradation of the low weight links as the conspiracy reacts to the information exposure.
3. It doesn’t matter if the information shared by the conspiracy is true or false, accurate or inaccurate, top secret or unclassified. It not the information that is being attacked, but the capacity of the network to sustain conspiracy. The links are the target, not the information. And the links are being degraded.
4. The battle is asymmetrical, and the conspiracy is at a strategic disadvantage. As it tries to defend itself, it weakens itself, and it strengthens its opponents. It’s opponents are not vulnerable to the same tactics, because they are not running a conspiracy. We are all seeing this played out in real time.
5. Bob’s point, “screw it, we’re the superpower”, misses the point. The US being a superpower and the existence of a conspiracy network in its ruling elites are two independent variables. The conspiracy still falls if it is exposed; and as it reacts to exposure. And the US will still remain a superpower. Nor can this conspiracy be indifferent to the collapse of it’s communication links, as these are what sustain the conspiracy in the first place.
6. I suppose I should be expecting a visit from the Spanish Inquisition (interesting historical parallel don’t you think) about now, so I hereby recant everything I just said. 🙂 It doesn’t matter what I think anyway, “Eppur Si Muove”
The (likely intended) consequence of leaks undesired by the secret-keepers is to make keeping those secrets harder and harder, and less efficient. To the extent that hidden, and uncovered activities differ from what the governed desire, leaks will inevitably lead to government that must operate with fewer and fewer secrets (or more and more resources for the same level of security). This is my understanding of one of Julian Assange’s objectives, a form of creative destruction. We’re moving towards a showdown between freedom and control. The ultimate question, really, is can a mostly-transparent democratic republic actually exist and function?
Why not? The Catholic Church survived the Spanish Inquisition (but it did have to clean up it’s act and stop burning people alive). It would be contradictory if a democracy could only survive by deceiving it’s people, because then it wouldn’t be a democracy anymore.
FYI. The Spanish Inquisition was run by the Spanish government. Hence, Spanish Inquisition. The Catholic Inquisition was a horse of a different color.
IANAL, but I have actually read parts of the Espionage Act. It applies to military material, cryptographic techniques and activities, but not to diplomatic cables. The NYT clearly violated it twice during Bush’s administration. That his DoJ chose not to prosecute does not preclude Obama’s DoJ prosecuting Assange. Assange has endangered informants in Afghanistan, the Taliban are pouring over WikiLeaks to try and identify them. If any informants deaths can be traced to material they “leaked”, Manning and Assange are liable for the death penalty. Reason enough for the Europeans to choke.
The diplomatic cable leak basically shuts down the US diplomatic corps, no one is going to talk to any of them in confidence for quite some time. Think about the implications of that.
Manning is had, the Espionage Act, the USMCJ, both apply to him, plus any confidentiality agreements he signed when he was cleared.
Assange is only on the hook for the military stuff he leaked, the Espionage Act doesn’t cover diplomatic cables.
And the Pentagon Papers decision only set a high bar for prior restraint, the opinion itself noted that the government retained, undiminished, the ability to prosecute after publication.
The most effective response to the leaks is a secret, continuous, but measured, release of false information. No comment is made about any of the information released.
It begins to be clear that some infomation is false and before long the true and false become so inextricably linked that no one trusts any of it.
Wouldn’t work. If it’s obviously false people will just ignore it. Everyone in the USSR knew Pravada was full of propaganda. They read it anyway, but filtered out the obviously false information.
Let’s go back to the Protestant Reformation / Spanish Inquisition analogy. The Church could have discredited Martin Luther by getting criminals from jail, dressing them as priests, and sending them out to claim they were protestants but: (1) the Church wasn’t that innovative (2) people would easily distinguish between the real protestants and the fake ones and ignore the latter.
What’s more the Church’s own behavior in reaction to the Protestant reformation caused ordinary people to switch sides. Burning people alive and forcing others to recant the evidence of their senses made the choice obvious. Martin Luther wasn’t Satan. The Church was. And Bloody Mary didn’t get that moniker for nothing.
Interesting isn’t it. A simple parish priest posts a 14 point bulletin to a church door, taking on a civilization spanning church, with the power to grant heaven or hell in the afterlife, tens of thousands of churches, priests, and pulpits, heads of state and even armies under it’s command, not to mention a large holdings of real wealth and power . . . and the parish priest won. Let’s understand why.
p.s. Assange is the new Martin Luther. 🙂
The Church wasn’t and isn’t evil or deceptive. It merely tried to preserve and speak what it honestly thought was the truth. It still does not condone Luther or other religions. Even today it’s not “cerationist” but teaches that God created the universe using evolution as part of the process.
The Popes were selling indulgences, even for already dead people, running brothels and later, fighting the reformation, burning people alive. That’s stretching the definition of honest piety isn’t it?
From the wiki entry on Protestant Reformation:
Martin Luther was shocked by the corruption of the clergy on a trip to Rome in 1510. Sixtus IV (1471–1484) was the first Pope to impose a license on brothels and a special tax on priests who kept a mistress. He also established the practice of selling indulgences to be applied to the dead, thereby establishing a virtually infinite source of revenue.[5] Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) was one of the most controversial of the Renaissance Popes. He fathered seven children, including Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, by at least two mistresses.[6] Fourteen years after his death, the corruption of the papacy that Pope Alexander VI exemplified – particularly the sale of indulgences – prompted Luther to nail a summary of his grievances on the door of a church at Wittenberg in Germany and launch the Protestant Reformation.
Interesting Wiki. I’ve heard about Luther and his note on the church door. But he didn’t reform the church, he started his own. Not sure what all this has to do with Wikileaks, except perhaps that change happens when people realize that change is needed. Let’s hope it’s for the better.
Actually, the leaks have made the US government look very bad, but only because of the reaction to those leaks.
And to get him extradited, they need to convince the Brits that there’s a good chance of convicting Assange. So far, there’s basically zero chance. So they’re torturing Bradley Manning to get him to admit to conspiracy with Assange. Nice, huh?
> We were the super-power, remember?
FTFY
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this before, but what are the implications of having hundreds of thousands of diplomatic communications being leaked for code crackers? Couldn’t foreign governments go back to their stash of intercepted, but encrypted, US diplomatic communications and use the documents released by Wikileaks to help crack the US diplomatic codes? Even if the encryption methods or keys has since been changed, this could possibly allow the decipherment of other more sensitive and truly ‘secret’ information from the past. No? I’m sure the Russians, Chinese, Isrealis, Brits, Japanese, French, etc…. are all pouring all over the Wikileaks disclosures to do just that.
You were the super-power. Remember?
Incidentally, the 1.4G ‘insurance’ file is ‘out there’, been torrented by hundreds of thousands, we’re just waiting on the decrypt key..
I hope that the eventual result of the Wikileaks is one of the two responses Robert proposes. The idea of the government being paranoid scares me. Paranoid powers do terrible things to stay in power. The purges by Stalin ring a bell? I would far rather that the government either takes this with grace or is so self assured and smug they don’t care than that the powerful get paranoid.
Instead of stopping doing evil because they are afraid they will be found out those in power who will do evil will continue doing it but instead would do more getting rid of the evidence or witnesses. If you accept that the government is so evil that it needs this kind of check revealing its actions then you should accept it is not a check at all but an incentive to do worse to keep power. If you don’t accept that the government is evil then these kind of actions do not help anything. Revealing that the government did a wrong, corruption, evidence of illegality, those types of things are worthwhile causes. Just embarassing it either is juvenile or potentially dangerous.
Again consider what gets crowded out by ongoing WL headlines…
Like how Enron crowded out Abama Sin Laden and Sadam Hussein was faded in and nobody noticed once the 911- rhetoric picked up again…
Our “collective attention span” seems to be about 90 days. What do you remember from the headlines that far back? This coming weekend newspapers are going to be full of headlines from 2010, and millions are going to be thinking, “oh yeah…”.
Offloading of documents to unsecure environments can also happen when the top management thinks the rules don’t apply to them. The poster boy for this is John Deutsch when he was Director of the CIA and taking classified documents home.
Offloading of documents to unsecure environments can also happen when the top management thinks the rules don’t apply to them. The poster boy for this is John Deutsch when he was Director of the CIA and taking classified documents home.
The poster boy for this is John Deutsch when he was Director of the CIA and taking classified documents home.
Iphone pas cher…
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