US Intelligence Planned To Destroy WikiLeaks 555
An anonymous reader writes "This document is a classified (SECRET/NOFORN), 32-page US counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks (PDF). 'The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the US government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out.' It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization. Since WikiLeaks uses 'trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whistleblowers,' the report recommends 'The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site.' [As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no WikiLeaks' source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective.] As an odd justification for the plan, the report claims that 'Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website.' The report provides further justification by enumerating embarrassing stories broken by WikiLeaks — US equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable US violations of the Chemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay."
Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder why the government is worried about them...
Re:Should there be ANY government secrets? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Tyranny hates freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
When a government serves its own purposes it cannot serve its citizens.
I think that's a false dichotomy. Similar to your subject line.
... so historically there have been very clever tyrants to embrace the big freedoms and squash the tiny ones that matter to them. And that, in my opinion, is what China is doing. They don't hate freedom and I find personifying things like tyranny, terror and information saying that they hate, love or want is very detrimental to arguments.
Look at China. It's own purposes overlap the needs of its people. It needs to artificially manipulate the value of its money for many reasons. Some for its own purposes, some for the betterment of some of the citizens. Now look at China again for your subject line. Yeah, absolute freedom is impossible with a tyrant running the country. And your likely to have more freedom in a republic. But you never have absolute freedom anyway in a group larger than one.
I would rephrase your subject to read "Tyranny Often Finds Freedom Annoying" and since tyrants have complete control by definition, they often just get rid of the freedoms. And then there would be a revolution or something
The war that began in the 60s has finally come to an end, and it looks like all the players switched sides.
It's great purple prose but it's kind of erroneous. That's a great one liner there but I would have preferred a lengthy paragraph on COINELPRO [wikipedia.org] in today's contexts.
These 200 odd years were certainly a nice time.
And cut the goddamn fake apathy for crying out loud. Man up and speak about it to your friends and family ...
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Would you prefer that the torture at Guantanamo had been kept secret?
Slashdot edtorialoid, again. (Score:3, Interesting)
So I read the pdf which appeared to me as a risk assessment of Wikileaks.org. It basically concluded that Wikileaks is or can be used as a threat to US military. But it said almost nothing about "destroying" Wikileaks.
Remember, you don't have to destroy a threat right now. Use it or lose it.
And /. editors should learn from the US military on how to choose a good title for news items. Duh.
Re:Should there be ANY government secrets? (Score:3, Interesting)
Thus any leakers (and the Wikileaks personnel) are to be prosecuted
The risk of "unauthorized" public scrutiny of government actions is a powerful deterrent. The system you suggest we punish -- where individuals can make a moral decision which benefits the public regardless of orders or rank -- is a primary factor in the difference in conduct between the conduct of armies in democracies and armies of autocratic states. The moral responsibility that comes with military service is taught from day one, and these whistleblowers are in its best tradition. It is a transfer of some powers from the military machine back to the people who make it function, and by publishing that information (negating it's value for private gain), giving that power wholly over to the public. Democracy is more than elections.
But if you want to throw those people in jail, sure, whatever.
Also, if you're going to cite "whistleblowing laws" as a panacea, at least be specific, because they don't work in the way you describe. Reference: http://report.globalintegrity.org/United%20States/2009/scorecard/59 [globalintegrity.org]
Smells like a lure... (Score:4, Interesting)
This leak feels like the ones Apple's secret police use. Since it's particularly inflammatory, I wonder if they only gave specific people access to it to track down who was doing the leaking...
Re:Good job wikileaks beat them to it! (Score:1, Interesting)
...but it was not a good idea for them to take all the leaked documents offline without notice in order to show their value so that people will donate.
I agree. I was only tangentially familiar with WikiLeaks when they did their call from donations. I went to see what they had that was worth donated for only to discover that everything was unavailable. Instead of moving me to donate, they instead blew their chance at picking me up as a reader and potential donor.
Re:Governments don't keep secrets for the hell of (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes its for good national security reasons which in the long run protect the public. Reasons which a lot of wannabe Robin Hoods won't know about and as a consequence can put agents or even the entire country at risk.
You mean like revealing the identity of active agents on national television? Oh, ups, that was a high-ranking government official, my bad.
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, there are classified documents and unclassified documents. I can work with either. You can't.
I'm a military contractor, and the work on a daily basis is on unclassified documents. That makes it easy to work with. I can email the documents, throw them on an FTP server to transfer back east, or have a working copy on my hard drive plus a backup (or 50) on the server. Realistically, nobody's going to care if someone find out that hey, we use this type of wire, or that, ooh, that cable runs from this box to that box. There aren't any of those fabled "weak points" that would destroy the thing in one shot. You want to talk about bulletproof design? The military takes that literally.
If you had a valid FOI request, odds are you could get your hands on the plans for the thing. They'd be more interesting than useful, and you'd get a hell of a lot of jiffy marker on them, but you could get them. It might be faster to go to school, get an Engineering degree, and get a job for a military contractor yourself, but you could probably get them.
Some procedures for using the items, or what's inside the mysterious black boxes, or certain protocols, are outside what you are allowed to know. It took me a year to get my security clearance. That doesn't mean I can read any given document with that level -- I also have to have a "need to know". Classified documents require work on a seperate machine, not on the corporate network, and usually require work in pairs. There's a special room that we use to work on the classified documents. Lockboxes, keyed entry, no copies, ugh. File transfer is via ... let's just say it's not electronic because you can't make copies without filling out lots of forms in lotsplicate. It's just easier on everyone if we work with unclassified all the time. (Sometimes, it's just not possible.) That's why I'm not going to read this leak. It'll mean a fucking huge PITA pile of paperwork if I get a classfied document, even a publicly available one, on this machine.
I may read it at home, though. ;)
Re:Wrong... (Score:4, Interesting)
Only on slashdot would a statement so legally invalid as this be considered "informative."
Okay, then, what obligation does an uncleared(*) individual have?
(*) By uncleared, I mean someone who has never had a clearance. Once you've had a clearance, you're forever obligated to protect the classified information to which you had access, even if your clearance is no longer active.
Re:An easier plan (Score:3, Interesting)
Tax information about specific persons.
This information should fall under privacy protections for the civilians involved.
Operation strategies and plans during warfare
For a limited time only. A few days after the operation or so. Any longer time than the enemy could be reasonably expected to wait to witness the information first hand is unreasonable.
Certain security procedures
Like just how long you can drown someone before they'll die? I'm not having much success imagining what you mean here...
The exact location and strength of military assets
Limed time only, see above.
Procedures for arming/deploying certain weapons
Limed time only, see above.
Just to name a few.
Nearly all of the things you have named above are within easy reach of any enemy with any amount of intel whatsoever. The only protections you'd be affording our government by keeping these kinds of secrets would be from those without intel. "Citizens" as they are normally named.
Better examples, if you please.
Re:Wrong... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:An easier plan (Score:2, Interesting)
You honestly think the government makes up the 'noble class?'
Yes, they are. The Kennedy family dominated US politics for years, and they live on private compounds. They have megabucks and come out for votes and photo ops. What else would you call them?
Ditto for the Bush family.
Ditto for the Romney family, though I don't know if they have a compound. (Mitt probably has more money than both Bush and the Kennedys.)
The US senate is loaded with millionaires and so is the House for the most part.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
1) People who get into special forces normally have scientifically provable higher tolerances to physiological stress. The whole point of special force selection is to weed out those who aren't gifted so.
2) Everyone "cracks" under waterboarding (by which I mean feels extreme terror and experiences a panic attack). It is a physiological reaction that makes your body think you are drowning while in reality you can't actually drown.
3) The training that special forces get is more like a taster and they aren't expected to last longer then a day. They are taught how to delay being broken so that what information they give is out of date by the time it is extracted.
4) Saying that torture requires physiological damage (burns, bruises etc) is just silly. Torture is just inflicting pain to make a subject willing to talk, as the sensation of pain only occurs within the brain there is no requirement that damage need be caused to generate the pain signal.