Then you are starting to believe all the misinformation that the government is trying to spread about him. This is how the discredit people and this information, since they can not actually deny it.

I really believe that this is one of the greatest actions to happen to democracy in a long time, and everybody should be rejoicing in these leaks.

We need more transparency in government, and there are people out there willing to do this, and get in all sorts of trouble for it. Fortunately he has left Australia, the government here would be more than happy to send him over to the USA on any trumped up charges.

Do you remember when wikileaks launched, it was described as an anonymous organization "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa"? When their website had a raw archive of documents on the front page?

The changes in wikileaks started happening before the government became very interested in them. They became much more focused on fund-raising, manipulating the media to their advantage, editorializing the leaked material, and Assange became the figurehead associated with every release of information.

Apple has Jobs. Microsoft has Gates. It was Jordan and the Bulls. Wales is calling for donations on Wikipedia.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20101027_wikileaks_and_cultur...

by and large, people with a problem with WL have a problem with the implementation. they want the warning messages to be reworded, and maybe have a 3px box-corner radius. i dunno, you think 5px would look too soft? anyway, what harm is there is letting him do whatever he does? he's not taking info himself, he's at the mercy of his submitters. i'd certainly love to see a zynga tag go up on WL, but until then we have our wonderful government and military to pay attention to and read about. consider it political pornography.

That's nice. Because it's not the greatest thing to happen to Afghanistan democracy for a long time, given the vigour with which the Taliban seem to be using it (and previous leaks) to identify and punish (ie, murder) Afghani informers.

They've said they intend to hunt down and punish informants named in the Wikileaks docs, and they have a long enough history of brutality towards informants (as you'd expect of any side in a military conflict) that it's only prudent to take them seriously.

But sure, let's all sit behind the safety of our computer screen in our (relatively) free and democratic society, and scoff at the possibility that this might make the struggle yet more difficult for people fighting for a chance at freedom and democracy in their own land.

But we haven't. So until someone shows that they have been killed, I presume that they haven't. That doesn't mean that it won't happen in the future.

Still, it'll hardly embolden anyone who might've been considering becoming an informant.

So, fair enough of you to presume no killings have eventuated _yet_, but it's a diversion from the main point: you can't call it a step forward in the struggle for freedom and democracy in Afghanistan.

Actually, I haven't heard a single government report about Assange or Wikileaks at all. It's my own judgment I came to.

There's a big gap between Wikileaks' stated goals and the actual results of their actions. I'm looking at the potential consequences of some of this - releasing documents related to nuclear disarmament in Pakistan, a Politburo agent risking his life to protect dissidents - this isn't greater transparency, this is stupidity.

> We need more transparency in government, and there are people out there willing to do this, and get in all sorts of trouble for it.

There's a place for secrecy - counter-terrorism, investigating human trafficking smuggling, sensitive negotiations where a local population is sympathetic to violence against minorities, but the country's leaders want to work with the USA to stop genocide and suicide bombing. Transparency sounds great as a buzzword, but you need some pragmatism and discretion too. That's not government misinformation - just my researched and studied opinion on the matter.

There is nothing in what you say that constitutes a critique of the project management going on at Wikileaks. You're saying their schedule is slipping, or that the goal is succumbing to yak shaving? Look at what site you're on.

You can't always plan the outcome and/or the effect of a project. It is the nature of the entrepreneur to execute on their idea and let the chips fall where they may, and indeed the very site that you've spent enough time on to earn a five-figure karma has a culture and a tradition that glorifies the MVP: minimum viable product. What of WL in that light? How is it that your judgement comes down so squarely against such a central concept of the HN world this time? I don't think politics is a good enough reason here, and Assange cannot be faulted for not being able to predict the future. Shorter: let's look at YouTube's original plan, shall we?

Maybe the lesson you're teaching is that the best MVP is an appropriate MVP? An MVP that has a known outcome and thus is the perfect project: one with a known need and no competition, a pure niche?

The above may be blunt, and I don't mean to raise a One True Scotsman specter, but I think it's appropriate to question why WL is not given the conceptual-outcome leeway generally allowed to MVPs, or whether they need it at all.

(Yes, this also applies to the poorly planned and poorly executed occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. government doing stupid shit in a war is not a justification to leak unrelated diplomatic cables that risk getting good people killed for no good reason)

At least provide some evidence of a great increase in risk that people will be killed.

I've heard of few to no claims that people are now at a high risk of death due to these cables from anyone other than the Sarah Palins and Congressman King's of this world. Sec. Def. Gates stated that the consequences for U.S. foreign policy will be fairly mild.

Once such inflamed rhetoric is removed form your comments, I can't see how your position holds water.

Further, I fail to see a gap between Wikileaks stated goals and the results. The results you claim (potential consequences related to Pakistan nuclear activity, protection of dissidents), even assuming they are valid and therefore in opposition to Gates concern level, are relatively minor in comparison to the stated goals: much higher degrees of government transparency brought about by the constricting of secret communication. That being the (summarized) stated goal of Wikileaks, the reality is it is long term. If this is step 1 of 100 that leads to a government that cannot maintain the levels of secrecy necessary to fabricate a path towards something like the Iraq War, then the results align perfectly with the goal.

However biased / inaccurate they may be, sites like http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ claim ~100k documented, civilian casualties in this past war. Lets divide by 100. If a leak prevents an action which would kill 1,000 civilians, and ends up causing a couple, is it worth it? Is it morally correct? Do the ends justify the means? Is not leaking something you believe could save 1,000-x lives morally correct?

I'd say slowing down an aggressive empire could be classified as a "good reason" likely to save many lives.

It takes some imagination to suggest that what Wikileaks has has done has cost lives. Approximately 3 million people have access to SIPRnet. It seems unlikely that Wikileaks could compromise it, yet foreign state intelligence would be unable.

Hasn't happened.

He'll certainly be written into the history books* for it.

*wikipedia edit logs

The rest of the world already knows that the US will break any law if it sees fit (GTMO anyone?) and is a morally and financially bankrupt state. I understand: if the US invades a country, it is "bringing democracy"; if the US spies and gets information it is foreign policy/diplomacy; if the US through buying oil and selling ammunitions supports a totalitarian regime like Saudi Arabia, it is business as usual, but if Wikileaks publishes damaging material a US soldier submitted without coercion, it is terrorism.

[1] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/clinton-ordered-diplomats...

And remember, he is an Australian citizen so the whole treason thing doesn't apply.

In the olden days (like, a couple of years ago) classified documents would get leaked to newspapers. The newspapers would take a look at them and publish them in excerpt alongside an editorial talking about how they thought long and hard about whether it was in the public interest to publish this particular document and blah blah blah. As I understand it, based on my reading of the law, they were technically committing a crime by doing so, but the authorities never bothered to pursue prosecution against the media outlets and just prosecuted the original leaker. Why not? I don't know, maybe because responsible publication of leaks is acknowledged to be a good thing, or maybe because it's not worth going to war with anyone who buys ink by the gallon.

Wikileaks, on the other hand, will publish huge swathes of documents in a much less restrained manner than the New York Times would. It's concievable that they can be charged.

As far as I know, the law states that it's illegal to pass along classified documents, and it doesn't restrict the applicability of this law to the people who were supposed to have the documents in the first place.

Note that this does not apply to Bradley Manning or others who may be sources and who may have committed crimes in passing classified information to uncleared people. But as much as our political elites might wish it; embarrassing the government is not a crime.

International law can be very quirky (IANAL, but my work sometimes requires me to deal very directly with particular specific aspects of international law). Much of it comes down to precedent: if you can enforce a claim consistently for a long enough time, it becomes accepted and legitimate international law, which is the reason for the U.S. military's Freedom of Navigation (FON) operations. Conversely, if you allow others to regularly violate your national sovereignty in a particular manner without responding (even if only by formal diplomatic protest), then those particular rights may come to be accepted as no longer belonging to your nation.

A meta-observation: I've noted that posts saying, "he can't be prosecuted by the U.S." are generally getting many upvotes, while posts explaining how and why he could (not that he SHOULD, just that it's possible) are getting few or none. I can't know what other people are thinking, but it seems to me that people are voting based on what they would like to be true, rather than on what actually is true.

And even in this specific case, in espionage cases, the US can choose to prosecute and basically abduct anyone in the world they want, provided they're willing to put up with the political consequences. Not saying it's right, but if you think you can spy against the US (or many other countries) and face no consequences because you're not a US citizen, you might be in for a nasty surprise.

And yes, the U.S. can kidnap him and bring him into U.S. so they can charge him with U.S. law...but they can't charge him in another country under U.S. law and expect him to get arrested...not unless they go through the whole extradition thing.

But that's like saying, you fall under Chinese law, because they might send a hit squad to take you out for breaking their laws.

Yes might generally equals right internationally, but for now they are trying to put up the pretense that U.S. cares about foreign relations.

The people who abducted the suspect might be operating under USA law, and they might not be guilty when they go to the USA. However just because it's legal to do it in USA doesn't mean it's legal in the country they do it in. They would still be breaking the law in that country. Would you like if a person broke a USA law while in the USA and then said "But it's OK, it's legal under Irish law?"

To the person who posted this and those who upvoted this: you have power over the quality of the conversations on this site. Please give some thought to how you use it.

You know he is basically living as a fugitive, moving from place to place, working underground, etc.