What do you think of Assange and Wikileaks?

PayPal's back up.

Nope.

"While Western governments are used to seeing secrets leaked through traditional media, they are struggling to adjust to a new era in which raw data can be easily and rapidly disseminated around the world. "There is an information war, and it's about control," he said. "The choice is to either live in a transparent world or shut down the Internet."

Found this on a news article and thought it was a good summary of what's going on.
I think what Assange is doing is the right thing to do. Like I said earlier, If i'm in the military and I'm putting my life on the line, I better damn well know what I'm fighting for. These stupid wars are all political and not worth people dying for in my opinion.

[color="#cc8899"]What Manning and Assange did is unforgivable - yes, every country has its dirty secrets and opinions of others. That's well known and not likely to ever change. By releasing only those of one nation, he's done nothing but destroy credibility and endanger cooperation between nations as well as the lives of others. The reports he illegally released are written with specific purposes in mind, mainly to provide insight and understanding to decision makers regarding people and events that they don't have time or ability to learn about in-depth or might not have the opportunity to learn of normally.

Manning needs to rot in Leavenworth for life - he took several oaths upon joining the military and becoming an intelligence professional to protect the lives of his fellow soldiers and prevent the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents, which he blatantly went against. His is the ultimate act of betrayal to others in the intelligence discipline.

As for Assange's rape charges, I could care less. The real issue is and will always be that he illegally received classified US government documents and illegally published them on his website. There is no deep, mysterious truth revealed in the documents, but rather things already known or suspected that are commonplace for all nations. Maybe if he was releasing documents pertaining to Area 51, or the JFK assasination, or something of the like I'd be remotely interested beyond the simple fact that he's a criminal. But all he's published in the most recent batch is diplomats poo-poo'ing each other behind the others' backs. Get over it.

Yes, I understand what you are saying, it is only available to military personnel. However, what I am saying is that if 2 million people having access to documents such as these, there is potential for a security breach. If these documents are this easy to access, then all I would need to do, if I was a terrorist organisation, is get one person to enlist in the military to have access to all of this and more. To me, that is a security flaw that has to be addressed.

You have a very poor understanding of security clearances. Of those 2million people you reference, maybe 100,000 have access to highly classified information. Manning's job was specifically designed to read, handle, and digest the information in those reports, then take what could be used from it at a lower classification level to brief those without clearances. [/COLOR]

[COLOR="green"]Transparency, while a good thing, is ultimately impossible. Think of it this way:

You have a job. A few of your co-workers annoy the pomegranate out of you. You don't like them, and in fact, wish they'd get fired. But are you going to openly walk up to them, tell them you hate their guts, and say they should be fired? No, because common sense tells you not to. Doing something like that needlessly disrupts things, and could get either of you in trouble. Your boss might fire you for being so outright rude, or the people could get back at you.

The same thing applies to countries. We might not like what X is doing, but we can't tell everyone how much we hate X, for fear that X might retaliate. And retaliation amongst countries isn't done by losing a job, or by name calling, or fists; it's done with weapons. Things that can hurt people.

I mean, I could understand being forthright and open as a person, since the only one who could ever take blame is you, but when it's a country, you've got the entire population to worry about. One offhand comment against someone, BOOM, you've got 100 people dead from something. Is it really necessary to openly put so many people in danger just for the sake of truth? Sure, some things people want real information on, like secret reasons for a war, but you can't accept transparency without full transparency. And until every person in the world can get along, pomegranate like that can't happen.[/COLOR]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0...-4,00.html

The last paragraph (and the first paragraph on the next page) has a good summary of how many people have top secret clearence in the military.

Wikileaks is DIGGING ITS OWN GRAVE. They DDOS'd mastercard today as some form of lashing out. They are already walking a thin line with the more or less legality of their website; and now they are actually doing blatantly illegal things. Too bad wikileaks has the power of anon on their side, basically. Not so much anon itself but the powers that they all hold; one of that being anonymous.

And talking about transparent governments, you have to realize that the rest of the world does the same things we do. There isn't an honest government in this world. There won't be for a long time, either. Until the world can collectively as one get rid of this system, we can't be transparent.

Wikileaks has not done any of those attacks.

There's currently hackers fighting on the both sides.

[COLOR="green"]Transparency, while a good thing, is ultimately impossible. Think of it this way:

You have a job. A few of your co-workers annoy the pomegranate out of you. You don't like them, and in fact, wish they'd get fired. But are you going to openly walk up to them, tell them you hate their guts, and say they should be fired? No, because common sense tells you not to. Doing something like that needlessly disrupts things, and could get either of you in trouble. Your boss might fire you for being so outright rude, or the people could get back at you.

The same thing applies to countries. We might not like what X is doing, but we can't tell everyone how much we hate X, for fear that X might retaliate. And retaliation amongst countries isn't done by losing a job, or by name calling, or fists; it's done with weapons. Things that can hurt people.

I mean, I could understand being forthright and open as a person, since the only one who could ever take blame is you, but when it's a country, you've got the entire population to worry about. One offhand comment against someone, BOOM, you've got 100 people dead from something. Is it really necessary to openly put so many people in danger just for the sake of truth? Sure, some things people want real information on, like secret reasons for a war, but you can't accept transparency without full transparency. And until every person in the world can get along, pomegranate like that can't happen.[/COLOR]

Like I've said before, yes, there is NO REAL WAY a government can be transparent, HOWEVER, admitting de facto that the country isn't transparent is telling the government itself to burn the foundations of democracy. Get my point?

I must say, his underground lair is kinda cool. Like a villain in a cartoon

Article -
http://www.news.com.au/features/wikileak...5968685673

Gallery -
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/photo-g...544?page=1

Like I've said before, yes, there is NO REAL WAY a government can be transparent, HOWEVER, admitting de facto that the country isn't transparent is telling the government itself to burn the foundations of democracy. Get my point?

If there's no real way for it to be transparent, shouldn't everyone already assume that it isn't?

As for Assange's rape charges, I could care less. The real issue is and will always be that he illegally received classified US government documents and illegally published them on his website. There is no deep, mysterious truth revealed in the documents, but rather things already known or suspected that are commonplace for all nations. Maybe if he was releasing documents pertaining to Area 51, or the JFK assasination, or something of the like I'd be remotely interested beyond the simple fact that he's a criminal. But all he's published in the most recent batch is diplomats poo-poo'ing each other behind the others' backs. Get over it.

He did not illegally publish the documents. Court decisions have already upheld the rights of journalists to publish things like this. WikiLeaks has put forth the message that if they get informationt hey feel is worth publishing then they will publish it. They did nto steal anything. They were just given information and they published it.

Technically, if Manning was the leaker, he did break a law. He was given access to the documents under the presumption that he would keep them secret. If he was the leaker, then his actions were illegal, but that also doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

Members of the U.S. Millitary cannot use discs, flashdrives, or anything that can transmit a file, really.

Wikileaks also got cash from supporters to bail out Manning; none of the cash ever got to him.

And, the Dutch arrested an anon for pro-wikileaks hacking against Visa and Mastercard.

He did not illegally publish the documents. Court decisions have already upheld the rights of journalists to publish things like this. WikiLeaks has put forth the message that if they get informationt hey feel is worth publishing then they will publish it. They did nto steal anything. They were just given information and they published it.

Technically, if Manning was the leaker, he did break a law. He was given access to the documents under the presumption that he would keep them secret. If he was the leaker, then his actions were illegal, but that also doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

The information is extremely highly classified and the government has the ability to prosecute people for simply possessing it, let alone publishing it. Illegal may be the wrong word, but it was highly immoral and irresponsible of him to do so. I personally hold what he did to be espionage - he encouraged people to deliver classified information to him so that he could publish it.

The information is extremely highly classified and the government has the ability to prosecute people for simply possessing it, let alone publishing it. Illegal may be the wrong word, but it was highly immoral and irresponsible of him to do so. I personally hold what he did to be espionage - he encouraged people to deliver classified information to him so that he could publish it.

I second this.

By leaking those diplmatic cables (and "secret" & "classified" military files) out, it could cause lots of damage to the United States and for its allies, both militarily and politically. Not to mention, there could be other consequences too. There is a very strong reason why certain things need to stay "secret".

The information is extremely highly classified and the government has the ability to prosecute people for simply possessing it, let alone publishing it. Illegal may be the wrong word, but it was highly immoral and irresponsible of him to do so. I personally hold what he did to be espionage - he encouraged people to deliver classified information to him so that he could publish it.

WikiLeaks never said "please give us things to embarrass the USA." WikiLeaks setup an anonymous method that anyone in the world can give them information they feel should be published. WikiLeaks then reviews the information and decides to publish it. They jsut happened to get someone who had these cables.

Also, relevant:
[video=youtube;xhZk8ronces]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces[/video]
transcript: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Res...271961.htm

I think he's certainly suckered a lot of you into thinking he's fighting the good fight. Especially people who frequent the interwebs. Really. He's not. If you're an American, I shouldn't have to explain why you should be ashamed to support the bimbo. If you're not, you probably just don't like us anyway and will settle for anything. I like how people from other countries are telling us we should be more transparent when no one's government is at ALL a shining example of transparency. I'm willing to bet Assange wouldn't publish documents originating from other governments had they been given to him. No...it's not about freedom of knowledge. If you don't like the government keeping secrets, perhaps you should have voiced your opinion before now -- but no, you haven't. This is one thing I don't mind the government screaming "It's for national security!" over, because it's true. A lot of these things do have to do with our relations with other countries and now the damage can already be seen in multiple places due to this damn fool.

Assange more likely has a European superiority complex (like a lot of Europeans) and knows he can easily gain support from morons -- who did you think frequents 4chan and calls themselves Anonymous..? He doesn't really care what the cables say. Sure, "we're reading them line by line, but we'll release all of them in a s`hitstorm if anything happens to me or WikiLeaks." Right.

P.S. Quoting that video doesn't make it true. Parts of it, yes, very true. But no, you can have secrets without expanding government control.

I should be ashamed of someone who is fighting against internet and media censorship?

Related and unrelated, this is an amazing speech:
[video=youtube;nxPB9yy7IJ4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxPB9yy7IJ4[/video]

He's fighting censorship? I missed that. Last I checked many other countries have many more censorship problems than us. Even so, how is he fighting censorship? Seems more like he's "fighting secrecy." Two very different things to me. Trust me, I'm against media censorship in all forms. He's not fighting that. I'm more against this guy being a douchebag.

I quoted this before (not here). Very good editorial on it.

Governments, like married couples, are entitled to their secrets - from us, from the kids and from the neighbors. Total transparency produces total opaqueness. If everything's open, no one says anything. The WikiLeaks brouhaha will pass. Diplomats will once again be indiscreet at cocktail parties and rat out one another in the same way some people marry repeatedly, each time forever. The only thing worse than indiscretion is efforts to puni...sh the miscreants by eroding the core constitutional right to publish all but the most obvious and blatant national security secrets. The government has to get better at keeping secrets. Muzzle the leakers - but not the press.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...05408.html

Some of the comments in this thread make me wonder if people are truly thinking or if they want to be controlled like sheeple. An example: If your government burns books for censorship, and you try to fight that, is it legal? Hell no is it legal. Is it right? Very right. People need to think outside the box, regardless. Although, I'm sure some people would think that it's quite alright for the government to burn books just because they think its bad for their people to know the information. Many people who support the government in this manner are misinformed, or they have a stake in the society that they do not want to give up.

He is fighting censorship by continuing to publish documents that governments around the world are trying to censor. We, the USA, are supposed to be champions for human rights and the upholding of our constitution. The very first amendment, our very first right granted by the constitution is the right to free speech. People are entitled to say and publish what they want. WikiLeaks is publishing the truth, even though people are fighting to stop them. Just like past releases, such as the Pentagon Papers, WikiLeaks is protected by their right to free speech. These leaks also fight secrecy, but it is a true test of whether or not there is such a thing as freedom of speech.

Also, I'd say governments are NOT entitled to secrecy if they are using that to commit crimes. The public has a right to know whether or not the people they have given power to are abusing that power. When our leaders commit crimes in the name of our nation, we have a right to know they are doing that. WikiLeaks with the release of these cables is exposing our government for crimes they have documented that they have committed, and for that I thank them. The world can not be a better place as long as governments can hide their actions from the public - allowing them to do so is only allowing them to make this world a worse place to live jsut to better themselves.

I'm interested in why xLeviathin is detracting from the content that was specifically published and is referring to the more general concept of censorship. The statements basically constitute an appeal to authority (US patriotism), an appeal to emotion (patriotism), and an ad hominem on character (Assange) that is irrelevant to the content of the matter that has been posted. The character of someone who hosts a site must be viewed as independent of the website they may create which may be viewed as independent as the documents which it sources if they are indeed not a publication of the website itself or the individual in question.