to their credit they have changed their approach, in response to criticism by organizations like Amnesty International, and are now carefully redacting the names of the vulnerable prior to publishing. this is the case with the current batch of cable releases. they are a young media organization (only about 4 years old) and are I suppose still learning from their mistakes.
To be fair, everything that I've seen leaked from the "cables" makes the U.S. look awesome and respectable, it even makes China look all right. It makes european countries look like douches, though.![]()
problem with your analogy is that no one has died from wikileak's leaks. and in many cases, people have benefited.
the guardian has done an amazing job providing context and analysis re: these cable leaks.
but they couldn't do that if wikileaks didn't provide the leaks in the first place.
The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCOs World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from May 1 - May 3 in Washington, D.C. UNESCO is the only UN agency with the mandate to promote freedom of expression and its corollary, freedom of the press.
The theme for next years commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information.
The parallels to Orwell's 1984 are just...incredible...
Rule #1: Say ONE thing - but in reality do the opposite.
You can find that wherever you look. Politicians, respective the whole "political/industrial complex" are masters of it. Ironically, this is not only the case in the US or other western governments, but anywhere.
Here's a new one. So why would they release this type of information?
"WikiLeaks publishes list of worldwide infrastructure 'critical' to security of U.S"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40526224/ns/us_news-security/
Here's a new one. So why would they release this type of information?
"WikiLeaks publishes list of worldwide infrastructure 'critical' to security of U.S"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40526224/ns/us_news-security/
For a traditional website to work it will want a domain name like website.com, so people can find it. Those domain names can stop working for any number of reasons. One commonly assumed action for Wikileaks is that ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers that manages certain top-level protocol and parameter assignments for the Internet, intervened. It did not.
A little technical discussion to explain why: The domain name system (DNS) is hierarchical, and its zones are exclusive of one another rather than inherited (save for the lateral mirroring among the twelve root zone servers). The root zone orchestrated by ICANN is a very small file just a mapping between each top-level domain like .org or .ch (TLD) and the IP address(es) of the servers designated to say more about that TLD (one server, not in ICANNs hands, keeps track of names under .org, one for names under .ch, etc.). You can see a user-friendly version of the file here, with the Swiss name servers described here. The info you see there is what ICANN can directly change and that only for its own root zone servers (B, L, and sort-of A), hoping to have it mirrored by the others; map below the fold here.
So for those servers, ICANN could all-or-nothing delete .ch, which means for those drawing TLD info from the ICANN roots theyd eventually (depending on caching of previous info) cease finding the nic.ch server(s) in Switzerland through which to resolve any .ch name. But theres no way to express in the TLD zone something like go to nic.ch for every domain name under .ch except wikileaks.ch. And if .ch were ditched, the mirroring root servers would likely balk at mirroring that elision, and ISPs using B, L, and A to resolve TLDs would just turn to other root zone servers or hard code in the last known IP address for nic.ch as the place to go for .ch names.
I guess a too-crafty-by-half solution would be to mirror everything in the .ch zone to a new .ch server run by ICANN, then delete wikileaks.chs info from that servers files, then redirect the root zone to the new server instead of the old. That would work for about five minutes. After that, increasing chaos as Swiss webmasters made changes to their .ch names in the official nic.ch registry only to find them not reflected for those users unlucky enough to be rerouted to ICANNs snapshot mirror. At which point the mirror roots (and the ISPs) awaken to the deception and take action a la the preceding graf.
Note that wikileaks.org went down not because of anything done to its DNS entry within the list kept by the registry* that minds the list of .org domains. Instead, the name server to which its entry pointed was attacked by unknown parties DDOSd and EveryDNS, the operator of the name server, chose to stop answering queries about wikileaks in the hopes that the DDOS would stop. (Apparently it did.) EveryDNS is not to be confused with EasyDNS, which is a separate company that isnt involved in the situation!
*Im on the board of Trustees for the non-profit Internet Society, ISOC, which is the parent to the Public Interest Registry, which keeps track of names in .org.
If a domain name doesnt work, a website can try to register and maintain another domain name, or it can just use a direct IP address a number to be found. A website also needs hosting, and Wikileaks has apparently had to shift its hosting at least once after being dropped by a chosen provider: Amazons commodity hosting service shut down the site for terms of service violations after being contacted by U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman.
1) 4) As shown with DynCorps and other scandals, Wikileaks could have easily served a just and noble cause in revealing corruption. Instead by mass dissemination of mostly benign documents Wikileaks has messed with the diplomatic process, has potentially endangered thousands of lives, and has invited attention seeking anarchist attacks on countless critical facilities.
No one has demonstrated this or even attempted a justification that wasn't completely laughable.
By all reports he has an unredacted insurance bomb that would reveal many civilian names in Afghanistan.
What is completely laughable about this?
By all reports he has an unredacted insurance bomb that would reveal many civilian names in Afghanistan.
What is completely laughable about this?
Declare Assange a terrorist
HybridSquirrel is being a gigantic troll
Problem, HybridSquirrel?
Yeah. He did that so he doesn't get killed. What would you do? I know I would stay alive if possible.
Yeah. He did that so he doesn't get killed. What would you do? I know I would stay alive if possible.
So you would gamble with other people's lives? To quote YOU, that would make you a POS.
