A Summary of the Case for Wikileaks; Plus, Who Let the Logs Out?! and Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-11)

[Scroll down to THOUGHTS for the case for Wiklieaks.]

Fwiw, in general, my fave institutional sources at present are Greg Mitchell's blog at The Nation, The UK Guardian, and Foreign Policy's Wikileaked blog. Below are some highlights (for highlights from previous days, click here).



NEWS:

At right, demonstrators in Brisbane, Australia. Protests are ongoing worldwide and more are planned (see the Guardian). Here's a FB page that may have some info re- planned protests.

The BBC has a good written summary about Anonymous here (but re- the video, I'm not sure all Anons would agree with all the one speaking says).

While Anons' DDoS attacks continue, they've decided to shift their efforts to publicizing content from the leaks themselves, since that's what the powers that be fear most; see, e.g., Operation Leakspin.

Question: What exactly are the Anons' demands? TorrentFreak refers to an Operation Payback page stating them, but apparently that site's been taken down.

A recent Anon tweet: "Join us. First for the good news! You get 72 virgins! Now for the bad news . . . ain't no girls here."

One small business reports that Paypal has locked its account because it donated to Wikileaks. Moneybookers is not an alternative because, even though it's based in Europe, it too has cut off payments to Wikileaks and has been taken down by Anon's DDoS attacks.

Not exactly new, but urgent in the light of current developments, is this story (as reported by the BBC) about the President's "killswitch" power – the power to kill the internet in the event of a national "emergency." UPDATE: "The Senate Committee on Homeland Security . . . has approved a cybersecurity bill . . . that would give the president far-reaching authority over the Internet in the case of emergency."

THOUGHTS: The Case for Wikileaks

We are living in times of extraordinary incursions against the rightful liberties and powers of ordinary citizens. The U.S. Congress has acquiesced in, among other things:

Routine secret service and police violations of First Amendment rights, including preemptive round-ups and detentions of protesters in connection with political conventions and other events (see various posts here and sources cited therein, esp. here and here);

Wholesale NSA/AT&T violations of Fourth Amendment and privacy rights, including warrantless wire-tapping and mining of e-mails of U.S. citizens (see various posts here and sources cited therein);

Gross TSA and other governmental or quasi-governmental violations of Fourth Amendment and privacy rights, including unreasonable and invasive searches without the least pretext of probable cause (see posts here {may include some repeats from previous link} and sources cited therein);

The institution of policies of kidnapping, torture, and assassination of U.S. citizens and others without trial (see, e.g., here, here, and here);

The invasion of Iraq based on lies; etc.

These violations are are massive, and they're becoming the new norm. And apart from a few bit-part scapegoats, no one has been held to account for them; indeed, for the most part, they have not even been investigated. Talk about the terrorists winning. 

And similar violations are taking place in other so-called democracies.

There have been periods in the past when the traditional media did a better job of fulfilling their proper function as the "watchdog of democracy." But it's been some time since they fulfilled that role (see, e.g., "leaked reports back up what Iraq vets have been telling journalists for years, only to be ignored").

I do not fault individual journalists, most of whom are over-extended and underpaid. But, leaving the internet aside for the moment, the vast majority of traditional media worldwide are directly or indirectly controlled by a handful of large corporations (see Wikipedia and the sources cited there). Resources for real reporting have been hollowed out, and most "liberal" journalists were driven out years ago. As a result, wittingly or not, much if not most of the traditional media functions mainly to "catapult the propaganda," controlling the national agenda by echoing talking points originated by conservatively-funded think tanks and disseminated by Faux News et al.

As for the internet, big business is already well on their way to controlling most of that, too; among other things, witness the latest pending FCC regulations and this article about proposed legislation to give the U.S. President the legal power to "kill" the Internet; see also Lawrence Lessig re- the "iPatriot Act."

With respect to the U.S. Embassy cables, Wikileaks is working with the major newspapers of the world to carefully vet and redact everything it publishes, and it has published nothing that has not been published by one or more of those newspapers.

Wikileaks was founded in 2006; since then, not a single person is known to have been physically harmed as a result of any Wikileaks disclosure, ever (I'm pretty sure if the U.S. government could name one, it would have been leaked by now.) {UPDATE: Per Assange in an interview with Frost Over the World, the Pentagon has confirmed that it knows of no one that has been physically harmed because of any Wikileaks publication}).

In contrast, as of this writing, the number of Coalition soldiers who have died because of the lies used to justify invading Iraq, conservatively counted, are nearing 5,000, Iraqi deaths are nearing 1.5 million, and the U.S. has spent over $1 trillion {see info in the left sidebar of this blog}.

Some have argued that Wikileaks' publication of State secrets is as bad as our governments' and big businesses' invasions of the privacy of U.S. citizens; but this is a false equivalency. I don't have the power to act on behalf of or make decisions affecting the welfare of millions of other people; and if I did, again, I should not also have the power to unilaterally decide what they get to know about it.

Some argue that Wikileaks' work is not REAL journalism and so should not be afforded the same First Amendment protection as other news media.

Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the traditional media in the U.S. utterly FAILED to report the fact that the aluminum tubes claimed by the Bush admin to have been purchased for use in a nuclear weapons program were in fact ill-adapted for such use and were more likely purchased for other reasons (I heard that fact mentioned only late at night, on the BBC). Indeed, rather than verifying the Bush admin's claim, The NYT chose to publish Judith Miller's completely uncritical – if not complicit – story, "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts" – a story substantially based on the deliberate leaking of classified information by Scooter Libby, chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney. If what Wikileaks' work isn't journalism, I wish The NYT and other corporate media did more "non-journalism."

The corporate media are also the "journalists" who failed to analyze Bush admin. claims far enough to realize that a half-dozen specious reasons to invade Iraq did not add up to one good one – something obvious to the millions who demonstrated against the invasion in "the biggest global peace protests before a war actually started."

There simply is no principled basis for distinguishing Wikileaks' publications from those of The NYT and other newspapers.

Some argue the information published by Wikileaks isn't important enough to justify the breach of secrecy. So, who gets to decide what's important, and on what basis? The U.S. agents who warned of the possibility of 9/11 but were ignored have speculated that that tragedy might have been prevented if someone had leaked to Wikileaks.

How about the needless gunning down by U.S. military forces of a Reuters cameraman and Iraqi innocents shown here? Or, from the U.S. Embassy cables, what about the revelations that the British government secretly promised to protect U.S. interests during the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, or that, in response to U.S. pressure, the German government assured the U.S. that it would not follow through on its investigation of the CIA's abduction of a German citizen mistakenly identified as a terrorist, or that the U.S. dismissed British objections about secret U.S. spy flights taking place from the UK, amid British officials' concerns that the UK would be deemed an accomplice to rendition and torture, or that the U.S. sought assurances from the Ugandan government that it would consult the U.S. before using American intelligence to commit war crimes, or that as of 2009, Shell Oil had infiltrated all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, or that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer paid investigators to unearth corruption links to Nigeria's attorney general in an attempt to stop his legal action against a controversial drug trial involving children, or that Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups, or that the Obama administration and Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, are determined to reject talks with the Taliban, or that government corruption in Afghanistan is rampant (viz. an incident last year when then vice-president Ahmad Zia Massoud was stopped in Dubai while carrying $52m in cash), or that the U.S. seeks to manipulate nations opposed to its approach to global warming, or that the U.S. and China worked together to prevent European nations from reaching an agreement at last year's climate summit, etc.? And I look forward eagerly to the expected publications re- the Guantanamo detainees and a major US bank.

The U.S. and other governments have struggled for months to find some legal violation to charge Wikileaks with, without success. To date, the only U.S. law seriously proposed as a possible basis for charges is the Espionage Act, which was used to try to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers – and in that case, the charges were dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Wikileaks' case, the argument for a violation of the Espionage Act is even weaker, since (1) Wikileaks has neither stolen nor leaked any information but merely published information others leaked to it, and (2) Wikileaks is not a U.S. citizen or resident.

The lack of any basis for legal action against Wikileaks has not stopped governments and big businesses from using all their might to try to crush it. They've tried to strangle Wikileaks' presence on the internet through their own DDoS attacks (yes, someone did it to Wikileaks before “Anonymous” did it to any of them) and by pressuring Wikileaks' website hosts and domain name registrars to drop Wikileaks; they're trying to strangle the organization financially (MC, Visa, Bank of America and other banks have stopped processing donations to Wikileaks, although you can still donate to the KKK); and much of the traditional media, particularly in the U.S., are working to bury revelations that Wikileaks has published or to make it and/or Assange look bad enough to make you forget about the governmental and corporate crimes that Wikileaks' publications are revealing. This could happen to you, even if you'd broken no laws, just like it happened to Wikileaks, if the powers that be didn't like what you were saying.

Some conservative leaders in the U.S. have even called for the assassination of Wikileaks' staff. One has to wonder what might have happened to Assange by now if he hadn't had his insurance file.

What governments and big businesses fear most is not terrorism, but us – and what we might do if we learn the truth.

Knowledge is power, and a balance of power requires a balance of knowledge. The way things are now, corporations and governments know everything about us and we know almost nothing important about them.

I believe that too much information is better than too little. I have more faith in our ability as a species to collectively sort through the info and interpret it helpfully, than I have in the likelihood that any smaller group of individuals entrusted with the power to pick and choose what we should know, without meaningful oversight, will refrain from abusing that power.

In truth, we must ALL be journalists, which means we must ALL have access to the facts.

If Wikileaks can be crushed by the powers that be, we can ALL be crushed. There's only one thing that can stop them: us.

If just ten percent of the people travelling by air over Thanksgiving had refused to submit to the unreasonable searches by TSA, it would have been the end of those searches. If enough of us stand up for Wikileaks, it will be the end – at least for a time – of our governments' and big businesses' efforts to crush those who insist on the right to know what the powerful are doing to us or in our name.

This blog supports Wikileaks. If you agree that free speech is essential to democracy, I hope that you too will stand up against those who seek to stifle it.

You can sign a petition to stop the crackdown on Wikileaks here.

At right, a bit of off-the-cuff Anon art.

Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-10): A Call to Arms, er, Computers; and We Must ALL Be "Journalists"

First, let me refer you to Greg Mitchell's blog at The Nation, the excellent UK Guardian, and Foreign Policy's Wikileaked blog. Here are a few highlights (based as always on my own idiosyncratic interests).



Funny/Scary:

"Wikileaks" Google searches exceed those for Justin Bieber.

HUGE volume of "Wikileaks" searches originating from U.S. intelligence agencies.

At least I'm not alone.

NEWS:

The images at right show the bunker in which the servers now hosting Wikileaks are located (thanks, Julie!), operated by the Swedish company, Bahnhof. Seriously.

You can sign a petition calling for an end to the crackdown on Wikileaks here.

TechCrunch reports DDoS attacks have hobbled Facebook, and as of 1:45pm CST, it does seem slow. Mastercard's site was down again this a.m.; "The attack was due to begin at 2pm and within five minutes MasterCard's site was down." "Most of those participating in the attacks are using the LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) DDoS tool . . . . The open-source tool . . . is being downloaded at the rate of about 1,000 copies per hour, said Tal Be'ery, the Web research team lead at Imperva's Application Defense Center." As of this a.m., I believe I read there'd been over 44,000 copies downloaded. UPDATE: Twitter is closing Anon accounts as fast as it can find them – which isn't fast enough. "#anonymous does not care why twitter is suspending accounts. we simply respawn. back to business."

Interesting article at Financial Times: "This year has seen military and security experts often warn about the prospects of 'cyberwarfare.' Few expected the most prominent assaults against large companies to come from a scattered group of anarchists and idealists with no identifiable leader, membership or nationality. . . . [One Anon said,] 'If [authorities] are willing to gun down WikiLeaks in broad daylight, they will come down on you as well.'" That reminds me, time to download a copy of this blog . . . .

A DNS provider that suffered backlash last week after it was wrongly identified as supplying and then dropping service to WikiLeaks has decided to support the secret-spilling site, offering DNS service to two domains distributing WikiLeaks content; more here.

Greg Mitchell has a great idea: "WikiLeaks should send its 249,000 unpublished cables to Bernie Sanders for him to read during his epic filibuster [of Obama's tax cut deal]; he could vet them as he goes along. Bernie now trending #1 and #2 at Twitter." He also says "[f]amed French newspaper Libération [is] now hosting a Wikileaks mirror site" (vive la France!)

Wikileaks now has a competitor: OpenLeaks.

Search the entirety of the cables for particular words or phrases here.

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS:

Re- the Second Amendment . . . this whole affair shows that computers are the "arms" of our time, and the hazards of surrending them in favor of Cloud-based facilities owned or controlled by others. Maybe the Second Amendment should be expanded to include computers.

(New train of thought:) We're seeing the beginning of a push to sell the claim that Wikileaks' actions are not protected by the First Amendment because what it does is not "real" journalism. I'm pretty sure this is B.S. and hope to hear more from the EFF and ACLU on this point.

And I'm not really so interested in the U.S. media's opinion as to why Wikileaks' work is not "journalism."

These are the media who utterly FAILED to report the fact that the aluminum tubes claimed by the Bush admin to have been purchased for use in a nuclear weapons program were in fact ill-adapted for such use and were more likely purchased for other reasons (a report I heard only on the BBC). On the contrary, instead of verifying the Bush admin's claim, The NYT chose to publish Judith Miller's completely uncritical – if not complicit – story, "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts" – a story substantially based on the deliberate leaking of classified information by Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.

So, it's journalism to publish without question leaked material produced by persons known to have spoken in furtherance of their own political agenda, but it's not journalism to publish leaked material produced by persons who to all appearances had no agenda other than to tell the truth?

The corporate media are also the same "journalists" who failed to analyze Bush admin claims far enough to realize that a half-dozen specious reasons to invade Iraq did not add up to one good one – something obvious to the millions who demonstrated against the invasion in "the biggest global peace protests before a war actually started." (See also, e.g., Phil Donohue pushed off the air for opposing Iraq invasion.)

Publishing facts is at least as important as the corporate media's much-vaunted "analysis."

In truth, we must ALL be journalists, which means we must ALL have access to the facts.

I'm also hearing the argument that the Wikileaks' disclosures don't deserve protection because the lies they reveal aren't as big as those revealed by the Pentagon Papers. To this I say, (1) who gets to decide? and (2) only a tiny fraction of the material held by Wikileaks has yet been published.

Terrific new essay by Naomi Wolf at HuffPo: "Espionage Act: How the Government Can Engage in Serious Aggression Against the People of the United States" – i.e., the law was created as a way to do that; and as a result, e.g., "poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp . . . for the 'crime' of saying that he did not hate Germans."

Good essay by Ian Welsh here: "The odd thing about Wikileaks is that their success has been assured, not by what they leaked, though there is some important information there, but by their enemies. The massive and indiscriminant overreaction by both government and powerful corporate actors has ensured this, and includes but is not nearly limited to . . . ."

The latest from Anonymous:



They say access to the internet is a fundamental human right. I'm inclined to agree.

Re- Taxes: Follow the Money -- REALLY

Excellent piece by Stephen Herrington at HuffPo:

What damages economies is when money is lost from the economy. In the case of the Great Depression and now our Great Recession, the rich were, and now are, at a peak in terms of how much of the nation's per capita income went to them. Now as in 1929, the rich took money out of the economy and "invested" it in non-productive speculation apart from the real economy. Some $18 trillion in corporate cash are sitting on the sidelines waiting in vain for some market magic to offer some reason to re-enter the real economy. The notion that wealth is invested in economies and finances new homes and factories hasn't been true for over a century, not since Dow and Jones set up shop on Wall Street. The bulk of wealth now circulates in and out of stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities and hedge funds and will never see the real economies of the world again unless it is taxed back into it and spent by governments.

Higher taxes on the poor and middle classes don't damage economies except when they are levied in order to spare the rich from an increasing tax burden commensurate with their increasing share of wealth. In 1932 Hoover raised taxes on everyone but levied extra taxes on the working class. He did so in an effort to balance the budget and thus took money out of the economy in order to limit the liabilities of the rich who had appropriated too much for a healthy economy to sustain already. In 1937 FDR did the same thing and worse; he stopped government stimulus spending, removing even more money from the economy, all in order to relieve the rich from returning enough money to the economy, from their takings, to keep it working.

WWII solved the problem of government not understanding what a great world power economy is based on. Wages doubled during WWII and the economy boomed for a generation. Nobody expected that kind of result but Keynes. A world power economy is based on money in circulation and that is dependent on money in either of the hands of the wage earning public or the hands of government, both of whom spend what they take in. Eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the middle class will not harm the economy if it is not commensurate with tax relief for the rich. The only way to improve our economy is to tax the historic levels of wealth and return that wealth to the economy.

More at the link.

I'm afraid I don't have time to write all I'd like to about Obama's compromise tax package, but I will say that (1) if passed, the average family will get a few thousand in tax cuts in the near-term and will lose more than twice that in the longer term, in order to finance the much larger cuts for the rich; (2) I believe the cut in FICA taxes is a poison pill designed to kill Social Security – basically, they're looting funds for our future retirement (again) to pay more bonuses to bankers now; and (3) whatever else this episode shows, it proves that tax cuts for billionaires are so important to Republicans that they're willing to sacrifice everything and everyone else to get them – that those cuts for billionaires are so important that they outweigh everything else combined.

Wikileaks: UPDATES (2010-12-09)

Ok, I'm officially obsessed. To avoid filling this blog with nothing but posts about Wikileaks, I'm now limiting them to one per day (or less), and I'm putting a link to them in the sidebar at left (under "Some of my heftier posts").

Here's the latest:

NEWS:

Good sites for updates: Greg Mitchell's at The Nation and, as always, Democratic Underground. UPDATE: Foreign Policy's Wikileaked blog seems to be rolling now and may be a good source for analysis of the content of the releases.

One of the complainants in the "rape" cases against Assange may have ceased cooperating with the Swedish prosecution.

DDoS attacks by Wikileaks supporters: Anonymous "Operation Payback" members have fully or partially disabled the websites of the Swiss Post Office bank, Visa, Mastercard (see also The NYT), Paypal (see also BoingBoing), Sarah Palin, Joe Lieberman, and the Swedish government. Wikileaks has issued a statement disclaiming any connection with the Anons, and the latter appear strictly self-deputed (more on them below). UPDATE: Here's a claim that Paypal has agreed to Anonymous's terms. FURTHER UPDATE: More details re- the Anons' attacks here. FURTHER x 2 UPDATE: Per PCWorld, "the collective forces of Anonymous have taken down the PayPal blog (though not PayPal itself), the US Senate Web directory, the site for Julian Assange's Swiss bank, the site for the Swedish prosecutors who are bringing charges against Assange . . . , and the home pages of Visa and MasterCard . . . ." FURTHER x 3 UPDATE: The Anons may be abandoning DDoS attacks in favor of combing through the cables themselves and publicizing juicy bits overlooked by others. I would not be surprised if they found a few; details here. Should they decide to continue the DDoS attacks, as of 4pm ET today, over 44,000 copies of the software used in the attacks had been downloaded (see here; last I'd seen late yesterday, the no. was ca. 31,000).

Technically, Anons are NOT hacking their targets, merely inundating them with service requests (the list of individuals' MC numbers claimed to have been hacked by the group was a fake); and the concerted attacks by Anons began only after similar attacks on the Wikileaks site (the sources of which remain as yet unknown); more here. MSNBC and others, however, continue to refer to the Anons as hackers and to characterize them as a dangerous mob.

Here's a "Letter from Anonymous," describing its efforts as a non-violent, digital sit-in. Their goal: "Win the right to keep the Internet free of any control from any entity, corporation, or government. We will do this until our proverbial dying breath." (Emphasis supplied.) The group is only loosely organized, and as far as I know, they've made no concerted attack except against entities they believe to have acted in bad faith.

Counterattacks: "Operation Payback is facing a little payback of its own. First Twitter closed the pro-Wikileaks group's account. And now we hear the Feds are shutting down some online discussion of Operation Payback attacks." – Gawker. What's left of one discussion allegedly shut down can be seen here. UPDATE: "Late Wednesday, Operation Payback itself appeared to run into problems, as many of its sites went down. It was unclear who was behind the counterattack." FURTHER UPDATE: "A Facebook page, Operation Payback, and Twitter account, Anon-Operation, were both suspended due to them promoting 'unlawful activity'. But the Twitter account has returned with a new handle, Anon_Operationn." See also Forbes.

Information about protests and other events in support of Wikileaks here.

Interview with Julian Assange on the eve of his arrest here.

This article has some background on the allegations of sexual misconduct against Assange and other matters; see also here. Apparently he's been on Interpol's "most wanted" list because he continued intercourse after the condom broke.

In case I haven't mentioned it, the best source I've found so far for daily reporting and analysis of Wikileaks' ongoing releases is the most excellent UK Guardian.

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS:

Naomi Wolf has a great piece at HuffPo, "Julian Assange Captured by World's Dating Police." Sample: "Thank you again, Interpol. I know you will now prioritize the global manhunt for 1.3 million guys I have heard similar complaints about personally in the US alone – there is an entire fraternity at the University of Texas you need to arrest immediately."

Good essay by Jack Hunter at The American Conservative, "The Conservative Case for Wikileaks," e.g., " . . . loyalty to the Republic necessitates treason to the Empire. Their interests are diametrically opposed. Secrecy (and indeed, duplicity) in all dealings of the State is a defining characteristic of empires, and exists primarily to protect the governing class from being held accountable by the governed."

Daniel Ellsberg (who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The NYT) " . . . has said that labelling the Pentagon Papers leak as 'good' whilst the Cablegate leaks are 'bad' makes no sense. 'That's just a cover for people who don't want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.'" More here. UPDATE: Ellsberg will appear on The Colbert Report tonight.

Good essay by James Moore on HuffPo: "I am Julian Assange . . . and if you care about the truth, you are, too."

Yesterday, on NPR's Fresh Air, David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The NYT, stated that what Wikileaks does is not journalism. I find this claim self-serving and absurd; or alternatively, I only wish The NYT had done more non-journalism in the run-up to our invasion of Iraq based on gov't lies.

And I for one applaud Wikileaks' invention of "scientific journalism," in which you can click on a report and be taken directly to the source, so you can verify it for yourself. This is now easy to provide and could help counteract the proliferating, UNsubstantiated "journalism" on the internet, Faux News and elsewhere. (Assange's recent op-ed in The Australian, in which he discussed "scientific journalism," among other things, is well worth the read.)

One thought from a few days ago: When you see/hear some talking head calling Wikileaks "irresponsible," ask yourself who THAT person is responsible TO? Who signs that person's paycheck – you, or the powers that be?

PREVIOUS POSTS
(excluding a few less-substantive ones):

All posts contain links to sources with more details.

Wikileaks: What's at Stake? - 2010-12-08
A list of many of the issues implicated in the ongoing efforts by the US and other gov'ts to shut Wikileaks down.

Wikileaks: the Big Picture - 2010-12-06
A succinct statement of the big issue: a balance of power requires a balance of knowledge, and these days, Big Bros. know all about us while we know nothing impt. about them.

I'd also like to refer you to John Naughton's excellent Op-Ed for The UK Guardian: "The attack of WikiLeaks also ought to be a wake-up call for anyone who has rosy fantasies about whose side cloud computing providers are on. These are firms like Google, Flickr, Facebook, Myspace and Amazon which host your blog or store your data on their servers somewhere on the internet, or which enable you to rent "virtual" computers – again located somewhere on the net. The terms and conditions under which they provide both 'free' and paid-for services will always give them grounds for dropping your content if they deem it in their interests to do so."

Wikileaks Info Reveals Afghan Meltdown - 2010-08-09
A gif created by yours truly animating Wikileaked reports that show that violence in Afghanistan has increased since the US stepped up its efforts there.

Wikileaks - 2010-07-27
TED Interview with Assange from shortly before Wikileaks' publication of US military docs re- Afghanistan.

Wikileaks Releasing 6,780 Secret Reports Commissioned by Congress - 2009-02-10
Link to article with more details.

Whistle-Blowers' Site Taken Off-Line in the U.S. - 2008-02-18
Nearly three years ago, the US gov't disabled the wikileaks.org domain name in the US, but rescinded the order after the EFF and ACLU intervened; links to more details.

"Kettling," a.k.a. containment or corralling, is a police tactic for the management of crowds during demonstrations or protests.

More on "kettling" at Wikipedia.

What "O" Apparently Stands for

Assange à la Taiwan

From Next Media Animation.

Wikileaks: What's at Stake?

FURTHER UPDATE: For a more recent, complete statement of the case for Wikileaks, see here.

UPDATE: Anonymous's "Operation Payback" has now taken down the main Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal sites.

I'm more or less obsessed with this story for many reasons, some of which are roughly outlined as follows:

• For the chronological coincidence of the prospective disclosure of Bank of America secrets with the dramatic step-up in efforts to shut Wikileaks down by whatever means necessary (see also Market Ticker).
• For the fact that you can now donate to the KKK or the American Nazi Party with your MC or Visa, but you can't donate to Wikileaks.
• For the comparison between the hunt for Julian Assange and the hunt for Bin Laden.
• For the use of the women charging Assange with still unspecified sexual improprieties, considered together with the use of similar charges to neutralize other figures perceived as threats to the powers that be (e.g., Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Gary Condit, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, et al. – see here re- the latter, and see here re- the charges against Assange).
• For the use of the mass media to slander or discount a public figure seen as dangerous to the powers that be (Jimmy Carter, Cindy Sheehan, Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, et al.).
• For the comparison between Wikileaks' publications and the publication by The New York Times of the Pentagon Papers.
• For the contrast – to date – between Dr. David Kelly's fate vs. that of Assange, in light of the precautions each did/did not take.
• For what it shows about the toothlessness of the law when it comes to redress for abuses of power – i.e., what redress will Wikileaks have, if it ever establishes that Paypal, Amazon, Mastercard, et al. wrongfully terminated its accounts?
• For the First Amendment/freedom of speech issues.
• For the Fourth Amendment/privacy issues.
• For the comparison between the "treason" alleged to have been committed – though Assange is not a U.S. citizen and, despite frantic, months'-long efforts by governments in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Sweden, and elsewhere, Wikileaks' activities have yet to be argued plausibly to have broken the laws of any country – vs. that of members of the U.S. Congress and executive branch, who, despite their oaths to uphold the U.S. Constitution and laws, are known to have committed, acquiesced in, or failed to investigate the following, most of which are still ongoing:

The creation of a "Constitution-free zone" (see here);

NSA/AT&T violations of Fourth Amendment and privacy rights, including mass wire-tapping and mining of e-mails of U.S. citizens (see various posts here and sources cited therein);

TSA and other governmental or quasi-gov'l violations of Fourth Amendment and privacy rights, including unreasonable, invasive searches without the least pretext of probable cause (see posts here {may include some repeats from previous link} and sources cited therein);

Secret service and police violations of First Amendment rights, including preemptive round-ups and detentions of protesters in connection with RNC's and other events (see various posts here and sources cited therein, esp. here and here);

The institution of policies of torture and assassination of U.S. citizens and others (see, e.g., here, here, and here);

The invasion of Iraq based on lies;


Etc.

• For the contrast, speaking of treason, between the efforts made to find and prosecute Assange vs. the relative lack of serious investigation or prosecution of those responsible for the outing of Valerie Plame and attendant destruction of her anti-WMD operations (see here and sources cited therein), or the lies that led to the US invasion of Iraq, or any of the Constitutional violations listed above.
• For what the story shows about how free the internet still is (see essay here).
• For what it suggests about how free the internet isn't (see posts here and sources cited therein), including the terrible risks we take by relying on the Cloud.

Note, not one person is known to have died as a result of any Wikileaks disclosure ever – while as of this writing, the still-mounting, governmentally-confirmed Coalition military deaths in Iraq total 4,748 (not to mention contractors, or the wounded) and Iraqi deaths total 1,421,933 (see the left side bar of this blog).

The inescapable inference is that what the powers that be fear most is not terrorists, but the truth.

As set out in my previous post, a balance of power requires a balance of knowledge; but the way things are now, corporations and the government know everything about us and we know almost nothing important about them.

There's a great deal at stake here, and I greatly fear many possible, negative effects. Perhaps most importantly, I believe we must prepare for the fact that this affair will greatly benefit the powers that be by mapping out in considerable detail the areas in which their control is still relatively weak, e.g., control over internet and other infrastructure, applicable law, etc.