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Fritz
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #30 on: 2010-12-14 15:22:48 » |
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I am intrigued how Stratfor and the Economist, as examples given they have a degree of credibility as news organizations, both play down what the consequences to the INTERNET as a democratic tool, that the 'Wikileaks events' have enabled. It has been served up as yet another thing the governments will have to protect us from, and there by will be muzzled, and not just Wikileaks, but the INTERNET as a whole. Where is Marshall McLuhan when you need him; "The media is the message".
Sigh
Fritz
Taking Stock of WikiLeaks
SOurce: Stratfor
Author: George Friedman
Date: 2010.12.14
Julian Assange has declared that geopolitics will be separated into pre-“Cablegate” and post-“Cablegate” eras. That was a bold claim. However, given the intense interest that the leaks produced, it is a claim that ought to be carefully considered. Several weeks have passed since the first of the diplomatic cables were released, and it is time now to address the following questions: First, how significant were the leaks? Second, how could they have happened? Third, was their release a crime? Fourth, what were their consequences? Finally, and most important, is the WikiLeaks premise that releasing government secrets is a healthy and appropriate act a tenable position?
Let’s begin by recalling that the U.S. State Department documents constituted the third wave of leaks. The first two consisted of battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. Looking back on those as a benchmark, it is difficult to argue that they revealed information that ran counter to informed opinion. I use the term “informed opinion” deliberately. For someone who was watching Iraq and Afghanistan with some care over the previous years, the leaks might have provided interesting details but they would not have provided any startling distinction between the reality that was known and what was revealed. If, on the other hand, you weren’t paying close attention, and WikiLeaks provided your first and only view of the battlefields in any detail, you might have been surprised.
Let’s consider the most controversial revelation, one of the tens of thousands of reports released on Iraq and Afghanistan and one in which a video indicated that civilians were deliberately targeted by U.S. troops. The first point, of course, is that the insurgents, in violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, did not go into combat wearing armbands or other distinctive clothing to distinguish themselves from non-combatants. The Geneva Conventions have always been adamant on this requirement because they regarded combatants operating under the cover of civilians as being responsible for putting those civilians in harm’s way, not the uniformed troops who were forced to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants when the combatants deliberately chose to act in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
It follows from this that such actions against civilians are inevitable in the kind of war Iraqi insurgents chose to wage. Obviously, this particular event has to be carefully analyzed, but in a war in which combatants blend with non-combatants, civilian casualties will occur, and so will criminal actions by uniformed troops. Hundreds of thousands of troops have fought in Iraq, and the idea that criminal acts would be absent is absurd. What is most startling is not the presence of potentially criminal actions but their scarcity. Anyone who has been close to combat or who has read histories of World War II would be struck not by the presence of war crimes but by the fact that in all the WikiLeaks files so few potential cases are found. War is controlled violence, and when controls fail — as they inevitably do — uncontrolled and potentially criminal violence occurs. However, the case cited by WikiLeaks with much fanfare did not clearly show criminal actions on the part of American troops as much as it did the consequences of the insurgents violating the Geneva Conventions.
Only those who were not paying attention to the fact that there was a war going on, or who had no understanding of war, or who wanted to pretend to be shocked for political reasons, missed two crucial points: It was the insurgents who would be held responsible for criminal acts under the Geneva Conventions for posing as non-combatants, and there were extraordinarily few cases of potential war crimes that were contained in the leaks.
The diplomatic leaks are similar. There is precious little that was revealed that was unknown to the informed observer. For example, anyone reading STRATFOR knows we have argued that it was not only the Israelis but also the Saudis that were most concerned about Iranian power and most insistent that the United States do something about it. While the media treated this as a significant revelation, it required a profound lack of understanding of the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf to regard U.S. diplomatic cables on the subject as surprising.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ statement in the leaks that the Saudis were always prepared to fight to the last American was embarrassing, in the sense that Gates would have to meet with Saudi leaders in the future and would do so with them knowing what he thinks of them. Of course, the Saudis are canny politicians and diplomats and they already knew how the American leadership regarded their demands.
There were other embarrassments also known by the informed observer. Almost anyone who worries about such things is aware that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is close to the Russians and likes to party with young women. The latest batch of leaks revealed that the American diplomatic service was also aware of this. And now Berlusconi is aware that they know of these things, which will make it hard for diplomats to pretend that they don’t know of these things. Of course, Berlusconi was aware that everyone knew of these things and clearly didn’t care, since the charges were all over Italian media.
I am not cherry-picking the Saudi or Italian memos. The consistent reality of the leaks is that they do not reveal anything new to the informed but do provide some amusement over certain comments, such as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev being called “Batman and Robin.” That’s amusing, but it isn’t significant. Amusing and interesting but almost never significant is what I come away with having read through all three waves of leaks.
Obviously, the leaks are being used by foreign politicians to their own advantage. For example, the Russians feigned shock that NATO would be reassuring the Balts about defense against a potential Russian invasion or the Poles using the leaks to claim that solid U.S.-Polish relations are an illusion. The Russians know well of NATO plans for defending the Baltic states against a hypothetical Russian invasion, and the Poles know equally well that U.S.-Polish relations are complex but far from illusory. The leaks provide an opportunity for feigning shock and anger and extracting possible minor concessions or controlling atmospherics. They do not, however, change the structure of geopolitics.
Indeed, U.S. diplomats come away looking sharp, insightful and decent. While their public statements after a conference may be vacuous, it is encouraging to see that their read of the situation and of foreign leaders is unsentimental and astute. Everything from memos on senior leaders to anonymous snippets from apparently junior diplomats not only are on target (in the sense that STRATFOR agrees with them) but are also well-written and clear. I would argue that the leaks paint a flattering picture overall of the intellect of U.S. officials without revealing, for the most part, anything particularly embarrassing.
At the same time, there were snarky and foolish remarks in some of the leaks, particularly personal comments about leaders and sometimes their families that were unnecessarily offensive. Some of these will damage diplomatic careers, most generated a good deal of personal tension and none of their authors will likely return to the countries in which they served. Much was indeed unprofessional, but the task of a diplomat is to provide a sense of place in its smallest details, and none expect their observations ever to be seen by the wrong people. Nor do nations ever shift geopolitical course over such insults, not in the long run. These personal insults were by far the most significant embarrassments to be found in the latest release. Personal tension is not, however, international tension.
This raises the question of why diplomats can’t always simply state their minds rather than publicly mouth preposterous platitudes. It could be as simple as this: My son was a terrible pianist. He completely lacked talent. After his recitals at age 10, I would pretend to be enthralled. He knew he was awful and he knew I knew he was awful, but it was appropriate that I not admit what I knew. It is called politeness and sometimes affection. There is rarely affection among nations, but politeness calls for behaving differently when a person is in the company of certain other people than when that person is with colleagues talking about those people. This is the simplest of human rules. Not admitting what you know about others is the foundation of civilization. The same is true among diplomats and nations.
And in the end, this is all I found in the latest WikiLeaks release: a great deal of information about people who aren’t American that others certainly knew and were aware that the Americans knew, and now they have all seen it in writing. It would take someone who truly doesn’t understand how geopolitics really works to think that this would make a difference. Some diplomats may wind up in other postings, and perhaps some careers will be ended. But the idea that this would somehow change the geopolitics of our time is really hard to fathom. I have yet to see Assange point to something so significant that it would justify his claim. It may well be that the United States is hiding secrets that would reveal it to be monstrous. If so, it is not to be found in what has been released so far.
There is, of course, the question of whether states should hold secrets, which is at the root of the WikiLeaks issue. Assange claims that by revealing these secrets WikiLeaks is doing a service. His ultimate maxim, as he has said on several occasions, is that if money and resources are being spent on keeping something secret, then the reasons must be insidious. Nations have secrets for many reasons, from protecting a military or intelligence advantage to seeking some advantage in negotiations to, at times, hiding nefarious plans. But it is difficult to imagine a state — or a business or a church — acting without confidentiality. Imagine that everything you wrote and said in an attempt to figure out a problem was made public? Every stupid idea that you discarded or clueless comment you expressed would now be pinned on you. But more than that, when you argue that nations should engage in diplomacy rather than war, taking away privacy makes diplomacy impossible. If what you really think of the guy on the other side of the table is made public, how can diplomacy work?
This is the contradiction at the heart of the WikiLeaks project. Given what I have read Assange saying, he seems to me to be an opponent of war and a supporter of peace. Yet what he did in leaking these documents, if the leaking did anything at all, is make diplomacy more difficult. It is not that it will lead to war by any means; it is simply that one cannot advocate negotiations and then demand that negotiators be denied confidentiality in which to conduct their negotiations. No business could do that, nor could any other institution. Note how vigorously WikiLeaks hides the inner workings of its own organization, from how it is funded to the people it employs.
Assange’s claims are made even more interesting in terms of his “thermonuclear” threat. Apparently there are massive files that will be revealed if any harm comes to him. Implicit is the idea that they will not be revealed if he is unharmed — otherwise the threat makes no sense. So, Assange’s position is that he has secrets and will keep them secret if he is not harmed. I regard this as a perfectly reasonable and plausible position. One of the best uses for secrets is to control what the other side does to you. So Assange is absolutely committed to revealing the truth unless it serves his interests not to, in which case the public has no need to know.
It is difficult to see what harm the leaks have done, beyond embarrassment. It is also difficult to understand why WikiLeaks thinks it has changed history or why Assange lacks a sufficient sense of irony not to see the contradiction between his position on openness and his willingness to keep secrets when they benefit him. But there is also something important here, which is how this all was leaked in the first place.
To begin that explanation, we have to go back to 9/11 and the feeling in its aftermath that the failure of various government entities to share information contributed to the disaster. The answer was to share information so that intelligence analysts could draw intelligence from all sources in order to connect the dots. Intelligence organizations hate sharing information because it makes vast amounts of information vulnerable. Compartmentalization makes it hard to connect dots, but it also makes it harder to have a WikiLeaks release. The tension between intelligence and security is eternal, and there will never be a clear solution.
The real issue is who had access to this mass of files and what controls were put on them. Did the IT department track all external drives or e-mails? One of the reasons to be casual is that this was information that was classified secret and below, with the vast majority being at the confidential, no-foreign-distribution level. This information was not considered highly sensitive by the U.S. government. Based on the latest trove, it is hard to figure out how the U.S. government decides to classify material. But it has to be remembered that given their level of classification these files did not have the highest security around them because they were not seen as highly sensitive.
Still, a crime occurred. According to the case of Daniel Ellsberg, who gave a copy of the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam to a New York Times reporter, it is a crime for someone with a security clearance to provide classified material for publication but not a crime for a publisher to publish it, or so it has become practice since the Ellsberg case. Legal experts can debate the nuances, but this has been the practice for almost 40 years. The bright line is whether the publisher in any way encouraged or participated in either the theft of the information or in having it passed on to him. In the Ellsberg case, he handed it to reporters without them even knowing what it was. Assange has been insisting that he was the passive recipient of information that he had nothing to do with securing.
Now it is interesting whether the sheer existence of WikiLeaks constituted encouragement or conspiracy with anyone willing to pass on classified information to him. But more interesting by far is the sequence of events that led a U.S. Army private first class not only to secure the material but to know where to send it and how to get it there. If Pfc. Bradley Manning conceived and executed the theft by himself, and gave the information to WikiLeaks unprompted, Assange is clear. But anyone who assisted Manning or encouraged him is probably guilty of conspiracy, and if Assange knew what was being done, he is probably guilty, too. There was talk about some people at MIT helping Manning. Unscrambling the sequence is what the Justice Department is undoubtedly doing now. Assange cannot be guilty of treason, since he isn’t a U.S. citizen. But he could be guilty of espionage. His best defense will be that he can’t be guilty of espionage because the material that was stolen was so trivial.
I have no idea whether or when he got involved in the acquisition of the material. I do know — given the material leaked so far — that there is little beyond minor embarrassments contained within it. Therefore, Assange’s claim that geopolitics has changed is as false as it is bold. Whether he committed any crime, including rape, is something I have no idea about. What he is clearly guilty of is hyperbole. But contrary to what he intended, he did do a service to the United States. New controls will be placed on the kind of low-grade material he published. Secretary of Defense Gates made the following point on this:
“Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments — some governments — deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.
“Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.”
I don’t like to give anyone else the final word, but in this case Robert Gates’ view is definitive. One can pretend that WikiLeaks has redefined geopolitics, but it hasn’t come close.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Blunderov
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #31 on: 2010-12-17 06:49:38 » |
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Quote from: Fritz on 2010-12-14 15:22:48 SOurce: Stratfor
Author: George Friedman
Date: 2010.12.14
I don’t like to give anyone else the final word, but in this case Robert Gates’ view is definitive. One can pretend that WikiLeaks has redefined geopolitics, but it hasn’t come close.
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[Blunderov] I disagree. IMO Stratfor is indulging in wishful thinking if it believes that Wikileaks is not a game-changer. This is true Democracy and the American oligarchs and their co-conspirators hate it with every fibre of their black, profiteering hearts. This is not just rethoric. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, one of the main things that has been made crystal clear by the last batch of Wikileaks is the USA's complete contempt for the interests, wellfare, opinions and rights of the most of the rest of the planet. The proles are getting fed up with the Military Industrial Media complex and are rising. They are rising in the UK. They are rising in Ireland, Spain, Greece, France and elsewhere too. And they are rising on the internet. Big time.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/12/hacktivism-for-cyber-democracy/
Hacktivism for Cyber Democracy
by Joel S. Hirschhorn / December 16th, 2010
Because of the attacks on WikiLeaks and its founder there has been considerable media attention to the hacktivism practiced by supporters of WikiLeaks. That has been manifested as cyber attacks on mainstream commercial websites that acted against WikiLeaks. Hacktivism as retribution and strategy to gain political objectives is bound to become much more common. And considering how voting, especially from the perspective of younger people, has been enormously disappointing as a means of reforming government and political systems worldwide, that seems appropriate.
Naturally, there is a fine discussion of hacktivism at Wikipedia. There we learn that it has been around far longer than the current attention to the WikiLeaks situation.
Hacking has come to mostly mean illegal breaking into computer systems, while activism has always been either violent or nonviolent. Hacktivism is clearly now seen as an alternative to convention activism, civil disobedience and, increasingly, participation in democratic, electoral processes.
The combination of computer programming skills, critical thinking, anger and disgust with prevailing corporate and government institutions can, and probably should, drive better focused hacktivism. It could become an effective strategy for achieving major political reforms.
Cyberterrorism along with cyber crime, Internet fraud and everyday spamming are to be feared and fought, while hacktivism merits considerable respect and public support as a philosophic and political tactic responding to contemporary political and social issues and needs. At least, as long as it does not do harm to individuals.
Those with the expertise to implement hacktivism are a new breed of radicals, revolutionaries, and power brokers that is unsurprisingly an inevitable consequence of the whole computer, networking and Internet world that has been overly embraced. As with all technologies, there are always generally unseen and unintended negative impacts that catch people, governments, companies and just about everyone else by surprise. If there is any real surprise, it is that the world has not seen far more widespread hacktivism.
In a fine 2004 article, “Hacktivism and How It Got Here,” Michelle Delio pointed out: Hacktivism, as defined by the Cult of the Dead Cow, the group of hackers and artists who coined the phrase, was intended to refer to the development and use of technology to foster human rights and the open exchange of information.
We should see hacktivism as a dimension to cyber or digital democracy. It may first appear as more deadly than violent street protests against government actions that are seen frequently, particularly in Europe, but should it not be seen as just a more technological form of protest appropriate for our time? Indeed, just as WikiLeaks is seen as a more potent, technological form of whistle blowing, is not hacktivism its logical complement?
There is a wonderful, detailed history of hacktivism on the Wikipedia site, including a citation to a 2006 published paper by the now infamous Julian Assange titled “The Curious Origins of Political Hacktivism.”
Listen to the thinking of a 22-year-old London software engineer known only as Coldblood, who controls the servers the group Anonymous uses to implement its hacktivist actions. “I decided to speak as I’m passionate about how government shouldn’t censor the internet. We suggest sites to attack, and if enough people think it’s good, it will generally happen. It’s a community thing. By making it harder for these companies to operate online we show them a message that it’s not just governments they need to keep happy, it’s the users as well. If their website is offline, then people can’t use their services and it affects them. It’s like an idealistic democracy. But everyone is aware that the attacks are illegal. Nobody is pressured into taking part. A lot just watch. But if they arrest one person, the attacks won’t stop.”
To see hacktivism positively today may require having a positive attitude towards WikiLeaks as the defender and protector of the public’s right to know what governments, corporations and international organizations are really doing, even when secrecy is used to thwart transparency. In so many respects, WikiLeaks is more trustworthy than the groups it exposes. It is performing a duty that newspapers could once be counted on to do, but with corporate ownership and censorship of media, WikiLeaks offers more independence. However, the relationship between WikiLeaks and several mainstream newspapers in its release of US State Department documents has been seriously questioned by Michel Chossudovsky: “how can this battle against media disinformation be waged with the participation and collaboration of the corporate architects of media disinformation? Wikileaks has enlisted the architects of media disinformation to fight media disinformation: An incongruous and self-defeating procedure.” Still, working with corporate media may have been a tactic to protect WikiLeaks.
This much seems certain about the future: The more that electoral politics in western democracies appears increasingly ineffective in fighting political and corporate corruption, economic inequality, restraints on the Internet, environmental problems, suffering in developing countries, and unnecessary wars, the more we can expect to witness hacktivism. The most interesting question is whether the American and global plutocracy that has so successfully advanced the greedy interests of the rich and powerful will learn to live with hacktivism or whether it mounts a far more aggressive attack on it, including severe criminal penalties. Hacktivism is not so much the problem as a symptom of a far more serious, deeper set of problems.
[Bl.] Visit the site for moar delicious links and crunchy, vitamin laden discussions.
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Fritz
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #32 on: 2010-12-19 11:17:25 » |
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Quote from: Blunderov on 2010-12-17 06:49:38
[Blunderov] I disagree. IMO Stratfor is indulging in wishful thinking if it believes that Wikileaks is not a game-changer. This is true Democracy and the American oligarchs and their co-conspirators hate it with every fibre of their black, profiteering hearts. This is not just rethoric. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, one of the main things that has been made crystal clear by the last batch of Wikileaks is the USA's complete contempt for the interests, wellfare, opinions and rights of the most of the rest of the planet. The proles are getting fed up with the Military Industrial Media complex and are rising. They are rising in the UK. They are rising in Ireland, Spain, Greece, France and elsewhere too. And they are rising on the internet. Big time.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/12/hacktivism-for-cyber-democracy/ |
Thx [Bl] ... still not comfortable with the notion that media like the Economist are just not able to state what you and I clearly get about what is going on. Don't they get it ? Or is the fix really in that deep.
Seems it may be. Nice to see Larry pony up !!
Cheers
Fritz
PS: The video in the story below is worth watching
Assange: Text messages show rape charges were 'set up'
Source: The Register
Author: Dan Goodin in San Francisco
Date: 2010.12.17
Spirited defense of WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange said on Friday that text messages in the possession of the Swedish government prove that rape charges against him are a set up.
“There are intercepted SMS messages between the women and each other and their friends that I'm told represents a set up,” Assange, who spoke from Suffolk, UK, said on ABC's Good Morning America. “Those SMS messages the Swedish prosecutor has refused to release and in fact stated that my lawyer, who was shown the messages by the police, is gagged from speaking about them.”
He continued:
In their representations to the courts here over three separate court dates, the Swedish government stated that it didn't need to provide a single piece of evidence to the court, in fact didn't provide a single piece of evidence to back up its allegations. We're not just talking about evidence in terms of physical objects, we're talking not even a single word of the allegations themselves.
Assange's comments come a day after he was released on £240,000 in security deposit and sureties (about $370,000) after a High Court judge rejected Swedish prosecutors' bid to keep Assange in jail while their extradition request is pending. He is now under house arrest in a 10-bedroom mansion owned by journalist and Frontline Club founding member Vaughan Smith.
The spirited defense came as smut publisher Larry Flynt said he was donating $50,000 to the WikiLeaks legal defense fund to support the mission of the whistle-blower website.
“If WikiLeaks had existed in 2003 when George W. Bush was ginning up the war in Iraq, America might not be in the horrendous situation it is today, with our troops fighting in three countries (counting Pakistan) and the consequent cost in blood and dollars,” he wrote in The Huffington Post.
Assange also told GMA that he had no contact with Pfc. Bradley Manning prior to him allegedly dumping 250,000 US State Department memos that WikiLeaks began publishing late last month.
“I had never heard of the name Bradley Manning before it was published in the press,” he said. “WikiLeaks' technology [was] designed from the very beginning to make sure that we never know the identities or names of people submitting us material. That is in the end the only way that sources can be guaranteed that they remain anonymous as far as we are concerned.”
He went on to say that “there is nothing specific that we do that encourages any sort of specific documents submitted to us.”
If true, the claims could thwart US prosecutors as. according to The New York Times they look for evidence that Assange encouraged or helped Manning to extract the classified diplomatic cables. That might open the door to Assange being tried as a conspirator in the leak, rather than a passive recipient who only published the documents.
According to the NYT, Manning “sometimes uploaded information directly to Mr. Assange, whom he had initially sought out online.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Fritz
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #33 on: 2011-01-01 18:10:52 » |
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Fritz
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #34 on: 2011-01-02 13:10:37 » |
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Nice to see some folk understand; seems the further you get from Ottawa, the more sensible Canadians get.
Cheers
Fritz
Wikileaks and Canadian targets
Source: Prince Albert Daily Herald
Author: Herald Staff
Date: 2010.12.09
The Prince Albert Daily Herald - Opinion
Of all the absurd things said regarding the release of diplomatic cables by the website WikiLeaks.org, none is more absurd than what's been said about potential terrorist targets in Canada.
A cable listed Canadian sites that are important to the security of the United States, which include the James Bay Power Project, Ontario nuclear plants, and the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor.
One person quoted in a national media report, who is referred to as a national security and emergency preparedness expert, said it is useful information to those who wish to do harm and it was careless of WikiLeaks to release it.
He might have been protecting a possible source of funding — government contracts — by saying that, but it was still absurd.
If it was said in earnest, then it grossly underestimates the intelligence of the average terrorist and helps explain why "experts" were blind to the terror attacks of 9-11.
All a terrorist had to do to learn what targets are strategic to a given country was watch American military officers present the video of their bombing campaigns in the Gulf War. Bridges, power plants and other civil infrastructure were blown to bits on CNN along with military targets.
Most of the targets in Canada were also the subject of media coverage after 9-11 because our country was so affected by the closure or tightening of border crossings. And since Canada is an open country, all a terrorist has to do to find such targets is type the key words into Google or any other Internet search engine.
Imagine that Prince Albert had strategic importance to the United States (perhaps it does, due to the many trucks passing through with loads of yellowcake). Anyone reading this paper or searching our website will know the vital targets. Anyone who needs a diplomatic cable released on WikiLeaks to figure them out is so lacking in brain power that he will blow himself up trying to make a bomb long before he gets to the target.
If security experts want to talk about careless releases, they should stick to things like Agent Orange, depleted uranium or U.S.-cultured anthrax.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Blunderov
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #35 on: 2011-01-24 14:21:30 » |
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If Chilcot is our finest inquisitor, thank heavens for WikiLeaks
Tony Blair's evasions at the Chilcot inquiry continue to be an insult to the British public
Sunday 23 January 20
A couple of weeks ago, the Canadian television presenter Richard Gizbert asked a panel at the Frontline Club in London what effect WikiLeaks' disclosure of American cables might have had during the run-up to the Iraq war. Would the kind of revelations we saw last year have made it impossible for Tony Blair and George Bush to invade Iraq on the basis of claims about weapons of mass destruction?
Obviously, publication would have made deceit and obfuscation vastly more difficult, because the more the public is made aware of what governments know and don't know, the more difficult it is for politicians to follow messianic crusades of their own. That is one of the crucial arguments in favour of publishing such material. Contrast the clear shafts of light that spread from publication of the cables with the interminable ramblings of John Chilcot's committee of pensionable British worthies and you find yourself regretting that the manoeuvrings of Blair and Bush were not exposed to similar scrutiny in 2002 and 2003. Is it any wonder that the internet generation largely supports the dumping of raw information by whistleblowers on the web when they see figures from the 20th-century British establishment like Chilcot forlornly apply to make public two letters from Blair to Bush, only to be refused on the grounds that prime ministers and presidents have a right to keep their correspondence private?*
The request was passed by the cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell to Tony Blair, who naturally declined to give his consent, the same reaction no doubt as Richard Nixon would have given if he had been asked, rather than forced, to allow the Watergate tapes to be played in public. But the moral possession of these letters does not lie with Blair, the state or even the historians of the future, but to the British people of today – the public who paid for his Iraq adventure in money and lives. The confidences between statesmen are as nothing compared with the public's right to know what went on in the lead-up to war.
When Blair won the battle of the letters, he was halfway home and that was before he even set foot in the inquiry last week. Plenty was revealed, but he never looked discomfited during his appearance and any admission of failure only served the self-portrait of an agonised leader who was merely trying to do right by his country. He has an impressive armoury of tricks designed to draw sympathy from his audience or at least to stall his interrogators – the dramatic hesitation as he recalls those difficult months, the empty concessions to the views of opponents, the frequent use of "in respect of", "look" and "I have to say", all of which serve to evoke a reasonableness which is wholly bogus.
When he was being ever-so-gently pressed on the question of why the attorney general Lord Goldsmith was not involved in discussions in the months between October 2002 and January 2003, he came out with a contorted explanation about keeping the Americans in ignorance of the doubt of his cabinet and the government's chief legal officer. "I had to hold that line – very uncomfortably by the way," he said with a familiar dash of self pity. It is clear there was never any question in his mind that he wanted to take the country to war; what he in fact admitted in this exchange was the subtlety – some would say cunning – with which he manipulated the public and political discourses towards that end. When asked why he had ignored Goldsmith's unambiguous advice that UN resolution 1441 was not enough to go to war in a speech to the House of Commons, he made the truly baffling distinction between a political and a legal speech, as though the first somehow gave him licence to say anything he wanted, whereas a legally informed statement would be more constrained.
I have no proof, but suspect that Blair was not conscious of the difference at the time. He can be remarkably hazy about the law and once stated in these pages that the Human Rights Act does allow the courts to strike down the act of our "sovereign parliament", which it most certainly does not.
His passing admissions underline this intellectual laxity, though you would not know it from the reaction of the five members of the inquiry. As an aside, Blair revealed that only 14 of 28 meetings with key figures to discuss the possibility of war were actually minuted; no record exists of who was there or what was said at half of these meetings.
Chilcot's purpose is to write a report, not create a courtroom drama for television. The questioning is respectful, sometimes over-elaborate but rarely forensic, which is a pity because on these issues the public does need to see political leaders visibly held to account, even if that means impolitely forcing them to answer difficult questions.
According to a US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks in December, the British government promised to protect American interests during the inquiry, which may account for the suppression of the Bush correspondence. One cannot help feeling that the entire process is far too gentlemanly and that Blair will now return unscathed to his life as a quasi-financial, quasi-political, quasi-religious entrepreneur, not unlike the character described in Robert Harris's novel The Ghost.
A report will eventually be extruded by the Chilcot committee, by which time most people will have long since given up caring about Iraq. It will no doubt make sensible mandarin points about the law, proper procedures and good government, but as with the other inquiries into Iraq, the British public has been deprived of proper satisfaction. We don't need a show trial, just a sense that penitence of a genuine sort or an admission of guilt has been wrung out of some of the Chilcot's witnesses, especially Tony Blair.
But maybe this is not our way. There are already important lessons to be learned about our recent history and the dictatorial way Blair ran the government at the height of his power – how easily checks on him were bypassed, opposition thwarted, intelligence skewed, lawyers and obstructive colleagues sidelined, all in the mortifying attempt to earn the favour of the US and pursue a policy of "liberal intervention" that was, by the way, in part developed by Chilcot committee member Sir Lawrence Freedman.
The thing is that we don't have to wait for the report to understand what happened; it has been plain for the last six or seven years. But imagine how things would be if we had known then what we know now. Real-time disclosure makes deception very hard
This article appeared on p30 of the Main section section of the Observer on Sunday 23 January 2011. It was published on guardian.co.uk at 00.07 GMT on Sunday 23 January 2011.
Inserted from <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/23/tony-blair-chilcot-inquiry-wikileaks>
*[Blunderov] As good as an admission of guilt. In the world that the military-industrial-media complex would have us imagine we inhabit, evidence or potential evidence of a crime is never 'confidential'. Aparrently this particular case is the exception that proves the rule. Waging agressive war is the crime of crimes. It is a reasonable inference that the disputed correspondence would prove this.
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Fritz
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #36 on: 2011-02-14 18:14:09 » |
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So is this the finger "The Man" is waving at the wired world ?
Cheers
Fritz
PS: BGP
Boffins devise 'cyberweapon' to take down internet or Love BGP will tear us apart
Source: The Register
Author: Dan Goodin
Date: 2011.02.14
University Boffins say they've devised a way to take down the internet by turning core parts of its routing protocol against itself.
The attack, which was presented last week at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego, California, attacks functionality in the BGP, or Border Gateway Protocol. The technology is designed to ensure that links between internet service providers and other large network operators never go down, by routing around paths that are no longer valid. Attackers would be required to have a botnet of about 250,000 infected machines to map major routes between ASes, or autonomous systems.
New Scientist, which describes the attack developed by University of Minnesota professor Max Schuchard here, goes on to say:
An attacker deploying the Schuchard cyberweapon would send traffic between computers in their botnet to build a map of the paths between them. Then they would identify a link common to many different paths and launch a ZMW attack to bring it down. Neighbouring routers would respond by sending out BGP updates to reroute traffic elsewhere. A short time later, the two sundered routers would reconnect and send out their own BGP updates, upon which attack traffic would start flowing in again, causing them to disconnect once more. This cycle would repeat, with the single breaking and reforming link sending out waves of BGP updates to every router on the internet. Eventually each router in the world would be receiving more updates than it could handle – after 20 minutes of attacking, a queue requiring 100 minutes of processing would have built up.
Schuchard went on to tell the publication it would take days for the collective internet to recover and fixes would only come about “by network operators actually talking to each other.” For the fix to work “each autonomous system would have to be taken down and rebooted to clear the BGP backlog.”
BGP was designed to keep email and other data moving over the internet even when paths between two or more stops are no longer working. Rather than scuttle the transmission, packets are simply rerouted on-the-fly over another route.
The attack, laid out in a paper titled Losing control of the internet: using the data plane to attack the control plane, is the latest to exploit weaknesses in BGP. In August 2008, researchers at the Defcon hacker conference outlined a technique for hijacking huge chunks of the internet that capitalized on the implicit trust placed in BGP routers.
That trust has also been exploited to divert internet communications – some of it from the US military – though China.
The theoretical assault described by Schuchard and his colleagues is essentially a denial-of-service attack that targets the internet's control plane. The researchers estimate with a 250,000-node botnet, “the median load on nearly half of the core routers increased by a factor of 20 or more.” ®
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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MoEnzyme
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infidel lab animal
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #37 on: 2011-03-11 21:08:20 » |
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Stripped naked every night, Bradley Manning tells of prison ordeal
US soldier held on suspicion of leaking state secrets speaks out for first time about experience
Ed Pilkington in New York
The Guardian, Friday 11 March 2011
'Stripping me of all of my clothing is without justification'
Bradley Manning believes he was placed on suicide watch in retribution for a protest over his treatment held outside the prison. Photograph: AP
Bradley Manning, the US soldier being held in solitary confinement on suspicion of having released state secrets to WikiLeaks, has spoken out for the first time about what he claims is his punitive and unlawful treatment in military prison.
In an 11-page legal letter released by his lawyer, David Coombs, Manning sets out in his own words how he has been "left to languish under the unduly harsh conditions of max [security] custody" ever since he was brought from Kuwait to the military brig of Quantico marine base in Virginia in July last year. He describes how he was put on suicide watch in January, how he is currently being stripped naked every night, and how he is in general terms being subjected to what he calls "unlawful pre-trial punishment".
It is the first time Manning has spoken publicly about his treatment, having previously only been heard through the intermediaries of his lawyer and a friend. Details that have emerged up to now have inspired the UN to launch an inquiry into whether the conditions amount to torture, and have led to protests to the US government from Amnesty International.
The most graphic passage of the letter is Manning's description of how he was placed on suicide watch for three days from 18 January. "I was stripped of all clothing with the exception of my underwear. My prescription eyeglasses were taken away from me and I was forced to sit in essential blindness."
Manning writes that he believes the suicide watch was imposed not because he was a danger to himself but as retribution for a protest about his treatment held outside Quantico the day before. Immediately before the suicide watch started, he said guards verbally harassed him, taunting him with conflicting orders.
When he was told he was being put on suicide watch, he writes, "I became upset. Out of frustration, I clenched my hair with my fingers and yelled: 'Why are you doing this to me? Why am I being punished? I have done nothing wrong.'"
He also describes the experience of being stripped naked at night and made to stand for parade in the nude, a condition that continues to this day. "The guard told me to stand at parade rest, with my hands behind my back and my legs spaced shoulder-width apart. I stood at parade rest for about three minutes … The [brig supervisor] and the other guards walked past my cell. He looked at me, paused for a moment, then continued to the next cell. I was incredibly embarrassed at having all these people stare at me naked."
Manning has been charged with multiple counts relating to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret US government cables, videos and warlogs from Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. The charges include "aiding the enemy", which can carry the death penalty.
The legal letter was addressed to the US military authorities and was drawn up in response to their recent decision to keep Manning on a restriction order called Prevention of Injury (PoI). It means he is kept in his cell alone for 23 hours a day and checked every five minutes by guards including, if necessary, through the night.
The letter contains excerpts from the observation records kept in the brig which consistently report that Manning is "respectful, courteous and well spoken" and "does not have any suicidal feelings at this time".
Sixteen separate entries made from 27 August until the records stop on 28 January show that Manning was evaluated by prison psychiatrists who found he was not a danger to himself and should be removed from the PoI order.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/11/stripped-naked-bradley-manning-prison
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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Fritz
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #38 on: 2011-05-02 16:30:07 » |
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Julian is playing the game; ya gots to be impressed with his staying power.
Cheers
Fritz
Julian Assange: Facebook Is 'Appalling Spy Machine'
Source: Huffington Post
Author: Thomas Houston
Date: 2011.05.02
In an interview with Russia Today (RT), Julian Assange called Facebook the "most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented."
He told RT's Laura Emmett,
Here we have the world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to U.S. intelligence.
It's not new ground for the Wikileaks founder. In March, Assange told Cambridge University students that the Internet is "the greatest spying machine the world has ever seen."
During the Russia Today interview, Assange explained that Facebook, Google and Yahoo all provide automated interfaces for the U.S. intelligence (starts around 2:00 in the video below). "When they add their friends to Facebook," Assange said, "they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies."
Unlike The Onion's prescient fake news piece that poked fun at Facebook's success as a CIA program earlier this year, Assange says that these Web sites aren't being run by the government. Instead, the intelligence community is able to "bring to bear legal and political pressure to them."
"Facbook the most appauling spy machine ever invented, ... with built in interface for US intelligence."
Video at RT
WikiLeaks revelations only tip of iceberg – Assange
permalink email story to a friend print version
Published: 02 May, 2011, 08:50
Edited: 02 May, 2011, 12:28
http://rt.com/news/wikileaks-revelations-assange-interview/
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Fritz
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #39 on: 2011-05-12 21:54:43 » |
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Sure like to hear Assange's side of this story.
Cheers
Fritz
WikiLeaks Threatens Its Own Leakers With $20 Million Penalty
Source: Wired
Author: Kevin Poulsen
Date: 2011.05.11
 Julian Assange. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange now makes his associates sign a draconian nondisclosure agreement that, among other things, asserts that the organization’s huge trove of leaked material is “solely the property of WikiLeaks,” according to a report Wednesday.
“You accept and agree that the information disclosed, or to be disclosed to you pursuant to this agreement is, by its nature, valuable proprietary commercial information,” the agreement reads, “the misuse or unauthorized disclosure of which would be likely to cause us considerable damage.”
The confidentiality agreement (.pdf), revealed by the New Statesman, imposes a penalty of 12 million British pounds– nearly $20 million — on anyone responsible for a significant leak of the organization’s unpublished material. The figure is based on a “typical open-market valuation” of WikiLeaks’ collection, the agreement claims.
Interestingly, the agreement warns that any breach is likely to cause WikiLeaks to lose the “opportunity to sell the information to other news broadcasters and publishers.”
WikiLeaks is not known to have sold any of its leaked material, though Assange has discussed the possibility in the past. The organization announced in 2008 that it was auctioning off early access to thousands of e-mails belonging to a top aide to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, but the auction ultimately fell apart.
Also protected by the agreement is “the fact and content of this agreement and all newsworthy information relating to the workings of WikiLeaks.”
The New Statesman’s copy is unsigned, so whoever leaked it might be safe from legal action by WikiLeaks.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Fritz
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Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #40 on: 2011-06-20 19:10:35 » |
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I still keep looking over my shoulder and knowing that governments around the world what to lock down and control the Internet and the information on; doesn't this play into that goal ?
Cheers
Fritz
LulzSec, Anonymous announce hacking campaign
Source: CNET
Author: Elinor Mills
Date: 2011.06.20
 
Hacker groups Anonymous and LulzSec said today they are uniting in a campaign aimed at banks, government agencies, and other high-profile targets, and they are encouraging others to steal and leak classified information.
The "AntiSec" campaign appeared to have its first target earlier today--the Web site of Serious Organized Crime Agency in the United Kingdom was down. "Tango down - http://t.co/JhcjgO9 - in the name of #AntiSec," the group tweeted after releasing a statement announcing the campaign. The site was down this morning but back up at midday.
"Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation," Lulzsec said in a statement. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments. If they try to censor our progress, we will obliterate the censor with cannonfire anointed with lizard blood."
"Oldschool Internet is back. Anarchy is now - spread "AntiSec" whenever and wherever you can. Is saying 'hackers unite' too cheesy?  " LulzSec tweeted, adding in a follow-up tweet that "DDoS is of course our least powerful and most abundant ammunition. Government hacking is taking place right now behind the scenes."
LulzSec recently targeted the CIA, the U.S. Senate, FBI partner Infragard, and Sony sites. The group, which aims to embarrass victims for kicks, is believed to be an offshoot of Anonymous but sometimes pretends to be at odds with Anonymous as a prank.
Anonymous is a "hacktivist" group that tends to target organizations for political reasons and in support of freedom of speech. For instance, it has targeted the governments of Iran, Egypt, and Turkey. It has also targeted Sony in retaliation for the firm's legal action against PlayStation 3 hackers, and PayPal, Visa and MasterCard after those sites dropped services that enabled whistleblower WikiLeaks to receive online contributions.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20072675-245/lulzsec-anonymous-announce-hacking-campaign/#ixzz1PrNE08MC
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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