Wikileaks merge (Assange loses extradition appeal)

Someone from /b/ just got arrested...

http://gizmodo.com/5710568/dutch-4chan-teen-arrested-for-wikileaks-revenge-attacks

A 16 year old teen from the Netherlands has been arrested for being a 'Gunner' in the DDoS attacks that targetd Mastercard, Paypal and Visa. The DDoS program created collaberatively by /b/ members is an open-source program called Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LoIC) - essentially what it is is a volunteer botnet: you download the program to your PC and your computer can then receive control commands from a central gunner which picks the time and web location for a directed attack, using thousands of Ion Cannon PCs. The teen launched the attacks in retaliation to those institutions blocking donations to wikileaks. He was reportedly very effective at disrupting them, too.

I find it fascinating that 4Chan users would create such a thing and that enough people would volunteer to use it. Mildly entertaining stuff.

Manic Moran wrote: »

I'm not sure that's not a fairly important distinction, in political if not legal terms.

For example, it has been pointed out that in past cases, the 'leaker' has been prosecuted for basically being someone who had access to files, and giving it to someone who did not, whilst the newspapers, who simply published it, have not been successfully prosecuted. The false logic which is being spread around, however, is that this is proof that the laws can only ever apply to the original leaker, and not anyone who transmits the information afterwards. The counter-point to that is the prosecution of spy rings. Spy 1 obtains the information, gives it to Spy 2, who leaves it under a park bench for Spy 3 to pick up, who takes it to a ship and meets up with Spy 4, who then takes it to Moscow. All four spies could be (and have been in the past) nabbed under the espionage laws even though only the first one broke the 'access authorisation' barrier.

I seem to recall watching a film about the Cuban Missile Crisis - seemingly quite factual - but in which journalists knew something was up and were bullied and pleaded with to keep their stories silent for as long as possible. If what they were doing were illegal the Government would have simply censured them under the National Security Act. Those were domestic reporters, Assange and his organization are foreign, and can't really be tried for Treason either as some have suggested.

So how to apply this distinction in Wikileaks' case? (Assuming somehow territorial/legal jurisdiction can be applied, itself no easy challenge). One possibility I'm fairly sure that the AG's office is looking at is that a news organisation reports on most any type of subject that crosses its editor's desk, whereas wikileaks is a single-purpose organisation with that single purpose being illegal.

NTM

What illegal purpose is that, exactly?

The single purpose is to facilitate the publication of confidential information.

WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box). One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth. We are a young organisation that has grown very quickly, relying on a network of dedicated volunteers around the globe. Since 2007, when the organisation was officially launched, WikiLeaks has worked to report on and publish important information. We also develop and adapt technologies to support these activities.

WikiLeaks has sustained and triumphed against legal and political attacks designed to silence our publishing organisation, our journalists and our anonymous sources. The broader principles on which our work is based are the defence of freedom of speech and media publishing, the improvement of our common historical record and the support of the rights of all people to create new history. We derive these principles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In particular, Article 19 inspires the work of our journalists and other volunteers. It states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. We agree, and we seek to uphold this and the other Articles of the Declaration.

I suppose The Consumerist should be shut down also for obtaining insider information from Starbucks Barristas and Cash4Gold Employees? The latter of which was bound to an NDA if i recall correctly. There was also the case of "Corporate Espionnage" Where a Gawker Journalist, Jason Chen, physically obtained one of the original iPhone 4G prototypes to the tune of a very bizarre and consequential lawsuits that I think didn't end up anywhere. Though there were some pretty forceful seizures of his home computers. A search later deemed illegal because - he was a Journalist, and there are laws to protect Journalism.

If that can happen, finding a charge which would stick shouldn't be too hard.

I believe the egg comes before the chicken in that case. How could I be summoned to Traffic Court before I was charged with Speeding? Maybe it's just military-think but I find your insinuation troubling.

Does anyone remember Watergate ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States

This is what's called shooting the messenger. The US gov failed in it's attempts to shut down the NY Times reporting of the affair, there is legal precedent, plus in this case Assange is neither a US citizen, nor based in the country, nor did he personally steal the documents.

As far as I'm concerned, if a case is laid against Assange in the States, this lays bare the sheer hypocrisy and lies of the US concerning free speech and democracy. They have become what claim to be fighting.

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster...when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken – unspeakable! – fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse – a little tiny mouse! – of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic." -- Winston Churchill

gizmo wrote: »

Except Watergate resulted in the exposure of illegal activities perpetrated by the Nixon administration, what illegal activities were exposed when the diplomatic cables and installation lists were published?

Also the NY Times and indeed Woodward and Bernstein were bound by the journalist code of ethics and standards, something Wikileaks does not subscribe to. They fortunately can't have it both ways.

Wikileaks only releases things that they have discussed with other media outlets including the NY Times. They asked the US Dept of State if there were any titles which they should look for that were particularly dangerous, the Dept did not reply.

I support Wikileaks 100% and will continue to do so as long as they don't put any lives at risk. They are making politicians afraid of the media and people again, eliminating spin and double speak. That can only be a good thing.

gizmo wrote: »

Except Watergate resulted in the exposure of illegal activities perpetrated by the Nixon administration, what illegal activities were exposed when the diplomatic cables and installation lists were published?

Also the NY Times and indeed Woodward and Bernstein were bound by the journalist code of ethics and standards, something Wikileaks does not subscribe to. They fortunately can't have it both ways.

Really, nothing illegal ? Nothing dodgy like the fact that Shell have infiltrated and corrupted all levels of goverment in Nigeria, or that Pzifer tried to find dirt on Nigerian goverment officials in order to stop a legal case. Nothing important like the kidnapping and torture of an innocent German man http://tinyurl.com/3yvzf9u, nothing important like the murder of innocents and a secret war in Yemen, or the fact that the Afghan government is hopelessy corrupt and that it's basically a failed war ?

As for installations, did terrorists need a list of installations to attack the Twin Towers, or the nightclubs in Indonesia, or the tube in London, the trains in Spain etc etc ? That sort of claim is utterly ridiculous. The US commander in Afghanistan has said that no harm was done, as has the US Defence Dept.

Are you aware that Wikileaks requested that the US help them redact all documents in order to prevent damage, and that the US refused, or that only maybe 1000 documents have been released so far out of the 250,000, and that all of these have been redacted with the aid of major newspapers such as The Guardian, Spiegel and the New York Times ?

And they don't subscribe to principles ? Are you aware that Wikileaks requested that the US help them redact all documents in order to prevent damage, and that the US refused, or that only maybe 1000 documents have been released so far out of the 250,000, and all of these have been redacted with the aid of major newspapers such as The Guardian, Spiegel and the New York Times ?

In case you haven't noticed it's the US that are actually kidnapping, torturing and killing people on a huge scale, name one person that Wikileaks has killed.

And I say this as someone who has been a huge supporter of the US and the principles of free speech and democracy, but things have been looking worse and worse ever since the Iraq war, and now Wikileaks are merely using the US's very own words to expose their corruption and hypocrisy. Once again, why shoot the messenger ?

gizmo wrote: »

Except Watergate resulted in the exposure of illegal activities perpetrated by the Nixon administration, what illegal activities were exposed when the diplomatic cables and installation lists were published?

Also the NY Times and indeed Woodward and Bernstein were bound by the journalist code of ethics and standards, something Wikileaks does not subscribe to. They fortunately can't have it both ways.

How about spying on United Nations diplomats?

The leak of the directive is likely to spark questions about the legality of the operation and about whether state department diplomats are expected to spy. The level of technical and personal detail demanded about the UN top team's communication systems could be seen as laying the groundwork for surveillance or hacking operations. It requested "current technical specifications, physical layout and planned upgrades to telecommunications infrastructure and information systems, networks and technologies used by top officials and their support staff", as well as details on private networks used for official communication, "to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys and virtual private network versions used".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-spying-un

Manic Moran wrote: »

The big question is of jurisdiction, not over whether Wikileaks could be successfully prosecuted should the organisation find itself in a US court.
NTM

Very true, and that's what's worrying about the entire thing - that a non-citizen ,who has only acted as a conduit for information and who has not been charged under any American law, has found himself under such attack, up to and including calls by leading politicians for his murder, and the obviously heavy leaning on companies such as Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, etc not to deal with him. What ever happened to due process and the rule of law ? Not even the Soviet Union or China has had to arrogance to lay claim that their laws are applicable worldwide, why should the US be held different ? Their very actions so far are proving that they are just a mirror and that it's all a sham.

Manic Moran wrote: »

I don't have their names, but according to this interview in the Guardian, Assange is quite happy to take credit for some.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/01/julian-assange-wikileaks-afghanistan

Now, that said, the elections were controversial enough without the documents having been leaked, and it's quite likely there would have been violence anyway, so insofar as that goes, then, no, I can't point definitevely to anyone and say they have been harmed by Wikileaks. Whether or not anyone has been killed as a result of the Afghan leaks, nobody can definitively state, and either way, there is no way of knowing ahead of time what the opposition might or might not take advantage of. Either way, Assange seems to have no problem with people being killed as long as it's for reasons he approves of, which is surprisingly similar to the governments he's working against.
NTM

Wikileaks doesn't have an army, navy or an air-force. Assange can make all the claims he wants but as you say, correlation does not equal to causation. I don't know the man and neither do I care about what he's like as a person nor his motives, what I do care about is what the reaction is telling me about supposed freedoms and the like.

The US has supposedly stood for free speech and internet freedoms - they have attacked Iran about Twitter, China for it's great firewall and censoring of Google.

Read this speech from Hilary Clinton and see the sheer hypocrisy... http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full
There's going to be a need for new superlatives because the existing ones are inadequate.

How about Barack Obama.. http://tinyurl.com/yfubkdz
"Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn't flow so freely because then I wouldn't have to listen to people criticizing me all the time. I think people naturally are -- when they're in positions of power sometimes thinks, oh, how could that person say that about me, or that's irresponsible, or -- but the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear. It forces me to examine what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States. "

"Now, as I said before, there's always a downside to technology. It also means that terrorists are able to organize on the Internet in ways that they might not have been able to do before. Extremists can mobilize. And so there's some price that you pay for openness, there's no denying that. But I think that the good outweighs the bad so much that it's better to maintain that openness."

Here's another few good ones.. http://tinyurl.com/35fvvsq

How about the US government warning employees not to look at Wikileaks, even though 3 million have access to the full set of cables just as part of their job? Or what do you think about students and potential employees being told not to mention Wikileaks on Facebook or any other social networking sites because it could impact future employment and they could be seen as security risks - just where is the freedom of thought and speech there, I don't see how anyone could justify this sort of frankly Orwellian and Kafaesque behaviour.

The hypocrisy, lies and propoganda disgust and repulse me beyond words, and I feel sick that, while i had begun to suspect as much anyway in the wake of Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition (kidnapping), the Patriot Act and the like, Wikileaks has now laid bare the mealy-mouthed lies of politicans and that there now is no beacon of freedom in the Western world. For that Wikileaks can only be applauded.