Wikileaks to release more info
 

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/25/wik...ex.html?hpt=T2

WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website that infuriated the Pentagon when it published thousands of classified military reports, said it will release a fresh set of documents Wednesday.

The group posted on its Twitter page Tuesday: "WikiLeaks to release CIA paper tomorrow." It did not specify a time.

The website set off a firestorm recently when it posted some 76,000 U.S. documents related to the war in Afghanistan. The group has said it has another 15,000 documents, which it plans to release soon.

It was not immediately clear whether the Twitter post on Tuesday is related to the batch of documents that WikiLeaks has called the "Afghan War Diary."

>snip<

God bless 'em.

One can only hope that this sort of thing makes military commanders think twice about some of the things they do in the name of this country; not to mention some of the bull**** things we send our young men and women into harm's way for.

How did he get all of these documents to begin with? The article never explains that.

Leaked by a soldier.

Were the documents "Leaked" or stolen? Whatever, I'll read up on it up later.

Am I the only person who thinks these documents are only being published to further anti-American sentiments regarding the war?

I'm positive you are not alone in your psychotic paranoia. :p

You're not familiar with wikileaks at all, are you?

I'm not, and I don't think anyone will be answering to anything that they leak. OMG the government is doing shady things in wartime? Say it ain't so! ;)

Maybe I'm just being pessimistic but I don't see anything good coming from this other than encouraging more insurgency against the troops there. No soldier or officer is going to be held accountable for any "exposed" atrocity and we will just end up in Afghanistan even longer now.

Wikileaks exposes information for the sake of exposing it. It's not really about expected results (like punishment for atrocities or changing sentiment). They post pretty much everything they get their hands on. The guy who is responsible for the leaks is in the military judicial ... process... right now.

Ha! I've never been referred to as being psychotic or paranoid in my life. Good thing you are here to diagnose me.

BTW, Would the guy who leaked the Afghan War Diaries be considered paranoid with this statement he made?

"Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed."

He's fucked but I can't say I feel bad for him. He was in the intel community, he knew the consequences better than anybody else. I just hope he feels it was worth it.

if i recall, he was a hacker. not in the intel community.

i'm not a fan of this. war crimes happen. it's war. not to justify, but it's reality, and it's on both sides. this country does plenty of illegal shit to protect it's citizens and further it's national interests. not unlike every other country in the world.

al gore said it best:

"That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action."

Hopefully, this sort of thing will change our government's behavior. Maybe they'll not do things and think those things will stay secret forever if they are just classified a certain way. Doubtful, of course.

Only teasing (but, I do agree with the quote).

Yep - the sort of Nicholson-movie-quote "BAD GUYS DO BAD THINGS TO PROTECT GOOD PEOPLE" trope is tired and outdated in a general sense, and certainly shouldn't be carried out on the foot-soldier level regardless of location.

I can't see a downside to better transparency and accountability for military actions. War is hell, but it shouldn't breed heathenism.

The downside comes if anything released places our troops (or civilians) at greater risk than they already face. Perhaps I don't always trust government or military officials to draw that line in the right place, but I probably trust some activists like Julian Assange operating on their own agenda even less.

From what I "researched" online about Wikileaks online most of their leaks come from hackers but the Afghan war documents came from a Army Intel soldier.

Right - but that's the downside more to the leaking than to a general increase in transparency and accountability, isn't it?

It feels like changes to that end as a result of this activism would lead to a better armed forces, and less power for activists/leaks of this sort. Win/win.

^^^ True. I was reading more into what you said than what you actually said.

there are some things that the general public shouldn't be privy to.

Of course. In fact, I'd say there are large swaths of information that could be considered "mission-critical" - I'm not challenging the concept of classified information.

However, vastly more information is kept confidential than the amount that needs to be, and the guys making the decision have a self-interest in keeping literally everything quiet.

There are many, many things the general public should be privy to.

Exactly what is Assange's agenda? He leaks anything he's given. This is just by far one of his more high profile leaks.

If nothing else, this whole episode tells us what B.S. government secrecy is. With much of the stuff being released, there's no real reason why any of it should be secret.

With the embassy leaks (which I think are a bigger deal), I think those can be very embarrassing. But maybe they should be.

I've heard nothing to really substantiate that any of these leaks will place our soldiers in harm's way, so I'm assuming that as usual, the military and their mouthpieces are full of s***. Fool me once and such.

That is his agenda as far as I can tell: The public should have access to everything.

Just because you haven't heard anything to substantiate it means it not so?

I won't say I've heard anything specific either that these leaks will place troops in greater risk, and maybe they won't.

But I do see the potential with leaks of this kind, and I see no reason to think that Jullan Assange or anyone connected with Wikileaks will be a better judge of that risk than the military is.

Well, the Wikileaks website claims their mission is to expose governmental and coporate corruption. Does that qualify as an agenda? I don't believe that the man has a personal vendetta against anyone or any Corp or gov entity, but that doesn't mean a hacker or a submiter of info doesn't. Look at who hacked into Palins email account and submitted it to Wikileaks and tell me there wasn't any political motives involved.

When the first documents came out, it was reported on the news (and I didn't read all the thousands of pages leaked because I just don't want to support that site in any way, shape or form) that they did include names of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan who were helping us which does put them in grave danger.

^^^ to what Dee said, that was my biggest complaint with it.

Then ultimately, this is a good thing. Government without the threat that its actions will be exposed in a very public way is bound to misbehave. WikiLeaks literally means that any corrupt behavior by anyone high profile enough cannot be guaranteed to occur in private. There's always the specter of a leak which is discussed ad nauseum on CNN.

I'm fine with that. I don't care about the agenda of the individual submitting the data. I like that the threat exists whether you are a Swiss banking exec or a military officer authorizing international-law-violating black ops in Afghanistan.

I really think this is dumb.

i think the concept that "strained diplomatic relationships" don't affect national security is dumb.

I find the latest Wikileaks extremely amusing. I'm not sure why everyone's talking about how bad this makes the U.S. look. To me, all the countries who publicly bitch about our actions around the world and then privately turn to us to gossip about their supposed allies come off looking worse. Particularly Saudi Arabia! (We don't like Iran. We would secretly be delighted if you, U.S., were to bomb them off the face of the Earth. But of course we would never say that, because we like for them to believe that we're in this Jihad with them."). Same goes for Egypt, which apparently has been making nice with Israel!

Wikileaks to me just demonstrates how full of crap EVERYONE is, not just the U.S. They're all just upset that we spilled their gossip. Maybe if they all were just straight with each other instead of whining to the U.S. about it, we could all be a little more productive in the world.

The Netherlands is in uproar, because according to the leaked files, the U.S. is storing Nuclear Weapons here. And there's is a very anti- nuclear weapons stance here.
People are going to get fired over this.

The U.S. has nukes all over the world. I haven't looked it up, but I'm guessing Russia does, too. And I'm sure the countries who house them know about it and are getting something for it.

ETA: I didn't realize NATO encourages "nuclear sharing." Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

Soooooo, yeah, this has been public knowledge for a while.

I don't. I have a problem with a person (Assenge) or an organization (Wikileaks and the news organizations that have worked with it) that elects itself as the arbiter, without any check, of what classified documents should be made public.

But hey, at least Wikileaks is busy enough with all this that maybe it's not posting certain other esoteric/secret information anymore.

I agree. The hypocritical part is that Assenge is conveniently unable to be located.

If only occupying their time was so easy. They are probably excellent multitaskers.

Yeah, but they're posting so many government documents, I'm hoping they decide they don't have space for documents related to . . . say . . . non-political organizations for college students and alumni.

I agree and its neither neat, cool or cute in my eyes. Doesn't matter what other countries say behind closed doors, its what they do in public that matters. I mean like the whole China wouldn't mind if Korea was unified under the South.

Just give the crazy man trying to get a nuclear program together more reason to destabilize the region.

Let me clarify, I do not think it's OK that someone leaked/hacked this confidential information. I just meant I think some of the contents are amusing, and that in regards to some of the info, it seems counterproductive to me that it was ever kept secret instead of the associated parties discussing their feelings publicly.

Hey MC, do you know if Wikileaks can be prosecuted for releasing classified data?

Assange just spent a ton of time with the "we're charging you with rape, no we're not, well maybe we are, no nevermind" thing. Although last news states that he is now wanted by Interpol for the Swedish rape charges. Although he's supposedly in London. I'm not sure about these charges, it's entirely possible that the accusers were serious, they recanted for fear of publicity or the prosecutors waffled, but the way it's been handled is very strange.
If they had them, they'd probably post them. The fact that they don't go looking for them is really the only reason they're not all up there.

Without being a lawyer, the fact that the creator of the site and the site's servers are not in the US would make a huge difference.