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[inteuniso]

If I ever travel abroad, I'm Canadian. That's my story. There will be no deviation, eh.

It's easier to pull that off when you speak french.


Oui, monsieur, je suis canadien. Pourquoi est-que vous voulez savoir?

[SalmonGod]

Reputation is important. It needs to be cultivated, especially in the modern age. If you've got to take a shit, cleaning it up is a lot easier if you don't roll around in it all day long.

As I've said for years, the long-term benefits of being trustworthy outweigh the short-term benefits of a lie.

Also, the notion of honor is not some outdated relic of the feudal era.  It makes sense in a lot of ways.  While I think there should have been better ways to deal with things in feudal Japan than the use of ritual suicides and mass executions, I can at least understand the reasoning for them.  When one violated their personal codes or betrayed their duties, even if they had no choice but to do so, their lives simply no longer had value because nobody throughout the whole of society would be able to trust them anymore.  In a society where everyone fully understood the implications of honor, no one would want to live with a person who violated it.  And the way I see it, America as defined by the collective global presence of its governing and corporate entities, and quite frankly most of the world's authoritative establishments, have no honor and no value.  I can never ever trust them not to do harm for the sake of their own selfish interests.

[Phmcw]

If Assange die, America can kiss Europe as an ally goodbye.
It's as simple as that. France's survey has been clear : 54% actively support Wikileak, and the reaction and commentary in French speaking media are massively in support of Assange.
The uproar if he die will be of unkonwn proportion.
And he's arrested as long as those "rape" charges holds.
We'll see how long they last. (as far as I know, none of the "victims" actually pressed charges against him, confirmation would be nice.).

[GlyphGryph]

And while we (post-60s) Americans are culturally reared to cheer for the little guy, the vigilante standing up against The Man, the guy speaking Truth to Power....Assange is none of these. He's an arrogant twat who lucked into probably the largest security breach in American history, and has been wielding it like a little kid waving a flaming torch.

Removed long before he released any of this stuff, before he "lucked into it", he and his organization were still a force for good, for accountability, for transparency. And despite the amazing things he released, everyone ignored him - so if he gets something like this, what do you expect him to do? Downplay it and get ignored again, when he clearly honestly believes in his mission?

Is he arrogant as all hell? Hell yes. You have to pretty arrogant to change the world. Is he lucky? Probably, its hard to name a successful person where luck didn't play any sort of role in where they ended up. But none of that means he can't be a symbol for something more. Everyone has flaws - but symbols aren't about the person, and rallying around them isn't about liking the person, its about supporting what the represent. And truth? Accountability? These are things I have no problems rallying behind.

Edited to remove something unnecessary comment upon request from another user

[Tsarwash]

And while we (post-60s) Americans are culturally reared to cheer for the little guy, the vigilante standing up against The Man, the guy speaking Truth to Power....Assange is none of these. He's an arrogant twat who lucked into probably the largest security breach in American history, and has been wielding it like a little kid waving a flaming torch.

RedKing, just for you I'm going to repost the link from a right wing British newspaper regarding some of WikiLeaks more famous scoops. I am interested to see if you think ANY of these leaks were worthwhile. I think that some of them are.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8070253/Wikileaks-10-greatest-stories.html

I fail to see how the US people are credibly 'culturely reared to cheer for the little guy', considering that your country is the largest superpower in the world, and America has a history of overthrowing democratically elected governments that they do not like. Your nation would seem to have an isolationary viewpoint, as long as your interests are not affected in any way. There are plenty of worthy causes in the world that your government abstains from.

You seem to be on the side for censorship of the internet. Is this assumption correct ?

Edit.

[Leafsnail]

If I ever travel abroad, I'm Canadian. That's my story. There will be no deviation, eh.

It would explain the glut of obviously American tourists speaking in American accents here, then...

[Aklyon]

What are you talking about, eh?

[GlyphGryph]

And Glyphglyph. If I were you, I would retract or remove your angry comments. This is not the place for those kind of words.

Removed. It upsets me when people shoot the messenger as an excuse to ignore the message, and believe their personal views of someone they've never met and have no knowledge of give them carte blanche right to dismiss everything that person has done. No one who has ever done great things has avoided being called the equivalent of an arrogant twat by someone. But that's no excuse to be rude - I'm sorry.

[RedKing]

I'm not saying that WikiLeaks hasn't had utility before. I'm saying that what it is doing with *these* documents is not in that same vein.

Although some of the "top 10" you linked to show one of the main problems with WikiLeaks' bulk-disclosure method: the law of unintended consequences.

The "Climategate" scandal wound up being much ado about nothing, but it certainly gave the right-wingers something to screech about and boost their fundraising.

The BNP, while a reprehensible bunch, are entitled to their privacy as much as anyone else. And thanks to WikiLeaks, their paranoid delusions about the "establishment" trying to persecute them are now partially true, which bolsters their case when they try to recruit disaffected white youths.

The Palin thing, while good for a laugh, had the same sort of unintended consequence: folks on the Right got that much more riled up about "dirty librul tricks" and fundraising for the McCain/Palin camp spiked in the wake.


In this case, the unintended consequences are much more serious. Diplomatic relations have been damaged, but more worrisome is that confidence in confidentiality itself has been damaged. It's the same argument that's made against intrusive anti-immigrant measures like forcing police to check immigration status of any Hispanic who contacts them or having doctors verify immigration status. If you do, then they'll stop going to the police or the hospitals, and you'll wind up with ticking time bombs of disease and crime.

In this case, consider this scenario: Jordan and Syria have good relations. Jordan and the US have good relations. Syria and the US do not. Jordan discovers a Syrian plot aimed at undermining US interests. Jordan wishes to alert the US to this, but only as long as the Syrians do not find out that the Jordanians were involved. Only now, Jordan is worried that any communiques could be leaked so they don't tell us.

And when you start threatening to release things like a full list of strategic sites, it's no longer about "exposing dirty secrets", it's a full-on attack against US national security. I was ambivalent about the WikiLeaks releases until Assange started threatening to pull out a "doomsday" key code.

Am I for censorship on the Internet? No. Am I for national governments having a right to state secrets? Absolutely. While the US does tend to overclassify material a bit, they're a lot more transparent than some countries I could list. And there is a lot of material that's classified for very good reasons. I work with data of that sort on a daily basis. If some of it were compromised and stuck out there on the net, good people would likely die in very brutal, painful ways. For me, this is not an academic or philosophical discussion. It is a very real threat.

Glyphglyph: You have my apologies as well. I was probably out of line with my comments about Assange, but in what interviews and comments I've seen from him, he strikes me as arrogant and pompous.

[Phmcw]

Redking, the problem is not the right to have states secret, it's the content of these secret.

The deal with Spain's copyright law is pretty serious.

One of the assumption of the leak is that US government has become dangerous for the free world, and that their activities should be unveiled.

[SalmonGod]

Assange strikes me as an interesting character, but probably not a great guy to know personally.  But honestly I don't care much about his personal character.  There's far, far more at stake here, which is why it's infuriating that authorities are using a matter of personal character to drag him into courts, where that is almost certainly not what the trial is going to ultimately be about.

Ask yourself right now, how many musicians do you know who are total assholes in person?  Too many to count, right?  Do you still like their music?  Do you still find bits of wisdom in their lyrics?

How about your favorite politicians?  Do you agree with absolutely everything they do and say?  You still stand behind them, right?

If you're religious, do you cut ties with the church whenever a priest is involved in a scandal?

I'm with Glyph... really sick of character assassination.  It's always hypocritical BS, because the people who employ those criticisms never apply them universally, only to people they don't agree with.

[Tellemurius]

its how you make news man, gotta find the stuff people fear about and would shift focus to ( think we had one day where there was no deaths in the news). point is, they ran out of stuff they can stick him with thats not BS so they're going to his personal life.

[Tsarwash]

I agree that state secrets can be necessary, but a lot of what is kept secret turns out to be protecting individuals who are incompetant or corrupt. Ideally we would have a separate body who would decide if such material should be released, but presently the people who decide if information is made public are the very people to which benefit if most information is withheld.

If for instance troops are engaged in widespread abuse of civilians, then the ultimate commanders of those troops would be the ones who decide if the information should be published.

If an large company is involved in overseas illegal and dirty activities to ensure opposition to them is removed, and the companies national government finds out, then the government would often side with the company rather than the aggrevied parties, because the aggrieved party has no vote or influence on that gonernment but the company would.

[Realmfighter]

If I ever travel abroad, I'm Canadian. That's my story. There will be no deviation, eh.

Don't be a dick.

If you are, there will be no stopping the death teams from finding you.

[RedKing]

I agree that state secrets can be necessary, but a lot of what is kept secret turns out to be protecting individuals who are incompetant or corrupt.

A very popular sentiment, which is odd considering that most people haven't had exposure to classified material and are thus not in a position to determine what consitutes "a lot". To be honest, most classified material is actually pretty boring and mundane. But it's material which if released in large enough quantities could consitute a larger picture which would be of distinct interest to people who don't have the best of intentions. Purchasing orders, for example. An individual purchase order is mostly harmless. Ten thousand purchase orders gives you a good idea of what someone is doing and/or planning.

Ideally we would have a separate body who would decide if such material should be released, but presently the people who decide if information is made public are the very people to which benefit if most information is withheld.

Agreed. Classification/declassification is a problematic issue because it's always a struggle between security and transparency. The solution however, is not to blow the doors open and have all of one and none of the other, just as the Bush administration's attempts to conceal just about everything were misguided.

One of the assumption of the leak is that US government has become dangerous for the free world, and that their activities should be unveiled.

And this is an assumption I would take serious issue with.