quote:Originally posted by Geraine: I am outraged that we killed innocents. I've never said that I'm not. But I would be equally outraged if an American civilian were killed because of the leak.
I hope that what you mean by this is that you have two possible states of outrage; none and all the way, and this is why one civilian american death is equal to tens of thousands of other civilian deaths.
Also, if what MrSquicky said about wikileaks trying to work with the american gov to protect people is true, where is the proper place to direct your outrage?
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: ... Aside from that, these materials were obtained illegally- you can't work with people with the understanding that they are breaking your laws.
As a point of note, it is clear that Bradley Manning, the original leaker, broke American law when stealing the data. It is far from clear that Wikileaks committed any crimes by receiving the data away from the jurisdiction of American law.
(And it does seem clear that the New York Times is in the legal clear and indeed, co-operated with the US government in redacting the documents)
quote:. I think we can all see how odd that is --- journalism being a field which is ostensibly about speaking truth to power and all that drivel.
This may be the best illustration of the point, also courtesy of Greenwald, in which the "diplomat" is the one who argues for transparency while the "journalist" (the editor of the New York Times as it happens) defends clearing their reporting with the government before reporting it:
quote:I'm absolutely in favor of this kind of information coming out. In courts of law and through diligent legislation.
I believe that this kind of information absolutely must come out if we are, as a people, to restrain our government. However, I believe it cannot legally come out until we have a comparatively restrained government.
Ergo, it must come out illegally.
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I'm absolutely in favor of this kind of information coming out. In courts of law and through diligent legislation. I am fully aware that this is a tall order- and that the current government is not even *trying* to redress this. But we don't need foreigners, much less Julian Assange, conducting our foreign relations for us.
Okay. Cool. Show me where there's any chance of that actually happening. Show me anyone who could possibly do it. Show me how this necessary thing can come about, in the real world, other than this. What I mean is, this may be naive, but supporting the idea while attacking the only people who dare to do it is naive as well.
Who else will do it? Who in the government will do it right? Where's the legislation? More importantly, how do we get it started? Any ideas? I'd love for this to be done legally, and in a way that is legitimately not releasing the actually important secrets.
But I don't believe our government will do it. So why not?
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RT @carlmaxim: Palin says Julian #Assange should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden. So he should be safe for at least a decade.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: RT @carlmaxim: Palin says Julian #Assange should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden. So he should be safe for at least a decade.
quote:The Bush administration pressured Germany not to prosecute CIA officers responsible for the kidnapping, extraordinary rendition and torture of German national Khaled El-Masri, according to a document made public Sunday night by Wikileaks. The document, a 2007 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, describes a meeting during which the then-deputy chief of the U.S. mission to Germany, John M. Koenig, urged German officials to "weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S." of issuing international arrest warrants in the El-Masri case.
In 2003, El-Masri was kidnapped from Macedonia and transported to a secret CIA-run prison in Afghanistan where he was held for several months and tortured before being dumped on a hillside in Albania. The American Civil Liberties Union brought a case in the U.S. on El-Masri's behalf in 2005, charging that former CIA director George Tenet violated U.S. and universal human rights laws when he authorized agents to abduct and abuse El-Masri. Lower courts dismissed the lawsuit on state secrecy grounds, and in 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Geez, they kidnapped a German from Macedonia and then dumped him in Albania of all places after being tortured in Afghanistan. And all due to a mistaken name. I know most of this was "known" before.
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I think the scary bit for me is the "it could happen to you aspect." It's scary enough in the Maher Arar case, the Canadian who extraordinarily renditioned(?) to Syria for torture based on bad intelligence. I mean, hey, the odds are good that the US doesn't have bad intelligence on you *knock on wood* and you can minimise your time in the States (or passing through the States).
But in this case, all I need is some dude with a similar name and its not like Chinese names are terribly unique. And I don't need to be flying through the US, you can just be kidnapped in the dead of night.
And then dumped in the middle of nowhere without so much as an apology, c'mon.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I think the scary bit for me is the "it could happen to you aspect." It's scary enough in the Maher Arar case, the Canadian who extraordinarily renditioned(?) to Syria for torture based on bad intelligence. I mean, hey, the odds are good that the US doesn't have bad intelligence on you *knock on wood* and you can minimise your time in the States (or passing through the States).
But in this case, all I need is some dude with a similar name and its not like Chinese names are terribly unique. And I don't need to be flying through the US, you can just be kidnapped in the dead of night.
And then dumped in the middle of nowhere without so much as an apology, c'mon.
Dude! I already said I felt bad!
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I'm just venting in general. I respect those (especially expatriates) who can sympathize with the worries that can come with being subject to a capricious and alien legal system.
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Geez, they kidnapped a German from Macedonia and then dumped him in Albania of all places after being tortured in Afghanistan. And all due to a mistaken name. I know most of this was "known" before.
But Holy Crap.
Hey now, Albania isn't that bad. In fact, they probably did him a solid by dropping him off there. My wife is from there, and I'll say that when I visited my in-laws a couple years ago I was very impressed. There must be something in the water there, because 90% of the women are absolutely beautiful.
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Which reminds me, by the time he got back home (which was about half a year later), because no one had bothered telling his family what was going on, they had already left thinking that he had just run away.
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quote:The US struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in reaction to heavy political pressure.
The company announced it was cutting WikiLeaks off yesterday only 24 hours after being contacted by the staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security.
...
The department of homeland security confirmed Amazon's move, referring journalists to Lieberman's statement.
Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which supports internet freedom, said it was not a violation of the first amendment but was nevertheless disappointing. "This certainly implicates first amendment rights to the extent that web hosts may, based on direct or informal pressure, limit the materials the American public has a first amendment right to access," Bankston told the website Talking Points Memo.
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No doubt they threatened to start enforcing state sales tax laws if Amazon didn't drop their hosting.
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quote:When American TV and movie producers want action, the formula involves Middle Eastern terrorists, a ticking nuclear device, and a (somewhat ironically, Canadian) guy named Sutherland. Canadian producers don't need to look so far -- they can find all the action they need right on the U.S.-Canadian border.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: No doubt they threatened to start enforcing state sales tax laws if Amazon didn't drop their hosting.
Food for thought
quote:Human Rights Watch urges the following principles as relevant to legislating on corporate responsibility to uphold human rights: ... 4. COMPANIES NOT TO ACT AS VOLUNTARY CENSORS OF PROTECTED SPEECH: Companies have no business making decisions about what political or religious content should or should not be censored. Companies should be prohibited from taking actions on their own to censor political or religious speech. Such proactive censorship is usually done in anticipation of government demands or preferences, without a legally binding order to remove specific material having been received. Censorship carried out proactively as the result of testing to identify what material the government is censoring and then taking action on this information in absence of any specific, legally binding court order, should be prohibited. Companies should also be prohibited from complying with oral, undocumented requests from the American authorities for censorship of political and religious speech. This includes manual deletion of content in addition to the filtering of it. Companies should be required to challenge every order to censor non-violent political and religious speech in the American courts. Companies should be prohibited from complying with an order unless the order is made by a court. Acting in this way will help with America's often stated goal of building the rule of law.
quote:Originally posted by MattP: ... Thus far no deaths have been tied to previous leaks despite similar complaints at the time of their release.
I think.
In the end, it all depends on your view of the balance between the good that the state department might do in terms of visibility on human rights and the bad that it might do. As the former assisstant Secretary of State on the Colbert Report emphasized, an important goal of the US diplomatic core is still to build up consensus and coalitions of the willing to go to war. Toss in the examples above where the diplomats actively applied pressure to reduce visibility on human rights, and I think it becomes a dubious proposition that there is a net positive on that front.
(Also, I suspect there's a lot less pressure to leak Canadian diplomatic cables than American ones)
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This issue I think is separable from the main WikiLeaks story, the story of what happens to censorship and government control of what is shown on the Internet I think has repercussions for everyone, but especially for the small government folks who I would have thought would be all over it.
There's a good editoral by Rebecca MacKinnon here which covers some of my ideas on this.
quote:We are facing new questions on which Americans have no clear consensus, and which were not covered in civics class: How will decisions made by private internet and telecommunications companies about what content they will or won't allow affect the ability of citizens to carry out informed debate on important matters of public concern? What are the private sector's obligations and responsibilities to prevent the erosion of democracy?
While Amazon was within its legal rights, the company has nonetheless sent a clear signal to its users: If you engage in controversial speech that some individual members of the U.S. government don't like -- even if there is a strong case to be made that your speech is constitutionally protected -- Amazon is going to dump you at the first sign of trouble.
Let's hope that there will always be other companies willing to stand up for our rights as enshrined both in the U.S. Constitution and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- and by extension their right to do business with us.
The future of freedom in the internet age may well depend on whether we the people can succeed in holding companies that now act as arbiters of the public discourse accountable to the public interest.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: A Canadian human rights worker's take on these leaks.
Definitely worth reading.
I was 100% behind the Iraq war leaks, including the Apache-gunning-down-civilians. But I'm not sure I see any great good that can come from leaking these diplomatic cables.
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Sweet, I mean seriously (Well, maybe. I'm not sure whether "consult" means a trial or just asking for an informal opinion)
quote:The server OVH, which the government claimed was partly hosting Wikileaks site from northern France, has hit back.
It will consult a judge on whether it is legal to host the whistleblowing site in France. The server said "it's not up to politicians or OVH to demand or decide the site's closure".
quote:Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- A court in Pakistan rejected a citizen's petition seeking a ban on the WikiLeaks website, a Pakistani government official told CNN. The petition was submitted by a citizen named Arif Gondal who described the recent diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks as an attempt to damage Pakistan's image and defame its leaders, said Muhammad Salim, a government lawyer in Punjab Province. The court rebuffed the petition on the grounds that the petitioner has not been harmed by the Wikileaks website, Salim said. "Information should not be hidden, especially in the 21st century," the Judge said in court, according to Salim. "One should bear the truth no matter how harmful it is."
posted
I keep secrets from all of you; it's better for your own good if you didn't know anything that's happening in the background. Live sheep liveeeeee.
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You can tell me your bank account numbers without fear of me stealing from you. But you shouldn´t, because that information is valuable, and dangerous for you, and I don´t need it.
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SUBJECT KAZAKHSTAN: MONEY AND POWER ... ¶7. (S) The Ambassador asked if the corruption and infighting are worse now than before. Idenov paused, thought, and then replied, “No, not really. It’s business as usual.” Idenov brushed off a question if the current maneuverings are part of a succession struggle. “Of course not. It’s too early for that. As it’s always been, it’s about big money. Capitalism — you call it market economy — means huge money. Listen, almost everyone at the top is confused. They’re confused by their Soviet mentality. They’re confused by the corrupt excesses of capitalism. ‘If GOLDMAN Sachs executives can make $50 million a year and then run America’s economy in Washington, what’s so different about what we do?’ they ask.”
I have to wonder about the possibility that historians will look back at this in a few decades as the turning point toward a Great Firewall with American characteristics.
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I wonder how many Americans will just sheepishly roll over and tolerate government censorship of the Internet? All of them, or just most of them?
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Both make some good points. I didn't realize Wikileaks had put up blueprints for a nuclear weapon. That strikes me as extremely bad judgment, though perhaps not enough to outweigh the good they've done if it was an isolated incident.
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Another comment on the uniqueness of this turning point
quote:Reporters Without Borders condemns the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure being directed at cablegate.wikileaks.org, the website dedicated to the US diplomatic cables. ... This is the first time we have seen an attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency. We are shocked to find countries such as France and the United States suddenly bringing their policies on freedom of expression into line with those of China. We point out that in France and the United States, it is up to the courts, not politicians, to decide whether or not a website should be closed.
And they aren't exactly slouches when it comes to criticizing censorship in China either.
I think the international nature of this also should be emphasized. Each of those four companies aren't just blocking access to services by users in Chimerica, they're blocking access for everyone, whether German, Canadian, or French.
Edit to add: It is also truly strange to see people in China on Twitter, that normally pass around tips on how to circumvent the Chinese firewall through VPNs and alternate hosting services start passing around tips on how to route around the blocks on WikiLeaks. I suppose if the proponents of censorship have gone global, so have the opponents.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I wonder how many Americans will just sheepishly roll over and tolerate government censorship of the Internet? All of them, or just most of them?
Too few for censorship to really be viably effective for at least a decade, but perhaps too many to keep long-term plans from ultimately being viable, maybe?
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: No doubt they threatened to start enforcing state sales tax laws if Amazon didn't drop their hosting.
Food for thought
quote:Human Rights Watch urges the following principles as relevant to legislating on corporate responsibility to uphold human rights: ... 4. COMPANIES NOT TO ACT AS VOLUNTARY CENSORS OF PROTECTED SPEECH: Companies have no business making decisions about what political or religious content should or should not be censored. Companies should be prohibited from taking actions on their own to censor political or religious speech. Such proactive censorship is usually done in anticipation of government demands or preferences, without a legally binding order to remove specific material having been received. Censorship carried out proactively as the result of testing to identify what material the government is censoring and then taking action on this information in absence of any specific, legally binding court order, should be prohibited. Companies should also be prohibited from complying with oral, undocumented requests from the American authorities for censorship of political and religious speech. This includes manual deletion of content in addition to the filtering of it. Companies should be required to challenge every order to censor non-violent political and religious speech in the American courts. Companies should be prohibited from complying with an order unless the order is made by a court. Acting in this way will help with America's often stated goal of building the rule of law.
This quote from HRW seems insane to me. There is a huge difference between freedom of speech and forcing companies to participate in said speech. If a newspaper wants to publish something, that's fine. If a newspaper chooses not to publish something because they think the writer is a crackpot, or is trying to damage the country, the newspaper is well within its rights to "censor" that writer by not publishing it.
Likewise, didn't Amazon choose to drop wikileaks? So... is HRW really arguing that they should be made to not do that, for fear of censoring someone? Sorry, no. Freedom of speech doesn't extend into forcing other private entities to help you.
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quote: ... we are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging the American governments’ demands for censorship and surveillance. The private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression. And when their business dealings threaten to undermine this freedom, they need to consider what’s right, not simply what’s a quick profit.
posted
I have no problem with them urging companies to challenge government demands for censorship. That sentence seems fine to me.
It's when they say things like companies should be required to do so that I think they're ultimately a bunch of statists who are just as bad as the worst government censor, they just exercise their beliefs differently.
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Unless they were asked to do so and decided to take the easy way out, its not so much as forcing them as putting reverse pressure on them to go "hey, what the hell hero?"
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Blayne the first quote he posted explicitly used words like "prohibited" and "required." In my universe, these are much more synonymous with force than they are with asking.
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quote: Likewise, didn't Amazon choose to drop wikileaks? So... is HRW really arguing that they should be made to not do that, for fear of censoring someone? Sorry, no. Freedom of speech doesn't extend into forcing other private entities to help you.
C'mon, Dan. Did Amazon choose to drop? Well, so far as we know, yes. But don't be obtuse. Amazon has some very real, very large financial and political incentives to please the people who were putting some pretty hefty pressure on Wikileaks, and you and I both know it. 'Choice' starts to get a bit murky there, not as clear as choosing between coke and pepsi.
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quote: Likewise, didn't Amazon choose to drop wikileaks? So... is HRW really arguing that they should be made to not do that, for fear of censoring someone? Sorry, no. Freedom of speech doesn't extend into forcing other private entities to help you.
C'mon, Dan. Did Amazon choose to drop? Well, so far as we know, yes. But don't be obtuse. Amazon has some very real, very large financial and political incentives to please the people who were putting some pretty hefty pressure on Wikileaks, and you and I both know it. 'Choice' starts to get a bit murky there, not as clear as choosing between coke and pepsi.
I'm really not trying to be obtuse, I promise. I certainly get your point, but I'm not sure I agree that it makes the "choice" murky. Those factors may well have entered into Amazon's decision (they probably did!) but ultimately it was still their decision. Unless one thinks that the US government placed intense, clandestine pressure on Amazon directly, and that seems too conspiracy theoryish for me barring evidence.
No, assuming no secret government agents were sent to "help" Amazon's choice, I don't see the choice as having been compromised. This seems reminiscent of people claiming that Dr. Laura and Rick Sanchez etc. were all "censored." Even if a company in question doesn't specifically object to a given example of speech, if they fear the fallout of being seen to endorse such speech they are absolutely in their rights to stop supporting it.
What am I missing?
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quote:Those factors may well have entered into Amazon's decision (they probably did!) but ultimately it was still their decision. Unless one thinks that the US government placed intense, clandestine pressure on Amazon directly, and that seems too conspiracy theoryish for me barring evidence.
I'm not arguing it made the decision less their choice, I'm just pointing out the actual facts of the matter - Amazon's very real, undeniable vested interest in pleasing certain people - render their 'choice' a lot less idealistically clean and pure than your words were indicating, and much more jaded and cynical and murky.
I'm also pretty sure that when the Founding Fathers or anyone else was originally concocting ideals of censorship and freedom of speech, one of the things they didn't have in mind was groups choosing whether or not to effectively censor media outlets on the basis of appeasing the government.
quote:...if they fear the fallout of being seen to endorse such speech they are absolutely in their rights to stop supporting it.
What am I missing?
What I'm suggesting you're missing is that fears of government-sponsored fallout isn't really supposed to be one of the considerations in whether or not a private group decides to carry another private group's media offerings, Dan. It's pretty straightforward. That's de facto censorship, isn't it?
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Dan, two Senators talked to Amazon executives for six hours. I have no difficulty imagining that threats were made; I was only half-kidding about the sales tax thing, becuase I know it's a thorn in the side of the senators in question.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: PS: On Coke or Pepsi, the correct choice is... neither.
The correct choice is a small amount of Pepsi. More sugar tastes better but then gets sickening when you have too much.
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quote:Dan, two Senators talked to Amazon executives for six hours. I have no difficulty imagining that threats were made; I was only half-kidding about the sales tax thing, becuase I know it's a thorn in the side of the senators in question.
I would perhaps hedge at having difficulty imagining threats were made, because that's the sort of thing that can get folks into all sorts of trouble if later proven. But frankly I have no difficulty at all in imagining all sorts of veiled suggestions and not-so-veiled blandishments were offered, Dan, which is precisely what I was getting at. How much 'choice' is it if some very powerful folks come on over and give you a huge helping of carrot to help you along?
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Tom, Rakeesh, how would you suggest a situation like this be handled to prevent coercion against Amazon?
I agree with you that Dan's position leaves open the possibility of de facto censorship, but I'm not sure I can see a better alternative that doesn't.
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posted
Yeah, Rakeesh, I do see what you're saying. And I'm sure that would strongly influence Amazon's choice. And I'm not even saying that this is a good thing, per se, or that any US Senators should have done that (I agree with you, Rakeesh, regarding whether or not actual threats were made. Sorry Tom, but that seems to venture too far into a conspiracy theory sort of mindset that I try to avoid.)
But, even assuming this is a bad enough thing that we want to stop it, I'm adamantly opposed to the sort of "solution" HRW suggests. Private companies are not usually, and shouldn't specifically be, in the business of promoting all forms of speech. Private companies tend to have specific business goals, and if they feel a given expression of speech runs counter to their goals, I can't see any compelling reason why they should be forced to support it. So, as Destineer asked, even if this situation is bad, what exactly is the alternative? How do we plan on stopping it?
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