Solaris – 1980 – Solaris
41 minutes ago
Monday 6 December 2010
Umberto Eco: Not such wicked leaks
The WikiLeaks affair has twofold value. On the one hand, it turns out to be a bogus scandal, a scandal that only appears to be a scandal against the backdrop of the hypocrisy governing relations between the state, the citizenry and the press. On the other hand, it heralds a sea change in international communication – and prefigures a regressive future of “crabwise” progress.But let’s take it one step at a time. First off, the WikiLeaks confirm the fact that every file put together by a secret service (of any nation you like) is exclusively made up of press clippings. The “extraordinary” American revelations about Berlusconi’s sex habits merely relay what could already be read for months in any newspaper (except those owned by Berlusconi himself, needless to say), and the sinister caricature of Gaddafi has long been the stuff of cabaret farce.
Embassies have morphed into espionage centres
The rule that says secret files must only contain news that is already common knowledge is essential to the dynamic of secret services, and not only in the present century. Go to an esoteric book shop and you’ll find that every book on the shelf (on the Holy Grail, the “mystery” of Rennes-le-Château [a hoax theory concocted to draw tourists to a French town], on the Templars or the Rosicrucians) is a point-by-point rehash of what is already written in older books. And it’s not just because occult authors are averse to doing original research (or don’t know where to look for news about the non-existent), but because those given to the occult only believe what they already know and what corroborates what they’ve already heard. That happens to be Dan Brown’s success formula.The same goes for secret files. The informant is lazy. So is the head of the secret service (or at least he’s limited – otherwise he could be, what do I know, an editor at Libération): he only regards as true what he recognises. The top-secret dope on Berlusconi that the US embassy in Rome beamed to the Department of State was the same story that had come out in Newsweek the week before.
So why so much ado about these leaks? For one thing, they say what any savvy observer already knows: that the embassies, at least since the end of World War II, and since heads of state can call each other up or fly over to meet for dinner, have lost their diplomatic function and, but for the occasional ceremonial function, have morphed into espionage centres. Anyone who watches investigative documentaries knows that full well, and it is only out of hypocrisy that we feign ignorance. Still, repeating that in public constitutes a breach of the duty of hypocrisy, and puts American diplomacy in a lousy light.
A real secret is an empty secret
Secondly, the very notion that any old hacker can delve into the most secret secrets of the most powerful country in the world has dealt a hefty blow to the State Department’s prestige. So the scandal actually hurts the “perpetrators” more than the “victims”.But let’s turn to the more profound significance of what has occurred. Formerly, back in the days of Orwell, every power could be conceived of as a Big Brother watching over its subjects’ every move. The Orwellian prophecy came completely true once the powers that be could monitor every phone call made by the citizen, every hotel he stayed in, every toll road he took and so on and so forth. The citizen became the total victim of the watchful eye of the state. But when it transpires, as it has now, that even the crypts of state secrets are not beyond the hacker’s grasp, the surveillance ceases to work only one-way and becomes circular. The state has its eye on every citizen, but every citizen, or at least every hacker – the citizens’ self-appointed avenger – can pry into the state’s every secret.
How can a power hold up if it can’t even keep its own secrets anymore? It is true, as Georg Simmel once remarked, that a real secret is an empty secret (which can never be unearthed); it is also true that anything known about Berlusconi or Merkel’s character is essentially an empty secret, a secret without a secret, because it’s public domain. But to actually reveal, as WikiLeaks has done, that Hillary Clinton’s secrets were empty secrets amounts to taking away all her power. WikiLeaks didn’t do any harm to Sarkozy or Merkel, but did irreparable damage to Clinton and Obama.
Technology now advances crabwise
What will be the consequences of this wound inflicted on a very mighty power? It’s obvious that in future, states won’t be able to put any restricted information on line anymore: that would be tantamount to posting it on a street corner. But it is equally clear that, given today’s technologies, it is pointless to hope to have confidential dealings over the phone. Nothing is easier than finding out whether a head of state flew in or out or contacted one of his counterparts. So how can privy matters be conducted in future? Now I know that for the time being, my forecast is still science fiction and therefore fantastic, but I can’t help imagining state agents riding discreetly in stagecoaches along untrackable routes, bearing only memorised messages or, at most, the occasional document concealed in the heel of a shoe. Only a single copy thereof will be kept – in locked drawers. Ultimately, the attempted Watergate break-in was less successful than WikiLeaks. I once had occasion to observe that technology now advances crabwise, i.e. backwards. A century after the wireless telegraph revolutionised communications, the Internet has re-established a telegraph that runs on (telephone) wires. (Analog) video cassettes enabled film buffs to peruse a movie frame by frame, by fast-forwarding and rewinding to lay bare all the secrets of the editing process, but (digital) CDs now only allow us quantum leaps from one chapter to another. High-speed trains take us from Rome to Milan in three hours, but flying there, if you include transfers to and from the airports, takes three and a half hours. So it wouldn’t be extraordinary if politics and communications technologies were to revert to the horse-drawn carriage.
One last observation: In days of yore, the press would try to figure out what was hatching sub rosa inside the embassies. Nowadays, it’s the embassies that are asking the press for the inside story.
Students warned: Read WikiLeaks and you’re out of a government job
Graduate students at US universities are being warned not to read or post links to WikiLeaks documents, or they could be denied work with the US government.
Several news reports suggest the State Department has been warning university departments that students could fail security screening if they are seen to discuss or post links to WikiLeaks documents on social networking sites. The US government considers the leaked material to be classified, even after public release.
AboveTheLaw.com has obtained a letter from the career development dean of the Boston University School of Law warning students to stay away from WikiLeaks material.
"The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. [A State Department official] recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. 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," the letter stated...
Several news reports suggest the State Department has been warning university departments that students could fail security screening if they are seen to discuss or post links to WikiLeaks documents on social networking sites. The US government considers the leaked material to be classified, even after public release.
AboveTheLaw.com has obtained a letter from the career development dean of the Boston University School of Law warning students to stay away from WikiLeaks material.
Today I received information about Wikileaks that I want to pass on to you. This is most relevant if you are going to apply for or have already applied for federal government positions. Two big factors in hiring for many federal government positions are determining if the applicants have good judgment and if they know how to deal with confidential/classified information. The documents released by Wikileaks remain classified; thus, reading them, passing them on, commenting on them may be seen as a violation of Executive Order 13526, Classified National Security Information. See Section 5.5 (Sanctions).DemocracyNow's Amy Goodman obtained a copy of a similar letter sent by the office of career services at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
For many federal government jobs, applicants must obtain security clearances. There are various levels of security checks, but all federal positions require background checks. As part of such checks, social media may be researched to see what you are up to, so DO NOT post links to the documents or make comments on any social media sites. Moreover, polygraphs are conducted for the highest levels of security clearance.
I have not yet heard any fallout about specific individuals, but we wanted to give you this take on the situation.
Maura Kelly
Assistant Dean for Career Development and Public Service
"The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. [A State Department official] recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. 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," the letter stated...
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Daniel Tencer @'RawStory'
Explosive Wiki Rudd cable
Mr Rudd also told Mrs Clinton during a March 24, 2009, meeting in Washington that China was ''paranoid'' about both Taiwan and Tibet and that his ambitious plan for an Asia-Pacific Community was intended to blunt Chinese influence in the region.
It also reveals Mr Rudd offered Australian special forces to fight in Pakistan once an agreement could be made with Islamabad.
The cable details a 75-minute lunch Mr Rudd held as prime minister with Mrs Clinton shortly after she was appointed US Secretary of State in the Obama administration.
Signed ''CLINTON'' and classified ''confidential'', it is the first of the Wikileaks cables so far released that includes a substantive report on Australia.
The unprecedented disclosure of such a frank exchange between top political leaders is bound to complicate Australia's diplomatic ties in the region, especially with Beijing.
At the lunch, Mrs Clinton confided in Mr Rudd about America's fears about China's rapid economic rise and Beijing's multibillion-dollar store of US debt, asking Mr Rudd: ''How do you deal toughly with your banker?''
In a wide-ranging conversation with Mrs Clinton on global hot spots, Mr Rudd:
■ Described himself as ''a brutal realist on China'' and said Australian intelligence agencies kept a close watch on China's military expansion.
■ Said the goal must be to integrate China into the international community, ''while also preparing to deploy force if everything goes wrong.''
■ Characterised Chinese leaders as ''sub-rational and deeply emotional'' in their reactions to Taiwan, the breakaway nation Beijing continues to claim sovereignty over.
■ Said the planned build-up of Australia's navy - later revealed in the May 2009 Defence White Paper to include a dozen attack submarines - was ''a response to China's growing ability to project force''.
■ Sought Mrs Clinton's advice on how to deal with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whom she labelled the ''behind-the-scenes puppeteer''.
■ Agreed any success in the Afghanistan war would unravel if Pakistan then fell apart - and that Islamabad must be turned away from its ''obsessive focus'' on India.
■ Discussed ways to bring China to the table in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The disclosures in the cable, posted online by Britain's Guardian newspaper, will complicate Mr Rudd's already testy personal links with China after his reported reference to Chinese negotiators as ''rat f--kers'' during the Copenhagen climate change conference.
Mr Rudd also offered Mrs Clinton a candid assessment of the Chinese leadership, drawing a disparaging contrast between China's President Hu Jintao and his predecessor, saying Mr Hu ''is no Jiang Zemin''.
Mr Rudd said no one person dominated in China's opaque leadership circle but Vice-President Xi Jinping - who this year visited Australia and met Mr Rudd - might use family ties to rise to the top.
Mr Rudd also waded into the sensitive issue of Tibet, telling Mrs Clinton he had urged China to strike a deal with the Dalai Lama for autonomy in Tibet - and while he saw little prospect for success, asked Mrs Clinton to use her stature to have ''a quiet conversation'' to push the idea with Beijing's leaders.
On his Asia-Pacific Community proposal - a surprise initiative launched early in his time as prime minister - Mr Rudd explained the goal was to curb China's dominance in regional diplomatic institutions.
He said he wanted to ensure this did not result in ''an Asia without the United States''.
Mrs Clinton has since publicly praised the Mandarin-speaking Mr Rudd for his advice on China and credited him for the US decision earlier this year to join the East Asia Summit.
Mr Rudd is in the Middle East and a spokeswoman said he did not have any comment.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland yesterday would not answer questions from The Age on damage to Australia's ties with China or the role of Australian special forces in Pakistan.
He said in a statement : ''The government has made it clear it has no intention to provide commentary on the content of US classified documents.''
From the cable, Mr Rudd appears eager to impress on Mrs Clinton his knowledge of international affairs, promising to send her copies of his April 2008 speech at Peking University and a draft journal article on his Asia-Pacific Community plan.
That article was subsequently rejected for publication by the prestigious US journal Foreign Affairs.
Daniel Flitton @'The Age'
The Blueprint
With every day, with every passing hour, the power of the state mobilizes against Wikileaks and Julian Assange, its titular leader. The inner processes of statecraft have never been so completely exposed as they have been in the last week. The nation state has been revealed as some sort of long-running and unintentionally comic soap opera. She doesn’t like him; he doesn’t like them; they don’t like any of us! Oh, and she’s been scouting around for DNA samples and your credit card number. You know, just in case.
None of it is very pretty, all of it is embarrassing, and the embarrassment extends well beyond the state actors – who are, after all, paid to lie and dissemble, this being one of the primary functions of any government – to the complicit and compliant news media, think tanks and all the other camp followers deeply invested in the preservation of the status quo. Formerly quiet seas are now roiling, while everyone with any authority everywhere is doing everything they can to close the gaps in the smooth functioning of power. They want all of this to disappear and be forgotten. For things to be as if Wikileaks never was.
Meanwhile, the diplomatic cables slowly dribble out, a feed that makes last year’s MP expenses scandal in the UK seem like amateur theatre, an unpracticed warm-up before the main event. Even the Afghan and Iraq war logs, released by Wikileaks earlier this year, didn’t hold this kind of fascination. Nor did they attract this kind of upset. Every politican everywhere – from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton to Vladimir Putin to Julia Gillard has felt compelled to express their strong and almost visceral anger. But to what? Only some diplomatic gossip.
Has Earth become a sort of amplified Facebook, where an in-crowd of Heathers, horrified, suddenly finds its bitchy secrets posted on a public forum? Is that what we’ve been reduced to? Or is that what we’ve been like all along? That could be the source of the anger. We now know that power politics and statecraft reduce to a few pithy lines referring to how much Berlusconi sleeps in the company of nubile young women and speculations about whether Medvedev really enjoys wearing the Robin costume.
It’s this triviality which has angered those in power. The mythology of power – that leaders are somehow more substantial, their concerns more elevated and lofty than us mere mortals, who must not question their motives – that mythology has been definitively busted. This is the final terminus of aristocracy; a process that began on 14 July 1789 came to a conclusive end on 28 November 2010. The new aristocracies of democracy have been smashed, trundled off to the guillotine of the Internet, and beheaded.
Of course, the state isn’t going to take its own destruction lying down. Nothing is ever that simple. And so, over the last week we’ve been able to watch the systematic dismantling of Wikileaks. First came the condemnation, then, hot on the heels of the shouts of ‘off with his head!’ for ‘traitor’ Julian Assange, came the technical attacks, each one designed to amputate one part of the body of the organization.
First up, that old favorite, the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, which involves harnessing tens of thousands of hacked PCs (perhaps yours, or your mom’s, or your daughter’s) to broadcast tens of millions of faux requests for information to Wikileaks’ computers. This did manage to bring Wikileaks to its knees (surprising for an organization believed to be rather paranoid about security), so Wikileaks moved to a backup server, purchasing computing resources from Amazon, which runs a ‘cloud’ of hundreds of thousands of computers available for rent. Amazon, paranoid about customer reliability, easily fended off the DDoS attacks, but came under another kind of pressure. US Senator Joe Lieberman told Amazon to cut Wikileaks off, and within a few hours Amazon had suddenly realized that Wikileaks violated their Terms of Service, kicking them off Amazon’s systems.
You know what Terms of Service are? They are the too-long agreements you always accept and click through on a Website, or when you install some software, etc. In the fine print of that agreement any service provider will always be able to find some reason, somewhere, for terminating the service, charging you a fee, or – well, pretty much whatever they like. It’s the legal cudgel that companies use to have their way with you. Do your reckon that every other Amazon customer complies with its Terms of Service? If you do, I have a bridge you might be interested in.
At that point, Assange & Co. could have moved the server anywhere willing to host them – and Switzerland had offered. But the company that hosts Wikileaks’ DNS record – everyDNS.com – suddenly realized that Wikileaks was in violation of its terms of service, and it too, cut Wikileaks off. This was a more serious blow. DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the magic that translates a domain name like markpesce.com or nytimes.com into a number that represents a particular computer on the Internet. Without someone handling that translation, no one could find wikileaks.org. You would be able to type the name into your web browser, but that’s as far as you’d get.
So Wikileaks.org went down, but Wikileaks.ch (the Swiss version) came online moments later, and now there are hundreds of other sites which are all mirroring the content on the original Wikileaks site. It’s a little bit harder to find Wikileaks now – but not terrifically difficult. Score one for Assange, who – if the news media are to be believed – is just about to be taken into custody by the UK police, serving a Swedish arrest warrant.
Finally, just a few hours ago, the masterstroke. Wikileaks is financed by contributions made by individuals and organizations. (Disclosure: I’m almost certain I donated $50 to Wikileaks in 2008.) These contributions have been handled (principally) by the now-ubiquitous PayPal, the financial services arm of Internet auction giant eBay. Once again, the fine folks at PayPal had a look at their Terms of Service (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) and – oh, look! those bad awful folks at Wikileaks are in violation of our terms! Let’s cut them off from their money!
Wikileaks has undoubtedly received a lot of contributions over the last few days. As PayPal never turns funds over immediately, there’s an implication that PayPal is holding onto a considerable sum of Wikileaks’ donations, while that shutdown makes it much more difficult to to ‘pass the hat’ and collect additional funds to keep the operation running. Checkmate.
A few months ago I wrote about how confused I was by Julian Assange’s actions. Why would anyone taking on the state so directly become such a public figure? It made no sense to me. Now I see the plan. And it’s awesome.
You see, this is the first time anything like Wikileaks has been attempted. Yes, there have been leaks prior to this, but never before have hyperdistribution and cryptoanarchism come to the service of the whistleblower. This is a new thing, and as well thought out as Wikileaks might be, it isn’t perfect. How could it be? It’s untried, and untested. Or was. Now that contact with the enemy has been made – the state with all its powers – it has become clear where Wikileaks has been found wanting. Wikileaks needs a distributed network of servers that are too broad and too diffuse to be attacked. Wikileaks needs an alternative to the Domain Name Service. And Wikileaks needs a funding mechanism which can not be choked off by the actions of any other actor.
We’ve been here before. This is 1999, the company is Napster, and the angry party is the recording industry. It took them a while to strangle the beast, but they did finally manage to choke all the life out of it – for all the good it did them. Within days after the death of Napster, Gnutella came around, and righted all the wrongs of Napster: decentralized where Napster was centralized; pervasive and increasingly invisible. Gnutella created the ‘darknet’ for filesharing which has permanently crippled the recording and film industries. The failure of Napster was the blueprint for Gnutella.
In exactly the same way – note for note – the failures of Wikileaks provide the blueprint for the systems which will follow it, and which will permanently leave the state and its actors neutered. Assange must know this – a teenage hacker would understand the lesson of Napster. Assange knows that someone had to get out in front and fail, before others could come along and succeed. We’re learning now, and to learn means to try and fail and try again.
This failure comes with a high cost. It’s likely that the Americans will eventually get their hands on Assange – a compliant Australian government has already made it clear that it will do nothing to thwart or even slow that request – and he’ll be charged with espionage, likely convicted, and sent to a US Federal Prison for many, many years. Assange gets to be the scapegoat, the pinup boy for a new kind of anarchism. But what he’s done can not be undone; this tear in the body politic will never truly heal.
Everything is different now. Everything feels more authentic. We can choose to embrace this authenticity, and use it to construct a new system of relations, one which does not rely on secrets and lies. A week ago that would have sounded utopian, now it’s just facing facts. I’m hopeful. For the first time in my life I see the possibility for change on a scale beyond the personal. Assange has brought out the radical hiding inside me, the one always afraid to show his face. I think I’m not alone.
Operation Avenge Assange!
jamesrbuk Anonymous are stepping in to the #wikileaks #censorship battle. That'll liven things up. http://uiu.me/4.png #anon #4chan #cablegate
Sunday 5 December 2010
WikiLeaks site's Swiss host dismisses pressure to take it offline
WikiLeaks received a boost tonight when Switzerland rejected growing international calls to force the site off the internet.
The whistleblowers site, which has been publishing leaked US embassy cables, was forced to switch domain names to WikiLeaks.ch yesterday after the US host of its main website, WikiLeaks.org, pulled the plug following mounting political pressure.
The site's new Swiss host, Switch, today said there was "no reason" why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registrar set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names.
The reassurances come just hours after eBay-owned PayPal, the primary donation channel to WikiLeaks, terminated its links with the site, citing "illegal activity". France yesterday added to US calls for all companies and organisations to terminate their relationship with WikiLeaks following the release of 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.
The Swiss Pirate Party, which registered the WikiLeaks.ch domain name earlier this year on behalf of the site, said Switch had reassured the party that it would not block the site.
An email sent by Denis Simonet, president of the Swiss Pirate Party, to international members of the liberal political group said: "Some minutes ago I got good news: Switch, the registrar for .ch domains, told us that there is no reason to block wikileaks.ch."
Laurence Kaye, leader of the UK-based Pirate Party, tonight told the Guardian: "International Pirate Parties now have an integral role in allowing access to WikiLeaks. I wish some of our other politicians had the same guts.
"We support the WikiLeaks project as access to information is the prerequisite for an informed and engaged democracy."
WikiLeaks has been fighting to stay online since releasing a cache of sensitive diplomatic cables to the Guardian and four other international media organisations. Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, dropped the site from its servers on Thursday after being contacted by staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the US Senate's homeland security committee.
Everydns.net, the site's US hosting provider, yesterday forced the site offline for the third time in under a week. A series of "distributed denial of attacks" by unknown online activists still bring the site intermittently to its knees.
WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, described the decision as "privatisation of state censorship" in the US. Everydns.net said the attacks – which have been going on all week – threatened "the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites".
Josh Halliday @'The Guardian'
HA!
AutoExec - WM-01 - Wheelmate Steering Wheel Desk Tray - Gray
5.0 out of 5 stars The greatest thing for the heroin addict on the go., November 11, 2010
This review is from: AutoExec - WM-01 - Wheelmate Steering Wheel Desk Tray - Gray
This is perhaps the greatest invention in the world. I can line up my needles, spoon and tourniquet all while driving. It's also a great place to put my arm while I'm shooting up. It isnt really a great place to put my LSD stamps, well not when the window's down or the ACs running. When i black out, the table will catch my head and stop the drool from getting all over. The AutoExec's only problem is when me and my woman are driving together and i get in the mood. I grabbed her by the back of her head and tried to push her face into my crotch, trying to get some oral pleasure. Unfortunatly, I forgot the table was there and just kept slamming her face onto it. I ended up busting her nose wide open. If i hand't been so loaded with a mixture of black tar and china white, I may have realized what was going on after the 7th or 8th time. None of this changes the fact that the goddamn purple worm is out to get me.
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(Thanx SirMick!)
American Icon: The perverse allure of a damaged woman.
Ayn Rand is one of America's great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"—her readers—were "lice" and "parasites" who scarcely deserved to live. Yet she remains one of the most popular writers in the United States, still selling 800,000 books a year from beyond the grave. She regularly tops any list of books that Americans say have most influenced them. Since the great crash of 2008, her writing has had another Benzedrine rush, as Rush Limbaugh hails her as a prophetess. With her assertions that government is "evil" and selfishness is "the only virtue," she is the patron saint of the tea-partiers and the death panel doomsters. So how did this little Russian bomb of pure immorality in a black wig become an American icon?...
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Johann Hari @'Slate'
Reporters Sans Frontières on WikiLeaks
Reporters Without Borders condemns the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure being directed at cablegate.wikileaks.org, the website dedicated to the US diplomatic cables. The organization is also concerned by some of the extreme comments made by American authorities concerning WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.
Earlier this week, after the publishing several hundred of the 250.000 cables it says it has in its possession, WikiLeaks had to move its site from its servers in Sweden to servers in the United States controlled by online retailer Amazon. Amazon quickly came under pressure to stop hosting WikiLeaks from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and its chairman, Sen. Joe Lieberman, in particular.
After being ousted from Amazon, WikiLeaks found a refuge for part of its content with the French Internet company OVH. But French digital economy minister Eric Besson today said the French government was looking at ways to ban hosting of the site. WikiLeaks was also recently dropped by its domain name provider EveryDNS. Meanwhile, several countries well known for for their disregard of freedom of expression and information, including Thailand and China, have blocked access to cablegate.wikileaks.org.
This is the first time we have seen an attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency. We are shocked to find countries such as France and the United States suddenly bringing their policies on freedom of expression into line with those of China. We point out that in France and the United States, it is up to the courts, not politicians, to decide whether or not a website should be closed.
Meanwhile, two Republican senators, John Ensign and Scott Brown, and an independent Lieberman, have introduced a bill that would make it illegal to publish the names of U.S. military and intelligence agency informants. This could facilitate future prosecutions against WikiLeaks and its founder. But a criminal investigation is already under way and many U.S. politicians are calling vociferously for Assange’s arrest.
Reporters Without Borders can only condemn this determination to hound Assange and reiterates its conviction that WikiLeaks has a right under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment to publish these documents and is even playing a useful role by making them available to journalists and the greater public.
We stress that any restriction on the freedom to disseminate this body of documents will affect the entire press, which has given detailed coverage to the information made available by WikiLeaks, with five leading international newspapers actively cooperating in preparing it for publication.
Reporters Without Borders would also like to stress that it has always defended online freedom and the principle of “Net neutrality,” according to which Internet Service Providers and hosting companies should play no role in choosing the content that is placed online.
Saturday 4 December 2010
2010-12-04: NSW Supreme Court solicitor: Letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard
Dear Prime Minister
From the Sydney Morning Herald I note you made a comment of "illegal" on the matter of Mr Assange in relation to the ongoing leaks of US diplomatic cables.
From the Sydney Morning Herald I note you made a comment of "illegal" on the matter of Mr Assange in relation to the ongoing leaks of US diplomatic cables.
Previously your colleague and Attorney General the Honourable McClelland announced an investigation of possible criminality by Mr Assange.
As a lawyer and citizen I find this most disturbing, particularly so when a brief perusal of the Commonwealth Criminal Code shows that liability arises under the Espionage provisions, for example, only when it is the Commonwealth's "secrets" that are disclosed and that there must be intent to damage the Commonwealth.
Likewise under Treason law, there must be an intent to assist an enemy. Clearly, and reinforced by publicly available material such as Professor Saul's excellent article:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/dont-cry-over-wikil...
...Julian Assange has almost certainly committed no crime under Australian law in relation to his involvement in Wikileaks.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/dont-cry-over-wikil...
...Julian Assange has almost certainly committed no crime under Australian law in relation to his involvement in Wikileaks.
I join with Professor Saul also in asking you Prime Minister why has there been no public complaint to the US about both Secretaries of State Condaleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton being in major breach of International law ie UN Covenants, by making orders to spy on UN personnel, including the Secretary General, to include theft of their credit card details and communication passwords. Perhaps the Attorney General should investigate this clear prima facie evidence of crime (likely against Australian diplomats as well), rather than he attempts to prosecute the messenger of those crimes.
It is also disturbing that no Australian official has castigated Sweden for the shameful treatment Mr Assange has received ie his human rights abused, in that he has not been charged and served with papers in the English language regarding the evidence against him of alleged sexual offences. This is contrary to Article 6 of the European Covenant on Human Rights to which Sweden is a signatory nation.
Those offences remain unclear and the Swedish prosecutor Ms Ny appears to be making up the law as she wants. It appears now, by Ms Ny's interpretation that when consensual sex occurs but if a condom breaks, the male party is liable to 2 years imprisonment for sexual assault. All this information is publicly available.
An Australian citizen is apparently being singled out for "special treatment" Prime Minister. There are legitimate concerns among citizens here that his treatment by the Swedes is connected to US interests which are against the activities of Wikileaks, and you will note the strident, outrageous (and illegal) calls inciting violence against him in the US in demands for his assassination, by senior influential US politicians.
Granted that in western political circles, Mr Assange is not flavour of the month, but what he is doing in my opinion, and in the opinion of many here and abroad, is vitally necessary to expose American foreign policy failures and potential war crimes and crimes against humanity--not for the purpose of damaging US interests but to make them accountable.
While we have close and a good relationship with the US, there is no doubt that US influence and power is declining. That we appear to be still posturing, (given that declining power and a new paradigm of privately enforced accountability) to the US on the issue of Wikileaks is, Prime Minister, deeply disappointing.
Yours Faithfully
Peter Kemp.
Peter Kemp.
(Readers are encouraged contact the Australian Prime Minister here: http://www.pm.gov.au/PM_Connect/Email_your_PM)
Australia to help US over Assange
You better decide which side you are on...
wikileaks Digital McCarthyism: Columbia students advised not to comment on/link to discussions on Wikileaks. http://fb.me/AnjBDyaN wikileaks PayPal bans WikiLeaks after US government pressure http://is.gd/ibbwG Support us: http://wikileaks.ch/support.html
WTF???
MORE BANANAS!!!
I think those 'cheeky monkeys' (c) Spaceboy - who operate my computer system have gone on strike...
Julian Assange answers your questions
I'll start the ball rolling with a question. You're an Australian passport holder - would you want return to your own country or is this now out of the question due to potentially being arrested on arrival for releasing cables relating to Australian diplomats and polices?
Julian Assange:I am an Australian citizen and I miss my country a great deal. However, during the last weeks the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, and the attorney general, Robert McClelland, have made it clear that not only is my return is impossible but that they are actively working to assist the United States government in its attacks on myself and our people. This brings into question what does it mean to be an Australian citizen - does that mean anything at all? Or are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties.
girish89
How do you think you have changed world affairs?
And if you call all the attention you've been given-credit ... shouldn't the mole or source receive a word of praise from you?
Julian Assange:For the past four years one of our goals has been to lionise the source who take the real risks in nearly every journalistic disclosure and without whose efforts, journalists would be nothing. If indeed it is the case, as alleged by the Pentagon, that the young soldier - Bradley Manning - is behind some of our recent disclosures, then he is without doubt an unparalleled hero.
Daithi
Have you released, or will you release, cables (either in the last few days or with the Afghan and Iraq war logs) with the names of Afghan informants or anything else like so?
Are you willing to censor (sorry for using the term) any names that you feel might land people in danger from reprisals??
By the way, I think history will absolve you. Well done!!!
Julian Assange:WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time there has been no credible allegation, even by organisations like the Pentagon that even a single person has come to harm as a result of our activities. This is despite much-attempted manipulation and spin trying to lead people to a counter-factual conclusion. We do not expect any change in this regard.
distrot
The State Dept is mulling over the issue of whether you are a journalist or not. Are you a journalist? As far as delivering information that someone [anyone] does not want seen is concerned, does it matter if you are a 'journalist' or not?
Julian Assange:I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time. However, it is not necessary to debate whether I am a journalist, or how our people mysteriously are alleged to cease to be journalists when they start writing for our organisaiton. Although I still write, research and investigate my role is primarily that of a publisher and editor-in-chief who organises and directs other journalists.
achanth
Mr Assange,
have there ever been documents forwarded to you which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?
Julian Assange:Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original.
However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.
gnosticheresy
What happened to all the other documents that were on Wikileaks prior to these series of "megaleaks"? Will you put them back online at some stage ("technical difficulties" permitting)?
Julian Assange:Many of these are still available at mirror.wikileaks.info and the rest will be returning as soon as we can find a moment to do address the engineering complexities. Since April of this year our timetable has not been our own, rather it has been one that has centred on the moves of abusive elements of the United States government against us. But rest assured I am deeply unhappy that the three-and-a-half years of my work and others is not easily available or searchable by the general public.
CrisShutlar
Have you expected this level of impact all over the world? Do you fear for your security?
Julian Assange:I always believed that WikiLeaks as a concept would perform a global role and to some degree it was clear that is was doing that as far back as 2007 when it changed the result of the Kenyan general election. I thought it would take two years instead of four to be recognised by others as having this important role, so we are still a little behind schedule and have much more work to do. The threats against our lives are a matter of public record, however, we are taking the appropriate precautions to the degree that we are able when dealing with a super power.
JAnthony
Julian.
I am a former British diplomat. In the course of my former duties I helped to coordinate multilateral action against a brutal regime in the Balkans, impose sanctions on a renegade state threatening ethnic cleansing, and negotiate a debt relief programme for an impoverished nation. None of this would have been possible without the security and secrecy of diplomatic correspondence, and the protection of that correspondence from publication under the laws of the UK and many other liberal and democratic states. An embassy which cannot securely offer advice or pass messages back to London is an embassy which cannot operate. Diplomacy cannot operate without discretion and the
protection of sources. This applies to the UK and the UN as much as the US.
In publishing this massive volume of correspondence, Wikileaks is not highlighting specific cases of wrongdoing but undermining the entire process of diplomacy. If you can publish US cables then you can publish UK telegrams and UN emails.
My question to you is: why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function.
Julian Assange:If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.
cargun
Mr Assange,
Can you explain the censorship of identities as XXXXX's in the revealed cables? Some critical identities are left as is, whereas some are XXXXX'd. Some cables are partially revealed. Who can make such critical decisons, but the US gov't? As far as we know your request for such help was rejected by the State department. Also is there an order in the release of cable or are they randomly selected?
Thank you.
Julian Assange:The cables we have release correspond to stories released by our main stream media partners and ourselves. They have been redacted by the journalists working on the stories, as these people must know the material well in order to write about it. The redactions are then reviewed by at least one other journalist or editor, and we review samples supplied by the other organisations to make sure the process is working.
rszopa
Annoying as it may be, the DDoS seems to be good publicity (if anything, it adds to your credibility). So is getting kicked out of AWS. Do you agree with this statement? Were you planning for it?
Thank you for doing what you are doing.
Julian Assange:Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit inorder to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases.
abbeherrera
You started something that nobody can stop. The Beginning of a New World. Remember, that community is behind you and support you (from Slovakia).
Do you have leaks on ACTA?
Julian Assange:Yes, we have leaks on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a trojan horse trade agreement designed from the very beginning to satisfy big players in the US copyright and patent industries. In fact, it was WikiLeaks that first drew ACTA to the public's attention - with a leak.
people1st
Tom Flanagan, a [former] senior adviser to Canadian Prime Minister recently stated "I think Assange should be assassinated ... I think Obama should put out a contract ... I wouldn't feel unhappy if Assange does disappear."
How do you feel about this?
Julian Assange:It is correct that Mr. Flanagan and the others seriously making these statements should be charged with incitement to commit murder.
Isopod
Julian, why do you think it was necessary to "give Wikileaks a face"? Don't you think it would be better if the organization was anonymous?
This whole debate has become very personal and reduced on you - "Julian Assange leaked documents", "Julian Assange is a terrorist", "Julian Assange alledgedly raped a woman", "Julian Assange should be assassinated", "Live Q&A qith Julian Assange" etc. Nobody talks about Wikileaks as an organization anymore. Many people don't even realize that there are other people behind Wikileaks, too.
And this, in my opinion, makes Wikileaks vulnerable because this enables your opponents to argue ad hominem. If they convince the public that you're an evil, woman-raping terrorist, then Wikileaks' credibility will be gone. Also, with due respect for all that you've done, I think it's unfair to all the other brave, hard working people behind Wikileaks, that you get so much credit.
Julian Assange:This is an interesting question. I originally tried hard for the organisation to have no face, because I wanted egos to play no part in our activities. This followed the tradition of the French anonymous pure mathematians, who wrote under the collective allonym, "The Bourbaki". However this quickly led to tremendous distracting curiosity about who and random individuals claiming to represent us. In the end, someone must be responsible to the public and only a leadership that is willing to be publicly courageous can genuinely suggest that sources take risks for the greater good. In that process, I have become the lightening rod. I get undue attacks on every aspect of my life, but then I also get undue credit as some kind of balancing force.
tburgi
Western governments lay claim to moral authority in part from having legal guarantees for a free press.
Threats of legal sanction against Wikileaks and yourself seem to weaken this claim.
(What press needs to be protected except that which is unpopular to the State? If being state-sanctioned is the test for being a media organization, and therefore able to claim rights to press freedom, the situation appears to be the same in authoritarian regimes and the west.)
Do you agree that western governments risk losing moral authority by
attacking Wikileaks?
Do you believe western goverments have any moral authority to begin with?
Thanks,
Tim Burgi
Vancouver, Canada
Julian Assange:The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.
rajiv1857
Hi,
Is the game that you are caught up in winnable? Technically, can you keep playing hide and seek with the powers that be when services and service providers are directly or indirectly under government control or vulnerable to pressure - like Amazon?
Also, if you get "taken out" - and that could be technical, not necessarily physical - what are the alternatives for your cache of material?
Is there a 'second line' of activists in place that would continue the campaign?
Is your material 'dispersed' so that taking out one cache would not necessarily mean the end of the game?
Julian Assange:The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with significant material from the US and other countries to over 100,000 people in encrypted form. If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically. Further, the Cable Gate archives is in the hands of multiple news organisations. History will win. The world will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you.
That's it every one, thanks for all your questions and comments. Julian Assange is sorry that he can't answer every question but he has tried to cover as much territory as possible. Thanks for your patience with our earlier technical difficulties.The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange
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