Using Wikileaks To Figure Out What The Government 'Redacts'
from the compare-and-contrast dept
We've talked in the past about the ridiculousness of the US government pretending that the State Department cables that were leaked via Wikileaks are still confidential. The reasoning, obviously, is that they're afraid that declaring anything that's become public is no longer confidential is that it creates incentives to leak more documents. But the actual situation is simply absurd. Documents that everyone can see easily and publicly... live in this world, a world where anyone in government has to pretend that they're still secret and confidential. There have even been cases where officials have gotten into trouble for using information from a "public" document, because they're supposed to create this fiction that it's not.Still, there is one way in which this has actually turned out to be enlightening. A few months ago, the ACLU filed some Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the State Department on some issues, getting some of the very same documents that were leaked via Wikileaks. Except... the kind that came with the FOIA had redactions. The Wikileaks documents, for the most part, do not. That created an interesting opportunity for Ben Wizner at the ACLU. He could now compare and contrast the two version of the document, to see just what the government is redacting, and figure out if they're redacting it for legitimate reasons... or just to do things like avoid embarrassment.
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Filed Under: censorship, freedom of infromation, redacted, wikileaks
Companies: aclu, wikileaks
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New FOIA Policy
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It's kind of like seeing behind the Wizards curtain.
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dont forget, governments in general (and it seems the US government in particular) can do as they like. when doing so, they are acting in the best interests of the people that put them in power, not in their own best interests! (sarc)
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I am willing to bet anything that the US is not the worst offender in the world. I would bet also that it is not even in the top 10. The US government is doing a lot things that we all agree are bad but because of the level of free (not as free as it use to be) speech we have in this country we are more aware of it. We know about it. In a lot of countries you don't.
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you are right. there are countries worse than the US, such as China, Iran. those countries dont try to pretend they are open democracies, promoting freedom and human rights etc. the US does the promoting but in reality is getting as bad as they are. on top of that, China for example, mainly keeps itself to itself. the US is forcing itself everywhere
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As for China mainly keeping to itself. I don't think those in Taiwan or Tibet agree with you.
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Well... I think in the view of Chinese officials, Taiwan and Tibert issues are "herself" issues. So in their eyes, it's other countries stepping in her business, not the other way round.
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Free conscience is only possible if given the information to make an informed decision. If such information is withheld and decisions are made based on false or incomplete information then the conscience was not free to make the decision. It was suppressed. And, according to George Washington, that is the anti-thesis of freedom (i.e., the right of every man to a free conscience, free from suppression). A government that no longer upholds the Constitution and Bill of Rights is a treasonous government. And who, may I ask, is it the responsibility of to bring such a government back under the control of the people? China, Iran, and other abusers do not have as their Supreme Law the right to a free conscience. So please stop degrading the freedom of your fellow Americans by comparing us to the rest of the world.
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Dont make me laugh. American and it's insidious culture is the most dangerous threat to humanity that has ever existed on planet earth.
How many other countries are conducting two illegal wars, have stockpiles of nuclear weapons larger than any other, spend most of their budget (which is four or five times more than anyone else, while being trillions of dollars in debt) on more weapons. Meanwhile their own people are being turfed from houses. The USA now tries to control the internet for the sake of a few multinational corporation, and have a tame press that plays nicely with all this.
And that is just scratching the surface. Whoever you are you don't know the first thing about reality.
The most offensive thing is the total hypocrisy and denial.
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The world doesn't hate us because we are champions of Democracy, they hate us because we bully those who won't bend to our demands.
Our government seems to behave like a wife beater, in public we are all smiles and everything is fine. Behind closed doors we sometimes have to smack them around for being lippy.
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There are plenty of countries with similar standard of living and lower poverty, and their governments are not hated like the US government is. It's not envy. And from what I've heard and read, it's the US government that gets most of the ire from other parts of the world, not the people of the US (with some exceptions of course).
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Which would you do if you were the US?
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Again, IMO it is not simply the fact that we're a leader that angers most of the people. Some few will just be resentful of whoever's on top, but I think mostly it's stuff like Gitmo, Abhu Graib, helping crash the world economy, pushing ACTA and TPP, and so on. They don't hate us because we're rich, they hate us because we're assholes.
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You are not a leader, you are a bully.
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I couldn't disagree more. I think envy has close to nothing to do with it. I think that the US forcing its will on the rest of the world both through economic and military power is what does it.
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Not for long. China is growing at 9% per year, the US is 2% per year, maybe. The Chinese government has a motive to underestimate their growth. The US government is definitely lying to overestimate US growth. China has more middle-class consumers than the whole population of the US. The US is about to become number 2, then 3, then ...
Once that happens, you will see what happens to US influence and status in the world. It will not be pretty.
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Actually they're all worried recently because their growth rate dropped to around 7%.
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To coopt your analogy, it's more like waking up to the fact that our brother is an abusive alcoholic and trying to get him to the AA meeting in the first place.
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If we upheld the same standards we demand of others we would be leading by example, but to publicly say A while doing B C D (the same things we called everyone else out for) makes us hypocrites. One can not claim the moral high ground unless one is actually moral, not just moral when other people might see.
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We don't have a problem, we could stop bullying other countries whenever we want. We'll stop, just, you know, next year. This just isn't a good time.
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Of particular concern is the issue of overflights by _____________. Italian prosecutors allege that ______________traversed Swiss airspace on the day __________ was abducted. ____________________________ Washington has yet to respond.
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"If you can't dazzle them with skill, baffle them with Bullshit"
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Re: OOh Madlibs!
1: Zombie Pigmen
2: Janet Jackson
3: Michael Jackson
4: George
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Re: Re: OOh Madlibs!
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2. fat men
3. the sandwich
4. The Subway in Walla-Walla,
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2) Miss Coco Chanel
3) Jimmy Hoffa
4) Booker T
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Something like this would do the job nicely.
Congress(Classified) Vote To Defend Against(Classified)
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We really ought to protest laws and government facilitated policies that are held behind closed doors a whole lot more. This is unacceptable.
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The only effective protest that the US people has available is to vote the bums out. No amount of complaint to the existing bad guys, who are doing all this stuff, will work. They have been ignoring complaints for decades. Why should they stop?
Get organized. Do your duty, US voters.
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Did you not notice how it worked on SOPA/PIPA?
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Whether or not you and others may find this silly in light of their unauthorized release, the Executive Orders remain in full force and effect, and their procedures must be followed until such time as the process for downgrading/declassification has taken place.
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Whether or not you and others may find this silly in light of their unauthorized release, the Executive Orders remain in full force and effect, and their procedures must be followed until such time as the process for downgrading/declassification has taken place.
In other words, "that's how it is because that's how it is". I think we already knew that.
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Convincing argument.
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Too funny!
See if I can get the list to go through here.
pigeons
fat men
the sandwich
The Subway in Walla-Walla,
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Re: Too funny!
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Re: Too funny!
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It all comes back to state secrets...
Supreme Court recognition in United States v. Reynolds
The privilege was first officially recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1953 decision United States v. Reynolds (345 U.S. 1). A military airplane, a B-29 Superfortress bomber, crashed. The widows of three civilian crew members sought accident reports on the crash but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission.[1][2][3][4][5][6][9][10] The court held that only the government can claim or waive the privilege, and it “is not to be lightly invoked”, and last there “must be a formal claim of privilege, lodged by the head of the department which has control over the matter, after actual personal consideration by that officer.”[1] The court stressed that the decision to withhold evidence is to be made by the presiding judge and not the executive.[1]
In 2000, the accident reports were declassified and released, and it was found that the assertion that they contained secret information was fraudulent. The reports did, however, contain information about the poor condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case. Many commentators have alleged government misuse of secrecy in this landmark case.[11]
Despite this ruling, a case might still be subject to judicial review since the privilege was intended to prevent certain, but not all, information to be precluded.[1]
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Voting.
Further proof? He with the most campaign contributions wins 94% of the time. This American market has turned every thing into TV drama, and the only reason anyone has time to pay attention (while they themselves work endlessly for the goal of accumulation and/or withdraw silently to avoid putting a bullet in their head) is because the clowns that manage to stumble over their corrupt feet in search of accumulation make us all feel a little better about our own role (or lack thereof) at the stupid ballot box.
Further proof? Look at all those tea party candidates that make up the Congress with a lower approval rating than communism.
You simply cannot vote when the ideology you support is influenced by money, and when it takes all that money to "get the votes," the only people that make it there are the ones cut throat enough to sell you the hell out. Anyone incapable of seeing that doesn't deserve to vote in the first place, and fixing that problem by voting is... well, let's just say this: "And I'm the idealist?"
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Also of those redaction hide crimes then those that do the redacting are accessories after the fact in those crimes.
Obviously all redaction should in fact need to pass a judicial board to ensure nothing is redacted that the public should have access to.
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