Obama 'Considering Legal Action' Against Wikileaks
from the good-luck-with-that dept
Following the latest Wikileaks leak, apparently the Obama White House is exploring "the possibility of taking legal action" against the site. That's amusing. Of course, with Homeland Security expanding its mandate to seize domain names it doesn't like, you could see an attempt to seize the Wikileaks domain. However, while I'm sure there are some in the federal government who would favor such an action, I would think there are at least a few knowledgeable people in the administration who would note that the backlash to such a move would be overwhelming. The government may be able to fool some people by pretending that seizing websites without a trial isn't censorship when it comes to copyright issues, but it would be a much more difficult claim when the site is a whistleblowing site.
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Filed Under: censorship, feds, free speech, obama administration, whistleblowing, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks
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You already have some "freedom loving" Repubs labeling them a terrorist organization.
All bets are off when it comes to stealing and exposing government secrets. It's foreign espionage. Even if Assange hasn't really had anything all that significant so far. He's not going to be a hero to most voting Americans.
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CNN and other members of msm have been posting them, shouldn't they be accused of espionage as well then?
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From what I understand if they do go after WikiLeaks the password for the unredacted stuff gets released. WikiLeaks is also holding back a sizable chunk of unreleased stuff.
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Now with "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that WikiLeaks acted illegally in posting the material." Um, he's not a US citizen, so exactly how did he break any laws? Assuming he hasn't been to the US, didn't receive the data while on US soil, how exactly has he broken *any* US laws? We can make it illegal to do so in our country, but our laws don't extend past our borders (treaties not withstanding obviously).
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And if he's broken our laws, quite a few of us have broken Germany's 'no NAZI info' laws. We call it free speech, they call it illegal.
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won't happen
unless they think they can shut it off around the globe while wikileaks is armed with lawyers, they have another thing coming.
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The man needs to be in jail. His only interest is to hurt the US reputation and make it harder to operate, using classified documents.
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Matt, may be you should see what else WikiLeaks has posted over the years. Granted, that means you'll have to read something other than msm.
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And I am 100% sure that the US Government has never, ever tried to hurt another country's reputation using their classified documents in any way, shape or form.
/sarc
The man needs to be in jail.
For what? Assange is not a US citizen.
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'The man' doesn't own Wikileaks. 'The man' isn't the CEO (although he is the 'editor-in-chief'). 'The man' doesn't actually upload the documents himself. 'The man' isn't even in charge, although he is on the board. Putting 'the man' in jail wouldn't actually stop anything from happening.
So, lolwhut?
His only interest is to hurt the US reputation and make it harder to operate, using classified documents.
America-bashing is a world-wide past time. Please explain why it's suddenly illegal.
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One of the things they're proud of, is revealing $3billion in corruption in Kenya, which had a VERY significant impact on the vote there, which lead to a more open gov't.
Quite simply, your second paragraph is utter bullshit.
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USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!
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What is the real problem here is that the majority our perceptions of US policy and organization are grossly inaccurate. Simply put we have a belief our government is often doing the right thing. Well it is not IMHO.
We cannot continue to pretend having a military presence in almost every part of the world, spending more than several industrialized nations combined on the military budget, and fighting two separate endless wars is anything but a form of Imperialism.
We have to accept who we are before we can become who we want to be. In a lot of ways the US is operating as an addict unwilling to accept that he/she has a problem. This denial and the mechanisms that keep it in place is at the core of why we can't change.
I personally think that the US citizens are ready for the truth to be told about our government. I know I am.
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For one, they received an award from Amnesty International for revelations of conspiracy and mass murder by the Kenyan government. Their history abounds with shocking revelations and awards from different groups. They release whatever comes their way that they think has merit. They have no particular vendetta against the U.S. or anyone else.
Also, wikileaks is not a 1-man operation. Julian Assange is not wikileaks. If he were vaporized by a government laser from space, wikileaks can and would continue to operate.
If you think what wikileaks is doing is "gossip", then why do you think gossip is something people need to be in jail for? It can't be both important enough to go to jail for, and also "gossipy bullshit". You can't have it both ways.
You don't seem to really know much about wikileaks at all.
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Also as Mike notes, some of us are mirroring the Wikileaks site, if it go's down, were going to put it back up somewhere else. (on a side note, im going to need a new HD soon if they release much more roflol).
Hephaestus, do you mean this one?
http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/2466654/4932480/
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Too bad this President does not have enough guts to order it.
If only Regan were still in office...
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Apparently you are too young to remember that Reagan said himself that he was not aware nor has he authorized any of the "black ops" stuff you are pining for.
And as far as showing ignorance, you might read up about the black ops happening under current administration in countries like Pakistan. Oh wait, you can only divide things into black and white. Pun intended.
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note: I do believe he was a good man, but he also was a politician and nobody should trust their lives in the hands of those.
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and Regan.... you mean the actor who was bought and payed for by the rich to be a puppet president?
Not to sound bitter but he took the steady flow of money going to the middle class and clamped it down ensuring those with the most got even more and kept it. He even said it was "trickle down" which meant you turn down that steady stream to the middle class to just a trickle.
Gotta love the US citizens that still idolize this guy. Ignorance must truly be bliss.
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Who's at the door...
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This is a slippery slope for the US to start travelling. If we start tagging people or organizations as terrorists when clearly they are not in fact, it turns into the proverbial abuse of power and witch hunt that we have all seen occur throughout history via authoritarian regimes.
To me, this is a bigger issue than what information was released in those documents. As far as that is concerned the US needs to determine the source of the leak and deal with it and stop saber-rattling about wikileaks.
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I think last weekend's action clearly demonstrated that we are already way, way down down that slope and gaining speed by the second.
What is next? Will the Obama administration declare the Tea Party a terrorist organization and start seizing their assets? Or will the Tea Party gain control after the next election and declare liberals to be terrorists? The race is on.
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Also from the article: WikiLeaks would soon be targeting "despotic regimes in China, Russia, and Central Asia"
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Agreed. Last time namecalling began along these same lines the Salem Witch Trials happened.
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Sadly, it was more recent than that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
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Don't the words "national security" ring a bell? We all hear them way too often in recent years.
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They know they can't really shut down something like wikileaks merely via infrastructure. Rather they would have to pursue and prosecute any citizens in possession of the offending information.
Pressing the 'terrorist' hotbutton is just the first step of that process.
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Nothing wikileaks has done is any way terrorist-like behaviour. I am sure you'd be more upset if the government decided the huffington post was a terrorist organisation (though they publish far fewer facts).
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Secret Govt. Docs...
Leaking classified material and publishing it puts American as well as our 'friends' lives at risk.
It is also information on how the US Government operates behind ‘closed doors’ and can be used to find and exploit weaknesses in our security systems. It could be used, depending on the information, to find an exploit during time of war that could put millions of American lives at risk.
This should in no way be tolerated. The guy that owns the Wiki site is Australian I believe. I think we should bring the full power of the federal government to bear on Australia and have them extradite him for trial in the US on grounds of aiding and abetting terrorist organizations, among other charges.
When he is found guilty and he is guilty, put him in ADMAX with the rest of the terrorist, forever!
Send a message...
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Are you a Soviet? 'Cause that's what you must be referring to, Soviet Union.
The guy that owns the Wiki site is Australian I believe. I think we should bring the full power of the federal government to bear on Australia and have them extradite him for trial in the US on grounds of aiding and abetting terrorist organizations, among other charges.
It is hilarious that with the power of the internet (or Google, specifically) at your fingertips, you cannot figure out where the guy is.
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So let me get this straight, you want to ruin your ties with my country, because someone posted something leaked by your own countryman?
Over-reacting much? Did you stop to think of what those consequences would be, if you started making ill-thought out demands of your allies?
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Re: Secret Govt. Docs...
There is a persistent mythos that if security information isn't disclosed publicly, that it isn't available to adversaries. We see this all the time in IT, where some vendors -- always those who are embarrassed by the latest gaping security hole in their products -- rant about "responsible disclosure" and paint those who don't do their jobs for them as irresponsible.
But this is nonsense. Any adversary worth the title had the diplomatic cables of interest to them a long time ago. Given that an estimated 3 million people had access to varying subsets of these, it's farsical to presume that none of them leaked them, sold them, or accidentally disclosed them when they lost a laptop or a briefcase or whatnot. Everyone spies on everyone constantly, and low-hanging fruit like this is plucked at will.
What endangers people isn't the disclosure of this material: it's its existence. And responsible for that lies with those who have created it.
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You dont expect diplomats to discuss within themselves things regarding the personalities of those they have to deal with.
How is publishing that a diplomat said some president travelled with a volupious nurse, is 'whisleblowing'.
Its gossop, its things that will make the job of those diplomats far more difficult. or impossible.
No one at wikileaks is skilled, qualified or experienced in intelligence, and what the consequences of any information can be used for.
Dont forget in World War 2, german spies would look at the number of lights on in Government and defense buildings and use that information to determine if there was an attack being planned.
(the people planning the attack work late at night, with the lights on). if all the lights are off, they can use that information to determine the chance of an attack.
So, just the information about lights on in a building is intelligence.
The amount of food allocated to a group is a good indication of the number of people and the duration of their activity.
Therefore all military food transportation, and munitions and equipment is kept secert, because any information, by itself might be meaningless, but put together by the right people can and IS very damaging.
Geez, the US Government even do it, they released the name of that CIA double agent, destroyed her career. With just the releasing of name.
And that guy is from australia, but he is not in australia, he is basically on the run from the law, and have a child molestation charge against him.
We (Australia) could not send him to you even if we could, he's not here..
I work with the military in the middle easy all the time, they are my friends. Any information that makes their job harder is not helping the US.
He should be in prison, I would not be too surprised if at some point he just disappeared..
Imagine if he was in russia, how long would he last there?
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God your incoherent rant is all over the map. I'm surprised you didn't throw space aliens in there along with all the world war IIs and russians and child molesters.
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continue the onslaught of murder of innocent civilians? or directly being involved in the deaths of American troops?
THEY can spin it however they want:
"THIS EVIL MAN HAS PUT 'COUNTLESS' LIVES AT RISK"
But what about the lives of the already killed 10's of thousands innocent civilians? Well, according to THEM, I suppose, these aren't "countless" as they've been counted.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
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I find it highly amusing that so many people are so upset about a bunch of documents. Nothing Wikileaks has published is demonstrably false, is it ?
So if I tell you the sky is blue, you'll want to put me in jail too ? Wikileaks is providing a service that the traditional media should be, but is not.
(To politics.co.uk : http://tinyurl.com/2w8sevg)
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I find it highly amusing that so many people are so upset about a bunch of documents. Nothing Wikileaks has published is demonstrably false, is it ?
So if I tell you the sky is blue, you'll want to put me in jail too ? Wikileaks is providing a service that the traditional media should be, but is not.
(To politics.co.uk : http://tinyurl.com/2w8sevg)
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this administration needs a serious dose of reality.
Change? i'll take my guns and my free speech, you can have your change
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Stopped reading there.
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Worthless
So what's the point of legal action, aside from impotent chest beating?
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Wikileak
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Its not like he didnt know the risks going into this, and while i think it was foolish of him to use his name freely, its his decision at the end of the day.
Back to the subject though, your president cannot bring legal action against this site, not without everything blowing out of proportion, and just a large game of wack-a-mole.
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The REAL bottom line is don't let governments push you around when they threaten you.
The wikileaks team is a group of people who's lives involved constant movement, paranoia, and secret agent shit long before this leak happened. So don't worry about Assange - this is just another day at the office for him.
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(I didn't bother looking up the names so I may have misspelled them)
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Technology is empowering a more just and free society.
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over all
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So, desperate attempts will be made to hide documents, which will be all the more publicized as a result. The Streisand Effect hitting an entire government. This should be amusing.
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Everyone take a deeeep, deeep breath
The reality is that someone on the inside, that is to say American officials, have been leaking this stuff to Wikileaks and who knows where else with Wikileaks down on the bottom of the list. To be cynical the media pays more for a good leak, don't you know. Then again, having your leak mixed in with hundreds of others is a hell of a good way to stay in a position to be able to leak other communications if that's what this person wants to do.
For all of the fuss and furor doesn't it strike anyone as curious that, for example, the Canadian government knew which documents were about to be leaked before they hit Wikileaks? What I'm saying, to those who don't get it, is that everyone affected seemed to know about what would be up on the site before it got there.
That makes it extremely unlikely that Wikileaks is the only place getting this information and others are acting on it sooner rather than Wikileaks is.
Also keep in mind that government secrets, any government's secrets, are fleeting at best so I'm not all that convinced that anything is actually compromised here.
If the United States government and others, including the bunch of semi-competent lots we Canadians suffer with, want to get angry then that anger is better targeted at those doing the leaking and the seemingly easy route(s) they have to get those leaks out.
Of course that would be hard to do and it deflects attention from that problem to have a convenient scapegoat like Wikileaks to whips for governments to raise all holy hell about that rather than fix the problem.
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This is news?
That being said, it does highlight the dangers of communications, will other countries really want to work with the US knowing that their conversations might become public?
Wikileaks has a right to publish what is received but the US Govt. should punish those that release information to the full extent of the law.
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Iranian nuclear scientists assassinated
Like "Tomorrow there will be a huge leak and our moles in iran might be outed/arrested/tortured. Lets neutralise them today just in case".
I find it staggering that so many docs (inc supposed quotes from the Saudi king, UN bugging, etc) were at such a low level of confidentiality and available to so many people to see. How could one person make off with so much ?
Sounds like fairly poor information management to me.
If there's an upside, it's watching Iran try to dispute the revelation that they have no friends in the region...
But overall, this doesn't sound like dirty secrets being revealed (like the helicopter shooting video was). This is just pissing a lot of people off when noone serious is learning anything they didn't know.
This time I feel like saying to Wikileaks "and your point is ?".
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re: Secret Govt. Docs...
We Americans live in a Democracy and that only works when the government is transparent. Before anyone gets carried away, I know that there is some information that needs to be kept secret. However; it's a lot harder to keep the important stuff secret when you try to make everything secret.
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Seriously, I don't see what the big deal is here.
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One reason I've been saying we will attack Iran since before we've even attacked Iraq (though I've been saying we will attack Iraq a few months before we did, when the media and Bush started to suggest that he wanted to) is because we attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and both just so happen to be surrounding Iran. Coincidence or by design? It looks like we want to sandwich attack Iran from both sides. There are a couple of other reasons I've been saying it though they're too off topic to discuss here.
The point is that nothing in that leak is surprising one bit and so it's nothing hard to believe. Heck, the government isn't even denying any of it, they're trying to suppress the leaks which is almost an admission of its veracity.
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Probably the 20 + year propaganda campaign against Iran with constant war drums being beat by every chickenhawk that ever lived. That could have been it :)
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Real damage
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SCARY
Obama may have run on a platform of change, but Pandora's box is already open and no one in Washington DC wants to give up the power of "terrorism" + "national security". It's amazing the way the sheep accept that Wikileaks is suddenly a terrorist organization. Why? Because it publishes dirty secrets that embarrass people. There is very little threat to national security, if any, from the stuff published by Wikileaks.
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Huh huh, huh huh, you said tit.
Also I think there should be huge wads of money in that equation somewhere, that's something they get for saying "terrorism" and "national security". Or "homeland security" as the case may be.
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What was released this time (because last time was actually much more serious) is listed as gossip, the fact that it was released is a serious violation of trust. The kid that released it is in for some hard time, and rightly so.
Not everything the government considers should be made public. Do we have plans to attack China and Russia? Of course we do, we probably have plans to attack Canada. You plan for all options, that doesn't mean that they will be put into place or should be made public.
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Going Green
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The green party is increasingly becoming a real option with the sorry state of our two-part system.
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Hypocrisy much?
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People Seriously Support This Org?
If Obama goes through with this is would be one of the few things he has done since taking office that I would applaud
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Re: People Seriously Support This Org?
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