Wikileaks leak 250,000 classified files

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Jiro said:
I'm wondering to why we are vilifying Julian Assange for this. Why aren't we scorning our government for letting this mess to happen? How is it that a Private is able to obtain a highly-classified documents including information about our informants?

if Bradley Manning is able to download it... then any high-level spy is able to do this with ease. But hey... this is no surprise to us. USA leaks secrets worse than a Dutch dam where Hansje Brinker plugged the hole with his finger since 90's.

so why are we fixated on Assange instead of our government's mishandling of classified materials? This mess happened because our government allowed contractors and subcontractors (civilians) an access to highly-classified materials.
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Yes! I've been waiting for someone to get to the real issue!
 
WikiLeaks just released private documents about Jiro's motivations in AllDeaf, read on!

=P
 
Miss-Delectable said:
I don't like the denigration and persecution of Julian Assange that is going on lately.

Also I don't like it when I hear about Americans calling for his death. It's not funny at all.

Don't we, the world, have a right to know what some government have been up to and whatever the US govt does affects every countries and its citizen.

I think it'll be beyond stupid if US is to charge Assange with treason.

As it is no governments in the world could find a law to charge Assange for his release of confidential documents. I think what Assange has shown that is the content in George Orwell's 1984 book is becoming a reality now.
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:gpost:
 
Jiro said:
I'm wondering to why we are vilifying Julian Assange for this. Why aren't we scorning our government for letting this mess to happen? How is it that a Private is able to obtain a highly-classified documents including information about our informants?

if Bradley Manning is able to download it... then any high-level spy is able to do this with ease. But hey... this is no surprise to us. USA leaks secrets worse than a Dutch dam where Hansje Brinker plugged the hole with his finger since 90's.

so why are we fixated on Assange instead of our government's mishandling of classified materials? This mess happened because our government allowed contractors and subcontractors (civilians) an access to highly-classified materials.
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Bradley Manning IS being prosecuted for treason - not Assange. Bradley Manning was not a civilian contractor, he was a US Army intelligence analyst.

Civilian Law is much different than Military Law. Do not apply civilian law to soldiers or foreigners.

Assange is going to be charged with espionage.

The real issue is taking stolen documents and threatening the US Government with them.

He deserves everything he gets.
 
Steinhauer said:
Bradley Manning IS being prosecuted for treason - not Assange.

Assange is going to be charged with espionage.

The real issue is taking stolen documents and threatening the US Government with them.

He deserves everything he gets.
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you'd make a fine P.D. :thumb:
 
I wanted to find out about our banks and credit card companies. I heard something about how bad they are and cheated us. I didn't get the details because Julian was arrested and our government already shut down his servers. It's too bad that we didn't get some information.
 
Why can't he release them NOW? What takes him to wait forever, makes us wait, wait, and wait. Is he playing game with us ?
 
"what documents?"

Screwy businesses (if they were) shouldn't have been bailed out (banks who took assistance after the 08 crash).
 
jillio said:
:laugh2: Yep, they need that ability to twist things.:lol:
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The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." John F. Kennedy
 
Justice Department Studies WikiLeaks Prosecution
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department, in considering whether and how it might indict Julian Assange, is looking beyond the Espionage Act of 1917 to other possible offenses, including conspiracy or trafficking in stolen property, according to officials familiar with the investigation.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. acknowledged this week that there were problems with the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law that says the unauthorized possession and dissemination of information related to national defense is illegal. But he also hinted that prosecutors were looking at other statutes with regard to Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.
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Prosecutors have used the Espionage Act to convict officials who leaked classified information. They have never successfully convicted any leak recipient who then passed the information along, however, and the Justice Department has never tried to prosecute a journalist —which Mr. Assange portrays himself as being — under either a Republican or a Democratic administration.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said Tuesday on Fox News that he believed The Times should be investigated alongside WikiLeaks, although he cautioned, “This is very sensitive stuff because it gets into the America’s First Amendment.”
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now pay a very close attention to a fine-print of the laws...
“I certainly believe that WikiLleaks has violated the Espionage Act, but then what about the news organizations — including The Times — that accepted it and distributed it?” Mr. Lieberman said, adding: “To me, The New York Times has committed at least an act of bad citizenship, and whether they have committed a crime, I think that bears a very intensive inquiry by the Justice Department.”
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encore! encore! *clap clap clap* Look at Lieberman! How patriotic and tough he looks! Grooming himself for 2012 Presidency, eheh?

now let us examine why we cannot even drum up an espionage charge for Assange.
A government official familiar with the investigation said that treating WikiLeaks different from newspapers might be facilitated if investigators found any evidence that Mr. Assange aided the leaker, who is believed to be a low-level Army intelligence analyst — for example, by directing him to look for certain things and providing technological assistance.

If Mr. Assange did collaborate in the original disclosure, then prosecutors could charge him with conspiracy in the underlying leak, skirting the question of whether the subsequent publication of the documents constituted a separate criminal offense. But while investigators have looked for such evidence, there is no public sign suggesting that they have found any.

Meanwhile, according to another government official familiar with the investigation, Justice Department officials have also examined whether Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks could be charged with trafficking in stolen government property.

But scholars say there might be legal difficulties with that approach, too, because the leaked documents are reproductions of files the government still possesses, not physical objects missing from its file cabinets. That means they are covered by intellectual property law, not ordinary property law.

“This is less about stealing than it is about copying,” said John G. Palfrey, a Harvard Law School professor who specializes in Internet issues and intellectual property.

Intellectual property law criminalizes the unauthorized reproduction of certain kinds of commercial information, like trade secrets or copyrighted music, films and software files. But those categories do not appear to cover government documents, which by law cannot be copyrighted and for which there is no ordinary commercial market.

Mr. Assange has received leaks of private-sector information as well. He has indicated, for example, that his next step might be to publish a copy of the contents of a hard drive belonging to an executive at a bank — apparently, Bank of America.

If he does so, some of the problems associated with trying to find a way to prosecute him for distributing leaked government documents could disappear. The works of a person in the private sector are automatically copyrighted, and bank documents could be deemed trade secrets.

“If you had large-scale dissemination of a private-sector company’s records, there might be some kind of argument there similar to commercial espionage,” said James Boyle, a Duke University law professor who specializes in intellectual property and public-domain issues.

There would still be obstacles. For example, Mr. Assange could claim that his distribution of the files was allowable under the “fair use” exception to copyright law and that it was not for financial gain. Still, “fair use” does not allow wholesale reproduction, and prosecutors could argue that his organization was raising money from its activities.

Even so, Mr. Boyle cautioned, intellectual property law is not well designed to prosecute what WikiLeaks is doing.

“The reason people are upset about this is not about commercial theft or misusing the fabulous original expressions of U.S. diplomats,” Mr. Boyle said. “I think it is the wrong tool. You go after Al Capone for tax evasion rather than bootlegging — fine. But this is a bridge too far.”
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this is precisely why Assange's action does not meet any single legal statute of the Espionage Act. Not a single thing!
 
Jiro said:

this is precisely why Assange's action does not meet any single legal statute of the Espionage Act. Not a single thing!
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And yet, it doesn't deter the govt from trying! So they'd use different ways to make trouble for Assange.

By the way, many Australians supports Assange and does not condone the vilifying or the death threats that has been going on.
 
Steinhauer said:
There is a full scale cyber war going on. All of the organizations that have opposed wikileaks are being hacked. Mastercard servers have been down since 9:30 e.s.t. - and paypal is also under attack.

Watch your credit cards in the next few days just to be safe.


Operation Bank-Troll: rumored leak of MasterCard numbers is Web-attack in the name of WikiLeaks | Technology | Los Angeles Times


MasterCard site partially frozen by hackers in WikiLeaks 'revenge' | Media | guardian.co.uk
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I feel like this is happening as in V for Vendetta movie.
 
The only thing I for sure have learned from wikileaks is that goverments and corporates all over the world are at a high school level, or below. Not good news, but explains a lot.
 
A Cyber War is in the making, this is just the beginning.
 
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