Originally posted by Arbiter
Well, they certainly have a degree of responsibility for the results, but I don't know if I'd call it wrong doing.
If another government obtained the documents by espionage and did with them whatever they though was in their interest, including publishing them generally if they thought it was to the advantage, then I'd say they outmaneuvered us fair and square.
A private organization like WikiLeaks is arguably different because they don't owe the same kind of duty to advance a set of separate and potentially conflicting interests, but I'm not convinced they have any obligation to respect our interests, either. I'd definitely call their conduct hostile towards us, but I don't know about wrong.
From the point of view of the US it is wrong, as a citizen who elects these people, or the people that assign these people to their jobs we should also be mad at an organization like Wikileaks because its an attack on us as citizens who elect our government.
Its all about points of view, and if you are being harmed by these releases then from your point of view I hope you feel that what they are doing is wrong.
Groundhog Boy
quote:
Originally posted by Arbiter
2. The government should employ negligent security procedures and allow the information to leak out, relying on private organizations in other countries to respect the government's interests out of the goodness of their own hearts, then bitch and whine about it when someone inevitably doesn't.
There is absolutely information within government that is in the citizens' interest to keep secret. But if the government fails to advance the public interest by failing to keep the information secret, they should put their big boy pants on and take full responsibility for their failure instead of crying about how those dastardly foreigners, who had no obligation toward them to begin with, failed to help them do their job of keeping those matters secret.
If your information/goods are stolen by an employee hired to secure that data/goods and leaked to the public via a 3rd party, should you just say ", someone got all of my privacy data, cleaned out my security boxes at the bank, and my bank accounts, my bad...life goes on, i'll put on my big boy pants and take responsibility." no...you'd kill everyone involved for ripping you off.
Hate to quote myself but I made the same observation a couple of pages back.
quote:
Originally posted by igottaknow
...
Last time wikileaks released documents, I was watching politician/talking head who said something to the effect, there's nothing new or relevant revealed but oh it was terrible this got out and has hurt our security and put lives in danger. To which I had to ask how could something be irrelevant and yet be a terrible breach of security?
If you actually know the history of how governments behave its laughable when they fain to be genuinely hurt. Double standards and double speak are their middle name. When they steal information its know as intelligence when someone does the same thing to them its espionage, spying, treason, etc. The whole I'm embarrassed routine. Stop doing or saying things in secret that you think are embarrassing. But who really cares not them, its business as usual. Like criminals they are never sorry for what the did, only sorry they got caught.
Most if not all government treat their public like children who need to be sheltered from the truth.
Arbiter
quote:
Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
If your information/goods are stolen by an employee hired to secure that data/goods and leaked to the public via a 3rd party, should you just say ", someone got all of my privacy data, cleaned out my security boxes at the bank, and my bank accounts, my bad...life goes on, i'll put on my big boy pants and take responsibility."
No, you shouldn't let them do it in the first place. This ain't rocket science.
Failing that, you absolutely should put your big boy pants on and take responsibility, because if you don't accept responsibility for your mistakes, then you're going to keep making them.
Now, if you want to go after the people who took advantage of your stupidity, then by all means, do your worst. I certainly would, but then again I wouldn't be in that position in the first place. In any event, revenge is not a substitute for accepting responsibility and learning from your mistakes. And if your worst consists of sitting around crying and whining about it, then you might as well not bother because that's not going to accomplish anything. If, on the other hand, you're going to take some real action, shutting up and doing it would be the way to go.
Groundhog Boy
quote:
Originally posted by Arbiter
No, you shouldn't let them do it in the first place. This ain't rocket science.
Failing that, you absolutely should put your big boy pants on and take responsibility, because if you don't accept responsibility for your mistakes, then you're going to keep making them.
Now, if you want to go after the people who took advantage of your stupidity, then by all means, do your worst. I certainly would, but then again I wouldn't be in that position in the first place. In any event, revenge is not a substitute for accepting responsibility and learning from your mistakes. And if your worst consists of sitting around crying and whining about it, then you might as well not bother because that's not going to accomplish anything. If, on the other hand, you're going to take some real action, shutting up and doing it would be the way to go.
Oh, so you do agree with what's coming down the pipe
quote:
Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
I'll also mention is that I see this creating vast amounts of damage to future transparency/speed of information. Wikileaks isn't, imo, for transparency. Either that or they're really short-sighted. Do you really think that the US government is going to work in the same manner following this? They're going to try to clamp down security, and in doing so, more things are going to happen over the phone, in person, etc...where NO ONE can repeat things with any legitimacy.
The other aspect that I'll point out, is that this is a good example of how the US reaction to 9/11 & the threat of terrorism ed us. Bin Laden should be happy. Out of fear, we gave access to data to many more internal people than deserved it in order to show the US citizens that we were doing everything possible to combat terrorism. As a result, a like PFC Manning was able to download gigs of data onto a flash drive that he eventually was able to disseminate to Wikileaks. Do you think, even for a second, that he reviewed (or understood all of) what he was passing off? No, he was some moron, upset about his job, and decided to take revenge at an employer, and this was a way to do it. The same thing is probably what happened to the "big bank" exec whose leak is impending.
Arbiter
I'd like to think that the US government will respond to such leaks by improving their human and technological security procedures before something really serious gets leaked, but this government we're talking about so I'm not holding my breath.
yukii
I think Assange is hot :o
infinity HiGH
quote:
Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
OK, so lets release all the documents on Canadian foreign policy decisions and plans for the world to see. Every move you make will be known about by the rest of the world weeks, months or even years.
Also every single thing you do with your allied countries will be public knowledge for the rest of the world. Lets see how many countries are willing to do business with you.
Use your head.
Well nobody really cares on what Canada is doing, lol. This sort of information would be irrelevant to most nations.
And honestly, you're being a little too sensationalist here. 250,000 documents on a number of different topics isn't even remotely close to anything and everything the United States of America is doing, planning. Having said that, maybe if the USA didn't meddle in foreign affairs so much this wouldn't be such a big deal. Seriously, don't act like the US government is the victim here. If anything it's their fault information THIS sensitive (as you seem to believe it is) was leaked in the first place.
Hell...If anything, the US leaked this on purpose.
Magadansky
quote:
Originally posted by infinity HiGH
maybe if the USA didn't meddle in foreign affairs so much this wouldn't be such a big deal. Seriously, don't act like the US government is the victim here. If anything it's their fault information THIS sensitive (as you seem to believe it is) was leaked in the first place.
Hell...If anything, the US leaked this on purpose.
"The internet has already been a source of tremendous progress in China, and it is fabulous. There are so many people in China now online. But countries that RESTIRCT FREE ACCESS TO INFORMATION or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century."
~Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton January 21,2010~
Fast forward now to this month
quote:
Welcome to one of the more bewildering tangents of the WikiLeaks information dump: the clash between the principle of a censorship-free Internet and the government’s need to protect certain information – and the sources of that information.
The federal government reasons that, published or not, the cables released by WikiLeaks are still classified documents. So it is warning employees from the Library of Congress to its far-flung foot soldiers not to access WikiLeaks and the mirror sites it and other information activists are feverishly setting up.
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
-- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
Another international conflict, another horrific taxpayer-funded sex scandal for DynCorp, the private security contractor tasked with training the Afghan police.
While the company is officially based in the DC area, most of its business is managed on a satellite campus at Alliance Airport north of Fort Worth. And if one of the diplomatic cables from the WikiLeaks archive is to be believed, boy howdy, are their doings in Afghanistan shady.
The Afghanistan cable (dated June 24, 2009) discusses a meeting between Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and US assistant ambassador Joseph Mussomeli. Prime among Atmar's concerns was a party partially thrown by DynCorp for Afghan police recruits in Kunduz Province.
Many of DynCorp's employees are ex-Green Berets and veterans of other elite units, and the company was commissioned by the US government to provide training for the Afghani police. According to most reports, over 95 percent of its $2 billion annual revenue comes from US taxpayers.
And in Kunduz province, according to the leaked cable, that money was flowing to drug dealers and pimps. Pimps of children, to be more precise. (The exact type of drug was never specified.)
Since this is Afghanistan, you probably already knew this wasn't a kegger. Instead, this DynCorp soiree was a bacha bazi ("boy-play") party, much like the ones uncovered earlier this year by Frontline.
For those that can't or won't click the link, bacha bazi is a pre-Islamic Afghan tradition that was banned by the Taliban. Bacha boys are eight- to 15-years-old. They put on make-up, tie bells to their feet and slip into scanty women's clothing, and then, to the whine of a harmonium and wailing vocals, they dance seductively to smoky roomfuls of leering older men.
After the show is over, their services are auctioned off to the highest bidder, who will sometimes purchase a boy outright. And by services, we mean anal sex: The State Department has called bacha bazi a "widespread, culturally accepted form of male rape." (While it may be culturally accepted, it violates both Sharia law and Afghan civil code.)
For Pashtuns in the South of Afghanistan, there is no shame in having a little boy lover; on the contrary, it is a matter of pride. Those who can afford the most attractive boy are the players in their world, the OG's of places like Kandahar and Khost. On the Frontline video, ridiculously macho warrior guys brag about their young boyfriends utterly without shame.
So perhaps in the evil world of Realpolitik, in which there is apparently no moral compass US private contractors won't smash to smithereens, it made sense for DynCorp to drug up some Pashtun police recruits and turn them loose on a bunch of little boys. But according to the leaked document, Atmar, the Afghani interior minister, was terrified this story would catch a reporter's ear.
He urged the US State Department to shut down a reporter he heard was snooping around, and was horrified that a rumored videotape of the party might surface. He predicted that any story about the party would "endanger lives." He said that his government had arrested two Afghan police and nine Afghan civilians on charges of "purchasing a service from a child" in connection with the party, but that he was worried about the image of their "foreign mentors," by which he apparently meant DynCorp. American diplomats told him to chill. They apparently had a better handle on our media than Atmar, because when a report of the party finally did emerge, it was neutered to the point of near-falsehood.
The UK Guardian picks up the tale:
US diplomats cautioned against an "overreaction" and said that approaching the journalist involved would only make the story worse.
"A widely-anticipated newspaper article on the Kunduz scandal has not appeared but, if there is too much noise that may prompt the journalist to publish," the cable said.
The strategy appeared to work when an article was published in July by the Washington Post about the incident, which made little of the affair, saying it was an incident of "questionable management oversight" in which foreign DynCorp workers "hired a teenage boy to perform a tribal dance at a company farewell party".
A tribal dance? Could illegal strip clubs stateside possibly try that one out? "Naw, those are not full-contact lap-dances, Mr. Vice Cop. Krystal and Lexxis are just performing an ancient Cherokee fertility dance. See those buck-skin thongs on and those feathers in their hair?"
As we mentioned, this isn't DynCorp's first brush with the sex-slavery game. Back in Bosnia in 1999, US policewoman Kathryn Bolkovac was fired from DynCorp after blowing the whistle on a sex-slave ring operating on one of our bases there. DynCorp's employees were accused of raping and peddling girls as young as 12 from countries like Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. The company was forced to settle lawsuits against Bolkovac (whose story was recently told in the feature film The Whistleblower) and another man who informed authorities about DynCorp's sex ring.
There's your tax dollars at work, Joe Six-Pack. Maybe now you won't get so worked up about the fact that KPFT gets about ten percent of its funding from the government and uses some of it to air Al-Jazeera.
