I have so far kept silent on the whole WikiLeaks debacle which has quickly gone from a minor annoyance for the world’s governments to a full scale international incident. The latest rounds of leaks have included stuff like the US government spying on the UN and our allies, confidential communication about State Department concerns, and even a list of 300 overseas sites that are considered critical to US national security (one of which belongs to my employer’s parent company). This has angered many governments who are now wanting to arrest Julian Assange, the now infamous founder of WikiLeaks. I have multiple issues with this:
1. Classified government records are classified for a reason. To publish it is in bad taste. Shame on you, Julian Assange.
2. Freedom of the press should be updated to include net neutrality. Traditional news media outlets have been reporting a lot of stuff that WikiLeaks has released, but it doesn’t seem that anybody is angry with the New York Times. How is WikiLeaks.org different than nytimes.com? Shame on you, US government.
3. Assange has not been spying on the US government, people who obviously shouldn’t have the appropriate security clearance have been leaking out this information. The assholes in the government are going after the wrong person. The government is acting like a humiliated child on the playground who is lashing out at the wrong target out of convenience. Grow up and plug your goddamn leaks!
4. Annyonamous’s DDoS attacks against Visa, MasterCard,PayPal, Amazon, and the Swedish government are also wrong. Businesses have a right to do business with whom they choose and to refuse service to whom they serve. The Swedish government also has a duty to investigate the allegations raised by its citizens. So back off.
Assange has not done anything that would merit arrest with regards to WikiLeaks, and he did just turn himself in for the suspicious Sweedish rape charge (the timing makes me skeptical). Governments need to take responsibility for their actions and take better measures to secure classified information.
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Just throwing things out there…
1) Classified documents exposing the corruption of a government should be unclassified for the sake of the people who the government is to represent. I support this exposure.
2) Media neutrality is a joke under the current circumstances. So long as the media within this nation holds sway on the opinions of the people, any attempts to limit the internal press will be met with resistance from the press. If you turn the people on it's government over freedom of press for the in-group, people will realize that the former out-group (wikileaks) is no different. Keeping a scapegoat retains control of those currently in control of both government and media.
3) The US government should attempt to plug its leaks for the sake of the people, but the people should always be ready to leak information when appropriate. The government consists of the people, and if the government becomes corrupt then the people should cease to support their government. I see this as exactly what has happened.
4) As someone who helped in the DDoS and hangs around the culture, I'd say most people have a misunderstanding of what was being attempted. The botnet known as "The Brain" is the majority of the attack; I've heard reports numbering 3,000 to 30,000 compromised systems controlled by the leaders of anonops. Simultaneously, 'soldiers' in anonops combined with ad-hoc users who jump in through social networking (such as myself) compose in around 2100. In reality, an onslaught could be carried out for far longer than one afternoon with no more than the zombie systems in The Brain. The temporary block of access is to show that we object to what is happening, and we have the means to do something about it. Now, when PayPal withholds the remaining balance of an account they've over-stepped their line. Refusing service because someone is controversial is not claiming neutrality; it's claiming opposition to controversy. I support the current controversy existing, so I have little issue protesting those who do not.
As for the rape accusations, it's not rape that he's charged with. The charge is 'sex by surprise' Basically it's unprotected sex with a woman who has requested a condom. In this case the claim is that the condom broke, which seems unverifiable outside of anecdote. One of these women has previous ties to the CIA, so I find her testimony to be rather suspect. Assange has also enjoyed threats from the German SS, and he's managed to severely piss off Swiss bank Julius Baer. I don't expect any sort of neutral testimony in his trial, and I hope he fights extradition for years.
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In response to each counter point:
1. You might be right on some subjects, but definitely not all. Some secrets need to be kept for the security of the United States, others need to be kept because there are things the government needs to do on behalf of the people that they people don't want to know about (such as black ops). The problem lies in who should decide what the people need to know?
2. We're in agreement here.
3. While I agree for the most part, I again ask, who decides? It seems like this is a case of one high level defense department official and one high level state department official deciding they know best.
4. Since I was unaware of PayPal withholding funds and do not have the time to research it I will withhold judgment on the attacks against that one company. With regards to the attacks against Visa, MasterCard, and Amazon this would be like people chaining themselves to the doors of a Walmart to protest one of their policies or decisions. If somebody did that they should go to jail. Those involved in these attacks are violating federal law and putting themselves at legal risk.
The most recent article I had read about the Swedish charges had labeled it as rape, I had originally used the term sexual assault. Regardless of what we label them, we are in agreement that these charges seem quite suspect.