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Maybe you've heard of wikileaks, maybe not. Their mission, in their own words:"We aim for maximum political impact. We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government, and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly—in terms of human life and human rights. But with technological advances—the Internet, and cryptography—the risks of conveying important information can be lowered."From http://harpers.org/archive/2010/03/hbc-90006732:"What has the Pentagon so riled up? WikiLeaks published documents about U.S. equipment deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, materials on the use of certain gas agents in Iraq, and the Standard Operating Procedures for Guantánamo (SOP), which established in the minds of many critics (and legal authorities around the world) that the Bush Administration had in fact embraced practices designed to abuse or mistreat prisoners there and conceal the details of their treatment from the public and from the Red Cross."They're releasing a video on April 5th, described here on their twitter page: http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/9412020034"Finally cracked the encryption to US military video in which journalists, among others, are shot. Thanks to all who donated $/CPUs."Their most recent tweet:http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/10962400912"We have airline records of the State Dep/CIA tails. Don't think you can get away with it. You cannot. This is WikiLeaks."They've moved into a media whore business model because their legal costs are, predictably, outrageous.

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They've moved into a media whore business model because their legal costs are, predictably, outrageous.
I've never heard of them until now. WikiLeaks on Wikipedia:"Wikileaks does not pay for lawyers, as hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal support have been donated by media organisations such as the Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association."
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Never heard of them either. I'm certainly in favor of government transparency and aggressive investigative reporting. I'd have to do more research to determine if this group is legit or is a bunch of crack pots or is a bunch of terrorist hackers.

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I've never heard of them until now. WikiLeaks on Wikipedia:"Wikileaks does not pay for lawyers, as hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal support have been donated by media organisations such as the Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association."
I don't understand where the $600,000 annual budget goes if not to their legal defense. This seems to be the consensus opinion around the net.
Never heard of them either. I'm certainly in favor of government transparency and aggressive investigative reporting. I'd have to do more research to determine if this group is legit or is a bunch of crack pots or is a bunch of terrorist hackers.
I mentioned earlier, they're the source of the pager messages from 9/11, and you can probably see a list of all their stuff at wikipedia when it's back up. They're rather... flamboyant... as you can see from the tweets.
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I should have put this in the OP, didn't think to check the cache. From here:http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/sear...=clnk&gl=us6 Notable leaks * 6.1 Pre-2009 leaks o 6.1.1 Daniel arap Moi family corruption o 6.1.2 Bank Julius Baer lawsuit o 6.1.3 Guantánamo Bay procedures o 6.1.4 Scientology o 6.1.5 Hack of Sarah Palin's Yahoo account o 6.1.6 BNP membership list * 6.2 2009 leaks o 6.2.1 Climate Research Unit e-mails o 6.2.2 Internet censorship lists o 6.2.3 Bilderberg Group meeting reports o 6.2.4 2008 Peru oil scandal o 6.2.5 Toxic dumping in Africa: The Minton report o 6.2.6 Kaupthing Bank o 6.2.7 9/11 pager messagesI'm real surprised that nobody's heard of them.

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Very mysterious and very suspect. If it is what it claims to be, and is not just some repository for kooks and tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists, it would be a very very good thing.If it is legit, I would think everyone would support it. I may keep an eye on this site. Are there archives? I don't see a way to see anything except what is on the front page... maybe I'm blind.

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Very mysterious and very suspect. If it is what it claims to be, and is not just some repository for kooks and tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists, it would be a very very good thing.If it is legit, I would think everyone would support it. I may keep an eye on this site. Are there archives? I don't see a way to see anything except what is on the front page... maybe I'm blind.
I can assure you that the previous leaks were legitimate, but they don't appear on the website right now. They shuttered everything to encourage people to donate for the yearly budget. Here's a sampling of some of the 9/11 pager stuff:http://womzilla.livejournal.com/273426.htmlAs for the current shitstorm, who knows? We'll find out if they have the goods on April 5. Here's a translated article describing the raid on the owner's house in Germany in March of 09, "after WikiLeaks released the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) censorship blacklist."http://www.translate.google.com/translate?...ory_state0=autoThey did the same with the Sarah Palin emails. It was just a huge dump of all her correspondence for a number of years... quite interesting. Only $240,000 left to be raised, I guess.
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i'm aware of them and catch a blip about them every once in a while. i think the goal is just to make information available that people in charge normally try to keep under wraps. i think it's a pretty principled group- a while back someone "leaked" their list of anonymous donors back to them, and they opted to let it stand.

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Until they tell us who really killed Kennedy, what is in Area 51 and who killed those people in Medina, Arkansas, they are just hacks with no real information I am interested in.

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With a little internet research, they appear pretty legitimate. I can't find any claims that they are kooks or conspiracy theorists.This is an Excellent Idea.

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Since you started this thread, I've seen several articles about Wikileaks and how The Man is really bothered by it. Here's the latest:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ci...nt-surveillance As far as "national security threats" go, real or imagined, it's likely that few Americans lose much sleep over Wilkileaks, the website that publishes anonymously sourced documents which governments, corporations, and other private or powerful organisations would rather you not see. It would appear the US security apparatus does not feel the same way.On Friday of last week, editor and co-founder Julian Assange posted a letter to the site detailing a laundry list of rather Keystone Kop-like instances of surveillance of himself and other members of the Wikileaks team, likely carried out at least in part by members of the US intelligence or law enforcement community:

"We have discovered half a dozen attempts at covert surveillance in Reykjavik both by native English speakers and Icelanders. On the occasions where these individuals were approached, they ran away."

Ironic if it were not so creepy, much of the observable surveillance took place while Assange and others were in Iceland advising the parliament on a groundbreaking set of laws … designed to protect investigative journalists and web service providers from spying and censorship. Assange also described being tailed on a flight en route to an investigative journalism conference in Norway, by "two individuals, recorded as brandishing diplomatic credentials ... under the name of US State Department".So why are US tax dollars being spent spying on a bunch of volunteer journalists, human rights activists and web geeks, as appears to be the case? There are a few obvious motives, but the smoking gun might be a classified film Wikileaks claims to have in its possession that shows evidence of a US massacre of civilians. Images have power – think Abu Ghraib, think Mi Lai – and efforts at "perception management" by the department of defence will be much complicated by documentary evidence that leaves little to interpretation or "perception" of a human rights crime committed by US forces. Wikileaks plans to show the video at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on 5 April."In my opinion, the operation points not to the CIA, but to the US Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), which (among other things) is tasked with tracing information leaks believed to be originating from US diplomatic staff," Dr Joseph Fitsanakis tells me, founder of Intelnews.org and an expert in the politics and history of intelligence and espionage. "If the US suspected that Wikileaks acquired restricted or classified documents through a US embassy official or staff member (which Julian alludes to in his editorial), then the DSS would get involved."As a target for surveillance Wikileaks is hardly the Kremlin – the mostly volunteer run site was temporarily shut down a few months ago due to lack of funds. Yet it has provided all manner of scoops in its short life – documented corruption in Kenya, evidence of potentially criminal bank fraud in Iceland, and classified US army documents about the treatment of Guantánamo detainees. And while its list of critics is long, openness and transparency are not chief characteristics regularly attributed to them. North Korea, China, Russia, and Zimbabwe have all blocked access to the site at one time or another in response to controversial leaks.It's not a very heartening sign that the US government has joined such an illustrious roster. Yet in an ironic twist one of the conclusions of a report prepared by the department of defence intelligence analysis programme (DIAP), and published by Wikileaks earlier this month contains a surprising defence of the workings of a functioning, responsive democracy:

"It must be presumed that Wikileaks.org has or will receive sensitive or classified DoD documents in the future. This information will be published and analysed over time by a variety of personnel and organisations with the goal of influencing US policy."

If the video Wikileaks plans to screen at the National Press Club on April 5 does indeed include scenes of a US massacre of civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan, as is purported, perhaps the "goal of influencing US policy" becomes a little easier to identify. National security is better served by promoting a just and accountable foreign policy. For starters, stop massacring civilians in the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and investigate and prosecute those responsible for past massacres and cover-ups when and where the burden of proof calls for it.If the US army and the defence apparatus still need help from the muckrakers at Wikileaks to remind them of this fact, then let the leaks continue. And if you think the work that Wikileaks is doing is important, then consider leaking them some money.

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Is there a counterargument that says what they're doing is a bad thing?Are anyone's lives put in danger as a result of this site or its leaks?
I imagine they would instantly cease to exist if they started outing CIA agents or what have you.The irony is that these anti-corruption organizations (transparency international, wikileaks) originate from Germany, which has a rich history of corruption. IIRC, they used to have a place for bribes to foreign nations built into their tax codes...thanks for the article, H.
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I imagine they would instantly cease to exist if they started outing CIA agents or what have you.The irony is that these anti-corruption organizations (transparency international, wikileaks) originate from Germany, which has a rich history of corruption. IIRC, they used to have a place for bribes to foreign nations built into their tax codes...thanks for the article, H.
I completely agree with your points, I guess I could have asked: Using existing documents from the site...I'm sure there is potential for security risks for specific people etc., but I am all for leaking government documents.
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I completely agree with your points, I guess I could have asked: Using existing documents from the site...I'm sure there is potential for security risks for specific people etc., but I am all for leaking government documents.
Yeah, I haven't seen anything to that effect. I hope they have the good sense to show some restraint and redact/etc. information that might end up getting someone killed.I have heard that this has been used as an effective take-down notice for organizations like wikileaks:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_LetterThe concept bothers me a little.
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some more of the story:http://collateralmurder.com/"WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded."lol @ all the people rushing to say it was so obvious that they were journalists. Sure looked like an RPG to me, and they even seem to confirm it later in the video? I'm still quite confused about what I saw.

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lol @ all the people rushing to say it was so obvious that they were journalists. Sure looked like an RPG to me, and they even seem to confirm it later in the video? I'm still quite confused about what I saw.
definitely not obvious. looks like they have AK47s too? still don't see why they needed to be destroyed from above though. also, when they blew up the building (why were they doing that??) there were people milling about in front of it. can't you just clear everyone away if you need to blow it up?
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definitely not obvious. looks like they have AK47s too? still don't see why they needed to be destroyed from above though. also, when they blew up the building (why were they doing that??) there were people milling about in front of it. can't you just clear everyone away if you need to blow it up?
Terrible for Reuters and the staff's family, but it seems like common sense would dictate that you keep the van and children away from a recent shooting with Apaches still circling... I really hate speculating on it, you know? The building thing could very easily be some standard counter-insurgency tactic. This was in 2007, also known as the height of getting our asses kicked in Iraq, so I'm inclined to forgive these kinds of mistakes.
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someone figured out the coordinates from the audio and found the location of the shootings:http://maps.google.com/maps?q=33.313692+44...mp;t=h&z=16and here's a NYT article on the occasion, from 2007:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/mi...nyt&emc=rssSeems somewhat inaccurate to me.I hate to be that guy, but it's funny that al jazeera runs this, while fox news runs stuff about tiger woods.

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