Poll

Has this site gone too far?

Yes. Stop the leaks now!
7 (31.8%)
No. Let the site continue what it's doing.
12 (54.5%)
Undecided.
3 (13.6%)

Total Members Voted: 22

Author Topic: Wikileaks  (Read 9749 times)

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Offline Mooshi

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Re: Wikileaks
« Reply #50 on: December 09, 2010, 12:13:38 am »
Foxpup..it amazes me how much of our ideals are alike. :o

I'm speaking for myself and no one else, but maybe someone might agree. I honestly do get the concern of both sides. Being the middle man that I try to be, I look at it like this: I'm only for leaks that are the truth of what is going on. Not just Wikileaks, but all sites that are brave. The stuff we watch on TV is only the candy-coated surface. What lays beneath is not always pretty. However, there are certain types of information that I believe should never be leaked and I think even Foxpup would agree with me here. Classified information that isn't another coverup deserves to be secret. Information such as top secret new weaponry for the military and armour. That kinda stuff is completely different over telling the truth. I consider /that/ valueable information that should never get in the hands of our enemies...the other stuff..well...remember that expression "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"? These are grown men/women...leaders at that! Stop excusing them, they should know better not to say certain things about their enemies..especially their allies. Far as I'm concered, their fault for opening their mouths in this technology age where everything is fair game.

Offline Kobuk

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Re: Wikileaks
« Reply #51 on: December 09, 2010, 01:47:12 pm »
I'm going to put a final word in this thread from myself.

Quote
Making a PUBLIC SHOW to vent out an internal/company/military/classified/etc. conflict or information is ethically WRONG.  It draws many people into the conflict who do not have a way to hear both sides of the story that creates political "sides" and generates a huge amount of speculation/rumors/gossip/etc.  In effect it's sacrificing the peace of the country and/or world for our own egos/emotions. 

Not sure I got what I wanted to say, right. But maybe Arb or Weisse will add their .02 cents later.

Offline Mooshi

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Re: Wikileaks
« Reply #52 on: December 09, 2010, 02:26:41 pm »
One could counter that by saying withholding certain information is also ethically wrong. Lemme use our country as an example. When the government of the United States was first put into place, not once did it say "bend over and let the government have their way". It was quite the opposite. We had the right to question our government if it were wrong, corrupt. That was the whole point of the American Revolution - to escape that sort of thing. Now in 2010, it may as well be the 1700's all over again in thought process. The king is right, we are wrong. We have no right to question what the king does so long as we nod our heads in agreement. No, I still hold the original principles to heart. Not everything our government does is right and they have no right to withhold information from the very people who gave them that power. It's about time "We the people" meant something again.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2010, 02:30:38 pm by Mooshi »

Offline Avan

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Re:Security leaks
« Reply #53 on: December 09, 2010, 02:51:57 pm »
@ mooshi & kobuk: I wouldn't throw around terms such as morals or ethics, especially considering that not everyone uses the same standards here. *Cough myself for one cough* - it just confuses things.

However it can be said, it is in most likelyhood and situations ridiculously reckless to leak information (of the states secrets type), and is highly liable to result in http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NiceJobBreakingItHero

Lastly, the leaks are of a much greater importance than wikileaks in the context of the discussion. In fact, leaking to the media would probably be more disastrous, if simply because Wikileaks occupies the little corner of the internet that pretty much only tin-hatters frequent, whereas the media has the resources to spread things much further, creating an even bigger fallout. Which would in any case spread to the internet via discussion on forums, blogs, etc. But closing down wikileaks is an incredibly loaded action; rather obviously by the discussion taking place here. Plugging the leaks, which would cause wikileaks to pretty much wilt and die in anonymity from the lack of what it needs, would solve all the problems - including it getting to the media, and then the internet - without causing any nasty political fallout. Focusing on wikileaks - for intentions of better or worse - only garners it more attention, generating more media focus on it, and inflaming the problem. It's like pouring sodium hydroxide on an open wound. It is GOING to make things worse. Much worse, much uglier, much longer to heal, and perhaps leave one heck of a scar.

GUYS: bottom line: creating a big hubbub about wikileaks is only going to further inflame the situation. If you want to stop state secrets from getting out, you have to aim for the roots of the problem - the actual leaks themselves; otherwise it'll grow right back like a weed, and then you'll be right back where you started, if not in an even worse position (especially considering cracking down on the media is essentially political suicide, especially in the US, where people can simply point to the first amendment).
If I were in the government, and I didn't want state secrets getting out, and I had the power to effect relevant policies, I would first pull all attention away from wikileaks, and focus everything on plugging holes in security at the source. Thus the freedoms of speech and press in their most liberal senses are retained, thus looking good there, while the actual problem - the release of classified information to the public - is eliminated!

So in sort of a symbolic gesture, I have labeled the subject of this post "Re:Security leaks" as opposed to "Re:Wikileaks", if anyone noticed.
What I'm saying is, let's NOT make an already inflamed situation worse by focusing on a side issue, and zero in instead on the real problem at hand. In fact, in a small way, by having focused on wikileaks from the start of this thread, we've probably only made things worse. In the grand scheme of things, yes, it's negligible what this forum's debate thread did, but if you zoom into just the community itself, you can see that it did have fallout, and quite a bit too. And if it was hurting us here to this degree, imagine what will happen when you try to get this onto a larger, national or even international level. It'll form yet another giant schism - another polarizing issue - and just like all the others, it will be nothing but a pointless diversion that does nothing but separate us all, and distract us from fixing, or even seeing, any of the real problems at hand.
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Offline Mooshi

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The Truth
« Reply #54 on: December 09, 2010, 03:00:15 pm »
Quote
WikiLeaks evoked the ire of the U.S. government last spring
when it posted a gritty war video taken by Army helicopters
showing troops gunning down two unarmed Reuters
journalists.
Since then, the organization has leaked some
400,000 classified U.S. war files from Iraq and 76,000 from
Afghanistan that U.S. military officials say included names of
U.S. informants and other information that could put
peoples lives at risk.

Oh, so it's ok to kill whoever you please, even if they are innocent, so long as no one else knows about it so they don't target you. That says it all. It's ok to gun down unarmed reporters, but the moment someone mentions it, they somehow become the bad guy. Makes about as much sense as someone reporting a crime and they be the ones sent to jail for telling. Oh wait.. That DID happen.
 

Comming from a military that has a don't ask don't tell policy, it's only fitting to take down anyone who doesn't follow your moral (or immoral in some cases) standards.

People get locked up..sometimes murdered in certain countries for telling the truth. Meanwhile we have people like Barack Obama who has done nothing..and yet gets rewarded with a flippin' Nobel Peace Prize. What a backwards world we live in.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2010, 03:02:51 pm by Mooshi »

Offline Serra Belvoule

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Re: Wikileaks
« Reply #55 on: December 09, 2010, 04:35:32 pm »
I was recently pondering how legit the information he has may prove to be.
I mean, there's certainly some truth on what's been posted but can we really assure everything there is real? It is the internet after all.
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Offline Foxpup

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Re: Wikileaks
« Reply #56 on: December 09, 2010, 10:07:58 pm »
Foxpup..it amazes me how much of our ideals are alike. :o

I'm speaking for myself and no one else, but maybe someone might agree. I honestly do get the concern of both sides. Being the middle man that I try to be, I look at it like this: I'm only for leaks that are the truth of what is going on. Not just Wikileaks, but all sites that are brave. The stuff we watch on TV is only the candy-coated surface. What lays beneath is not always pretty. However, there are certain types of information that I believe should never be leaked and I think even Foxpup would agree with me here. Classified information that isn't another coverup deserves to be secret. Information such as top secret new weaponry for the military and armour. That kinda stuff is completely different over telling the truth. I consider /that/ valueable information that should never get in the hands of our enemies...the other stuff..well...remember that expression "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"? These are grown men/women...leaders at that! Stop excusing them, they should know better not to say certain things about their enemies..especially their allies. Far as I'm concered, their fault for opening their mouths in this technology age where everything is fair game.

^^ This. I'm not denying that there is information that, if publicly released, would directly put people's lives in danger, stuff like protected witness identities (although, even that information should only be available to the people directly concerned, and not the millions of people (or however many it is) with a government clearance). But Wikileaks would never publish that sort of information. Some of the leaks may indirectly put people in danger, but they may also save countless lives by preventing atrocities. As for information on military technology (or any other technology for that matter), the information is usually out of date by the time it gets out; and besides, wars are won by logistics and manpower, not so much technology (see Lanchester's Square Law). All other information has no excuse to be locked away other than to foster corruption and conspiracy, which is bad.

Offline Rocket T. Coyote

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Re: Wikileaks
« Reply #57 on: December 31, 2010, 07:07:31 pm »
That Army Pvt. who provided the documents will likely spent the rest of his life in Ft. Leavenworth, and rightly so. Wikileaks could be labled as a terrorist organization, but don't expect any decisive action from the powers that be. Assange being a serial rapist and having his bail underwritten, in part, by Michael Moore certainly speaks volumes.
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Offline Avan

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Re: Wikileaks
« Reply #58 on: December 31, 2010, 08:28:36 pm »
*sees gasoline being dumped on the smouldering embers of the thread*
*runs over with a bucket of water and tries to put it out*

They run on attention; starving them of it causes them to sink into anonymity; its a classic case of small name, big ego - without any attention, their rantings and ravings are meaningless. Except of course to their target demographic of hard-core tin-hatters, but they are so few and far in-between that they can essentially be ignored. Sever the leaks; the source of their drama-making abilities, and they shrivel up, deprived of anything remotely interest-worthy.

Thing is, they can't be allowed to flare up, like they did a while back, because that simply increases problems across the board (because it gives media drama-queens yet something else political to yammer on about and get the populace all worked up and divided over that could actually end up affecting things on policy-level, further distracting voters from actually important issues (as opposed to symbolic issues)), nor can they be shut down... because that would cause other things to flare up (Again, the media, resulting in the exact same problems as before - except /now/ with the symbolic issues being examined in retrospect, and judgements actually being /passed/).
That's the problem with a democracy in a society in sheeple. It is one thing to have educated, epistemologically aware voters, and a whole 'nother beast to have a whole bunch of lemming-sheeple who will gadly run off a cliff if the media tells them to. Not saying the media should be restricted; but rather that people be made more aware. Of course... where to start? Wheee... what a fun question.

However, at least I can safely say that it was not me who dug everyone into this mess* (and in fact I may be the one who gets out and offers a rope out, even if it was all at my own expense [as in, that is essentially one of the principals behind the azar project] - course, you don't have to take the rope, but... have fun being stuck in a hole, or being led off a cliff by some news reporters (or a small-time tin-hat website with massively enlarged egos))
*Just something that I like to all-so anviliciously point out. Actually, long-term exposure to tvtropes seems to have a tendency to help, so if there was some way to make everyone on the planet read tvtropes... wait, that would not work, not all at once anyways, because the load would simply overload their servers and effectually result in a DDoS (just not an actual attack, per-say)
Maybe TvTropes should be, like, part of the highschool english curriculum. I mean, it helped me pass my lit analysis classes. >.> Sure it would turn us into trope-name-dropping marigold-counters, but we'd (mostly) love it [as in, everyone who does not learn to enjoy counting marigolds in a tongue-in-cheek wikiword-filled manner], fanfic quality would improve overall, Uwe Boll might actually stop making movies, Scamology would be rightly demoted to the 'laughingstock of the universe' and thus hubbard would lose all his ill-gotten $$$, but most importantly, people would actually know what I'm talking about when I name tropes by their wiki-word nam- I mean, people would be much more epistemologically aware. Yes. Mission accomplished guys.

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Offline Foxpup

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Re: Wikileaks
« Reply #59 on: January 01, 2011, 01:49:53 am »
Assange being a serial rapist and having his bail underwritten, in part, by Michael Moore certainly speaks volumes.
 :goldwink:

The fact that he ended up on Interpol's most wanted list despite not being charged with a crime (the Swedish authorities only want to "question" him - whatever that means) speaks greater volumes. Besides, Michael Moore will support anyone who leans left hard enough they're in danger of falling over. :D
« Last Edit: January 01, 2011, 01:53:15 am by Foxpup »

Offline Mr. Apple

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Re: Wikileaks
« Reply #60 on: January 15, 2011, 04:19:56 pm »
I recently was talking to my dad about this. He is totally against wikileaks and what it's doing despite the goal that they are trying to accomplish. I however see the goal as a noble one that i agree with whole heartedly, but the way they're accomplishing that goal is dangerous to say the least. And since i know a lot of people close to me that could be affected by this, i can't fully say they haven't gone too far.
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