WikiLeaks drop has started (1 Viewer)

Two things

As someone who works in Government IT-security I find it amazing that those security guidelines had not been implemented years ago, since most are SOP when dealing with classified or privileged information.

Secondly - I really don't get this "public need to know" mentality if it puts other peoples life at risk. I'm all for a critical press, but please - the press is NOT an elected government and publishing STOLEN information that even though nothing illegal has taken place, is intended to embarrass and hurt the country and its allies and which could eventually cause loss of human life, is ********
 
No troop locations/tactics look to be released, so lives aren't at risk. Shine the light on government.
 
No troop locations/tactics look to be released, so lives aren't at risk. Shine the light on government.

Those are not the only information which could potentially cause the loss of innocent lives.

But with the damage already done, the WikiLeaks information reveals some stark communications made among U.S. officials and foreign leaders. The New York Times reported that one cable captured a conversation between Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then leader of U.S. Central Command, that detailed a deal in which the Yemenis would take credit for bombing terror outposts as a means to prevent anger at the government by allowing U.S. forces to conduct operations.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ingly-chaotic-global-relations/#ixzz16fScFbD7

So if the terrorist camps are NOT bombed because agreements like these are leaked and the same terrorists later commits acts of terror somewhere else - the lives of those victims are indirectly put at risk by this leak.
 
Releasing this information seems pointlessly reckless to me. I think the potential damage that could be done far outways the need to know.
 
....the lives of those victims are indirectly put at risk by this leak.
This stretch can be applied to any logic to sell complete submission.

What do you think government is if we are abdicating they hide everything from the very people they 'serve'?

The 'media' isn't going to do their job of informing the masses (outside of serving as government mouth pieces), so it would give rise to a WikiLeaks. So it appears that we're either going to believe everything governments tell us (how has that worked for the past century?) or allow information to be vetted/weighed by thinking adults?

Terrur terrur terrur. Everyone's a terrurist. It is a simple and lazy justification for anything
 
http://nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.xml
A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, "if the local media got word of the fuel removal, 'they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons,' he argued."

¶ Thinking about an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North's economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would "help salve" China's "concerns about living with a reunified Korea" that is in a "benign alliance" with the United States.

¶ Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of "Let's Make a Deal." Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be "a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe."

¶ Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government: When Afghanistan's vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money "a significant amount" that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, "was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money's origin or destination." (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)

¶ A global computer hacking effort: China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.

¶ Mixed records against terrorism: Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the "worst in the region" in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar's security service was "hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals," the cable said.

¶ An intriguing alliance: American diplomats in Rome reported in 2009 on what their Italian contacts described as an extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and business magnate, including "lavish gifts," lucrative energy contracts and a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italian go-between. They wrote that Mr. Berlusconi "appears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin" in Europe. The diplomats also noted that while Mr. Putin enjoyed supremacy over all other public figures in Russia, he was undermined by an unmanageable bureaucracy that often ignored his edicts.

¶ Arms deliveries to militants: Cables describe the United States' failing struggle to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has amassed a huge stockpile since its 2006 war with Israel. One week after President Bashar al-Assad promised a top State Department official that he would not send "new" arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained that it had information that Syria was providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to the group.

¶ Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official "that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S."
 
Where is the publics needs to know when it comes to embarrassing information which could potentially mean losing Allys ?

This information was STOLEN !! - If you don't trust the government - do you actually trust the press and whoever gets access to classified data ? Do you trust that they will do the right thing and only release information which will not put peoples life at risk ?
 
Use that logic with the NOPD.
You would never know there was ever an issue with corruption.


You feel leaking this information is harmful, NOT the actions that the information is disclosing.

You're suggesting committing illegal acts by the government is okay, just so long as they don't get caught.
 
Use that logic with the NOPD.
You would never know there was ever an issue with corruption.


You feel leaking this information is harmful, NOT the actions that the information is disclosing.

You're suggesting committing illegal acts by the government is okay, just so long as they don't get caught.


Not at all. If you don't feel that you have the necessary check and balances in your juridical and governmental systems, work to implement those. That is the correct way to do so and also the democratic way to do it.

Don't go breaking the laws that was agreed upon by the people who was elected by you and your peers. Two wrongs never makes things right.
 
I thought there were checks and balances. No matter, those in charge of keeping the gov in check are bribed by those gov officials breaking the rules.

I agree that there could be some serious issues with Wikileaks, but it wouldn't exist if there were already a source that does the checks and balances already.

There will be no happy medium IMO. We will never get the info we need and Wikileaks will never be able to post their info without putting people in harm's way.
 
Not at all.
It took investigative journalists to uncover half of the corruption w/ NOPD. The 'system' in place is what lead to the enabling abuse.

Its perfectly legitimate to question Assange's methods, but the information should be made available. However, the practice of labeling everything 'classified' has become standard so FOI requests would never uncover them (your 'checks and balances').

Abu Ghirab / Water Boarding....can't tell anyone about that because it could harm our troops (never mind that we did it, though)

Go ahead and auto-neg rep me some more
 
It took investigative journalists to uncover half of the corruption w/ NOPD. The 'system' in place is what lead to the enabling abuse.

Its perfectly legitimate to question Assange's methods, but the information should be made available. However, the practice of labeling everything 'classified' has become standard so FOI requests would never uncover them (your 'checks and balances').

Abu Ghirab / Water Boarding....can't tell anyone about that because it could harm our troops (never mind that we did it, though)

Go ahead and auto-neg rep me some more

I NEVER neg-rep people for defending their convictions !

If you go back to my first post I make a distinct differentiation

publishing STOLEN information that even though nothing illegal has taken place
If the government, local or otherwise, break the law, we are talking a completely different ballgame !

I still believe however, that by obtaining the information by STEALING, it compromises the integrity of the investigation. I do believe the press should investigate government misuse and abuse, but do it without breaking the law !
 

Create an account or login to comment

You must be a member in order to leave a comment

Create account

Create an account on our community. It's easy!

Log in

Already have an account? Log in here.

Users who are viewing this thread

    Back
    Top Bottom