Thread: WikiLeaks
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Old Dec 8th, 2010, 09:35 PM       
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Originally Posted by Pentegarn View Post
Military secrets. Telling the world where a government is placing troops is doing just that, of course you hate America so I am not even going to try and persuade you why this is wrong to do to any country, but I will ask you to tell me how you would feel if it were done to say, China, or Cuba?
I hate the US government, but I'd say I hate the Chinese government more. I strongly dislike the Cuban government. I don't hate Americans, Chinese or Cubans. I don't know what my personal views on nations has anything to do with anything right now though. I would feel great if more information was leaked about more governments; the more the merrier. If they start realising that they are slightly more accountable for their actions than before, then maybe less human rights abuses etc will happen.

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So then why isn't he doing the same thing to other countries? Why only the US? Until he does, this counterargument comes off as empty.
He isn't personally 'hacking' US government websites or crap like that, he is providing a medium for OTHER WHISTLE-BLOWERS to post their information so that the world can see it. He is not personally collecting anything, the website relies on people that have become fed up at seeing criminal activity go on behind closed curtains and want to speak out about it. Other countries have been mentioned in the wikileaks quite often, including Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka... you don't read that because you are watching the news in America and it's only the SAFETY OF AMERICA that is the issue with wikileaks.

Hopefully people from more nations choose to speak out about criminal activities that their governments are responsible for. We all know it happens, but when it comes to light as fact, something you can't dodge, then more and more people will demand change.


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Again, until I see him do this to other countries besides the US, I have to assume this is an anti American act of cyber-terrorism, and defending it comes off as just anti American sour grapes. If you want to defend what he did because you hate America, be a man and say so. But don't pretend to be altruistic about it when this is a single target expose and when we all know much worse human rights violations are going on unexposed in many other countries (North Korea anyone?)
Again, he's not 'targeting' any one nation since all he is doing is providing an avenue for (so far) predominately US whistle-blowers. It's highly unlikely that documents pertaining to North Korean activities will surface, since it's highly unlikely that any North Korean with access to said information would survive.

All we have to go on about Nth Korean abuses stems from defectors, some reasonably high ranking, that have pretty much 'exposed' all the information that any sane person would need. Who doesn't know that North Korea is a horrible place to live where government sanctioned torture and crime, as well as political espionage etc, goes on daily?

Not that it has anything to do with Julian Assange or wikileaks, since they can't magic up a whistle-blower from nowhere, and can't hack into Nth Korean government documents, but do we NEED Nth Korean leaked information, or do we need to find out the secrets from the western governments, the ones that claim to serve and protect us and the ones that claim their wars are legal, and that torture is not something they partake in? We need to know what is going on with our own governments (and I really hope that more Australian documents come to light) since you and I are citizens of our own countries, and can affect change if needed.




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But it is terrorism to threaten to drop more information as he keeps repeatedly doing. If he was as altruistic as you you are now implying, why not drop it all? Why this slow leak? Could it be he wants to hit the snooze alarm repeatedly on his 15 minutes of fame? Seems that way to me, and his actions support this view
Why drop it all at once when the information will just get lost in a sea of information? That's counter-productive to the aim - let people know what is going on. Plus, all the information doesn't come out at the same time, it trickles in, so it trickles out.

Interesting note that I was unaware of at first, before the first major leak of US documents, all 500 thousand odd cables were made available to US analysis. Wikileaks itself checked all the content and blanked out any names they thought might be too sensitive or too dangerous to put in public.

Requests by wikileaks for the documents to be reviewed by the US were rejected. Wikileaks sent to the US ambassador in London a request: that wikileaks "would be grateful for the United States Government to privately nominate any specific instances ... where it considers the publication of information would put individual persons at significant risk of harm..."

Obviously the US government isn't too concerned about 'lives at risk' since it rejected the call on the grounds that US departments would "not engage in a negotiation" with wikileaks about the documents. Surely it would have been better for those at supposed risk if you read through the documents and blanked their names? Even IF you believed wikileaks wouldn't follow through on it's promise to respect such instances of individual risk, wouldn't it be better to TRY rather than just WE DON'T NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS and leave it at that? Wikileaks still blanked out many names, as previously stated, in the interests of privacy.


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I compared his hacking to another group who hacks and steals information for personal gain. His personal gain is fame, theirs is money, neither are doing it for selfless reasons.
That's a pretty big stretch of a comparison... the only link is that you think neither of them do what the do for personal gain. Santa Clause is just like a rapist, since they both do what they do to get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside themselves. Santa gives gifts, and a rapist rapes, but still - the same. Who is this 'other group' that hacks for money, by the way?

So you think that Julian Assange is doing all this for fame? The guy has had calls to assassinate him, serious ones. People in the US government have asked for him to be hunted down and neutralised. Fame? Honestly, there are better ways. It's a lot of work just for 'fame'. Wikileaks has been operating for, what, 5 years, and Assange himself is only just now 'famous', and I honestly believe that he would prefer it if he wasn't so widely known.


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Classified information is classified for a reason. You act like the US is the first country in the universe to ever have secrets. I am willing to bet the USSR has stories that would make your skin crawl with things they did that violated human rights.
You don't need to guess at what the USSR did to violate human rights, since a lot of documents were made public over the years since the break up of the USSR. You don't need to hit me in the guts with how bad the USSR was in cases of human rights; I am a more honest critic of the Soviet Union than most.

How do you know that classified information is classified for a GOOD reason? It's classified so that normal every day people don't get a chance to decide for themselves. Who decides what should be classified and what shouldn't? The same people that the classified documents are about... doesn't that strike you as a little bit of a bias? Knowing what we know now about most of these 'classified documents', they are kept secret for the sole reason that people wouldn't find out about criminal behaviour and therefore not endanger lives, but endanger the system of abuse the US government upholds.

Why do Sri Lankan war crimes need to be kept classified? Most of the leaked documents are classified because it is scandalous criminal activity that is going on - the exact same things that citizens of any country should know about their government.


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This one is easy to address, if he is whistle blowing military secrets (like exposing where US stations troops) then we are compromised strategically, which can lead to a diminished military, which can in turn lead to another attack on US soil. I personally have seen enough of that for one lifetime and do not want to tempt other groups to attack us because our military has been compromised.
I personaly haven't seen (I haven't read a large percentage of the hundreds of thousands of documents, surprise, surprise) any troop placement documents; if there are then I actually don't see it as that big a deal. What information is being given away? Where the US military ahs bases? I thought most of that was common knowledge. Just because Al-Qaeda finds out that you have a base in Swaziland doesn't mean that they will attack it, I figure they have enough targets as it is. Iran finding out about your secret bases on it's border would be something different, but I would say that setting up secret bases in sensitive places with a need for secrecy is asking for an attack anyhow. The point still stands though that Julian Assange is not blowing whistles on military secrets, wikileaks has provided an avenue for US military personnel to blow whistles.


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Don't you think to get a trial in your country you should commit crimes against that country instead of another one? If you don't want to be on trial in the US try this simple tip; don't commit crimes against the US

That's like saying a woman who gets raped in America by a foreigner has no rights to justice because the rapist was from another country. You just think he should avoid the US justice system because it was a crime against an entity you clearly dislike
He hasn't committed any crimes, nor will he get a trial in ANY country, most likely. A kangaroo court, perhaps. Better a trial by the US justice system than a US military tribunal, or 'sustained detention'.

What I was referring to though was thee fact that our PM has called him a criminal and said his actions are illegal. I think US officials have just stated how they want him to disappear, not that he has broken the law. If he has supposedly committed a crime against Australia (Which is unlikely) then if he is captured/detained (which is likely) he should get a fair trial in Australia. Note that you need to have proper reasons to BRING him to trial first. Or should.
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