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| Porn Users Forum » Wikileaks Gone Wild |
| 1-7 of 7 Posts | Page 1 |
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| 12-10-10 02:26pm - 5126 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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Wittyguy (0)
Active User  Posts: 1,138 Registered: Feb 04, '08 Location: Left Coast, USA |
Wikileaks Gone Wild By now everyone has probably heard about the whole Wikileaks controversy. Basically, some people at Wikileaks persuaded a junior level US military intelligence guy to download boatloads of "secret" intelligence file and turn them over to Wikileaks which then published all the files on line. Nothing earth shattering was revealed, just a bunch of private memos about how the government really feels about other governments and some pretty snooze worthy intel we wouldn't otherwise know about. The result? Wikileaks gets raged at by several governments, the Wikileaks founder gets tagged by the Swedes for some questionable sex crime ("sex by surprise", give me a break). Companies and ISP's that originally hosted Wikileaks began pulling them off the web and that in turn resulted in these companies getting slammed by an army of anonymous hackers as revenge. Who needs reality tv when we got this. I will say that I'm no big fan of Julian Assange (Wikileaks founder). He is an quasi-anarchist egomaniac who believes that government by its very nature is corrupt and must be exposed at any price. He doesn't edit anything which in past releases of info included private info of soldiers and identities of people helping the US who might pay with their lives for their disclosure. In this context I see Wikileaks as a bit of a cult of personality that lacks journalistic credibility that could harm the future release of confidential material that the world really should see, not the trove of mediocrity that we recently got. His threats to release more government materials should he ever be arrested attests more to his sense of entitlement than his journalistic credibility. Underneath all the b.s. there is some interesting shit going on though. First, let me start by committing my first felony of the day: click here. That's right, by merely posting to the classified reports, I have committed a felony under the US Espionage Act. Anyone who clicks on the link and reads the classified documents is also committing a felony. This is what the US government is planning on charging Wikileaks with (the case is not yet filed but it will be). WTF? I won't get into the whole debate about if it was appropriate to release the docs or not but I'll suffice to say that nothing revealed was of vital national security. If this revealing of the proverbial dirty underwear underneath the Statue of Liberty is so bad why weren't the journalists who released the Pentagon Papers in the 1970's tried for treason? Why wasn't Dick Cheney tried for releasing Valerie Plames name? The list could go on but my point is that this seems like an over reaction that could have a chilling effect on legitimate news organizations, whistle-blowers and other less than criminal types. This is a seriously out of date law that is being selectively used as a club in an age where the internet arms everyone with an automatic weapon. Second, it points out the fact that while the internet is viewed as a public place it is in fact run by private enterprise that has a financial stake in the game. Paypal and Amazon both had previous dealings with Wikileaks which they severed after the posting of the classified documents. In return, they got hacked with denial of service prompts by so called Wikileak supporters (I say so called because a lot of them were probably just looking for a reason to slap big corporations in the face for fun). I'm afraid that companies and countries may start to shy away from supporting free speech that might be controversial because they don't want to deal with negative publicity and attacks. This chilling effect could harm us all in the future as corporations deny people a platform to expose true crimes committed by governments or the powerful. Third, this situation brings into the debate the whole question of journalistic integrity, free speech and government secrets. Governments need secrets in that we shouldn't know everything our government is doing when it comes to national security and foreign affairs. Politicians going ape shit over the release of these documents seems to me to be a case of them feeding their own egos by filing time on cable tv which needs them to feed their bottom line. This whole thing also raises the question of what a journalist is in the internet age and where the lines of free speech get crossed. No answers for anyone, but it will be interesting to see where this goes. For those of you who suffered through this post, I reward you with a link to some products that inadvertently got a bit too sexy for themselves: here. | |
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| 12-10-10 03:40pm - 5126 days | #2 | |
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Tree Rodent (0)
Active User  Posts: 708 Registered: Oct 29, '08 Location: UK |
Was wondering when you'd get around to this one. The intelligent ones know those in power are a bunch of lying cheating corrupt scumbags who are our biggest enemies. They know we know, and we know they know we know. They don't mind this, because they just deny it and the pretence goes on. What they really hate is seeing all the stuff we know about being made public. This is an example of why those in power want control of the internet. We know our government is committing crimes against our own people and against foreign people. The problem for them is that when it is made public, it becomes a kind of unifying call for all those who hate government and big corporations and want to do something about it. That costs them money in the long run. | |
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| 12-10-10 04:48pm - 5126 days | #3 | |
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anyonebutme (0)
Active User  Posts: 294 Registered: Aug 23, '09 |
The Espionage Act was written primarily to handle situations involved with WWII, they have little relevance to today's changed world. Laws have never been updaed to reflect current technology. That's why they're going after something a bit weird, because that is what the written law allows for. Al Capone was never convicted of murder or theft or etc., he was prosecuted and jailed on income tax laws. Similar situation. | |
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| 12-10-10 04:49pm - 5126 days | #4 | |
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anyonebutme (0)
Active User Posts: 294 Registered: Aug 23, '09 |
And that would be Obama who's in power over here, correct?  Or do you just get to arbitrarily declare who you hate, and who other people are not allowed to dislike? | |
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| 12-10-10 06:02pm - 5126 days | #5 | |
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Tree Rodent (0)
Active User Posts: 708 Registered: Oct 29, '08 Location: UK |
I'm not important or powerful enough to be able to stop people disliking someone. For that I would need to be a media mogul, and therefore be able to tell all the stupid people what their opinions are, and then tell them how right they are. But I don't have to be powerful or important to express an opinion. Not while the internet remains relatively free anyway. I surprised myself by liking Obama. I thought it would be impossible for someone with integrity to make it to the the White House. I like him so much he's possibly my favourite politician of all time along with Carter, even though we would almost certainly disagree on 98 things out of 100. Some people ring true and some don't. He appears to be honest and have integrity. That's why I like him, even though he doesn't have the same politics and opinions as me. Obama is still a politician, and in government, and if he has true integrity he'll probably end up alone. The mechanism will go on with or without him. I'm thoroughly enjoying the Wikileaks thing though. Unlike Wittyguy I do like Assange as I consider the world needs more quasi-anarchistic egomaniacs who believe that government is corrupt, and needs to be exposed at any price. Edited on Dec 10, 2010, 06:47pm | |
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| 12-11-10 12:54am - 5126 days | #6 | |
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turboshaft (0)
Active User Posts: 1,958 Registered: Apr 01, '08 |
I can't say I "like" Obama--he's still a politician after all--but considering the last few guys in his position and the alternatives (both past and future)...well, he's an improvement to say the least. Having said that, he still makes decisions that either piss me off or just leave me scratching my head. Like the current "compromise" he's offering on the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts. I was thinking, "Okay, he's not going to submit to extending the highest income ones too." But then he does. WTF! Or his administration's positions and decisions on any number of things--Afghanistan, DADT, WikiLeaks, the Wall Street bailout. Frankly, I think to label him a "liberal" or "progressive" is to shame such terms. And yet this all still makes him a socialist, Kenyan-born, communist/Nazi-sympathizer, Muslim/possible atheist out to destroy America as we know it...so I guess my first criticisms were kinda mild. 
I do kind of like Assange too though, or at least what he's done with Wikileaks, if only because he's pissing governments off again. I'm a little skeptical of the he's-putting-countless-lives-in-danger propaganda the U.S. government has been saying. The U.S. government puts more lives in danger than Assange could ever dream of doing, which is why they get so pissed when their dirty laundry gets aired by someone like him and his site. My view is that the mainstream media has failed miserably in the last few decades, devolving into a handful of massive conglomerates that care more about maintaining stock prices and profits than putting out a decent, worthwhile product (and yes, newspapers, networks and websites are all products). There's no real serious political motive behind any of them beyond status quo maintenance and whoever can get them more money at any given time. The media has done virtually nothing in the last few years that should entitle them to hold more public trust then some Australian hacker with a website. Take the American coverage of the responses to 9/11, say, or just the buildup to the Iraq invasion--what would have happened had there been a WikiLeaks for the whole WMD and "smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" narrative?! Those are tens of thousands of lives that were lost. And not to sound like too much of an Assange-apologist here but he's only the messenger--other assholes give him the secrets--he only leaks or dumps them, and I doubt he offers any compensation beyond efforts to maintain anonymity. Oh, and and this whole "traitor" bullshit some have called him needs to stop. He's not an American citizen! So either the definition of traitor has radically changed or many of his critics need to take a good long look at a globe. "It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hardcore Commie works." - Gen. Jack D. Rippper, Dr. Stranglove | |
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| 12-11-10 05:31am - 5125 days | #7 | |
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Tree Rodent (0)
Active User Posts: 708 Registered: Oct 29, '08 Location: UK |
Yep, totally agree. Wish I could have put it as well as Turboshaft. | |
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