The Wikileaks dessemination megathread (Cablegate and beyond)

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Infohawk

Lifer
Jan 12, 2002
17,844
1
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I'm glad you were so vocal against Bush and the Iraq War where he gambled and hundreds of thousands lost their lives. You were just as outraged weren't you?

Actually I was pretty vocal against Bush. LOL. You've been here a while right? Feel free to do a forum search.

Before it was cool to be against Iraq War II I was against it. I'm still against it. Feel free to admit you made a dumb assumption. ;)
 

CLite

Golden Member
Dec 6, 2005
1,726
7
76
I'm glad you were so vocal against Bush and the Iraq War where he gambled and hundreds of thousands lost their lives. You were just as outraged weren't you?

What does that idiot have to do with anything? Why are people so blindly polarized?

Bush was a monumental fuck up who basically did nothing that I agreed with, the invasions, the patriot act, and many other things. However, that doesn't make Mr. Assange any less of paranoid megalomaniac anarchist who is holding many people hostage in his quest for global destabilization.
 

Hayabusa Rider

Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
Jan 26, 2000
50,879
4,266
126
Actually I was pretty vocal against Bush. LOL. You've been here a while right? Feel free to do a forum search.

Before it was cool to be against Iraq War II I was against it. I'm still against it. Feel free to admit you made a dumb assumption. ;)

I didn't remember, but I'm glad that you were against it.
The problem is that like almost everything hyperbole replaces discussion. Everyone does it to some degree but for some reason Wikileaks is a subject especially prone to it. At this point Assange hasn't done much but embarrass the bureaucrats. The talk of theoretical harm pales in significance to everyday actions the government takes, but for some reason they are largely immune from just about everything. They can classify virtually everything whether it merits it or not. That's the real issue here. Assange found an effective way to embarrass bureaucrats and that cannot be tolerated. People speak of harm done with Afghanistan, but that didn't draw nearly the angst that this does. Why? Because the government really doesn't care about anything nearly as much as being caught being honest, unable to obfuscate.

It's the thing they really fear.

I also think that the "all or nothing" argument is disingenuous. I don't know any sane people who would be for revealing nuclear launch codes or releasing names and addresses of all our operatives. An argument can be made that if wikileaks can obtain relatively harmless information then they could do real damage. Well, yeah, but that's really besides the point. Anyone given information could do the same. What matters is if they do, and it's highly unlikely that after all this time he hasn't something really juicy. While I could be wrong I expect that these files would only be released if he's attacked first. It's not a bad idea to put people off from killing you.
 

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Aug 20, 2000
20,577
432
126
As a close follow up to my last post, the Swiss domain name registry has indicated that despite pressure from France and the U.S., they will not take wikileaks.ch offline.

WikiLeaks site's Swiss registry dismisses pressure to take it offline

WikiLeaks received a boost tonight when Switzerland rejected growing international calls to force the site off the internet.

The whistleblowers site, which has been publishing leaked US embassy cables, was forced to switch domain names to WikiLeaks.ch yesterday after the US host of its main website, WikiLeaks.org, pulled the plug following mounting political pressure.

The site's new Swiss registry, Switch, today said there was "no reason" why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registry set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names.

The reassurances come just hours after eBay-owned PayPal, the primary donation channel to WikiLeaks, terminated its links with the site, citing "illegal activity". France yesterday added to US calls for all companies and organisations to terminate their relationship with WikiLeaks following the release of 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.
 

Infohawk

Lifer
Jan 12, 2002
17,844
1
0

Hayabusa Rider

Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
Jan 26, 2000
50,879
4,266
126
What does that idiot have to do with anything? Why are people so blindly polarized?

Bush was a monumental fuck up who basically did nothing that I agreed with, the invasions, the patriot act, and many other things. However, that doesn't make Mr. Assange any less of paranoid megalomaniac anarchist who is holding many people hostage in his quest for global destabilization.

Speaking of hyperbole, "quest for global destabilization" is quite an interesting charge. He's made politicians blush. Is that what qualifies these days? Hostage eh? Precisely who is that? Those who might attempt assassination?

The sky did not fall.
 

CLite

Golden Member
Dec 6, 2005
1,726
7
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Speaking of hyperbole, "quest for global destabilization" is quite an interesting charge. He's made politicians blush. Is that what qualifies these days? Hostage eh? Precisely who is that? Those who might attempt assassination?

The sky did not fall.

Hostages = people who snitched on the oppressive Taliban.

Those who might attempt assassination?

Speaking of hyperbole (or perhaps delusions of grandeur on the part of Mr. Assange), don't confuse the USA with Russia, we don't kill people who leak information with radioactive substances. As shown with the Private, we prosecute them with the law. In the case of Mr. Assange we might have applied political pressure to shut down the site and funding, but unfortunately we can't prosecute him.

Perhaps Mr. Assange's goal is not global destabilization. Rather he is a megalomaniac that craves attention, this pushes him to release information that accomplishes nothing else other than the destabilization of the diplomatic process. The vast majority of the documents he released accomplishes nothing more than that. If he had maintained the leaks to just critical documents which expose injustices then I would understand peoples infatuation with him.
 

RedCOMET

Platinum Member
Jul 8, 2002
2,836
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http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...une_to_takedown_says_researcher?taxonomyId=17


WikiLeaks nearly immune to takedown, says researcher
After DDOS attacks and the loss of its domain name, the WikiLeaks whistleblower site is as potent as ever

Computerworld - Massive network attacks and other punitive actions taken against WikiLeaks over the past few days only appear to have made the site and its contents far more resilient to takedown attempts, a security researcher said.

In the 10 days since WikiLeaks began releasing classified cables from the U.S Department of State, wikileaks.org was hit with massive denial of service attacks, the termination of its its domain hosting service, the loss of Amazon.com as a host, and the loss of PayPal, MasterCard and Visa Europe services.

Yet, in what's becoming an interesting case study in Internet resilience, WikiLeaks not only continues to serve up its controversial content, it appears to have bolstered its ability to do so, said James Cowie, chief technology officer at Renesys, an Internet monitoring firm.

Cowie has been tracking the WikiLeaks saga over the past few days and yesterday detailed the whistleblower Website's efforts to stay afloat in the face of growing adversity in a blog post.

Before WikiLeaks started releasing the classified State Department cables, its content was hosted by two Swedish ISPs and another based in France. WikiLeaks added Amazon.com's cloud server to the list earlier this month after it began releasing the documents, Cowie noted. Amazon quickly stopped hosting WikiLeaks, apparently over terms of service violations.

After Amazon's actions, WikiLeaks began hosting the wikileaks.org domain with two different ISPs one in France, and another in Sweden, Cowie said. Then a couple of days later, WikiLeaks' DNS provider, EveryDNS, terminated its domain name service.

In response, WikiLeaks established several new country-level domains, such as wikileaks.ch in Switzerland, wikileaks.at in Austria and wikileaks.cc in Cocos Islands. It then pointed the new domains back to existing IP addresses, or began having the new domains hosted with service providers in different countries.

The Swiss site (wikileaks.ch) itself has been heavily reinforced to avoid a repeat of what happened with EveryDNS, Cowie said. To mitigate the possibility of one DNS provider once again shutting off the domain as EveryDNS did, WikiLeaks this time has signed up with separate DNS service providers in eight different countries, including Switzerland, Canada and Malaysia.

A total of 14 different name servers across 11 different networks today provide authoritative name services for the wikileaks.ch domain, Cowie noted. "If you ask any of those 14 servers where to find wikileaks.ch, they'll point you to one of three differently routed IP blocks," in the Netherlands, Sweden and France, he added.

The geo-diversification makes it very hard to take WikiLeaks down, he said.


For the moment, the WikiLeaks content is hosted mostly on servers based in Europe. If WikiLeaks were to start hosting its content outside Europe as well, the challenge to those trying to stop the site will become even harder, Cowie said.

In addition to such moves, close to 1000 mirror sites serving up WikiLaks content have popped up around the globe over the last few days, he said.

"Within a couple days, the WikiLeaks web content has been spread across enough independent parts of the Internet's DNS and routing space that they are, for all intents and purposes, now immune to takedown by any single legal authority," Cowie wrote in his blog. "If pressure were applied, one imagines that the geographic diversity would simply double, and double again."

In an interview with Computerworld, Cowie added that even if WikiLeaks were taken down completely "bits and pieces of its content will probably be mirrored for ever," on the Internet, he said.

Just as important is the role that Google and Twitter played in making information available on WikiLeaks newly spawned sites and how to find them, he said,

"Even after the domain went away, people were Tweeting raw IP numbers" in order to let others know how to find WikiLeaks, Cowie said.
 

Throckmorton

Lifer
Aug 23, 2007
16,829
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2pp0eb7.gif
 
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GarfieldtheCat

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2005
3,708
1
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I'll repost this, since the other threads were locked.

People saying that wikileaks has released thousands of documents are incorrect, they have so far released just over 1 thousand, not multiple thousands. (for those mathematically challenged, that works out to be less then 1% of what they have)

Also, they have been working with various newspaper companies to redact sensitive information before releasing it. So I guess you need to start pushing for arrest and prosecution of all of those newspaper employees as well, right?

WikiLeaks has posted to its website only 960 of the 251,297 diplomatic cables it has. Almost every one of these cables was first published by one of its newspaper partners which are disclosing them (The Guardian, the NYT, El Pais, Le Monde, Der Speigel, etc.). Moreover, the cables posted by WikiLeaks were not only first published by these newspapers, but contain the redactions applied by those papers to protect innocent people and otherwise minimize harm.

And lets have pjblabber and the other authoritarian neo-cons weigh in and explain, given their "desire" to protect the spys/troops/people that could be harmed by these releases, why the US government, when asked by wikileaks to help identify sensitive information, that the government refused?

Link

That letter, written by DoD Legal Counsel Jeh Charles Johnson to WikiLeak's counsel, Timothy Matusheski, explicitly recounts -- contrary to the emphatic denials in Newsweek -- that WikiLeaks' lawyer had contacted the Pentagon and requested help in the "harm minimization" process. The DoD, however, is explicitly refusing to offer any help whatsoever

So wikileaks asked for help to protect people, and the US said no.

I guess the US would rather have innocent people die so they can play the propaganda war against wikileaks. And yet everyone is blaming wikileaks for possible getting people killed. I think y'all need to rethink your position a bit.
 

CLite

Golden Member
Dec 6, 2005
1,726
7
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People saying that wikileaks has released thousands of documents are incorrect, they have so far released just over 1 thousand, not multiple thousands. (for those mathematically challenged, that works out to be less then 1% of what they have)

For the intellectually challenged, wikileaks leaked over 400,000 afghan logs, so people stating they have released thousands of documents are quite correct. Additionally, they gave all 250,000 cables to a few journal sources so they have released all of those. Admittedly they only gave around 1,000 diplomatic cables to the web so far.

And lets have pjblabber and the other authoritarian neo-cons weigh in and explain, given their "desire" to protect the spys/troops/people that could be harmed by these releases, why the US government, when asked by wikileaks to help identify sensitive information, that the government refused?

So someone receives stolen documents and wants to leak them and seeks help in identifying names to redact which you think are sensitive, which would reveal to this person the names who you think are sensitive. Anyone with a brain can deduce why this might not have been a logical path for the Pentagon to follow, although with your previous argument I'm not sure if you can figure it out.



http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/3983...-jail-assange/

http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/press/

http://www.politicususa.com/en/mccon...ange-terrorist which goes for a lot of people in the senate labling him a "terrorist"


regardless, they are trying to prosecute a journalist, yet host an international press freedom day? troll much?

Link showing the US is actually trying to prosecute a journalist?

Your first link makes the bold title "World Press Freedom Day Announced As U.S. Tries To Jail Assange" with absolutely no facts. First of all Mr. Assange is not a journalist, and secondly we have not tried to jail him.

Holder and Congress are pursuing an investigation to see if there is any legal action that can be taken, but they are going to follow the law and if there are no grounds for arrest they aren't going to extradite Mr. Assange on trumped up charges.
 
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yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Aug 20, 2000
20,577
432
126
A couple of medium-size stories today - not exactly revelations themselves, but in the first instance it's contributed to the ex-PM of Britain being called to sit in front of an inquiry, and in the second it confirms something already know. The third item is for amusement - Russia unperturbed enough by WikiLeaks that a source at the Kremlin is reportedly urging NGOs to nominate Mr. Assange for a Nobel.

Tony Blair recalled by Iraq inquiry: Blair is to face another grilling about the Iraq War after new evidence came to light about the conflict. The former PM has been summoned back to the Chilcot Inquiry in the New Year, to answer more questions about why he took Britain into the conflict in 2003. The inquiry has been studying newly-released government documents, WikiLeaks revelations and Blair’s autobiography, since he was quizzed in January. (Source)

Officials pressed Germans on kidnapping by C.I.A.: American officials exerted sustained pressure on Germany not to enforce arrest warrants against Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in the 2003 kidnapping of a German citizen mistakenly believed to be a terrorist, diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks show. (Source)

Nobel Prize could protect WikiLeaks founder - Kremlin source: Non-governmental organizations should consider nominating Julian Assange for a Nobel Prize, a source in the Russian presidential administration has said. Public and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) “should think of how to help” the founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, the source said on Tuesday, as reported by Interfax news agency. (Source)
 

GarfieldtheCat

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2005
3,708
1
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So someone receives stolen documents and wants to leak them and seeks help in identifying names to redact which you think are sensitive, which would reveal to this person the names who you think are sensitive. Anyone with a brain can deduce why this might not have been a logical path for the Pentagon to follow, although with your previous argument I'm not sure if you can figure it out.

So I guess when the newspapers get information that is classified (and by your words, stolen), and they ask the government about it, according to you, the government should always say no?

Because I hope you know the government does that with newspapers all the time, blowing your concept out of the water. How many times have we seen articles delayed or edited because the government is concerned about the data? Lots. According to you, I guess it never happened.

The fact is wikileaks had the info, and was going to redact and then publish their information. The Government could help with the redaction to minimize the problems, or do nothing. They chose to do nothing. That in itself is telling.

So their claims that they are worried about spies and innocent people getting killed sound kind of false, given they could have helped prevent (or at least minimize it), and instead refused to help to claim better PR. Yea, that really looks good.
 

CLite

Golden Member
Dec 6, 2005
1,726
7
76
I suppose it is amusing that Russia, a country which kills it's leaks, supports the actions of people hellbent on exposing some fantasied corrupt empire in the USA. The blatant hypocrisy of a country far more corrupt and nefarious than the USA does make for some laughs.

Regarding the Masri story, while it is a disaster of epic proportions, it also gives you a glimpse of how the USA isn't some assassinating corrupt empire. First of all the blame falls on Bush for enabling the paramilitary arm of the CIA to grow greatly and start engaging in these kidnappings. There were two camps in the CIA, paramilitary and infiltration, and Bush loved the idea of paramilitary. Anyways Masri was one of several people who were falsely identified, he was detained in Macedonian on a border crossing because he appeared suspicious and his name was flagged, so they informed the CIA and then the CIA took him. The first mistake was not checking the authenticity of the passport, the local office just wanted another notch on their belt, it was like the wild west in the CIA at the time. So they ship him to a secret prison and find out later that the passport is authentic.

Anyways, here is where the USA differs from the assassinating Russians, or other nefarious countries. In the case of all these false renditions the USA has fessed up and returned the people to their respective countries. It would have been incredibly easy to put a bullet in the guys head and forget about him if the USA was truly some heartless evil empire. What they did was terrible, and action should be taken, but don't confuse the USA with the truly evil countries and organizations of the world. This is why Mr. Assange is not going to be assassinated.
 
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BeauJangles

Lifer
Aug 26, 2001
13,941
1
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This is why Mr. Assange is not going to be assassinated.

If I were him, I wouldn't worry about assassination from the United States. I'd worry about getting "disappeared" by the Russians if he pisses them off enough.
 

Infohawk

Lifer
Jan 12, 2002
17,844
1
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New word just in from Wikileaks... Chinese diplomats want Taiwan back and the US has pressured other countries to adopt free trade... OMG!
 

GarfieldtheCat

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2005
3,708
1
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Anyways, here is where the USA differs from the assassinating Russians, or other nefarious countries. In the case of all these false renditions the USA has fessed up and returned the people to their respective countries. It would have been incredibly easy to put a bullet in the guys head and forget about him if the USA was truly some heartless evil empire. What they did was terrible, and action should be taken, but don't confuse the USA with the truly evil countries and organizations of the world. This is why Mr. Assange is not going to be assassinated.

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Gee, I feel all warm and fuzzy about how great and honorable our country is now, since after illegally kidnapping and torturing an innocent man by accident, we dumped him back in Europe without blowing him away. And then, the US ignored and dismissed all lawsuits claiming National security, so the guy doesn't get a dime for being tortured by us for months.

Seriously, you think that makes us look good? Mind boggling. I really hope this is sarcasm.
 

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Aug 20, 2000
20,577
432
126
Again starting with meta-news, a VP at PayPal has admitted the U.S. State Department leaned on it to get it to close the WikiLeaks account. Also, it appears that the person to bring forth the assault charges against Mr. Assange is non-cooperative with prosecutors and is now effectively unreachable.

Finally, in some actual news: Burma is trying to join the nuke club.

PayPal admits State Department pressure caused it to block WikiLeaks: Speaking at the Le Web conference in Paris, PayPal's Osama Bedier, VP of platform, mobile and new ventures, shed light on PayPal's decision to freeze the WikiLeaks account and admitted that the U.S. State Department played a role in the company's blocking of the account. "[The] State Dept told us these were illegal activities. It was straightforward," Bedier said at Le Web. "We [...] comply with regulations around the world, making sure that we protect our brand." (Source)

Assange accuser may have ceased co-operating: Anna Ardin, one of the two complainants in the rape and sexual assault case against WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, has left Sweden, and may have ceased actively co-operating with the Swedish prosecution service and her own lawyer, sources in Sweden told Crikey today. Ardin, who also goes by the name Bernardin, has moved to the West Bank in the Palestinian Territories, as part of a Christian outreach group, aimed at bringing reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. She has moved to the small town of Yanoun, which sits close to Israel’s security/sequestration wall. (Source)

Burma is building secret nuclear sites: A Burmese officer quoted in a cable from the US embassy in Burma said he had witnessed North Korean technicians helping to construct an underground facility in foothills more than 300 miles (480km) north-west of Rangoon. (Source)
 
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Phokus

Lifer
Nov 20, 1999
22,994
779
126
Officials pressed Germans on kidnapping by C.I.A.: American officials exerted sustained pressure on Germany not to enforce arrest warrants against Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in the 2003 kidnapping of a German citizen mistakenly believed to be a terrorist, diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks show. (Source)

I think this should be considered a 'big deal' and not a 'medium sized story'.

The US kidnapping and torturing an innocent man is unacceptable and wholly justifies Wikileak's existence.
 

BeauJangles

Lifer
Aug 26, 2001
13,941
1
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I think this should be considered a 'big deal' and not a 'medium sized story'.

The US kidnapping and torturing an innocent man is unacceptable and wholly justifies Wikileak's existence.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I just think it's interesting that people have grasped onto this story as justification for wikileaks, when the story was already reported years ago and when wikileaks has brought nothing new to the table.
 

Phokus

Lifer
Nov 20, 1999
22,994
779
126
I'm not disagreeing with you, I just think it's interesting that people have grasped onto this story as justification for wikileaks, when the story was already reported years ago and when wikileaks has brought nothing new to the table.

Not true, the wikileaks story is that the US government successfully pressured Germany into not prosecuting the people who kidnapped the victim in the first place. The US used it's leverage or had some bargaining chips so that the wrongdoers escaped justice, that is morally unacceptable and is also a big story.
 

Blackjack200

Lifer
May 28, 2007
15,995
1,686
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New word just in from Wikileaks... Chinese diplomats want Taiwan back and the US has pressured other countries to adopt free trade... OMG!

Another leak that puts thousands of lives at risk... OMG!

Edit: Also saw that Assange is on the verge of being charged by the US under the espionage act. Despicable. If he's guilty then so is every media outlet that reported on the leaks. The UK/Sweden better refuse to extradite.
 
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