Monday, December 6, 2010

So What's So Wrong With Wikileaking All Over The Place?

So What's So Wrong With Wikileaking All Over The Place?

Over the weekend WikiLeaks must have really stepped on some serious toes. They got a seriously large attack on their server carried out, forcing their host to drop them. I guess they got a lot of pressure from the U.S. folks attempting to block the release of more documents. It's a good thing that the Swiss host isn't caving on dropping them.

But the BBC said Paypal caved and kicked Wikileaks out for policy violations, pretty much the same excuse that Amazon used for dropping them. Whatever it is that are in these unreleased cables must really be something dire.

Yup, the pretty obvious next WikiLeak will be pretty big.. No wait, it'll be the blood pouring out of the crater left in his head by a CIA bullet.

I have to ask, what's the big deal with transparency? I mean, Obama promised us unprecedented transparency as part of that Change we could believe in. I mean, just listen to his own words...



I guess he just didn't expect it to happen like this.

It leads one to wonder if it's only a matter of time before Julian is hauled off to jail. Good thing he's taking matters to make sure that even if he's dead or arrested, Wikileaks still goes on. You see, Julian has been circulating encrypted cache of uncensored documents suspected of including files on BP and Guantanamo Bay.
An encrypted cache of uncensored documents that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has circulated across the Internet may ensure that a huge array of secrets will be revealed even if the website is shut down or Assange is arrested.

Tens of thousands of supporters have downloaded the "insurance" file, which has been available since July, and it includes files on BP and Guantanamo Bay, The Sunday Times reported.
So at least he has some heads up on where he's potentially going if our law makers have any say in it. Oh yeah, they do.



It's pretty clear that our senators are just laying the public relation groundwork for revising the espionage act so that they can haul Julian's ass to Gitmo and charge him to death for telling the truth. This could be a really slippery slope that leads us to a massive free speech restriction. If you think the TSA stuff is insane, you really don't want to see what's around the corner. I mean, just look at this news from our law makers.
Top US Senator open to tighter leak controls

(AFP) – 23 hours ago

WASHINGTON — US Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein said Friday she was open to modifying a US law aimed at punishing spies to make it easier to target WikiLeaks and its founder.

"I would have no problem with this. If we need to do it, we should do it," she said when asked about a push by four other senators to amend the Espionage Act to make it a crime to publish the names of informants serving US forces.

Feinstein, a Democrat from California, told reporters she planned to introduce legislation herself to ensure that the law covers contractors who have played a vast role in the US war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I know we have to extend this for contractors, and we have a draft that does it," added Feinstein, who called in a letter released Thursday for the prosecution of Julian Assange, the self-described whistleblowing site's founder.

Feinstein said her office was preparing an article for publication recalling past comments by Assange that suggest he intended the release of secret war and diplomatic documents as "a clear strike at the government."
This whole WikiLeaks stuff is going to be comedy when next year's WikiLeaks publishes the cables between Washington and London ordering the UK to ship Assange out to Cuba.

But even with all that it's pretty clear that WikiLeaks will never die. I mean, seriously, it will never die.



But while it can never die, talking about it, like I'm doing in this very blog post, can be pretty much cancer for any potential career I had, or you had in working for the government.
Talking about WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger your job prospects, a State Department official warned students at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs this week.

An email from SIPA's Office of Career Services went out Tuesday afternoon with a caution from the official, an alumnus of the school. Students who will be applying for jobs in the federal government could jeopardize their prospects by posting links to WikiLeaks online, or even by discussing the leaked documents on social networking sites, the official was quoted as saying.

"[The alumnus] recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter," the Office of Career Services advised students. "Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.
Heaven forbid I'll never be able to obtain a government job.
Yes, heaven forbid that you'll ever want to obtain a government job, what with their nice retirement plans and proper pensions. So if you're reading this and you want to keep your security clearance, perhaps you better hit back on your browser and delete your cookies.

It's good to know that our government doesn't want anyone in the central intelligence agency that has enough intelligence to read secret documents. Wait, no. That makes no sense.

But hey, at least they're not considered a terrorist group.... oh wait.. Congress is on that right now
"The incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), asked the Obama administration today to "determine whether WikiLeaks could be designated a foreign terrorist organization...I think if we're going to live in this--in this world--in this technological world where information can be disseminated so quickly, we have to be serious and take firm, strong action against those who are putting American lives at risk. Because this will put people's lives at risk."

The calls for an all-out campaign against WikiLeaks are growing more shrill. Tony Shaffer of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, told Fox News that he would like to see military action against Assange: "I would look at this very much as a military issue. With potentially military action against him and his organization."

Well now, this shit is just stupid. It can be all boiled down into "We don't want people talking about it when we fuck up and we will re-write the laws to legally kill anyone who mentions it." So your freedom of speech is always a subject of being held against you if it does not favor the government. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by any of this, but somehow I still am.

Sarah Palin said Julian should be hunted down like Osama Bin Laden.. So I guess that means he'll be safe and uncaptured for at least a decade. I mean, yeah. You can go out and hunt him with every made up law and skewed definition of terrorism if you want, but you know what happens when you put an animal in the corner.. They can often just use everything they have to fight back...
WikiLeaks founder threatens to release entire cache of unfiltered files

At the centre of a tightening web of death threats, sex-crime accusations and high-level demands for a treason trial, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threatened to unleash a “thermonuclear device” of completely unexpurgated government files if he is forced to appear before authorities.

Mr. Assange, the 39-year-old Australian Internet activist whose online document-leaking service has embarrassed the United States and other countries by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic and military documents, has referred to the huge, unfiltered document as his “insurance policy.”

The 1.3-gigabyte file, distributed through file-sharing services this summer and protected with an unbreakable 256-bit encryption key, contains full versions of all the U.S. documents received by WikiLeaks to date – including those that have been withheld from publication or have had names and details removed in order to protect the lives of spies, sources and soldiers.

Mr. Assange’s lawyer Mark Stephens warned that if Mr. Assange were to be brought to trial on rape accusations he faces in Sweden, or for treason charges that have been suggested by U.S. politicians, he would release the encryption key. The tens of thousands of people who have downloaded the file would instantly have access to the names, addresses and details contained in the file.

I seriously wonder why the US literally did everything wrong with their reaction to this situation. This would have caused some waves on its own, but the public reaction to it is really driving its visibility. It's like the record companies and the move to sue the kids downloading songs.

Either way, I suppose I should be happy that this is going down and it'll probably start World War III, thus killing all of humanity in a puff of nuclear smoke.

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