Victoria Wang: All the censoring of WikiL... FRINFORMSUM: wikileaks. I can only imagine fellow document hounds are following the wikileaks phenomenon as close as we are. Here are some our favorite stories about the saga. First, Salon has a few questions for wikileaks, for the US government, for the journalists who received the leaked documents, and even some for Sarah Palin.
Steve Aftergood at Secrecy News –as always– provides an even-keeled estimation of the cables leak. Julian Assange’s 8-page interview with Forbes in which he hints a “big US bank” will be the next to get the wiki treatment. Interpol has also issued a “red notice” for him. Having trouble viewing wikileaks today? Then, Amazon stopped hosting the site on its servers. But wikileaks just migrated to Europe and tweeted, “If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.” Here’s a nice post at Foreign Policy explaining whey the US government still even uses cables anyway. Like this: Like Loading... Nixon-pentagon-leak. WikiLeaks, Round Three (Updated 29, 30 Nov.) (SWJ Blog) The Race to Fix the Classification System. The massive disclosure of a quarter million diplomatic records by Wikileaks this weekend underscores the precarious state of the U.S. national security classification system.
The Wikileaks project seems to be, more than anything else, an assault on secrecy. If Wikileaks were most concerned about whistleblowing, it would focus on revealing corruption. If it were concerned with historical truth, it would emphasize the discovery of verifiably true facts. If it were anti-war, it would safeguard, not disrupt, the conduct of diplomatic communications. This may be understood as a reaction to a real problem, namely the fact that by all accounts, the scope of government secrecy in the U.S. Although it has rarely been front-page news, important progress has been made this year in shifting U.S. government secrecy policy away from its cold war roots, and promoting greater discernment and discrimination in the use of national security classification.
These are not cosmetic changes. Kim Philby on Truth in Diplomatic Cables. As confidential U.S. diplomatic documents continue to enter the public domain, it is worth remembering that not everything that is written down in a government document, even (or especially) in a classified document, is necessarily true. “Truth telling” involves a bit more than trafficking in official records. Any historian or archival researcher knows that. So did the Soviet agent Kim Philby, who addressed the issue in his 1968 book “My Silent War” (p. 255): “It is difficult, though by no means impossible, for a journalist to obtain access to original documents.
But these are often a snare and a delusion. “Of course, it is best to have both,” he added. The lure of classified information. Just because information is classified, does not mean it is valuable. Politicians are often seduced by the aura of clandestine information-gathering, and this might be one reason DFAT funding has suffered in the last decade at the expense of the intelligence community — the diplomats have not been able to convince their political masters that information gathered openly through diplomatic exchanges can be just as important as that which is gathered covertly. The same principle holds good for the latest Wikileaks revelations. So when a classified cable reveals that a Gulf monarch once mocked French military technology, don't assume this reveals the truth or even that King Hamad of Bahrain was being candid. He was, after all, talking to US General David Petraeus. Similarly, as Dan Drezner points out, just because a Chinese diplomat privately criticises North Korea and calls it a threat to global security doesn't mean Chinese policy is about to change radically.
Wikileaks and “CableGate” I know a lot of you with .gov and .mil addresses have been warned to stay far, far away from the Wikileaks material. I am going to spend a lot of time over the next few weeks going through the cables carefully, pulling out the things that I think are most interesting. So, even if you can’t wade through all the nitty gritty stuff yourself, I will do my best to pick out the nuggets of gold.
My overall reaction is that the cables are quite exculpatory. Although Wikileaks claims the cache of purloined cables “reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors,” I am not so sure. Indeed, what I am struck by is how close the agreement is between what the United States says in public and in private. Sure, cables are candid — such as when speculating on Muammar al-Qadhafi’s fondness for a certain “voluptuous blonde” — but certainly not scandalously so. Really, the State Department can hold its head up high.
INSIDE WASHINGTON: Keeping the obvious secret - Jobs. WikiLeaks: Please use #cablegate to d... Has WikiLeaks finally gone too far? UPDATE: The Times' and the Guardian's coverage of the cables is up. Roy Greenslade, a journalism professor and commentator for the Guardian, castigates British editors for their critical coverage of WikiLeaks, the self-proclaimed whistleblower site that is about to release some 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables into the wild: Aren't we in the job of ferreting out secrets so that our readers - the voters - can know what their elected governments are doing in their name?
Isn't it therefore better that we can, at last, get at them? It's a fair question. I must confess that, like plenty of other editors, I can't wait to read this batch of documents. As a general precedent, though, it's troubling. Still, where do you draw the line? But is there a principle that says it's OK to publish one-off scoops, but not 250,000 -- or for that matter 2.7 million -- of them all at once? What do you think? Taliban prepare to punish WikiLeaks Afghan informers. Crispin J. Burke: Wikileaks' latest release...
WikiLeaks gets warning from State Department: Documents' release would have 'grave consequences' The Obama administration on Saturday warned WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange that the expected release of approximately 250,000 secret State Department documents would have "grave consequences" and place at risk the lives of journalists, human rights activists and soldiers. The State Department 's letter to Assange, released late Saturday night, comes as U.S. officials have in recent days warned foreign governments that the documents could expose sensitive information and harm relations with the United States. The documents are expected to be released this weekend. The letter was apparently written in response to a request by Assange for information on any individuals who may be "at significant risk of harm" by the disclosure of the documents. State DepLegal Adviser Harold Hongju Koh wrote that the Obama administration will "not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S.
Government classified materials. " WikiLeaks: We are currently under a m... [Live] Statelogs: Un nouveau monde? » Article » OWNI, Digital Journalism. WikiLeaks prend de la hauteur sur les combats. Après avoir publié des documents relatifs aux guerres en Afghanistan et en Irak, l'organisation a commencé à mettre en ligne plus de 250.000 mémos diplomatiques. Leur plus gros coup? Lors de la publication des Warlogs irakiens, WikiLeaks nous avait directement contacté pour fournir l’application qui permettait de naviguer à travers les rapports de situation écrits par l’armée américaine. Cette fois-ci, à quelques heures d’une fuite de mémos diplomatiques qui pourrait être la plus importante de l’organisation, nous sommes dans une situation qui ne nous rend pas dépendants d’une clause de confidentialité. Les mains libres, nous sommes accompagnés par Slate.fr et Lesoir.be, partenaires de l’application que nous avons développée, et qui sera en ligne dès dimanche.
A partir de lundi, ils mobiliseront leurs équipes pour nous aider à disséquer les documents les plus intéressants. Les équipes d’OWNI ont convenu d’appeler cette opération #Statelogs. Spiegel's article. Qui demande à la Nuit le Secret du Silence ? Le Libé des philosophes d'aujourd'hui est plutôt une meilleure surprise que les autres années (même si je suis trop biaisé et partial, je préfère mon article sur le jeune Rawls théologien de l'an dernier, avec l'ajout d'Elias dans le commentaire, à l'article de Ruwen Ogien aujourd'hui). D'habitude, lorsque l'actualité pose un problème factuel sur la politique internationale (par exemple les élections ivoiriennes aujourd'hui), les philosophes n'ont rien à apporter et se contentent donc d'endosser une position de journaliste avec de légères différences de vocabulaire ou de références (alors que certains Libé des historiens étaient parfois vraiment pertinents dans les cas où une "expertise" d'un spécialiste de sujets peu connus pouvait un peu rompre avec nos opinions déjà préconçues).
Ah, si, la page météo est étonnante (et même la page Problèmes d'échecs a droit à un traitement par Marc de Launay). Au moins, les philosophes qui en traitent évitent la "personnalisation" de la question. Puissance et moulins à vent - Big Blogger.