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Sunday, April 10, 2011

The Undeclared War Against Wikileaks

The U.S. Government appears to be waging an undeclared war against Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, while media and other enterprise interests either cheer the effort on or run for cover.

This clash is setting some precedents that we may all live to regret.

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The government is infuriated at Wikileaks' issue of about a quarter-million private messages purloined from the State Department, following earlier disclosures of soldiery material from Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the leaks, particularly from the war zones, clearly jeopardized individuals' personal security or American security interests. Most of the recent disclosures, however, merely confirm and add information to things we already knew. We did not need Wikileaks to tell us that the Arab states in the Persian Gulf were alarmed at the expectation of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.

Still, the officials responsible for safeguarding American secrets find it outrageous that a self-appointed defender of the public's right to know has usurped their power to decree what facts should be released. Nobody in group office likes to have his or her authority challenged.

But this is not merely about protecting lawful privilege. Assange probably would not lose any sleep if one of his disclosures got an American intelligence source fired or killed. He is not responsible for stopping weapons proliferation or terrorist attacks, and his conscience may not be affected if a lot of population die after such efforts fail. From the viewpoint of officialdom, what Wikileaks is doing admittedly is outrageous.

At moments like this, when emotions run high, we do well to remember that there are also other system and other points of view. The Wall road Journal's editorial page lost sight of this when it essentially called for Assange to be assassinated.(1)

"If he were exposing Chinese or Russian secrets, he would already have died at the hands of some unknown assailant," the newspaper wrote. "As a foreigner (Australian citizen) engaged in hostile acts against the U.S., Mr. Assange is admittedly not protected from U.S. Reprisal under the laws of war."

The Journal lost an excellent, dedicated journalist named Daniel Pearl when he was beheaded in 2002 after trying to interview jihadist leaders in Pakistan. Julian Assange is no Daniel Pearl, but he, too, exposes himself to marvelous and hostile interests to bring facts to the public. So did most of the 39 journalists that a compilation by the Committee to safe Journalists lists as killed this year.

The Wall road Journal, more than any other entity I can think of, ought to abhor extra-judicial killings of population who disseminate information, no matter what title appears on their enterprise cards.

Meanwhile, Wikileaks' technical and financial infrastructure has been under relentless attack, since just before it released the first batch of State agency documents on the night of Nov. 28.

The organization's Swedish servers were targeted in a "distributed denial of service" attack, typically used by hackers or extortionists who command legions of hijacked "zombie" computers to overwhelm a targeted website. Wikileaks, however, is not a typical market target; the strike made sense only for political reasons. Similar assaults have been mounted by Russian operatives against previous Soviet satellites that ran afoul of the Kremlin.

In this case, the party with the obvious motive is Uncle Sam. But, so far, no American or allied fingerprints have been found. It is also conceivable that someone else government that wanted to avoid inconvenient disclosures might have staged the attack.

Nevertheless, Wikileaks was forced to migrate its servers to a more robust platform offered by Amazon.com. That only lasted a few days, however, before Amazon buckled to political pressure in the form of congressional inquiries, notably from Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Amazon's decision "should set the accepted for other clubs Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material," Lieberman said in a statement.(2)

Suppose someone assembles the State agency documents in book form. Should Amazon, or other vendors, be pressured or prohibited from selling the book if the U.S. Government argues that the material was "illegally seized?" The First Amendment would prevent the government from outlawing the book, but Amazon's reaction shows that pressure may suffice to get results that the law itself cannot produce.

Days after Amazon evicted Wikileaks from its bodily home, the club lost its cyberspace address when someone else U.S. Firm canceled the Wikileaks.org domain name. That firm, Everydns, also came under pressure from Lieberman. Wikileaks became temporarily inaccessible until it secured a Swiss address, Wikileaks.ch.

There have also been concerted efforts to cut off the Wikileaks money supply. PayPal became the third U.S. enterprise to run from the club when it suspended Wikileaks' account. The enterprise said in a blog post that Wikileaks violated a PayPal course that prohibits use of the money-transfer assistance to "encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity." Mastercad and Visa followed suit by cutting off processing for Wikileaks.

Wikileaks has not been found to have broken any law. Of course, the someone who leaked the documents - suspected to be U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning - may have done so, but if Wikileaks is responsible for its sources' disclosures, then so is any news organization. Would PayPal, Mastercard or Visa cut off The New York Times for reporting on leaked secrets?

Not this time. But we have been down this road before, and in other situations, the former press has had the role that Wikileaks is playing today.

"Quit production national heroes out of those who steal secrets and issue them in the newspaper," President Richard Nixon said at the height of the Pentagon Papers controversy. His management went to court to block The New York Times from publishing the private Vietnam history leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called Ellsberg "the most hazardous man in America," which became the title of a documentary about the case last year. After warning The Washington Post's management that there would be financial repercussions for joining The Times in publishing the papers, the Nixon management orchestrated a challenge to the Post's licenses for five television stations. (The challenge finally failed.)

The Obama management is likewise rattling every saber it can get its hands on, for reasons that are not entirely clear. The Wikileaks documents have been disseminated electronically to every projection of the globe. What sense is there in warning Columbia University students not to link to the documents or comment on them, for fear of not getting hired by the State agency after college? Or instructing federal workers and contractors not to read the Wikileaks documents online, because they are still classified? The Pentagon Papers, which are ready in their entirety, are still classified, also. Are government workers who read the history of the Vietnam War also field to punishment?

Still, Attorney normal Eric possessor ordinarily intones that the publication of the Wikileaks papers was illegal, though he cites no singular law on the subject. There has been some venture that Wikileaks could be prosecuted for possessing stolen government documents. If Wikileaks can be prosecuted on those grounds, so could everybody involved in publishing the material Ellsberg leaked.

Assange himself is likewise the target of an apparently coordinated campaign to bring him to heel. Assange was arrested and held without bail in the United Kingdom on a Swedish certify that, agreeing to Assange's attorneys, relates to sexual relations Assange had with two women who purportedly asked him to stop when his condoms failed. While Assange may need to get best at his bedroom skills, it is fair to ask either these alleged sexual assaults would get international attention if Assange had not made so many enemies in high places.

A beneficial principle could come out of all this. If I make something a secret, it is my responsibility to keep it secret. I don't get to tell it to hundreds of thousands of people, together with low-level Army personnel who have no need to know any of this, and still make it a crime when the secrets get out - and especially not a crime for which population that merely learn the secrets, rather than actively take them, can be held responsible.

This is the approach that makes journalism possible. Anyone else reduces the press to a mere conduit for government statements. This would suit many government officials, but would not suit any community that calls itself democratic and self-governing.

The war against Wikileaks is a war against the press. The press just hasn't realized it yet.

Sources:

(1) The Wall road Journal: strike By Wikileaks

(2) Cbs News: Wikileaks: Amazon.com Kicks Us Off Servers

The Undeclared War Against Wikileaks

Thanks To : todays world news headlines

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