Wikileaks Now Hosted By the Swedish Pirate Party 438
oskii writes "During his visit to the the Swedish capital Stockholm, Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange has struck a deal with the local Pirate Party. The party, which participates in the national elections next month, will host several new Wikileaks servers to protect freedom of press and help the whistleblower site to carry out its operation."
Nice move (Score:5, Insightful)
While it's a nice publicity stunt for the Pirate Party (with the Swedish elections coming up in little more than a month), WikiLeaks may also gain from it. Swedish politicians may well be pressured by the US government, or by others depending on what WikiLeaks publishes in the future, to close down those servers like they did with The Pirate Bay. But now that they are hosted by the Pirate Party that would be seen as a direct attack on a political opponent, with the obvious effects on public opinion. That will likely make them think twice before ordering a shutdown, which probably wasn't the case with The Pirate Bay.
And yes, government representatives giving direct orders to police and prosecutors is illegal in Sweden. But in practice it happens all the time due to widespread patronage and cronyism and few legal checks against it.
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to close down those servers like they did with The Pirate Bay
You know, I keep hearing about stories about the final nail in The Pirate Bay's coffin, but it's still there. The founders may have lost that suit, but I'm not believing a word of the stuff about TPB finally being killed until it's been offline for more than a month.
Re:Nice move (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, The Pirate Bay was up and running again three days after that raid, and still is, and probably will be for the forseeable future. But the prosecutor _did_ raid their web hosting company, take their computers and dozens of other ones that just happened to be in the same room, and kept them for years, long after the time it could have taken the police to mirror the data. That's what I meant.
TPB had the resources and contacts to enable them to just copy their backups to other computers around the world and get the site running again, and I'm sure that WikiLeaks too have lots of hidden backup servers and hidden backup people to run them. Probably lots more than TPB. That doesn't mean that their enemies in e.g. the Pentagon will not try to close them down, one by one.
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As long as the ability to distribute data across web/db servers quickly across the world continues to exist, The Pirate Bay isn't going anywhere.
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Wow. Are you always this naive? The only thing that comes to mind when I read that was "bullshit". More accurate, "They have established a sufficient, for now, case of plausible deniability as to who is running it."
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Yep - now they will wait to shut down any servers before the third sunday in september...
After that all bets are off. Look how they strategically placed the TPB trail after the election.
Re:Nice move (Score:4, Insightful)
What you don't know about politics could fill an ocean.
Re:Nice move (Score:4, Funny)
I'd say he doesn't know most politicians. Can we start with them? Please? Don't remove the water, first, though.
Re:Nice move (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if the fights seem impossible,
it is refreshing to see people saying what they think, and take a real stand on issues.
The important thing is to bite, not to chew.
You must be able to say "no" to what is not ok, even if they are much stronger than you.
The Pirate Party is showing integrity and courage, as does wikileaks.
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I'm sorry, Sweden isn't nearly as retarded as you seem to think it is. I highly doubt anyone would take it as a direct attack on the Pirate Party with the exception of those too ignorant to matter anyway.
You have obviously never been to Sweden. I live here.
Re:Nice move (Score:5, Funny)
I thought we had a patent on that here in the States. ;)
you have, here in Europe we have bootlegged retards. sue them ;)
Re:Nice move (Score:5, Insightful)
If you mean to say that wikileaks's mission is not aligned with the core political principles of the Pirate Party, you might have a point; I don't know their overall platform well enough to say.
But to claim that wikileaks is, or ever could be, anything other than a political issue just strikes me as silly.
Not really. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more just falling in line with the party, and offering another level of protection for the site.
The reason that Sweden's Pirate Party got political support in the first place was because Americans pushed political pressure on the Swedish government to take action, thus causing the first raid on The Pirate Bay. When the public got wind of this, there was massive public outcry saying that they shouldn't allow American corporate interests (and American copyright law) dictate what the Swedish government did. So all of a sudden there was a ton of political support for people that opposed American-style copyright.
This is a political move not to equate wikileaks to the Pirate Party, but instead to show that the Pirate Party operates as a safe haven for information so it cannot be tampered with by foreign interests (most notably, the American government and American corporations, who seem to believe that they are the authorities to determine what copyright law SHOULD be rather than the constituents of these so-called democracies).
This just falls in line with what the party represents. I think that the Swedish people would sooner resent America for trying to impose its beliefs on their democratically elected governments than they would be worried of the consequences of staving those companies off. It's not like America is about to bomb them because they run filesharing sites. And if they did, then Sweden would have an entire international body of allies who would object.
Re:Do the Swedish have laws? (Score:5, Insightful)
The attitude is not "I can do illegal stuff in your country because I'm not there" - the extradition treaties between Sweden and USA work just fine for such criminals.
The attitude is that "The stuff is not illegal, even if some other government has sold out and outlawed it." Swedish government and Swedish people have absolute sovereign rights to decide that doing X in their country is completely legal.
(Unless they have also voluntarily made an international treaty saying that they will do otherwise. Then they would be contradicting themselves and the treaty would be overriding. But in this or piratebay case no such obligations prevent Sweden from going whatever way they wish)
Re:Nice move (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice move (Score:4, Insightful)
They're just fighting fire with fire.
So let me get this straight ... they (pirate party) make an obvious move to turn it into a political fight when it isn't ...
Abortion. Same sex marriage. These are obvious moves to turn something into a political fight when it's not.
and you're saying the Swedes are too stupid to figure it out, so they'll assume anyone attacking Wikileaks is attacking the Pirate Party?
The hallmark of a FUD campaign. You don't need to prove anything, just introduce a certain kind of doubt.
How many people do they intend to take on at one time? The RIAA/MPAA and several governments ... including the US ... I don't know about you, but if I was a Swedish citizen I'd have serious doubts about voting for someone who regularly bites off far more than they can chew.
The fact is, these groups have teamed up on us first. There is no way to attack one without attacking the others.
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No, the Pirate Party isn't represented in the Swedish Parliament. They are represented in the European Parliament.
Also, I have never heard of any thing called "parliament immunity" in Sweden.
The best legal protection you can get in Sweden is to start a newspaper and this is what Wikileak also is thinking of doing.
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No they don't. They plan to, after the election (even though I honestly doubt they'll pass the dreaded 4% limit), but at the moment they do not.
This may backfire... (Score:5, Insightful)
And in other News.... (Score:2)
Whistleblower?? (Score:2, Insightful)
A whistle blower would go through the data and make a something that at least resembles a case. He doesn't want to do any real work, like analyze the data, strip out names to protect innocent parties, or provide only truly relevant data. Instead, he prefers to vomit data and let other people make sense of it.
Assange suffers from attention deficit disorder
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Re:Whistleblower?? (Score:5, Informative)
He isn't a "whistle blower" by any means... he is simply providing a service FOR whistle blowers to anonymously release their information to the world.
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Yup, they don't care.
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I still feel his only concern is his public image and how much attention he gets. When he starts to publish documents that show how many civilians have died because Taliban and others house themselves with civilians and refuse to conform to anything in the Geneva Convention, then we will know he doesn't have an agenda to push and is truly a whistle blowe
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I love how people get modded down for pointing out the obvious.
wikileaks neutrality (Score:3, Insightful)
It's obvious to me that by aligning with a particular political party, Wikileaks is publicly announcing the abandonment of any semblance of editorial neutrality. Their Noble effort to bring additional transparency to the world is now forever tainted.
Re:wikileaks neutrality (Score:4, Insightful)
If you take a quick gander at The Pirate Party you soon discover they are very nicely aligned with free speech activists all over the world. Their only goal is free flow of information without restrictions.
I guess if you consider free speech a bad thing it may be a sad day, join the complaint department along with china, north korea and the rest of the fine states agains free speech.
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Well So much for a PP in the US (Score:2)
Ah well, time to start looking for a new source of hope in the States.
Awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
Now we have someone to bomb! /kidding
Well... /halfkidding
By aligning itself with a political movement, we now have a political entity of a foreign state aiding and abetting our enemies. I don't think we're going to be invading Sweden any time soon, but now we have someone to yell at when people are killed thanks to this info getting leaked out. Heckuvajob, Swedes... the Afghan informants' blood is on your hands now!
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Youve got it wrong. The Afghan informants blood is on US military that does an half assed job of protecting their informants. Do you seriously beleive this is the only leak of this and other sensitive information? Spies didnt suddenly become unemployed last month you know.
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More then 30.000 civilians, many of them kids, died in Afghanistan and many more are seriously wounded since the beginning of occupation. If anybody could handle THAT blood on his hands, Swedes will handle their tiny part you mentioned quite comfortably, I guess.
A while back... (Score:2)
A while back, in a post on a previous thread regarding Julian Assange shortly after the Afghanistan files were leaked, I posited the question, "Why is Julian Assange still alive?".
I had assumed that if he did indeed have dirt on the US military establishment he would be pushing up daisies in some backwoods of Virginia.
Now I know that he is simply a very cautious, very smart player that is using EVERYTHING at his disposal to protect himself and what he does. The people he is aligning himself with are NOT idi
God Bless the Pirate Party (Score:2)
From every mountain top let freedom ring! Freedom of information needs to be ringing out more than most other freedoms. I only hope the folks at Wikileaks and in the Pirate Party are safe from the more sinister forces that might be put upon them.
Not a huge change... (Score:2)
PRQ - the network cum ISP created to serve the Pirate Bay (and still doing so) - has been hosting much of Wikileaks since 2008. [foxnews.com]
Lots of people give the Pirate Bay guys shit for being a bunch of thieves hiding behind big words, but when it comes down to it, they walk the walk too. A lot more so than the MAFIAA has.
Interesting Q&A session with WikiLeaks founder (Score:5, Interesting)
An interesting question & answer chat with Julian Assange, who founded WikiLeaks [www.dn.se] was published (in English) by Dagens Nyheter, the biggest morning newspaper in Sweden, today.
It gives some insight into his thinking as well as the seriousness of their task — two of their contributors have already been assassinated.
file downloading != piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
I wish the 'Pirate Party' would stop calling itself that. Piracy is seriously wrong - there's nothing glamorous about it. By equating song and movie downloading with piracy, they surrender the argument to those who say they're a bunch of thieves.
And wikileaks should have been more careful about what they leaked. Their sloppiness doesn't help the cause of peace, freedom, or justice either.
Now that the pirates and leakers have combined forces, the mud on one will stick to to the other. Aside from the heightened press attention for the pirate party, I can't see how that's good. And the heightened press attention will be bad if the real message doesn't get out.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Great move, Pirate Party. (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously both sites and the Swedish Pirate Party are betting (pretty hard) on the election next month which a successful outcome would as previously posted [slashdot.org] put TPB and perhaps now wikileaks inside the Swedish Parliament.
Re:Great move, Pirate Party. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Pirate Party believes that websites like The Pirate Bay and Wikileaks are legal and should remain up. Since they have the power to act on those beliefs directly (while also trying to change and/or clarify the laws to ensure their legality) they have chosen to do so by hosting the sites in such a way that it is almost impossible for them to be taken down. They are simply standing up for their beliefs in a very public and open way, it doesn't necessarily mean that they support the actually things these sites do. Imagine a police officer doing his duty to protect a KKK member from a violent mob, it hardly means that the police officer supports the KKK.
Re:Great move, Pirate Party. (Score:5, Insightful)
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You know, Sweden used to be a mighty and warlike empire who dominated Northern Europe for centuries, and that's after they retired from being professional looters known as vikings. Don't underestimate the Swedish; the reason they don't practice the arts of war anymore is that they are so very good at them.
Why do you think even Hitler didn't invade Sweden? And Stalin specifically told his troops to be careful to not violate the Swedish bord
Re:Political entity required to comply? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Political entity required to comply? (Score:4, Insightful)
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It depends on the nature of the treaties between the two governments.
Just because the US Government wants something from another government doesn't mean they're going to automatically get it, even when a treaty is involved. National laws may carve out exceptions, and sometimes the government in question will just say "no", regardless of the treaties that are in place.
Re:Political entity required to comply? (Score:5, Informative)
If I recall correctly, in Sweden the servers of political parties, served from their political offices, are immune to prosecution for a variety of offenses. It's intended to protect the freedom of independent parties. It just adds another layer of shielding on top of Sweden's other protections.
They would have no more political obligation to remove the material in response to an outside government's request than the Republican party in the U.S. would in response to a request from the Chinese government to remove documents from a GOP server.
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The U.S. is prepared to take out Assange and Wikileaks by force. Putting this material on Swedish government property would make Sweden their enemy.
Re:Political entity required to comply? (Score:4, Informative)
The Pirate party isn't a part of the Swedish government. They are not even a party in the parliament.
I would be very interesting to see an American military assault on Sweden however. Would you bomb Stockholm or make an amphibious landing? How would that look? The only remaining superpower beats up a democratic country with 9 million citizens.... Should the Swedish Afghanistan force start firing on their US allies as retaliation?
Re:Political entity required to comply? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please do. If you find any Swedish secrets we would sure want to know.
Some thing we would like to know about is:
*) What did happen in the government during the tsunami in Thailand? Why do we need to keep these e-mails secret for 50 years?
*) What did happen to Raul Wallenberg?
*) Why is a big part of the Palme murder still classified?
*) Why can't we all see the old Stasi files handed over from Germany?
*) Did we really had submarines here during the cold war and where they US or Soviet?
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Ask the administration. But they're not secret for 50 years, they're temporarily sealed for 3 (now 2) years pending investigation on whether the law should be changed re: backup copies. I don't think it's going to happen in the end.
By Soviet accounts, he was executed in Lubyanka prison in 1947.
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Re:Political entity required to comply? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the US government should bug some Swedish government offices and broadcast all of Sweden's classified information too, instead. Maybe a nice game of tit for tat.
This reminds me of ECHELON. Remember, when US spies on UK citizens (spying on US citizens would be illegal, but spying on foreign ones is okay), UK spies on US citizens, and then they exchange data. What you propose is a similar thing in reverse - Sweden citizens spy on US government and (legally) publish the results from Sweden, US citizens spy on Swedish government and (legally) publish the results from US, and then both know what their respective governments are up to.
Hey, it actually sounds like a good idea! Can you please write a letter to your representative asking them to start spying on other countries and publishing that info ASAP? The sooner they start, the faster they'll get to my country. ~
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No. The swedish government might, if they've signed some treaty saying they will. Assuming you are a USian, consider what would happen if the federal government of Iran demanded that the Green party drop all information pertaining to Israel from their site. (Mostly: laughter).
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As a political entity, wouldn't the pirate party have some sort of international obligation to comply when other federal governments ask them to remove information?
Yes, there is an international obligation to comply. But they are only required to wear black patches over one eye, get a peg leg, and sport a parrot on their shoulders (a Norwegian Blue should be suitable). Otherwise when queried by "other federal governments", they can answer, "Arrgg maties, thirty days at see, and not a wench to be seen! Grease up the monkey!"
Re:Assange can post whatever he wants... (Score:5, Insightful)
By "go wrong" do you mean "embarrass the hell out of the US military"?
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They should be.
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The Human Race... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, you must be new here.
The truth is not nearly as important as their truth, or my truth, as told to me, by me (and others).
Beyond self-deception, there are many who are drawn to the idea of being a sort of "information royalty." The idea that you know more than others, and deserve to know more, because you're special, is very attractive.
Then there's the reality of tactical and strategic advantages. Sometimes you're just better off knowing more than others (information asymmetry), and sometimes you're
Re:Assange can post whatever he wants... (Score:4, Insightful)
For the same reasons we have to have laws restricting the dissemination of top secret truths. Some truth-tellings result in people dying.
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Re:Assange can post whatever he wants... (Score:4, Insightful)
So would you like to offer up the truth of your home address and some times when your family will be home alone?
There are truths that people shouldn't have to be prepared to defend their lives against, and there is no perfect security system.
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Going to one extreme because you haven't found the perfect balance between the two is ridiculous. Keep adjust your balance, a little at a time, aiming to find the perfect balance where the least people die, and accept that taking the responsibility to do so is the only moral way to act. How can a democracy exist if there is no one you can trust to lead? How can it exist if all of its soldiers are wiped out because the enemy has the truth of all your troop movements and plans?
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"Hey North Korea, the codes to the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States are ______."
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Re:Assange can post whatever he wants... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, as long as he's in line behind all the people who did wrong and covered it up, only to be exposed later through Wikileaks.
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That is an empty, meaningless phrase. What do "held accountable" and "things go wrong" mean? What applicable law covers it? Is the Pentagon "held accountable" when "things go wrong" and Afghan citizens die like chickens? Or when friendly fire kills US and NATO troops?
If you don't want things to "go wrong," pressure your elected representatives to withdraw our forces from the profoundly corrupt interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don't shit on t
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Eh. I think it's possible to release information that exposes scammers and war criminals without also putting specific innocent people at greater risk.
There being a good side to leaking doesn't mean you (or they) should ignore or fail to minimize, to the best of their ability, the downsides.
Re:Assange can post whatever he wants... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Clearly, he means that if anyone dies in Afghanistan, it's Assange's fault.
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Re:Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Because he violated operational security which lead to the two charges filed against him.
Misconduct charges were brought against him for "transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system" and "communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source".
Both are violations of the UCMJ.
When he became a soldier in the US Army he performed this oath
"I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
So he disobeyed the orders of the officers appointed over him and violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, why shouldn't his ass be sitting in a cell?
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"I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;..."
Its perhaps ironic that the only credible threats to the constitution reside near the top of the chain of command. Terrorists have never threatened our constitution. A succession of American senators, congressmen, and presidents have done all the damage.
"So he disobeyed the orders of the officers appointed over him and violated the Uniform Code of Milit
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Because he violated his orders and actively breached security protocol. **IT DOES NOT MATTER** what he "leaked" or why, it just matters that he broke the law. And in breaking the law by providing classified (even if most of the content was "common knowledge") documents to the 'public', he also provided classified documents to the enemy, in this case the Taliban. And those documents contained the names of Afghan citizens who were "collaborating" with NATO. And that puts them in danger, and makes putting
Re:Source (Score:5, Insightful)
**IT DOES NOT MATTER** what he "leaked" or why, it just matters that he broke the law.
Geeze, get a grip! Of course it matters. I don't mean to Godwin this thread, but I just talked to my father about this sort of thing yesterday, and he brought up the example of people hiding Jews in their basements etc. during the nazi era in Germany. Imagine someone back then said the same thing:
**IT DOES NOT MATTER** why he hid those Jews from the nazis, it just matters that he broke the law.
Seriously, I don't think this needs any further comment.
Re:Source (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Source (Score:5, Interesting)
Deontological ethics holds a thing is wrong if a rule is violated -- i.e. a lie is told. It is wrong to tell a lie -- period. There is no situational or contextual element in the analysis -- one simply obeys in order to be ethical and if one disobeys one is unethical.
Utilitarian ethics has a strong contextual element which focuses on likely happiness/unhappiness resulting from an action and searches for the maximization of happiness as the ethical end -- the ethical is that which maximizes happiness.
Given the situation above with regard to the Nazis knocking on the door and asking, "Do you have Jews hiding here?" the vast majority of respondents will say the ethical answer is "No" and justify that answer by way of what would happen if they answered truthfully -- the Jews would face horrible suffering and/or death. In short, the maximization of happiness in this case means breaking a rule against lying since adhering to that rule will mean greater suffering.
Most people who are strong adherents to Deontological ethical systems don't see themselves as violating their ethical beliefs in this circumstance, but they most assuredly are doing so. They might think of it as an "exception" or find some other justification, but in the end they are utilizing a competing and antithetical ethical system to the one they purport to adhere to -- they're actually Utilitarians at heart even if they don't recognize themselves as such.
One can be an adherent to an ethical system which is solely rules based ("x" is wrong no matter what), but in doing so one must sanction some truly horrible actions -- like answering "Yes" when the Nazis knock and ask if Jews are hiding in the basement.
News Flash (Score:4, Insightful)
**IT DOES NOT MATTER** what he "leaked"
You heard it here first people: if bsDaemon came across documents that showed the US Military was shoveling terrorist suspects into ovens, he'd ignore it and continue to do his job. Or maybe not that... maybe if he came across documents showing that we were burning women and children to death with phosphorous weapons, he'd just ignore it and continue to do his job. Okay, maybe not that...
Of course the line is drawn somewhere. To pretend otherwise is ***FUCKING INHUMAN*** and a good way to end up doing a lot of evil shit for the paltry reward of state loyalty.
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**IT DOES NOT MATTER** what he "leaked" or why, it just matters that he broke the law.
Some people think that he broke the law. Some people think that he didn't. What matters is whether he is charged and convicted in a court of law. He may deny that he was the source of the leak. There may be insufficient evidence for a guilty verdict. He may admit to being the source of the leak, but be able to argue that the classification of the material itself violated Executive Order 13292 (Sec 1.7) ("in no case shall information be classified in order to conceal violations of law").
There have been simil
Re:Source (Score:5, Insightful)
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Unless we arrest him overseas or he's extradited here that's pretty unlikely. Plenty of people have survived for a long time avoiding US Soil...
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Really? I would hope that justice is served and not some blanket GUILTY to be thrown over him or Assange.
And you know what else? I would hope that what the released documents reveals is taken into account.
Full names and pictures of informants? Tactical data (response times, UAV patrol routes and times, etc.)? That should be on Assange's head since he went and released all the data when the DoD called his bluff.
Cover ups? Friendly fire incidents rebranded into media friendly heroic last stands? Whoops,
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So explain to me then how Dick Cheny and Robert Novak conspired to "leak" the name of a CIA operative that was actively engaged in operations, compromised her and everyone she had contact with, but that wasn't treason?
In the U.S., rich people don't commit treason (or any other crimes) unless they're caught with the cocaine straws up their noses.
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First, it's Cheney. Second, it was Armitage and Novak.
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It was treason.
We don't know what kind of deal they cut by having Scooter Libby take the fall. But clearly it wasn't enough, because Republicans still walk the Earth.
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So explain to me then how Dick Cheny and Robert Novak conspired to "leak" the name of a CIA operative that was actively engaged in operations, compromised her and everyone she had contact with, but that wasn't treason?
It wasn't Dick Cheney that out'ed Valerie Plame to Robert Novak.
It was Richard Armitrage [wikipedia.org], US Deputy Secretary of State. Robert Novak identified his source very early in the investigation, so Patrick Fitzgerald [wikipedia.org] knew who it was. Yet, he was able to convict "Scooter" Libby [wikipedia.org] on charges of lying under oath. Ironically, those falsehoods concerned when Libby learned that Plame was a CIA agent, not whether he told anyone else.
While Novak would not be subject to the laws concerning publication of classified
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Basically there's two possibilities:
1) Bradley Manning chose to leak the documents, knowing that he would be punished for the leak. In this case I can't feel sorry for him -- he knew what the consequences would be and made a choice. That's his right as an adult.
2) Bradley Manning was dumb enough to think that releasing the documents, which pretty well narrow down who and where he, the leaker, could be, under the alias 'bradass87' rendered him anonymous, and the U.S. government would never figure out who
Scenarios (Score:2)
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Who should be jailed?
The person who planned to start a war?
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I feel so bad for Bradley Manning, the 22 year old that is taking the shit for all of this. Some douchebag congressman wanted to execute him. Why is getting truth out so bad guys?
So, if you could provide me with a list of times when your wife and children will be home alone over the next couple of months, I know some people who would love to get a hold of those truths. Thanks.
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I feel so bad for you for lacking a sense of moral equivalence.
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They're going to throw the book at him on principle, not o
Re:Source (Score:4, Insightful)
Because he's in the military. If an order is unlawful, he has a duty to disobey it. But, he'd better be right that the order, in this case, following operational security, is unlawful. He will have his day in court. If that order is found to not have been unlawful, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
IMO, it's not really for a 22 yr old E-4 to go about deciding which information should truly be secret and which shouldn't. That decision is way above his pay grade and a lot more than 1 guy decides what is secret and what isn't. If Manning didn't want to be in the Army and do wtf he's told, he shouldn't have joined.
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I don't know, Iran proved it's easier than you'd think to effectively block out access. DPI and other technologies have come a long way in the past decade. Ten years ago I bought into the Worlds of End argument. But today...I don't buy it. There are not an unlimited number of backbone providers. All it takes is control of those nodes and you can effectively, not absolutely, block/control access to whatever content you want.