New Wikileaks Dump is Unconscionable

Bells said:
Maybe if America did not want its childish diplomatic cables getting out,
Click to expand...

Everyone has such cables, your nation included.

Bells said:
they should make sure the content to such cables are secure and not able to be downloaded by an employee (one of between 2 and 3 million people who had access to all the cables) miming to Lady Gaga over a period of 8 months.

Assange is not at fault for the information getting out. America is at fault for bad security.
Click to expand...

No one is arguing against this.

Bells said:
He will get the support he needs from his home country. He has not done anything wrong and has broken no laws.
Click to expand...

He has broken numerous US laws.

Bells said:
He was not the spy. He was not the individual who stole the information from the US Government computers. He is like a journalist who publishes the information he receives. The actions of the US in attempting to charge him with espionage is a load of shite.
Click to expand...

You need to look up and read the espionage statutes. Possession of the information alone is prosecutable. So is publication and dissemination.

Bells said:
But not exactly which laws. Again, it seems to be a load of BS.
Click to expand...

I can give you the exact codes if you like.

Bells said:
And the US dares to declare itself as leaders of the democratic and free world? Hysterically funny at best.
Click to expand...

What's hysterical is the childish petulence people in this thread continually display towards the US and this situation.

The US is trying to enforce its laws and protect its information. All nations would do the same. Your country has similar espionage laws, and if there are anything like the UK's, which I suspect there are, then they are far more draconian than their American counterparts. Free Speech, which is enshrined in the US Constitution (is it in Austrailia's, it's not in the UK?) is not a license to behave irresponsibly and unethically and both the legislature and the courts have said as much.
 
hypewaders said:
Pre-Singularity, our consciousnesses are bound by flesh and blood, and all our physical imperatives. Notions of escaping this plane of existence through the internet are (how to say? gotta go take care of offline imperatives, no time to find the words) premature.
Click to expand...

I know we are still defined by "The Human Condition". We eat, drink, sleep and deal with waste produce. We are born, age and die, but technically why do we do these things? We attribute it to being the way of the universe, the way the world works, we unquestionably buy further into the conditioning.

What we tend to ignore is that perhaps what assumptions we have drawn have only existed as a pre- state, a state where we are to evolve to learn more, to increase our technology to be "up-to-date" with the capacity to change our initial understanding.

I've admittedly obtained a rather unique view set thanks to a model of the universe, the model suggests that it would be possible to make a universe of quantified volumes (atoms) that themselves can be classed as nano-technological but existent as dormant until we have the technology to utilise them to their fullest.

If the model is proven true then a lot of changes are possible, damaged cells could be rebuilt, limbs grown back, ageing stopped, even the need for food potentially alleviated. (If this is the case it will cause chaos because all the things that force the rich/poverty divide will come crashing down, proving that economics is a man made divergence)

It will obviously sound like Scifi to most, if not all, but it's something that is more possible than you hope to imagine.

The point is that if the models true, then no government alone should hold control over it, in fact it would be best if the whole cold war fiasco that's existed for the past 65 years was scrapped, otherwise there will constantly be countries trying to obtain power over it. It requires complete transparency,freedom, equality and of course co-operation and that my friend is the beginning of the singularity.
 
Last edited:
Stryder said:
Some time back I mentioned this, but what if people could "Naturalise" to the state of "Internet". Namely become an Internet Citizen, a denizen of the world wide web, DECLARE the Internet a "NATION". No governments as such but the potential for entire policy driven systems to emerge in this "Forum" (In this instance I don't mean Sciforums, I'm actually referring to the internet as a whole)

All this would require is the capacity to be seen as an Independent and Neutral State, who's people are obviously currently displaced for the absence of actual lands to live on.

Such independence would alter the methods that are required in dealing with Governments, as activities do not have to appear criminal.
Click to expand...

It may be coming and this situation may be a push in that direction.
 
countezero said:
Everyone has such cables, your nation included.
Click to expand...

Yep. And he has not committed a crime in Australia.

He has broken numerous US laws.
Click to expand...
Which ones has he broken?

Remember, he was not in the US, nor did he publish these in the US. He was given the information by another person.

Possession of the information alone is prosecutable. So is publication and dissemination.
Click to expand...
I take it the US Government is hunting down the editors and owners of the various news outlets in the US who have been publishing them for all to read? After all, since publication and dissemination is prosecutable, why have none of them been charged yet?

I can give you the exact codes if you like.
Click to expand...
Please do. With a link to the relevant sections of the statutes if you may? Thank you.:)

What's hysterical is the childish petulence people in this thread continually display towards the US and this situation.
Click to expand...
No. What is funny is how the US is reacting to this now, since they've known about this for over 3 months. What is hilarious is that they are over-reacting to what amounts to diplomatic gossip as though Mr Assange has committed mass murder. What is hysterical is seeing the senior members of your houses of Government threatening asssassination and saying laws should be changed in the US so that he can be arrested - but according to you, the lawmakers are wrong and he has broken US laws - yet you have senior members of the House saying that the laws may need to be changed so that he can be charged.

The petulence of people in this thread is towards a nation reacting like idiots for something they caused themselves, in that they failed to secure these supposedly vital documents. The people to blame for this are those who failed to do simple checks on Government systems to see who was accessing the data and why they may have been accessing and why the data was being copied or downloaded.

The US is trying to enforce its laws and protect its information.
Click to expand...
Really?

By calling him a terrorist and an enemy combatant? By calling for his assassination? By pushing for his arrest on trumped up charges that were thrown out of court and dismissed because the women were both found to have consented (by their own admittance)? By failing to secure the information and instead, having it open to over 3 million people who could apparently copy and download the information without any detection for over 8 months? Maybe if the US wanted to protect its information, it would actually take minute steps to ensure the information actually was protected.

The US should enforce its laws against the person who took the information for over 8 months, not against those who published it when it was handed to them on a platter. It is appalling that the US can even use arguments of his having broken US laws in publishing the information, when news organisations in the US have published it for all to read and have faced no scrutiny.

All nations would do the same.
Click to expand...
Really? All nations would have the information available for that many people and with such lax security that some clerk could download and copy it for over 8 months without detection?

Your country has similar espionage laws, and if there are anything like the UK's, which I suspect there are, then they are far more draconian than their American counterparts.
Click to expand...
We also have whistleblower laws that protect whistleblowers. Mr Assange not only did not spy on the US, he was not a whistleblower either. The individual clerk who took the information from US systems is both. Now, Mr Assange did not seek out this individual to get him to do it, nor was the indiviudal paid for what he freely gave to Wikileaks.

In short, Mr Assange is more in the role of a journalist instead of a spy. Had he directly approached the individual and asked him to steal the information of US Government computers, then you may have a leg to stand on. But he did not. The person downloaded it and then approached Mr Assange and Wikileaks with the information. To charge him with espionage under the Act, the US Government would have to prove that Mr Assange had a motive to get the information and to publish it. And I can assure you, that would be impossible for them to prove. They'd have to show that direct set out to get the information, which he did not. We all know he did not. They would have to show that he released it with the direct intent to damage the US's interests. Impossible to prove. He was quite direct and the site itself is direct in why it exists - to serve the public interest.

Most importantly, Mr Assange, an Australian citizen and in the capacity of a form of journalist, has no legal obligation to the US Government, nor does he have an obligation to not disclose information he was given by a US source. Had Mr Assange been employed by the US Government, then such prohibition may exist. But he was not and he is not employed by the US Government.

So pray tell, why exactly should Mr Assange be charged with espionage? If that was the case, then every single journalist that broke a story about the US Government or any Government around the world would be charged with espionage. But they are not. Unless of course you live in a country like Saudia Arabia or Iran.

Free Speech, which is enshrined in the US Constitution (is it in Austrailia's, it's not in the UK?) is not a license to behave irresponsibly and unethically and both the legislature and the courts have said as much.
Click to expand...
Actually, he has done nothing wrong. He has no legal obligation to your Government.
 
Bells said:
What is funny is how the US is reacting to this now, since they've known about this for over 3 months. What is hilarious is that they are over-reacting to what amounts to diplomatic gossip as though Mr Assange has committed mass murder. What is hysterical is seeing the senior members of your houses of Government threatening asssassination and saying laws should be changed in the US so that he can be arrested - but according to you, the lawmakers are wrong and he has broken US laws - yet you have senior members of the House saying that the laws may need to be changed so that he can be charged.
Click to expand...

WAY overblown.

First, only the Executive branch of the Gov can Arrest/Charge him with anything, so what ever some Congressmen says (Legislative Branch) means diddly squat.

And so far, the Justice Dept has not charged him with anything.

The fact is that while Gov prosecutors have used the Espionage Act to convict OFFICIALS who leaked classified information they have never prevailed in a case where a leak recipient simply passed the information along and, because of 1st Amendment issues, the Justice Department has never even tried to prosecute a journalist for doing so, which is why there will be no charges leveled against the NY Times.

As to your contention that we could change our laws so that we could then charge him, NO, that is not possible. One can not be charged retroactively in the US. The idea of changing the law would be so he could be charged in the FUTURE, but the reality, is I see no such change in the law in the works (Constitutional issues and all that), though it does make a good sound bite.

Arthur
 
adoucette said:
Not in the least.
Click to expand...

The real wikileaks expose is the reaction to Assange. It shows how hollow the whole championing of freedom by these countries is. Anyone can extol freedom of speech and expression when its to their benefit. Its when it exposes them that the real commitment to the ideology is tested
 
S.A.M. said:
The real wikileaks expose is the reaction to Assange. It shows how hollow the whole championing of freedom by these countries is. Anyone can extol freedom of speech and expression when its to their benefit. Its when it exposes them that the real commitment to the ideology is tested
Click to expand...

Bullshit.

There is no hypocrisy at work here.

People can be all for free speech and at the same understand, respect and argue for certain information to be secret and proprietary. Indeed, there are laws about such things, made by democratic legislatures and courts. The world you would make is anarchic and full of chaos.
 
You don't know that, countezero.

The whole thing exposes layer upon layer of competing matters, memes, and myths. At the surface, there is much difficulty in social and public arenas getting past the personification of whistleblowing in Assange (with Manning under wraps)- It's comfortable for consumers, and customary for government and media institutions to conflate a convenient persona with an issue, and mash public personas into cheap junk narratives in place of explorations of society present and future. Every conversation has its limits of cohesion in a world of multiplying competition for our attention. In the main channels the limits of conversation are tightening.

A very high percentage of most every opportunity for the public to explore the subject of WikiLeaks and informational freedom is devoted to Assange- to his troubled trysts that may or may not have any true importance to larger issues (beyond their effect in distraction).

There is a hollowness in institutional reaction to WikiLeaks, but it is echoed and amplified by a hollow sound in every sphere of public resonance: We seem, especially in the collective, to be creatures more eager to be titillated than informed. So we don't spend nearly as much time contemplating and communicating about the deeper layers, that may inform and empower us concerning the destiny of our species.

As communications technologies advance in an exponential way, we can peel off layered accretions of superficiality and distraction, to get down to the heart(s) of what we are collectively becoming as informational possibilities multiply. Or, we can add to and thicken the outer layers, embellish and sex them up, and largely ignore the underlying issues, the ones that often give us a disturbing glimpse of the inner workings of our present societies and their trajectories.

I would like to discover a place where intelligent people leave the outer advertising wrappers for others to fixate on. I would like to find a channel of discussions where minds are drawn down through the matroshka-capsules of groupthink to the underlying issues. I don't expect easy revelations there, but I am convinced there is more to learn and (what's more, I hope) a clearer inspiration as to what to do.

Among the layers of labels here's one I'm happy to rip away and look beneath: "Infowars". I am so sick of wars on this, and wars on that. There is no universal rule that learning is warfare, and what we're learning about today (class) is who is entitled to (and who among us really seek) the truth, (you know the courtroom cliché) the whole truth, and nothing but that which requires a relentless peeling-off of the wrappers and labels warning us that we've seen enough. We don't have to fight any externality to become free-thinkers. Once we become adept at seeing through the distractions, old hierarchies and institution are going to have trouble manufacturing the next models to distract us- they move slower than free thought. We don't have to accept the language and mentalities of warfare in seeking the truth. Info-Wars? Peel that plastic packaging right off- throw it over your shoulder. What's underneath? (stop reading now, and look)
 
Last edited:
hypewaders said:
You don't know that, countezero.

The whole thing exposes layer upon layer of competing matters, memes, and myths. At the surface, there is much difficulty in social and public arenas getting past the personification of whistleblowing in Assange (with Manning under wraps)- It's comfortable for consumers, and customary for government and media institutions to conflate a convenient persona with an issue, and mash public personas into cheap junk narratives in place of explorations of society present and future. Every conversation has its limits of cohesion in a world of multiplying competition for our attention, and in the main channels it seems to me the limits of conversation are tightening.

A very high percentage of most every opportunity for the public to explore the subject of WikiLeaks and informational freedom is devoted to Assange- to his troubled trysts that may or may not have any true importance to larger issues (beyond their effect in distraction).

There is a hollowness in institutional reaction to WikiLeaks, but it is echoed and amplified by a hollow sound in every sphere of public resonance: We seem, especially in the collective, to be creatures more eager to be titillated than informed. So we don't spend nearly as much time contemplating and communicating about the deeper layers, that often are more important to the destiny of our species.

As communications technologies advance in an exponential way, we can peel off layered accretions of superficiality and distraction, to get down to the heart(s) of what we are collectively becoming as informational possibilities multiply. Or, we can add to and thicken the outer layers, embellish and sex them up, and largely ignore the underlying issues, the ones that often give us a disturbing glimpse of the inner workings of our present societies and their trajectories.

I would like to discover a place where intelligent people leave the outer advertising wrappers for others to fixate on. I would like to find a channel of discussions where minds are drawn down through the matroshka-capsules of groupthink to the underlying issues. I don't expect easy revelations there, but I am convinced there is more to learn and (what's more, I hope) a clearer inspiration as to what to do.

Among the layers of labels here's one I'm happy to rip away and look beneath: "Infowars". I am so sick of wars on this, and wars on that. There is no universal rule that learning is warfare, and what we're learning about today (class) is who is entitled to (and who among us really seek) the truth, (you know the courtroom cliché) the whole truth, and nothing but that which requires a relentless of peeling-off the wrappers and labels warning us that we've seen enough. We don't have to fight any externality to become free-thinkers. Once we become adept at seeing through the distractions, old hierarchies and institution are going to have trouble manufacturing the next models to distract us- they move slower than free thought. We don't have to accept the language and mentalities of warfare in seeking the truth. Info-Wars? Peel that plastic packaging right off- throw it over your shoulder. What's underneath? (stop reading now, and look)
Click to expand...
:worship:
 
forgive me..i read the first page and the last..
if i missed something,a refresh would help..(corrections anticipated..)

all i have heard about the info that was released was just ppls opinions on foreign leaders..IE this one is an asshole we can do such and such to him..she is gullible..etc etc...
why is this a bad thing?
why do we have to loose our freedoms as a nation because the government screwed up? (better security on their computers)
who is Assange?
why is it bad for the government to know that they are only human also..
 
With 99.9 percent of the WikiLeaks cables still yet to drop, the American people are going to learn a lot more about how their Foreign Service works. And if that means they can all start talking about their foreign policy like adults, that's a good thing.
Click to expand...
The facts of a situation, presented in unavoidable form, cause yet another respectable media forum (Foreign Policy magazine, in this case) to spout leftist rhetoric.

And the assertion there, that the American people in general have a hell of a lot to learn from the contents of these leaks, is now accepted by pretty much everyone - agreed?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top