WikiLeaks founder chooses to blackmail

[Sisyphus]

Originally Posted by JahiaraQ

Did I miss something?

Maybe...

Originally Posted by JahiaraQ

Are we not in America ?

We are...but the man who published the purloined papers...and the servers he used to serve them up...are not. Thus, the brouhaha...

Originally Posted by JahiaraQ

What happened to that lil piece of paper, you know the one that idiot G.W. Bush wiped his ass with? What was it called ? Oh yeah the constitution & Bill of Rights. Was I misinformed about this in grade school or didnt it cover a thing called freedom of the press? I hope he continues to tell the gvt to fuck themselves. This isnt communist era russia. Its America and whe have rights, no one should be punished for using them.

Some would argue it's been missing in action here for a long time. But, in this case...again, it's difficult to figure what protection the US Bill of Rights affords a Swedish web site owner hiding in the UK when he publishes documents that were purloined from a US "secure" network. It's messy....

Dunno that there's any real answers but it makes chewing the fat more entertaining...don't cha thinck?

[JahiaraQ]

That it does..

But a country that prides itself on freedom of the press cant try and force a gag order on the press. counterproductive aint it?

[Sisyphus]

Originally Posted by JahiaraQ

That it does..

But a country that prides itself on freedom of the press cant try and force a gag order on the press. counterproductive aint it?

Preachin' to the choir, luv! Preachin' to the choir....

[charlestudor2005]

For example, the law used to say that when you owned real estate, you owned it from the center of the earth to the sky. That worked out fairly well until companies wanted to put up power/telephone lines, or until there were airplanes. Now, the power/telephone line issue was resolved with easements and condemnation. However, the airplane thing required years for the law to catch up with the technology.

Another example is water rights in the US. In the East, whoever owned the land that the water ran over was able to control the water rights. However, in the West, someone could dam a stream, and downstream it became a life and death issue. Water rights changed.

There are countless other examples. We are just seeing a twist in the Wikileaks case where the govt. wants to prosecute and is having a tough time doing so. If I were the AG, I'd stop devoting all this time to a fruitless prosecution and throw it back in Congress' lap by saying the law doesn't provide an avenue for prosecution.

[JahiaraQ]

@charlestudor2005 your post are starting to make me like you, I like how you think ;-)

[charlestudor2005]

Originally Posted by JahiaraQ

@charlestudor2005 your post are starting to make me like you, I like how you think ;-)

Be careful...it's also easy for me to disappoint.

[Guest053011]

To those comments aimed at me:

I admit my judgment of him is harsh and bias. I feel that privacy has it's place, even for governments. There comes a point when releasing information just because you can does more harm than good.

We are in a new age with access to information. Science is often faced with the moral quandary of: "We can do this, but should we do this? Is it wise? Does it take into consideration repercussions, human relation, our general well being and future development?"

Information is power and with power comes responsibility. Sadly history shows that power inevitably corrupts.

If someone has access to sensitive information and wishes to pursue it in a meaningful manner to achieve some kind of end that they believe is improving a situation in some way, I can respect that. A site like factcheck.org serves a purpose.

To become a trashy soulless tabloid has no redeeming value, it's parasitic and I feel he and WL have no redeeming social or moral value. To be worse then a callous reporter, and then have the audacity to use information as blackmail knowing it can cause harm, speaks of a man without character or honor. If his threats are empty, then he's just a douche-bag. My personal opinion (and that's all you're getting here) is that he's a desperate attention whore, and that's fine - get into the entertainment business stay away from political information.

Oh wait... there's a movie already in the making isn't there? Leech.

WTF: Us Canadians believe in Order, Peace and Good Government, and I feel the pointless releasing of confidential information works against all three of those principals.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Lauren Summerhill

WTF: Us Canadians believe in Order, Peace and Good Government, and I feel the pointless releasing of confidential information works against all three of those principals.

You won't have Good Government without a free press. A free press looks into government conduct. The more transparent your government, the better informed its citizens. Better informed citizen can then choose just how they want to go about keeping Order and Peace.

btw, my earlier post was directed at you convicting the guy of rape before knowing any facts on the matter. That is not strictly a Canadian confliction btw....plenty of Americans do the exact same thing.

How many women get raped and then throw a party for the man that just raped them the next day? Sweden's rape laws are something else. Not looking at that fact is akin to you accepting an overnighter with a cannibal because he'd said he cook up a great dinner and have you for dessert. Might sound fine at first glance. One needs to look a certain seemingly small nuisances before passing such harsh/hasty judgement.

[pjorourke]

I don't really have an issue with the Wikileaks guy -- I doubt he even did anything illegal (just stupid and harmful). The person that ought to be hung by their balls is the guy that stole the information and gave it to him. That guy is a traitor and should be treated as such.

[John Bull]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

I don't really have an issue with the Wikileaks guy -- I doubt he even did anything illegal (just stupid and harmful). The person that ought to be hung by their balls is the guy that stole the information and gave it to him. That guy is a traitor and should be treated as such.

I still can't get my mind to accept as fact that a lowly PFC had access, much less was able to copy, documents in the 100's of thousands from the DOD and the State Dept. I was a lowly PFC once and I just don't buy it.

Conspiracy Theory Alert: There is bad info included in these releases that are intended to mislead one or more foreign governments. In other words, this is a deliberate play by the US.

[Rudyard K]

Originally Posted by John Bull

Conspiracy Theory Alert: There is bad info included in these releases that are intended to mislead one or more foreign governments. In other words, this is a deliberate play by the US.

Occams Razor.

JB, do most of the mistakes that happen around you in your business world happen because there is some master plan?...or simply because most folks aren't paying attention?

[Whirlaway]

Assange releases the "Afghanistan Diaries"; thousands of pages of highly classified military information which actually endangers the lives of our soldiers and allies - no reaction from Obama and his DA.

Then, o' my gosh, he releases cables which only embarass (but don't endanger) high ranking pobah's in our government (like Clinton) and he is immediately picked up by the authorities and is deemed a pariah by the ruling elite and talking heads.

IMO Assange should be "taken out" for the Afganistan Diaries but praised for the Diplomatic cable dump !

[TexTushHog]

Originally Posted by Sisyphus

But, in this case...again, it's difficult to figure what protection the US Bill of Rights affords a Swedish web site owner hiding in the UK when he publishes documents that were purloined from a US "secure" network. It's messy....

He didn't steal or purloin documents. He received copies from a third person who was apparently authorized to access them and was negligently allowed to copy them. The U.S. still has the documents. They are not stolen. At worst he received copies. Even the private didn't steal documents.

And Charles hit the nail on the head. There isn't a statute that makes what this guy did illegal. It's just not something that the legislature thought of when writing the criminal laws. The proper remedy is to pass a law making it criminal.

However, you may have great difficulty doing this consistent with the First Amendment. Likewise, it may not be wise to broadly write a law even if you can. But those are issues for the legislative branch and the Courts to deal with in writing the statute and after a statute has been passed.

[Mazomaniac]

Originally Posted by Whirlaway

Assange releases the "Afghanistan Diaries"; thousands of pages of highly classified military information which actually endangers the lives of our soldiers and allies - no reaction from Obama and his DA.!

Maybe that's because, despite all of the screaming and crying about the release, the documents didn't actually do any harm to anyone except to the politicians who didn't want you to know the truth about what's going on in Afghanistan.

Quote Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell on August 10th:

"We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents"

Quote Defense Secretary Robert Gates on October 17th:

"[T]he review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by the disclosure."

That's the Pentagon saying that the leak did no harm. There was nothing in those documents that the Afghan people didn't already know. It was the US population who were in the dark about what was really happening there until the leak brought it home.

AFAIK there has not been a single, solitary incident in which the US government has said "this happened because of Wikileaks". It's all just smoke to hide the truth of what's been happening over there. Wikileaks acted responsibly and screened the documents to avoid that kind of harm. Looks like they did a pretty good job.

If you actually read some of those documents you'll be sickened (I hope) at what was actually done in your name and the cover-up designed to keep you in the dark about it. Everyone's a hawk before a war and a dove after. Wikileaks will hopefully speed up that process.

Mazo.

[Mazomaniac]

Originally Posted by Lauren Summerhill

WTF: Us Canadians believe in Order, Peace and Good Government, and I feel the pointless releasing of confidential information works against all three of those principals.

Lauren, you may find it interesting to read Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg (the man who actually leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press).

In his book Ellsberg makes what I think is a pretty effective case about why democracies can't properly function when there's too much secrecy in government. He actually argues that open government - at least to a point - is quite necessary for preservation of the three principles that you speak of. He says he leaked the Pentagon Papers when he realized that the US government had gotten so deeply involved in its own secrecy that it was effecting the ability of the people to choose the course for the country itself.

I don't know if you'd agree with him or not after reading it, but I think that Ellsberg makes the best case I've heard so far about the role of openness in democratic society. I think you'd find it a good read.

Cheers,
Mazo.