WikiLeaks founder Assange has encrypted Guantanamo documents, will release them if arrested. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has circulated across the internet an encrypted “poison pill” cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay. One of the files identified this weekend by The (London) Sunday Times — called the “insurance” file — has been downloaded from the WikiLeaks website by tens of thousands of supporters, from America to Australia. Assange warns that any government that tries to curtail his activities risks triggering a new deluge of state and commercial secrets. The military papers on Guantanamo Bay, yet to be published, believed to have been supplied by Bradley Manning, who was arrested in May. Other documents that Assange is confirmed to possess include an aerial video of a US airstrike in Afghanistan that killed civilians, BP files and Bank of America documents. One of the key files available for download — named insurance.aes256 — appears to be encrypted with a 256-digit key.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange refused bail. 8 December 2010Last updated at 04:45 GMT Julian Assange (left) appeared in court with John Pilger and others offering sureties The founder of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has been refused bail by a court in London but vowed to fight extradition to Sweden. Mr Assange denies sexually assaulting two women in Sweden. He was remanded in custody pending a hearing next week. A judge at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court refused bail because of the risk of the 39-year-old fleeing. A Wikileaks spokesman said the arrest was an attack on media freedom and pledged to continue publishing.
After the court appearance Mr Assange's lawyer Mark Stephens said he would be applying again for bail. He claimed the accusations were "politically motivated" and said the judge was keen to see the evidence against Mr Assange, an Australian citizen. Mr Stephens said Wikileaks would continue to publish material and added: "We are on cable 301 and there are 250,000 secret cables. " The allegations. Julian Assange Arrested.
Wikileaks Conspiracy. Wikileaks: False Flag Cyber War is Here. Wikileaks Assange Exposed as CIA Manchurian Candidate. Will WikiLeaks Hobble U.S. Diplomacy? Authors: Daniel S. Markey, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia, Council on Foreign Relations, and Author, No Exit from Pakistan Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations John Campbell, Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies Robert M. Danin, Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies Thomas W. Lippman, Adjunct Scholar, Middle East Institute Scott A. Snyder, Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the Program on U.S. -Korea Policy Interviewer(s): Deborah Jerome, Deputy Editor December 1, 2010 How will this week's release of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.org impact U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, Pakistan, and elsewhere?
Daniel S. The latest WikiLeaks data dump undercuts U.S. policy in Pakistan in at least two important ways. Max Boot, Jeane J. For WikiLeaks and its media enablers--the New York Times, Guardian, etc. Robert M. WikiLeaks just made the world more repressive. I am an aid worker, the kind who rants about transparency, open governments and reforming the United Nations. But, I used to be a diplomat and I used to write secret cables, like the ones being released by WikiLeaks. And I said some very frank and nasty things in those cables. Why? I was posted to Jakarta.
My job was to find out as much as I could about the human rights abuses being committed by the Indonesian military, and to help apply whatever pressure we could to make them stop. Allow me to illustrate with an example. When we sent the reporting cables back to the Department of Foreign Affairs, they were secret for a reason. The third most common topic in the WikiLeaks cables is human rights, with American diplomats doing the same thing we were trying to do in Indonesia: Make the world a little better.
That's hard to swallow for the cyber mob that is celebrating the embarrassment being inflicted on the U.S. government this week. The cables and the damage done. For people who value freedom and truth, what's not to applaud about WikiLeaks? Certainly in Australia, the cablegate saga – and its local offshoot – has unlocked a tide of libertarian righteousness. Throughout the media and much of civil society, there's a thrill of surprise at the unsaintly ways and words of diplomacy, a frisson of satisfaction at seeing the powerful humbled and exposed, and a current of outrage on behalf of Julian Assange.
All this is muddled with some less noble impulses, including the voyeuristic buzz of reading a lot of other people's mail. And if your business is to sell newspapers, there is also the rare joy of finding a new lease on relevance and profit. But beyond the melodrama and moralising, what matters are the consequences. Bad for diplomacy and international cooperation: More than ever, most of the world's problems demand cooperative responses. Restrictions on providing sensitive information to the media and the public could well be tightened. WikiLeaks: The secrecy presumption. Having just published Stephen Collins' reply to Rory's post, I'm going to pile on and offer my own critique.
But first let me point out that we have already received a number of emails from the bureaucracy and diplomatic community in support of Rory's position. Unfortunately, these were marked 'not for publication', so I want to encourage those readers in Canberra who feel constrained by saying that we are prepared to put aside this site's usual reluctance to publish anonymous comment. So, to business, and I want to start by agreeing with Stephen Collins' introduction, and to put the case more explicitly: I think Rory is showing status quo bias. He is absolutely right to say that 'most of the world's problems demand cooperative responses', and that a certain level of secrecy is required to make this workable. But what level, exactly? But even if Rory is right, that ship has sailed, and governments will have to learn how to cope in a WikiLeaked world.
How are they doing so far? Gary's choices - WikiLeaks: America the indispensable. Les diplomates américains gênés dans leur travail par WikiLeaks, actualité Monde : Le Point. Depuis une semaine, des diplomates américains en poste à l'étranger ont du mal à effectuer leur travail, victimes temporaires des révélations issues des notes du département d'État obtenues par WikiLeaks. Le déluge de télégrammes américains analysés et publiés par cinq journaux a eu pour effet immédiat de rafraîchir les relations entre les ambassades américaines et leurs contacts, témoignent des diplomates, encore en poste ou retirés des affaires. "À court terme, nous sommes presque en cessation d'activité", confirme un diplomate de haut rang sous le couvert de l'anonymat. "En toute honnêteté, personne ne veut nous parler", ajoute-t-il.
Il estime qu'il lui faudra peut-être deux à cinq ans pour reconstruire des liens de confiance avec ses contacts habituels. "Certaines personnes doivent toujours nous parler, notamment au sein du gouvernement, mais certains nous demandent déjà si nous allons rapporter par écrit nos discussions", poursuit-il. "Le temps refermera les plaies" (un diplomate) U.S. Diplomats Aren't Stupid After All - By Joshua Kucera. As a journalist covering international affairs, I have long wondered: Are U.S. diplomats ignorant or lying? I have talked to countless numbers of them in dozens of countries in "on background" interviews, that staple of foreign reportage.
Readers recognize a background interview by its citation of "a Western diplomat," and theoretically that anonymity frees the diplomat to talk frankly. But in practice, I've found that when that diplomat is American, the result is still often nothing more than warmed-over talking points, displaying a level of knowledge that suggests a cramming of the Wikipedia entry on the country in question. "Of course things could be better, but overall the situation is improving," they'll say blandly, while I scribble "BLAH BLAH BLAH" in my notebook, hoping they can't see it, to maintain the fiction that I'm interested in what they're saying.
This is not the case with other countries' diplomats. These don't necessarily contradict what Hoagland told me. Sifting Through the Fallout from Wikileaks. The ongoing release of U.S. diplomatic communications by the Wikileaks organization is “embarrassing” and “awkward,” said Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates yesterday, but its consequences for U.S. foreign policy are likely to be “fairly modest.” “I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought.
The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets… Other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another.” Coming from the Secretary of Defense, that measured statement should help to deflate some of the more extreme reactions to the Wikileaks action. Wikileaks leader Julian Assange should be designated an enemy combatant, suggested Rep. Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks | Danger Room.
It’s too late to stop WikiLeaks from publishing thousands more classified documents, nabbed from the Pentagon’s secret network. But the U.S. military is telling its troops to stop using CDs, DVDs, thumb drives and every other form of removable media — or risk a court martial. Maj. Gen. Richard Webber, commander of Air Force Network Operations, issued the Dec. 3 “Cyber Control Order” — obtained by Danger Room — which directs airmen to “immediately cease use of removable media on all systems, servers, and stand alone machines residing on SIPRNET,” the Defense Department’s secret network. Similar directives have gone out to the military’s other branches. “Unauthorized data transfers routinely occur on classified networks using removable media and are a method the insider threat uses to exploit classified information. It’s one of a number of moves the Defense Department is making to prevent further disclosures of secret information in the wake of the WikiLeaks document dumps.
Photo: USAF. Biden Slams WikiLeaks Document Hand-Off as Close to Terrorism - FoxNews.com. OSINT Strategies. The moral standards of WikiLeaks critics - Glenn Greenwald. The WikiLeaks disclosure has revealed not only numerous government secrets, but also the driving mentality of major factions in our political and media class. Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S. Indeed, I don’t quite recall any entity producing as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks has: as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon. The way in which so many political commentators so routinely and casually call for the eradication of human beings without a shred of due process is nothing short of demented.
Those who demand that the U.S. WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Brooke, thanks very much. Happening now, a criminal investigation into the leak of U.S. diplomatic secrets. . . . Julian Assange answers your questions | World news. Ron Paul: Re: Wikileaks- In a free s... Is anyone else worried that Julian Assange is just going to disappear one day. : AskReddit. Julian Assange should be assassinated, Canadian official claims. Wikileaks' struggle to stay online. 7 December 2010Last updated at 19:51 By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter Julian Assange has now been arrested For rolling news outlets Wikileaks has been a dream come true with thousands of US embassy cables dribbling out titbits of sensitive information and providing new headlines on a daily and even hourly basis. But for the US government, the revelations are less welcome. The site has become its bete noire and after making its displeasure clear, US firms that have dealings with it have been quick to turn their backs.
The troubles began for Wikileaks when Amazon which hosted its servers in the US, withdrew services saying the site was breaking its terms and conditions. They continued when EveryDNS, the domain name firm which allowed the Wikileaks.org address to be translated into an IP address, withdrew services. Without it, the .org site was effectively shut down. But despite losing many links in its supply chain, Wikileaks remains defiantly online. Continue reading the main story. WikiLeaks fights to stay online after US company withdraws domain name | Media.
The US was today accused of opening up a dramatic new front against WikiLeaks, effectively "killing" its web address just days after Amazon pulled the site from its servers following political pressure. The whistleblowers' website went offline for the third time in a week this morning, in the biggest threat to its online presence yet. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security, earlier this week called for any organisation helping sustain WikiLeaks to "immediately terminate" its relationship with them. On Friday morning, WikiLeaks and the cache of secret diplomatic documents that have proved to be a scourge for governments around the world were only accessible through a string of digits known as a DNS address. The site later re-emerged with a Swiss domain, WikiLeaks.ch. Julian Assange this morning said the development is an example of the "privatisation of state censorship" in the US and is a "serious problem.
" Amazon said: It noted that: WikiLeaks website pulled by Amazon after US political pressure | Media. 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. WikiLeaks expressed disappointment with Amazon, and insisted it was a breach of freedom of speech as enshrined in the US constitution's first amendment. The organisation, in a message sent via Twitter, said if Amazon was "so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books. " While freedom of speech is a sensitive issue in the US, scope for a full-blown row is limited, given that Democrats and Republicans will largely applaud Amazon's move. The question is whether he was acting on his own or pressed to do so by the Obama administration, and how much pressure was applied to Amazon.
WikiLeaks: WikiLeaks,org domain kille... Blocking Access to Wikileaks May Harm CRS, Analysts Say. The Library of Congress confirmed on Friday that it had blocked access from all Library computers to the Wikileaks web site in order to prevent unauthorized downloading of classified records such as those in the large cache of diplomatic cables that Wikileaks began to publish on November 28. Since the Congressional Research Service is a component of the Library, this means that CRS researchers will be unable to access or to cite the leaked materials in their research reports to Congress.
Several current and former CRS analysts expressed perplexity and dismay about the move, and they said it could undermine the institution’s research activities. “It’s a difficult situation,” said one CRS analyst. “The information was released illegally, and it’s not right for government agencies to be aiding and abetting this illegal dissemination. But the information is out there. “I can understand LOC blocking the public’s access to Wikileaks,” a former CRS analyst said.
Wikileaks excluded from trending topics. Twitter Appears to Censor Wikileaks-Related Trends. Library of Congress Blocks Access To Wikileaks. Can Government Employees Read the Pentagon Papers?