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."
An easier plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An easier plan (Score:4, Funny)
Or at the very least, Slashdot it into oblivion?
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Message to our government: why do you need privacy if you have nothing to hide?
I mean, they use that B.S. line on us all the time. I think it's time we turned the tables and started using it back.
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Message to dgatwood: The government has plenty to hide. I'm sure that there are plenty of things that some people in our government know that should not be known by many (most, if not all) people outside of some agencies. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there aren't things that should be disclosed, the government is run by people, people seek power, power corrupts and all that, but there are definitely reasons that the government SHOULD have some secrets.
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as there are definitely reasons that individuals SHOULD have some secrets.
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Message to jayme: The individuals that make up "the people" have plenty to hide. I'm sure that there are plenty of things that some individuals know that should not be known by by the general populace, or more importantly the corrupt leaders at the top. Therefore:
Stop tracking my cellphone.
Stop monitoring my PC or net connection.
Stop entering my home wtihout warrant, or peering inside with external cameras.
Stop subjecting my to groinal patdowns when I enter an airport or train terminal.
Stop taking my blood so you can trace or identify me (see GATTACA for why that's a bad idea).
I want my liberty not harassment; nor serfdom to the noble class (US congress/EU parliament).
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Insightful)
You honestly think the government makes up the 'noble class?' They are just servants of the noble class, bought and paid for. If they do what they are asked, they may be let into the noble class after they retire from politics. If you aren't getting at least seven figure bonuses, you aren't noble, you're a peon.
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
PRINT "thank you"
thank you
READY.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Stop subjecting my to groinal patdowns when I enter an airport or train terminal.
It depends on who is doing the pat down.
Re:An easier plan (Score:4, Funny)
Have you seen the people who work for TSA?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Welcome to the new United Kingdom"
There, corrected it for you.
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Informative)
The US Congress [is] elected by the general population.
Yes, but in name only. The general population doesn't get to decide who they vote for or against. They only pick from among the short list of candidates vetted by unelected entities.
Perhaps if there would exist an unelected federal entity such that would create legislative frameworks for the states. Would that be an unelected congress, perhaps?
You mean like the Federal Reserve? Or the Department of (Concept)?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So Ron Paul was "vetted by unelected entities"? Same with Ralph Nader and Ross Perot?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Informative)
And just as there are some things that the government should NOT be allowed to keep secret, for example the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment [infoplease.com].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you need to know rocket launch codes?
Do you need to know the weak points of military equipment?
Do you need to know about troop movements?
Do you need to know the personal information of soldiers?
At the very least, this information is confidential(soldier's information). Some of these things are Secret(military equipment). Other things are Top Secret(rocket information). You don't need to know any of these thing
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I do. We've found out that, at the height of the cold war, the launch codes were unset/all-zeros. That's something I sure as hell should have known...
Yes, I do. How many times has the government spent tons of money on projects with massive flaws, which later rendered them useless or required massively expensive fixed? I need to know this information before they are purchased, and before soldiers are deployed to war zones where this weakness may lead to numerous deaths...
See something like the Stryker. It WAS known that it's armor was effective against most everything but RPGs. Then they were sent into a war zone where RPGs were everywhere. The government couldn't hide this, so they rolled out additional armor for these vehicles.
With Humvees, however, there wasn't any explicit public acknowledgment that they were vulnerable, and the armoring process took YEARS, crawling along at a snail's pace until leaders were publicly shamed for it.
Yes, I do. We declare war on Syria and send the soldiers into Iran, instead? I sure as hell need to know. Massacre in a war zone? I sure need to know who was there, and when.
With all three, this information could be DELAYED by quite a bit, but there's little denying that we DO need to know damn near everything our government is doing.
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Message to dgatwood: The government has plenty to hide. I'm sure that there are plenty of things that some people in our government know that should not be known by many (most, if not all) people outside of some agencies. . . but there are definitely reasons that the government SHOULD have some secrets.
dgatwood was being ironic. The "if you have nothing to hide . . ." line we get from the government and others is disingenuous.
Re:An easier plan (Score:4, Funny)
Message to jayme0227: You, sir, are an asshat. Those of us who are not asshats realized that dgatwood knows that the government has things to hide. Why on earth would you assume that private citizens do not? That was sort of his point.
Message to the rest of Slashdot: Sorry to ruin the joke by explaining it to death.
Message to self: Enough with the "Message to $name:" crap. It really wasn't funny the first time and now it's just getting annoying.
Re:An easier plan (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess the plan wasn't to actually get the gov't to unhide everything, but to stop them from using the "has nothing to hide" rhetoric everytimes they try another assault on privacy. Basically use the statement against the government, and when they request people to give up their privacy, reuse their answer (and make it obvious that it was _their_ answer to begin with)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That why it's not just a an anonymous BBS
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Informative)
Tax information about specific persons.
Operation strategies and plans during warfare
Certain security procedures
The exact location and strength of military assets
Procedures for arming/deploying certain weapons
Just to name a few.
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (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
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
These are the people who used French citizens to test out LSD on in the 1950's and 10 died, some jumping off buildings
Got a citation for that, 'cos that just sounds like an urban legend to me... LSD does NOT make people jump off buildings or I and many of my friends would have been dead a LONG time ago.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It made the news recently [telegraph.co.uk], of course not everyone buys it [discovermagazine.com].
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't an easier plan to destroy the credibility of wikileaks be to overflow it with bogus leaks and fake whistleblowers, flooding them with misinformation?
Yeah, like posting a fake document outlining the governments secret plans to discredit wikileaks.org. That would be the kind of thing that those rubes would eat right up.
Re:An easier plan (Score:4, Informative)
The best plan would be to embrace Wikileaks as a valuable informant so that the bad guys could be rooted out of government, but of course that option won't even be considered. (Now, what might that say about the ones doing the considering....)
Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Great Circle of Hack (Score:5, Insightful)
The elections are not pretend. They are real elections. The government need not fear real elections as it has already brainwashed the voters into voting for the establishment every time.
Or in Howard Dean's case... (Score:3, Insightful)
Turn a candidate trying to fire up his supporters at a campaign event into... ..."THE SCREAM of an crazy man"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The government need not fear real elections as it has already brainwashed the voters into voting for the establishment every time.
Ah, the good old "We the sheeple" argument.
The United States has somewhere around 130 million voters. As much fun as it would be if it were otherwise, people's political philosophies do not rocket from left to right and back again every four years. The national candidates will generally reflect the center of the bell curve, and will thus wobble just a bit to one side or the oth
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You said: Do we really want to be just like China, North Korea and Russia?
Answer: No, of course not.
You said: Aren't they countries where freedom is suppressed if it even exists?
Answer: Yes, for the most part. But, you could put the U.S. into that list also, based on the continual chipping away of our rights for the past 80 or so years. And, even worse, more and more chipping away of our individual liberty and freedom here in the U.S. are being proposed continually.
You said: I guess that shows you where our
Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder why the government is worried about them...
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
The "If you have nothing to hide..." argument, while fallacious when applied to individuals, actually works for government.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
...Then you're doing it wrong...
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Primarily because the only way for a government to work is if it is accountable to its electors - and they only way to hold an organization accountable is to make it transparent. I'm not accountable to my neighbor for what I'm doing in my office, but my representatives are sure as hell accountable to me for what they're doing in their offices.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Depends on their position, missionary, doggy, or liberal.
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:Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Mmm, yeah - I agree with your logic. But - there are a lot of secrets that SHOULDN'T be so secret.
Work your way through all the hype leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Oil never figures into the "official" line of reasoning. All the same, the flow of oil became a priority once the war started. Defending the oilfields became a matter of urgency. Getting oil workers to actually pump oil from the ground was "Job 1!"
I'm a veteran, and I've not one bad word to say about my little brothers who served in Iraq - but I will say that they were used by the administration. And, THAT should be made public knowledge. The "American interests" that were protected in Iraq were actually CORPORATE interests.
Oh yeah - what was the lineup of companies that eventually benefitted from the Iraqi oil wells? BP leads the list? British Petroleum? Operation Ajax was done for BP's sole benefit all those years ago. Man, oh man - those bigwigs at BP sure have a lot of stroke in Washington!
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, give me twenty minutes, some saran wrap, a board that inclines, and a jug of water. I'll have you begging me to say that waterboading is torture.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
While technically correct, it is largely misleading to make that claim. The justice department report (http://documents.propublica.org/justice-department-report-on-waterboarding-memos#p=1) clearly covers how the waterboarding used to torture prisoners and the waterboarding used to train special ops to resist torture vary. In case you don't feel like digging through the 289 pages though I will highlight the major differences.
The training method uses a small amount of water applied to a cloth over the prone soldiers face for around 20 seconds. The torture method uses extremely large quantities of saline (because when the used water the amount they swallowed started killing them by extreme electrolyte imbalances) poured over a inclined prisoners cloth covered face for 40 seconds. Now if you can't see how being oxygen deprived for 20 seconds and oxygen deprived and have the sensation of drowning for 40 seconds differ, lets move on.
The training method was NEVER applied more than twice and typically only once. The 'approved' torture method allowed for 6 'pours' of 40 seconds each during a 2-hour session where the prisoner remained strapped to a gurney with his head down. But the good news is that they were only allowed to do this twice per day, except for the extra 4 minutes of supplemental drowning they could add in if they needed. The guidelines allowed them to shackle the prisoner to the roof for up to seven days before waterboarding them, causing extreme discomfort and keeping them awake the entire time, but of course Club Gitmo's spoiled little jihadi's got hand-fed and diapered while they were chained up. Between waterboarding sessions they could look forward to enjoyable pasttimes like being placed in stress positions, being stuffed into a small box, being thrown against the wall, or having hypothermia induced by being doused with ice water.
There are also adorable guidelines on having medics standing by so that prisoners could be pushed close to death without quite going over, and to resuscitate them if those naughty terrorists have the audacity to die on them. Information on keeping them on a liquid diet so that it was less dangerous when they would breath in their own vomit. It reads remarkably similar to a guide on human experimentation that you would expect from the Nazi's.
Remember as well that this was just the 'approved' method. If all those recordings hadn't gotten 'accidentally' destroyed we might know what actually happened and whether it went beyond approved methods. Regardless I can't concieve of how anyone could consider what was done to be 'not torture'.
Re: (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 e
Other countries.. (Score:2)
"China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org"
To me, this means we should be helping them & not trying to destroy them.
Tyranny hates freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
When a government serves its own purposes it cannot serve its citizens.
The war that began in the 60s has finally come to an end, and it looks like all the players switched sides. These 200 odd years were certainly a nice time.
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:Governments don't keep secrets for the hell of (Score:5, Insightful)
And the problem with the above policy is that the government will regularly abuse its power to keep secrets.
Instead, it will spy on its own citizens, crush freedoms, trample the constitution, and generally run amok big-brother-style, all in the name of "protecting the country", when what it really is protecting is itself and its powers -- power for the purpose of power.
As far as I am concerned, this government lost its rights to keep secrets. They cannot be trusted to keep secrets. They cannot be trusted, period. When the government has lost its respect for its people, how can the people be expected to respect the government?
CAPTCHA == Founders
Re:Governments don't keep secrets for the hell of (Score:5, Insightful)
All the stuff wikileaks has leaked has been in the category of avoiding embarrassment rather than anything that was truly a sensitive matter of national security.
For example, a detailed report on the exact weaknesses of various pieces of military equipment, identities of our spies, details of planned troop movements are all things I would consider important to national security.
Covering up the fact that we're torturing people because it would make a lot of people upset to learn that is not a matter of national security.
Wikileaks has performed an invaluable service for the years its been in operation.
Re: (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:Governments don't keep secrets for the hell of (Score:5, Insightful)
The article listed some things that the US gove would have preffered to kept secret and not have been leaked to 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."
The first one we could have easily been told they were keeping secret and either accepted it or have them tell us. The rest are offensive that they should be hidden from the public at all.
Re:Governments don't keep secrets for the hell of (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the abuses seem to be outnumbering the legitimate cases. It's not some people, it's entire agencies abusing secrecy as a matter of unwritten policy.
That is. of course, against the law. Too bad the law enforcement agencies are amongst the worst offenders.
Re:Governments don't keep secrets for the hell of (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments DO keep secrets for the hell of it. Time and time again information is withheld, for years or decades. Then when every asshat involved with the project retires, it's declassified. What do we find? Absolutely nothing that would have jeopardized national security.
You'd have to be naive to trust the government to decide what to withhold. Remember, any power that can be abused will be abused. Chances are it will be abused more often than not. Who's a bigger threat? Our own government, with the largest military budget in the world, that operates in unaccountable secrecy, which has repeatedly and reliably abused every power afforded it? Or a third world country half way across the globe?
Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Corruption at home is a bigger danger than "evildoers" abroad. And you know what? Taking care of the former can help take care of the latter.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
first? (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely, that would run counter to the US first amendment? What's happened to respect for the First that would let such a plan get beyond any US official's fantasies of power?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To the best of my knowledge, to get a position dealing with secrets, you sign a paper saying you won't reveal the secrets.
Doesn't apply to classified information (Score:3, Insightful)
Abusing one's security clearance can result in severe penalties.
I, for one, cannot read the document, as I no longer hold a clearance, and am legally obligated not to read or download it.
Re:Doesn't apply to classified information (Score:4, Funny)
"it truly is a matter of life or death in many circumstances. "
Yes, the government's life or death. The government keeps secrets so we don't string them up by their fucking necks.
That's about to happen anyways. Civil war is brewing in the USA and it's about to come to a head. Silent meetings, etc. about 50 million people are about to rise up and end this bullshit once and for all.
Thank god the US Military is only about 1.7 million people and a fair majority of the type of citizens that would fight the government far outnumber those, almost 40:1.
never implemented? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good job wikileaks beat them to it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry to criticise people who are clearly on our side. The Wikileaks folk are great, and the job they were doing was great, and it will be great again when they start back up...
...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. It was last year, probably December, and everything's still offline :-(
For one example, they published the only (at the time) big ACTA leak. (There's since been a bigger one, hosted elsewhere [swpat.org]) Everyone was pointing to them, and they took their copy offline. To my amazement, no one had a back up, so us anti-ACTA campaigners simply lost the only leaked draft.
At the implementation level, it was a bad idea to simply cause all pages to give error 404 [wikileaks.org]. A page of "We need donations, we'll be back up when we get them" would have been better.
Lesson: take backups of important docs, even ones published by groups of good people.
Wikileaks increasingly looks like a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
They are demanding a budget significantly larger than Wikipedia's was just a few years ago... for a site that gets 1/1000th of the traffic. They could never hope to fight the legal battles directly with any amount of money, the only solution for materials with serious legal force behind them will be freenet.
Meanwhile, Cryptome trucks on as they have since damn near the beginning of the internet. They'll send you a DVD set of their content for _free_ if you ask.
Be aware... (Score:5, Insightful)
This information is marked SECRET and NOFORN (i.e. not for export or foreign eyes); simply accessing it without a security clearance may be committing a crime against national security.
Whether or not the US government will end up with a log of IP addresses that have downloaded it is a judgment for the reader.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The US government has taps on all internet backbones. Even if you go through a proxy, they will be able to identify your IP address if you access such information.
If the WikiLeaks had branded itself as a just whistle-blower site, it would have a chance at surviving. As is, its operators are certain to see jail eventually.
Re:Be aware... (Score:4, Informative)
This information is marked SECRET and NOFORN (i.e. not for export or foreign eyes); simply accessing it without a security clearance may be committing a crime against national security.
If you don't have a security clearance, then you don't have any obligation regarding classified information, and you don't even need to understand whether you are authorized to view a SECRET/NOFORN document.
The burden of protecting and properly handling classified information belongs to those with a clearance.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, in the context of my original comment, this wouldn't apply to someone who merely downloaded what was purported to be a leaked classified document.
Precisely. It's so ironic that the guy criticizing unfounded legal advice for being modded +5 informative is himself modded +5 informative for unfounded legal advice.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You've got it backwards. It is not a crime to see a classified document if you aren't cleared for that level of classification. It is a crime to show somebody a classified document who isn't cleared to see it, however.
"it appears that this plan was ineffective" (Score:5, Insightful)
Far more likely that it was never implemented.
Serves a Useful Purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider this - decades ago the US Supreme Court affirmed the State Secrets Doctrine, allowing the government to argue that trying a court case would reveal national secrets (and that the case must therefore be dropped without a hearing), because the government argued that revealing information about what was I think a plane crash would hurt national security. Decades later, when the files were unclassified, it turns out that there were no real secrets involved, certainly none that would have been revealed in a trial - the government was simply trying to hide the fact that there was government negligence involved. They wanted to avoid embarrassing themselves, not protecting secrets. Remember that next time the US Government invokes the doctrine (which they do with ever-increasing frequency).
Re:Serves a Useful Purpose (Score:4, Informative)
You refer to this [wikipedia.org] section of the Wikipedia article on State Secrets Privilege.
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.
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...
That was funny! (Score:3, Funny)
However, one thing caught my attention on the 4th page: "The Wikileaks.org Web site could be used to post fabricated information,
misinformation, disinformation, or propaganda and could be used in perception
management and influence operations to convey a positive or negative message to
specific target audiences that view or retrieve information from the Web site."
Um, you mean like, Fox News? http://www.foxnews.com/
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone could argue that there isn't a need for secrecy in some things. To be sure, there is information that, if revealed, could do great harm to national security. The problem is that self-serving individuals and groups will often try to hide their own misconduct under the guise of national security. Once you've put that cork in the bottle, it becomes extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to uncork it. In effect, these people undermine the notion of national security.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
These can often be quite ineffective. First of all, one has to know there is actual misconduct before one can ask for any details. Then, in even the more liberal countries, there is a rather vast array of legal defenses those parties can use to keep their misdeeds secret, and pathetically few for the general public to pry open the lock and peer inside.
Whistle blowers have long played the crucial role of revealing, even in sparse details, misconduct by officials. To be sure, there are leaks whose sole purpose is to malign or destroy, but in a government and in general in a society that aspires to some level of openness you have to take the good with the bad.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone in virtually any country who, being in a position to handle secrets, whistleblower laws or not, who releases that information puts themselves at grave legal risk. Even if you had the best intentions, and despite any protections, you can find yourself in serious trouble; whether you work for a private interest and are under an NDA, or are a government employee of some kind, and thus likely bound by everything from confidentiality to nation security/state secret laws.
Even with whistleblower protection
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Would you prefer that the torture at Guantanamo had been kept secret?
Re:Two can play your game (Score:5, Insightful)
Newsflash: torture doesn't prevent and hasn't prevented any terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Moreover, torture only weakens image of USA in the world, probably provoking MORE attacks.
Re:Two can play your game (Score:4, Insightful)
Newsflash: torture doesn't prevent and hasn't prevented any terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Moreover, torture only weakens image of USA in the world, probably provoking MORE attacks
Even if it did, that is not a justification for the use of torture. In fact, we(The United States) has explicitly stated that there is no justification for torture under any circumstances. Even the mythical 'ticking bomb' of television and movie fame is not a justification.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Newsflash: torture doesn't prevent and hasn't prevented any terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Moreover, torture only weakens image of USA in the world, probably provoking MORE attacks.
What's more, torture doesn't really help in most cases of interrogation.
It really depends on the goals.
If your goal is to get the truth, then torture will not get you any results at all.
Why would someone tell a torturer the truth, when that will only result in more torture?
Unless by pure coincidence the truth and the statements the torturer want you to say happen to match of course.
If your goal is to get someone to repeat what you tell them to repeat, for purposes of recording, faking confessions, or to be
Re:Two can play your game (Score:5, Insightful)
Like here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/oct/03/world.guantanamo [guardian.co.uk]
Or a nice writeup here: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/01/kiriakou_retracts_claims_on_wa.php [scienceblogs.com]
Or here: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/04/about_that_library_tower_plot.php [scienceblogs.com]
Etc.
There's really not a single shred of evidence that torture helped to prevent a single attack.
Of course, it might be classified, but I'm certain that neocons would have cried on every corner about their success if they had a single case to tell us about.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Newsflash: there was an attack during the Republican administration.
Ergo, Republicans cause terrorist attacks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, A Democratic Administration and Justice Department used the criminal investigation and justice system to find, arrest, indict, bring to trial, convict and imprison for life almost all of those involved with the first WTC bombing. All within two years, if I recall the details correctly.
Compare and contrast to the Republican Administration and Justice Department in office on 9/11/2001.
(And yes, I KNOW you were being sarcastic. The above is to remind those /.ers who revere the names of Bush, Cheney,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Two can play your game (Score:5, Informative)
A more realistic statement is that people will tell everything they know to prevent $BAD_THING from happening, and once they run out of the truth, they will start making things up.
And how will you know the difference? You won't. If you're intelligence gathering is so bad you have to rely on torture, you don't belong in the intelligence business.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. You don't understand human nature very well. You don't torture people for information, you torture them to get confirmation of what you want to be true. If you torture someone long enough and they'll tell you exactly what you want to hear.
The inquisition used to force people into confessing they were satanists so that the church could confiscate their property, and, of course, they'd generously split that property with person who reported the dangerous sinner.
So you see, torture isn't used because
Re:Two can play your game (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
What torture? Fucking pansy. Smash a testicle with a hammer and when the victim regains consciousness tell him what he needs to do to keep the other one. OH NOES! WE DIDN'T GET A PRAYER RUG IN THE PATTERN WE DEMANDED. Guantanamo exists because our soldiers were prevented from correctly disposing of the enemy in the field.
Guantanamo exists because we lacked the backbone to follow the standards that we claim to uphold.
You hit the nail on the head (Score:3, Informative)
And not only that, in free and democratic societies, individuals deciding on their own to leak classified information is a subversion of that very democratic process. In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.
When an individual, on his or her own, decides that some secret information should be leaked, they subvert that process. It is nowhere near akin to
Re:You hit the nail on the head (Score:4, Insightful)
1. You don't get to make that determination yourself
Everyone has to make that determination themselves. In the end, you are only accountable to your own conscience.
People leak to WikiLeaks because they believe (mostly accurately) that there will be no consequences
I'd like to think that people leak to WikiLeaks because they believe there will be consequences. I don't think they do it for the hell of it, they want information to get out there and effect change.
There are well-known and established processes that govern classification.
And when those processes amount to nothing more than a rubber-stamp, what then?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're missing the point. That's not how the system is supposed to work, because of:
Maybe I'm missing the point, maybe I'm just not expressing myself correctly. I'll let Thoreau do it:
Re: (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 the
Re:Should there be ANY government secrets? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are, of course, assuming that the decision making inside government is done with the interest of some greater good in mind.
Unfortunately, as it is done by humans, it is very often done with personal interests in mind. Many of the documents leaked on Wikileaks are testament to that. The only reason they were kept secret was that they'd embarass someone, with "embarass" in the widest sense including "prove criminal war crimes".
Whistleblowers are an (unofficial) part of the checks & balances system. Every time they blow the whistle on something that should not have been kept secret, should have been revealed, and the fact that it was covered up shocks the public as much or more than the actual content, the system is set right again a little bit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am pretty sure, the answer is a resounding "Yes". Some things should be kept secret for some time... No one seriously argues against that, even if there are disagreements over whether a particular bit of information needs to be classified or not (and for how long).
There are some things that in an ideal world would be better off kept secret. However the consequences of allowing our government to keep secrets are worse than allowing those secrets to be heard.
Now, if anything needs to be hidden, then someb
Haven't you heard? (Score:4, Funny)
Everything has "changed" under Obama!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
*burp* *fart* *queef*
Wow, better get those leaks fixed...