US says Wikileaks could 'threaten national security'

[Studeo]

26 July 2010 Last updated at 15:45 GMT

US says Wikileaks could 'threaten national security'

The United States has condemned as "irresponsible" the leak of 90,000 military records, saying publication could threaten national security.

The documents released by the Wikileaks website include details of killings of Afghan civilians unreported until now.

Three news organisations had advance access to the records, which also show Nato concerns that Pakistan and Iran are helping the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has denied claims its intelligence agency backed the group.

The Pakistani presidential spokeswoman, Farahnaz Ispahani, said the leaks might be an attempt to sabotage the new strategic dialogue between the US and Pakistan.

A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was "shocked" at the scale of the leaks, but thought that "most of this is not new".

The huge cache of classified papers - posted by Wikileaks as the Afghan War Diary - is one of the biggest leaks in US history. It was also given in advance to the New York Times, the Guardian and the German news magazine, Der Spiegel....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10758578

[Etherios]

I just think its 1 more push towards a war against IRAN ... who knows Pakistan also? They leaked the files themselves and now cry wolf and point fingers.

[Swami]

They leaked the files themselves and now cry wolf and point fingers.

I think its done to take out/shut down bloggers,...............

[bluestflame]

to give just cause to implement new legislation to lock down freeflowing of information and ideas in other areas over the internet , they already have the monitoring in place they just want the law to support them so they can come out in the open about it

[JoshERTW]

Wikileaks site is down - probably servers overloaded by massive surge of traffic as this is now all over the MSM

[Swami]

Wikileaks site is down - probably servers overloaded by massive surge of traffic as this is now all over the MSM

http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/

[norman]

Alex Jones is going to talk to a couple of people/guests today who are suspucious that Wikileaks might not be quite what it seems!

The show started 50 mins ago ( 5:00pm UK time ).

[JoshERTW]

Alex Jones is going to talk to a couple of people/guests today who are suspucious that Wikileaks might not be quite what it seems!


I'm not a big AJ fan but I could see the PTB exploiting this. For example trying to turn public opinion against Wikileaks (and alternative media in general) as being a 'national security threat.' Agenda would be to implement tighter internet control, limit freedom of speech etc. I'd go as far to say as we can probably expect this type of reaction from the PTB.

This does not automatically mean that Assange/Wikileaks is on the payroll, just that the PTB are reacting to a situation. Perhaps they even seeded some of the intel (the "Iran supplying arms" thing seems especially suspect).

Edit:

Thanks Swami for the link - war diary seems to be only part of the site thats up at the moment.

Personally I get a good vibe off this Assange character and what he is trying to do. A true Revolutionary.

[Operator]

Three news organisations had advance access to the records, which also show Nato concerns that Pakistan and Iran are helping the Taliban in Afghanistan.


NATO should be concerned for NATO countries in NATO area ... Unless we had a pole shift and the world map altered drastically ... I can't remember the North
Atlantic even being close to Afghanistan.

Thumbs up for David Icke who years ago predicted that NATO would operate outside it's territory ....

[Moemers]

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0726/WikiLeaks-report-fictitious-says-Pakistan-s-ex-spy-chief-Hamid-Gul

[Fredkc]

Alex Jones is going to talk to a couple of people/guests today who are suspicious that Wikileaks might not be quite what it seems!.
So, the "conspiracy guy" wants to talk about the anti-conspiracy guys really being a conspiracy to trap and delude the real anti-conspiracy guys with an anti-anti-conspiracy conspiracy.

God I wish I could write this stuff!

[norman]

So, the "conspiracy guy" wants to talk about the anti-conspiracy guys really being a conspiracy to trap and delude the real anti-conspiracy guys with an anti-anti-conspiracy conspiracy.

God I wish I could write this stuff!


That's the whacky side of all this, for sure. I'm trying to see it all as a criminal investigation as well.

When there is a serial criminal on the loose in my community and the local chief of police is running the investigation and following up all leads like he should, I tend to hope that he'll get to the bottom of it and collar the crook. If he comes out on the radio and gives a statement about how the investigation is going, I don't, and I haven't yet heard others accuse him of being a conspiracy theorist.

I'm hoping that the world wide community is going to gradually grow into the idea that a great crime has got to be solved and the investigation is a serious one that will be the difference between having to 'lock our doors' and opening them up and 'letting the air in'.

The difficulties arise between us when we have so many different ways of coping with being cooped up in our little boxes. Some people are lying on the floor doing breath training and normalizing the situation while others are banging and kicking the doors 'raging against the machine' and definately not intending to normalize any of it, not the actions of the crook and not the passive normalization of it by the 'meek', either.

As it's our 'communities' that are mainly terrorised by the 'crook', I hold tight to the idea that our communities are what we've got and what we must make the most of. We are a very mixed crowd and there are lots of potentially serious arguments to be had among us. A unifying factor is called for and the biggest issue I can see right now is the nature of that unifying factor.

Do we even want to FIX this world at all, or are we saving all our 'pennies in "heaven"'?

My gut feeling is that as long as we are still living in these bodies in this world, we should be trying to fix this world. If Alex Jones is trying to fix this world, I'm paying a lot of attention to the energy around him. I've been listening to him nearly continuously for 18 months since I finally managed to get passed my 'difficulties' with his Texan 'red-neck' angle on everything.

I would never want Alex Jones to become the leader of the world. That would be a nightmare, but his passion for getting to the bottom of the CRIME that has, and is, robbing all of us of the world we could be living in is quite infectious and is just getting to the stage where it's going to get very interesting from here on.

Wikileakes is a kind of cerebral keyboard jockey version of Alex Jones but without his 'in the flesh' passion and plain 'goodness'. With the PTB having a very challenging time trying to keep the Alex Jones phenomenon under control or even eliminated, it's a very plausible case to make that a super-truth factoid based new kid on the block could very easily be a stalking horse to out flank Alex Jones on his more blind side.

Softly softly catchy monkey.

[bluestflame]

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/US_Lawmakers_Want_to_Criminalize_Whistleblower_Sit es_Over_TSA_Leak

first they pick off the ones that can be percieved in public opinion to be "justified " , but once any new legislation rushed into effect is enforcable the semantics and the intent behind the clever wording of the legislation begins to be used to muscle in on other (broad term) "whistleblower sites "

[Anchor]

Think is there is evidence in the war diary of naughtiness on the part of the government who have been pretty much lying. Now people can see that. Lots of NC deaths (ie non-combatants) largely unreported etc. Subsequently finding many of these children.

If this was planned by the Pentagon as the ultimate blog-stopper, I think it will backfire.

[conk]

The only threat to security is how it exposes the lies. The lies aren't secure once exposed to light.

[Anchor]

I did some background reading into the Pentagon Papers that I did not know about, no wonder the government are unhappy, spectre of the past...

As is my habit, I highlighted a few things


On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, a documentary history tracing the ultimately doomed involvement of the United States in a grinding war in the jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia.

They demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance.

The Government sought and won a court order restraining further publication after three articles had appeared. Other newspapers then began publishing. They, too, were restrained, until finally, on June 30, 1971, the United States Supreme Court ruled, by a vote of 6 to 3, that publication could resume.

The fight over the top-secret papers, whose compilation had been ordered by Robert S. McNamara when he was Defense Secretary, became a pivotal moment in the ages-old struggle between the Government and the press. But few would have guessed at the time how much it would change the news media, how much it would change the public view of the news media and the Government and how little it would change the way the Government conducts its business.

Opponents of the Vietnam war, including Daniel Ellsberg, the onetime hawk turned dove who played a key role in making the papers public, hoped that doing so might persuade President Richard M. Nixon to change his policy on Vietnam. It did not. Less than a year after publication, Haiphong Harbor was mined, and the war dragged on.

The Pentagon Papers prompted the first attempt ever made by the Federal Government to impose a prior restraint on the press in the name of national security. In his new book, "The Day the Presses Stopped" (University of California Press), David Rudenstine argues that some of the papers (though not the ones printed) could indeed have compromised national security.

Few if any of the main players in the drama share that view. But even if it is correct, that only makes the precedent stronger; the Constitution, in the Court's view, makes prior restraint impermissible even if there is some danger to national security.

Victory emboldened the news media, and the contents of the Pentagon Papers themselves guaranteed, at least for the generation of journalists directly involved, that every Government utterance would be subject to skeptical (and too often cynical) scrutiny. The Nixon Administration responded by creating the Plumbers unit (so called because they were to deal with leaks like that of the papers). That step in turn led to the Watergate scandal and ultimately to Nixon's resignation. — R. W. Apple Jr., June 23, 1996


Let the sword of truth strike at the lies in all people.

[Wookie]

Re: US says Wikileaks could 'threaten national security' change that to Wikileaks could threaten the idea of national security and i would agree. I found this interview that might be of interest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD5dxkPwibU&feature=channel
Interesting you meen the troops aren't there out the kindness of their heart? what do you meen there are alterior motives for getting involved in a civil war. No surly armies are not taking part in a war because someone is making money from it. People have the right to want/need help, but they should also have the right to know just how much said help costs in the short/long term. The ends do not always justify the means.

Peaceful journeys. Wookie

[Decibellistics]

Considering that they have 92,000 documents and have only read through 2,000 or so that will be released in 2 months......I'm pretty stoked. If these are credible, filled to the gills documents, we hopefully will be given a driving force to motivate individuals that are lacking the such about the situation.

I'm much more interested in the money laundering schemes rather than the violence.

[Renee]

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html

This is very good interview from TED. Personally I see if anyone is going to really be listened to on a world stage and mature audience, it is this fellow. He is educated, well-spoken, and not someone who comes off as a fanatical loonie toon, which would immediately alienate almost anyone under 30.

Some people come off as a disservice not only to themselves but the whole movement, with their emotional outbursts, and diatribes. Know matter how well meaning they may think they are - they are also very hard to take seriously. Give people just the facts and let them make up their own minds, this is what I see him doing and actually making a difference.

Enjoy
Renee

[Studeo]

Source: The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wikileaks-editor-interrogated-by-us-border-police-2041235.html

Wikileaks editor interrogated by US border police
By Stephen Foley in Las Vegas

Monday, 2 August 2010
A senior volunteer for Wikileaks in the US has been detained, questioned and had his phones seized when he returned to the country from Europe, as the FBI steps up its investigation into the leak of thousands of Afghanistan war secrets to the whistleblower website.
Jacob Appelbaum, who has stood in for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange since he was advised not to travel to the US, spent three hours at a New York airport while customs officers photocopied receipts and searched his laptop, and he was again approached and questioned by FBI officers at a computer hackers conference in Las Vegas on Saturday.
Two officers approached Mr Appelbaum after he had given a talk on how to subvert Chinese government internet surveillance at the annual DefCon conference. He declined to talk to them.
The internet security researcher had returned to the US for the conference from the Netherlands on Thursday when he was detained. Border officials quizzed him on the whereabouts of Mr Assange, on his attitudes to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and on the philosophy behind Wikileaks.
Mr Assange has not been to the US since Wikileaks published a secret video showing US military personnel in Iraq celebrating a helicopter attack in which 12 civilians were killed, including Reuters journalists. The controversy has escalated further since the site additionally published 90,000 field reports and other military documents from the war in Afghanistan, including some that contained the names of Afghan informants.
Mr Appelbaum, who works with the Tor project, which helps internet users to obscure their identity online, has long been a senior spokesman for Wikileaks in the US. Last month he stood in for Mr Assange at a New York computer conference and used the event to ask for funding and volunteers. Fearing the authorities, instead of returning to the stage as promised after the helicopter video played, he left by a side entrance and used a decoy in a similar hooded top to walk out of the front.
Since the seizure of his electronic equipment last week, Mr Appelbaum's voicemail now says "this telephone number is no longer an appropriate way to reach me".
Talking to The Independent at DefCon at the weekend, he angrily rejected comments from the US joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who said of Wikileaks and its volunteers last week that "they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family" because insurgents could use information in the documents to launch reprisals.
"When you have been waging war for 10 years, who are you to say that?" Mr Appelbaum said. "What are you thinking, writing these people's names down? And what are you doing in concrete terms to protect these people?"
Both the FBI and the US military believe that the documents came from the same source as the helicopter video, and they have already charged a 22-year-old intelligence analyst working in Iraq, Bradley Manning, with that leak. Now they are examining Mr Manning's links with the hacker community.
At DefCon, Mr Appelbaum refused to confirm or comment on his detention but defended Wikileaks' commitment to exposing information that governments around the world want suppressed. "All governments are on a continuum of tyranny," he said. "In the US, a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt. In the US, we don't have censorship but we do have collaborating news organisations."

[Decibellistics]

My teacher made us watch this in my Law and the Media class.
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By the way the dude talks reaaaaaaaally fast so good luck.

[bluestflame]

wikileaks a threat to national insecurity , when the population no longer live in fear , they are much harder to steer

[Studeo]

Pentagon demands WikiLeaks 'do the right thing'

The Pentagon has demanded that a website that solicits leaked government secrets cancel any plan to publish more classified military documents and pull back tens of thousands of secret Afghan war logs already posted on the Internet.

The demand, which the Defence Department has no independent power to enforce, is primarily aimed at preventing release of approximately 15,000 secret documents that the website WikiLeaks has said it is holding.

The Pentagon also hopes to stop WikiLeaks from making public the contents of a mammoth encrypted file recently added to the site. Contents of that file remain a mystery.

"We are asking them to do the right thing," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. "I don't know that we're very confident they'll have a change of heart."

WikiLeaks posted more than 76,900 classified military and other documents, mostly raw intelligence reports from Afghanistan, on its website July 25. The 15,000 additional documents are apparently related to that material.

The documents leaked so far illustrate the frustration of US forces in fighting the protracted Afghan conflict and revived debate over the war's uncertain progress. The White House angrily denounced the leaks, saying they put the lives of Afghan informants and US troops at risk.

"The Defence Department demands that WikiLeaks return immediately to the US government all versions of documents obtained directly or indirectly from the Department of Defence databases or records," Morrell said.

He called the material stolen property, but would not address whether the demand is a prelude to legal action against the website or others. Morrell spoke at a Pentagon press conference that amounted to a televised public appeal to the secretive site and its editor, former computer hacker Julian Assange.

An Army private, Bradley Manning, is jailed on suspicion of leaking classified material to WikiLeaks in a previous case. He is a "person of interest" in the latest release, Morrell said.

As a practical matter, the Pentagon has little if any hope that it can recapture all electronic forms of the documents already placed online and since downloaded and examined by countless people.

"The genie is out of the bottle," Morrell acknowledged later, but he said WikiLeaks would make matters worse by releasing more information.

The Pentagon has had no direct contact with WikiLeaks about possible efforts to redact those documents to make them less of a security threat, Morrell said, and he ruled out such an exercise.

"We're not looking to have a conversation about harm minimisation," Morrell said. "We're looking to have a conversation about how to get these perilous documents off the website as soon as possible, return them to their rightful owners and expunge them from their records."

Ad Feedback The Pentagon has some idea what the 15,000 unpublished documents contain, he said. US intelligence and security officials appear worried that the unpublished material contains more damaging secrets than were contained in the low-level military intelligence reports first released.

Also hanging fire are secret State Department documents that Manning is suspected of obtaining.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Thursday that the government thinks WikiLeaks has classified State Department material that it has not released.

"Certainly as a government, we would like to see all documents returned, whether they're military cables, whether they're State Department cables. This is classified information that WikiLeaks does not have a right to possess," Crowley said.

WikiLeaks has posted a huge encrypted file named "Insurance" to its website, raising the possibility that the organisation may be prepared to release another wave of secret material if the government attempts to block the site or target its operators.

Bloggers have noted that the file is 20 times the size of the batch already released.

WikiLeaks would not comment Thursday on the 1.4 gigabyte file beyond a vague reference to "security procedures".

Assange said little more in his response to the same line of questioning in a television interview with independent US news network Democracy Now!

"I think it's better that we don't comment on that," Assange said, according to the network's transcript of the interview. "But, you know, one could imagine in a similar situation that it might be worth ensuring that important parts of history do not disappear."

Assange has expressed concern over his safety in the past, complaining of surveillance and telling interviewers that he's been warned away from visiting the United States.

The Pentagon has a team of about 80 intelligence experts combing the documents already released for information that Taliban insurgents or others could use to hone their tactics against US force or target informants. That team, which includes military intelligence analysts and others culled from the nation's vast constellation of intelligence agencies, could soon grow to as many as 125 people, Morrell said.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/technology/3997074/Pentagon-demands-WikiLeaks-do-the-right-thing

[Fredkc]

The Pentagon has demanded that a website that solicits leaked government secrets cancel any plan to publish more classified military documents and pull back tens of thousands of secret Afghan war logs already posted on the Internet.

So.... let's sum up, shall we?
First response by the WH and Pentagon is the release amounts to a pack of government...... "secrets", and Wikileaks is in deep merde.
Then, WH and Pentagon say there was no valuable information in the release. Govt's version of an 11 yr old saying "That didn't hurt!"
Now, WH and Pentagon are back to the "secrets" line.
And, now that thousands of copies exist (including 2 on my own machines), world wide, they want the original removed from sight.
What tripe!


State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Thursday that the government thinks WikiLeaks has classified State Department material that it has not released.Oh darn... those pesky notions of "probable cause", and "Go get a damned warrant!", once again rear their heads, to the inconvenience of government.
"Imagine what they'll 'think' tomorrow"

[Beth]

My teacher made us watch this in my Law and the Media class.
<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6wXkI4t7nuc&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6wXkI4t7nuc&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>



By the way the dude talks reaaaaaaaally fast so good luck.

Great video, I really enjoyed it and learned quite a bit. Thanks!

[Fredkc]

Decibel, yaya;

Even more important now than when it was made. There have been 2 SC rulings since weakening the Miranda decision, including one last week. It is all but a non-existent creature of TV shows, now.

Now days many states require you to identify yourself ,when requested by a police officer. Beyond that, anything you say to them, you do at your peril.

A cop can make up, or say anything they please, to elicit a response from you. They commit no crime in doing so.
On the other hand, even if you innocently give them "mistaken" information, you can be prosecuted for obstructing justice.

Fred

[Beth]

Thanks Freddyc, things are getting crazy around here. Good to learn things to protect one's self!

[MorningSong]

Hark! Hark! I just ran across this:


Military services caution personnel against accessing WikiLeaks site
By Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent
August 7, 2010 -- Updated 0009 GMT (0809 HKT)

Washington (CNN) -- U.S. military personnel are being warned not to log onto the WikiLeaks website to view the tens of thousands of leaked military documents there, saying it could be considered a security violation.

While it is not an official ban, a senior Defense Department official told CNN there is consideration being given to establishing a formal policy.

A Marine Corps e-mail circulating within some offices of the corps notes that personnel are "cautioned" not to access the WikiLeaks site from personal, public or government computers.

"By willingly accessing the WIKILEAKS website for the purpose of viewing the posted classified material -- these actions constitute the unauthorized processing, disclosure, viewing, and downloading of classified information onto an UNAUTHORIZED computer system not approved to store classified information. Meaning they have WILLINGLY committed a SECURITY VIOLATION," the e-mail warns.

While the message is not directed specifically at the entire corps, it goes on to note that viewing the classified documents on WikiLeaks could lead military security officials to "immediately remove, suspend 'FOR CAUSE' all security clearances and accesses."

he message also tells service members, "Do not ask friends to access the website from their home computer." The Marine Corps warns such actions could also lead to failing a polygraph examination and loss of security clearances.

A similar message has been circulated in Navy units dealing with security. Spokesmen for both the Army and Air Force say those services are considering similar messages. All sources declined to be identified by name because the entire WikiLeaks matter involves the security of classified information.

On Thursday, at a briefing for reporters, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell demanded that WikiLeaks stop soliciting for leaks on its site, saying it is trying to entice people to "break the law and share classified information."

"WikiLeaks' webpage constitutes a brazen solicitation to U.S. government officials, including our military, to break the law," Morrell said. "WikiLeaks' public assertion that submitting confidential material to WikiLeaks is safe, easy and protected by law is materially false and misleading."

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/08/06/wikileaks.military.ban/index.html#fbid=8a_z1moym_s&wom=false

[bluestflame]

thier worried about servicemen waking up and busting the veil once they realize just how much thier loyalty to thier country has been abused and misused by manipulation , they've been losing lives in a manufactured war and the cracks are beginning to appear in the illusion

[Studeo]

WikiLeaks readies release of more files

AP Last updated 10:20 13/08/2010

WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange said his organisation is preparing to release the rest of the secret Afghan war documents it has on file.

The Pentagon warned that would be more damaging to security and risk more lives than the organisation's initial release of some 76,000 war documents.

That extraordinary disclosure, which laid bare classified military documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010, has angered US officials, energized critics of the Nato-led campaign, and drawn the attention of the Taliban, which has promised to use the material to track down people it considers traitors.

The Pentagon says it believes it has identified the additional 15,000 classified documents, and said Thursday that their exposure would be even more damaging to the military than what has already been published.

Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell described the prospective publication as the "height of irresponsibility."

"It would compound a mistake that has already put far too many lives at risk," he said.

Speaking via videolink to London's Frontline Club, Assange brushed aside the Pentagon's demands that he stop publishing their intelligence. He gave no specific timeframe for the release of the 15,000 remaining files, but said his organisation had gone through about half of them.

"We're about 7,000 reports in," he said, describing the process of combing through the files to ensure that no Afghans would be hurt by their disclosure as "very expensive and very painstaking."

Still, he told the audience that he would "absolutely" publish them. He gave no indication whether he would give the documents to media outlets The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel - as he has before - or simply dump them on the Wikileaks website.

The leaks exposed unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings by Nato forces and covert operations against Taliban figures. Assange has said that hundreds of those reports should be investigated by the media for evidence of war crimes.

WikiLeaks' supporters say the blow-by-blow account of the conflict reveal the horror of the campaign's daily grind. Detractors say the site has recklessly endangered the war effort and Afghan informants working to stop the Taliban.

The Pentagon has a task force of about 100 people reading the leaked documents to assess the damage done and working, for instance, to alert Afghans who might be identified by name and now could be in danger.

Taliban spokesmen have said they would use the material to try to hunt down people who've been cooperating with what the Taliban considers a foreign invader. That has aroused the concern of several human rights group operating in Afghanistan - as well as Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which on Thursday accused Wikileaks of recklessness.

Jean-Francois Julliard, the group's secretary-general, said that WikiLeaks showed "incredible irresponsibility" when posting the documents online.

"WikiLeaks has in the past played a useful role by making information available. . . that exposed serious violations of human rights and civil liberties which the Bush administration committed in the name of its war against terror," Julliard said in an open letter to Assange posted to his group's website.

"But revealing the identity of hundreds of people who collaborated with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous."

WikiLeaks, through its account on micro-blogging website Twitter, dismissed the letter as "some idiot statement, based on a bunch of quotes we never made."

While he acknowledged that some of the critiques leveled at his group were legitimate, he said the Pentagon - as well as human rights groups - had so far refused to help WikiLeaks purge the name of Afghan informants from the files.

At the State Department, spokesman Mark Toner said he was not aware of any effort by department officials to contact WikiLeaks.

Defense Department spokesman Col. David Lapan dismissed WikiLeaks' claims that they were reviewing the documents and removing information that could harm civilians.

"They don't have the expertise to determine what might be too sensitive to publish," he said. As for when the Pentagon expected WikiLeaks to release the documents, Lapan said: "WikiLeaks is about as predictable as North Korea."

In the meanwhile, the US has also reportedly urged its allies to look into Assange and his international network of activists, although it's not clear how aggressive Washington has been in prodding its foreign friends.

Earlier Thursday the Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told The Associated Press that Washington had not approached the his government about pursuing possible criminal charges against Assange, an Australian citizen, or about putting restrictions on his travel.

"Quite clearly we're working closely with the United States on these matters," Smith said, citing Australia's Defense Department and the Pentagon as the agencies working together. "These are very serious matters for concern."

Australia, which has some 1,550 troops in Afghanistan, has already launched its own investigation into whether posting classified military documents had compromised the national interest or endangered soldiers.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/technology/4021069/WikiLeaks-readies-release-of-more-files

[JoshERTW]

thier worried about servicemen waking up and busting the veil once they realize just how much thier loyalty to thier country has been abused and misused by manipulation , they've been losing lives in a manufactured war and the cracks are beginning to appear in the illusion

This was exactly my first thought when I read a similar article a few days ago

[Studeo]

Could Wikileaks be stopped, theoretically?

An online whistle-blower's threat to release more classified Pentagon and State Department documents is raising difficult questions of what the United States government can or would do, legally, technically or even militarily to stop it.

Constrained by the global reach of the Internet, sophisticated encryption software and the domestic legal system, the answer seems to be: Not much.

But if the US government believes that the release of classified documents WikiLeaks is preparing to disclose will threaten national security or put lives at risk, cyber and legal experts say the options could expand to include cyber strikes to take down the WikiLeaks website and destroy its files or covert operations to steal or disable the files.

It all sounds, at times, like a spy movie, where the possibilities extend as far as the imagination can reach. But most outsiders agree that reality is probably far less dramatic.

At the center of the drama was the posting last week of a massive 1.4 gigabyte mystery file named "Insurance" on the WikiLeaks website.

The "Insurance" file is encrypted, nearly impossible to open until WikiLeaks provides the passwords. But experts suggest that if anyone can crack it - it would be the National Security Agency.

That file, coupled with WikiLeaks' release of more than 77,000 secret military documents last month, prompted the Pentagon to demand that the website's editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, cancel any new document dumps and pull back the Afghan war data he already posted.

WikiLeaks slammed the demand as an obnoxious threat, and Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell declined to detail what, if any, actions the Defense Department may be ready to take.

Few people involved, for the Pentagon and other agencies, would talk openly about what the Pentagon or the clandestine NSA could or would do to stop the expected document dump. It is not even clear if U.S. officials actually know what WikiLeaks has.

"Do we believe that WikiLeaks has additional cables? We do," said State Department spokesman P J Crowley. "Do we believe that those cables are classified? We do. And are they State Department cables? Yes."

Officials say the data may also include up to 15,000 military documents related to the Afghanistan war that were not made public in the initial release.

Daniel Schmitt, a WikiLeaks spokesman in Berlin, said Saturday the new batch of classified documents the website is preparing to release will contribute to the public's understanding of the war.

"Hopefully with this understanding, public scrutiny will then influence governments to develop better politics," he told The Associated Press.

Ad Feedback Schmitt denied that the disclosure of the documents is a threat to US security interests.

Assuming the documents contain highly sensitive information that threatens national security, the US must weigh a number of options, experts say.

First, from a legal standpoint, there is probably little the US government can do to stop WikiLeaks from posting the files.

It is against federal law to knowingly and willfully disclose or transmit classified information. But Assange, an Australian who has no permanent address and travels frequently, is not a US citizen.

Since Assange is a foreign citizen living in a foreign country, it's not clear that US law would apply, said Marc Zwillinger, a Washington lawyer and former federal cyber crimes prosecutor. He said prosecutors would have to figure out what crime to charge Assange with, and then face the daunting task of trying to indict him or persuade other authorities to extradite him.

It would be equally difficult, Zwillinger said, to effectively use an injunction to prevent access to the data.

"Could the U.S. get an injunction to force US internet providers to block traffic to and from WikiLeaks such that people couldn't access the website?" Zwillinger said. "It's an irrelevant question. There would be thousands of paths to get to it. So it wouldn't really stop people from getting to the site. They would be pushing the legal envelope without any real benefit."

Legal questions aside, the encrypted file conjures visions of secret codebreakers hunched over their laptops, tearing open secret, protected files in seconds with a few keystrokes.

Reality is not that simple. It appears WikiLeaks used state-of-the-art software requiring a sophisticated electronic sequence of numbers, called a 256-bit key, to open them.

The main way to break such an encrypted file is by what's called a "brute force attack," which means trying every possible key, or password, said Herbert Lin, a senior computer science and cryptology expert at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

Unlike a regular six- or eight-character password that most people use every day, a 256-bit key would equal a 40 to 50 character password, he said.

If it takes 0.1 nanosecond to test one possible key and you had 100 billion computers to test the possible number variations, "it would take this massive array of computers 10 to the 56th power seconds - the number 1, followed by 56 zeros" to plow through all the possibilities, said Lin.

How long is that?

"The age of the universe is 10 to the 17th power seconds," explained Lin. "We will wait a long time for the US government or anyone else to decrypt that file by brute force."

Could the NSA, which is known for its supercomputing and massive electronic eavesdropping abilities abroad, crack such an impregnable code?

It depends on how much time and effort they want to put into it, said James Bamford, who has written two books on the NSA.

The NSA has the largest collection of supercomputers in the world. And officials have known for some time that WikiLeaks has classified files in its possession.

The agency, he speculated, has probably been looking for a vulnerability or gap in the code, or a backdoor into the commercial encryption program protecting the file.

At the more extreme end, the NSA, the Pentagon and other US government agencies - including the newly created Cyber Command - have probably reviewed options for using a cyber attack against the website, which could disrupt networks, files, electricity, and so on.

"This is the kind of thing that they are geared for," said Bamford, "since this is the type of thing a terrorist organization might have - a website that has damaging information on it. They would want to break into it, see what's there and then try to destroy it."

The vast nature of the Internet, however, makes it essentially impossible to stop something, or take it down, once it has gone out over multiple servers.

In the end, US officials will have to weigh whether a more aggressive response is worth the public outrage it would likely bring. Most experts predict that, despite the uproar, the government will probably do little other than bluster, and the documents will come out anyway.

"Once you start messing with the Internet, taking things down, and going to the maximum extent to hide everything from coming out, it doesn't necessarily serve your purpose," said Bamford. "It makes the story bigger than it would have been had the documents been released in the first place."

"If, in the end, the goal is to decrease the damage, you have to wonder whether pouring fuel on the fire is a reasonable solution," he said.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4006626/Could-Wikileaks-be-stopped-theoretically

[lindabaker]

The truth is the truth...aside from subjective interpretation written by all the different sides of the information war. The manufactured wars will have to stop. Whether or not Wikileaks or any other information providers can get any new information through to the public, will remain to be seen. The manufactured wars will continue, but for how long? When will people get tired of paying for the wars? Whether we pay in taxes or in soldiers' lives, it's time to quit. It's about the most powerful grabbing resources, and using the soldiers in these manufactured wars to accomplish the task of dominion. It's about keeping the money flow going: from the mines or oil fields, to the bank accounts of the rich and richer. Now, it's about the grab of lithium and other minerals in Afghanistan. There are no countries, only people working for the Powers. We have no fight with the people of other countries! The world wants peace. The "bad guys" we must stop are the ones who make all this "us against them" stuff up and expect us to believe it all. As my Grandfather would say, it's horse sh!t. Don't let the miners of resources create wars...it's in their best interest, not the interest of the rest of us. What if they gave a war and nobody came?

[Studeo]

Pentagon ready to talk with WikiLeaks?

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the Pentagon has expressed willingness to discuss the online whistleblower's request for help in reviewing classified documents from the Afghan war and removing information that could harm civilians. The Pentagon denied any direct contacts with WikiLeaks.

"This week we received contact through our lawyers that the General Counsel" of the Pentagon "says now that they want to discuss the issue," Assange told The Associated Press by telephone.

Assange added that the contacts have been brokered by the US Army Criminal Investigation Command, which "CID" denies.

"Any allegations that we are somehow involved in the redaction or review of material, we flatly deny," said CID spokesman Chris Grey.

Grey declined to comment on whether Army investigators had been approached at all by WikiLeaks to review the war files, but Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said there had been no "direct" contact on the matter.

Whitman also said the Pentagon is not interested in cooperating with WikiLeaks to purge the names of Afghan informants from the files.

"We are not interested in negotiating some sort of minimized or sanitized version of classified documents," he said.

"These documents are property of the United States government," Whitman said. "The unauthorized release of them threatens the lives of coalition forces as well as Afghan nationals."

Assange said Wednesday that "contact has been established" but added it was not clear whether and how the US military would assist WikiLeaks.

"It is always positive for parties to talk to each other," Assange said. "We welcome their engagement."

He reiterated that WikiLeaks plans to release its second batch of secret Afghan war documents within "two weeks to a month."

The first files in its "Afghan War Diary" laid bare classified military documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The release angered US officials, energized critics of the Nato-led campaign, and drew the attention of the Taliban, which has promised to use the material to track down people it considers traitors.

Non-governmental organisations, including the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, have criticised WikiLeaks as being irresponsible.

WikiLeaks describes itself as a public service organisation for whistleblowers, journalists and activists.

"We encourage other media and human rights groups who have a genuine concern about reviewing the material to assist us with the difficult and very expensive task of getting a large historical archive into the public's record," Assange said.

The Australian was in Sweden in part to prepare an application for a publishing certificate that would allow WikiLeaks to take full advantage of the Scandinavian nation's press freedom laws.

That also means WikiLeaks would have to appoint a publisher that could be held legally responsible for the material. Assange said that person would be "either me or one of our Swedish people."

WikiLeaks routes its material through Sweden and Belgium because of the whistleblower protection offered by laws in those countries. But it also has backup servers in other countries to make sure the site is not shut down, Assange said.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4039598/Pentagon-ready-to-talk-with-WikiLeaks

[Bomack]

Warning? Scare Tactics?



CNN Breaking News to textbreakingne.
show details 3:48 AM (5 hours ago)
-- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange charged in Sweden with rape and molestation, prosecutor's office says.



CNN Breaking News to textbreakingne.
show details 8:53 AM (12 minutes ago)
-- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange "no longer wanted" and not a rape suspect, Swedish prosecutor says on website.

[Celine]

Publicity stunt more like it

[Studeo]

Swedish rape warrant for Wikileaks' Assange cancelled

Julian Assange had been cited as saying the release of the allegations was "deeply disturbing" Swedish authorities have cancelled an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on accusations of rape and molestation.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority website said the chief prosecutor had come to the decision that Mr Assange was not suspected of rape.

The warrant was issued late on Friday.

Wikileaks, which has been criticised for leaking Afghan war documents, had quoted Mr Assange as saying the charges were "without basis".

That message, which appeared on Twitter and was attributed directly to Mr Assange, said the appearance of the allegations "at this moment is deeply disturbing".

In a series of other messages posted on the Wikileaks Twitter feed, the whistle-blowing website said: "No-one here has been contacted by Swedish police", and that it had been warned to expect "dirty tricks".

The Swedish Prosecution Authority website said chief prosecutor Eva Finne had come to the decision that Julian Assange was not suspected of rape and so was not subject to arrest. It said Eva Finne would make no further immediate comment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11049316

[Carmody]

Think of it this way, If Assange is actually an asset, and the rape charge was there to increase his sense of legitimacy..what purpose could the leaks serve? then contemplate this as an opposing viewpoint. Ie, legitimate attempt to take down a legitimate whistleblower.

In either case, you end up at least with confusion, insofar as the public is concerned..and in the end...that is all the intelligence community and those who control nations could ever want, and all they have ever really aimed for. As they know the rest is actually impossible and ultimately counterproductive to their aims.

[Studeo]

Wikileaks releases CIA 'exporter of terrorism' report

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has published a CIA memo examining the implications of the US being perceived as an "exporter of terrorism".
The three-page report from February 2010 says the participation of US-based individuals in terrorism is "not a recent phenomenon".

The report cites attacks by US-based or financed Jewish, Muslim and Irish-nationalism terrorists Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has published a CIA memo examining the implications of the US being perceived as an "exporter of terrorism".

The three-page report from February 2010 says the participation of US-based individuals in terrorism is "not a recent phenomenon".

The report cites attacks by US-based or financed Jewish, Muslim and Irish-nationalism terrorists Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has published a CIA memo examining the implications of the US being perceived as an "exporter of terrorism".

The three-page report from February 2010 says the participation of US-based individuals in terrorism is "not a recent phenomenon".

The memo cites several cases of alleged terrorist acts by US residents.

An official played down the report from the CIA's so-called Red Cell, saying it was "not exactly a blockbuster paper".

The Red Cell was set up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to offer an "out-of-the-box" approach and "produce memos intended to provoke thought rather than to provide authoritative assessment", the CIA website says.

CIA spokesman George Little said: "These sorts of analytic products - clearly identified as coming from the Agency's 'Red Cell' - are designed simply to provoke thought and present different points of view."

The report, which highlights attacks by US-based or US-financed Jewish, Muslim and Irish-American terrorists, questions how foreign perceptions of the US could change with continued attacks.

"Much attention has been paid recently to the increasing occurrence of American-grown Islamic terrorists conducting attacks against US targets, primarily in the homeland. Less attention has been paid to homegrown terrorism, not exclusively Muslim terrorists, exported overseas to target non-US persons," the report says.

The memo, titled What If Foreigners See the United States as an 'Exporter of Terrorism'?, concludes that if the US is perceived by other nations as an "exporter of terrorism", those countries may be less willing to co-operate with the US in the detention, transfer and interrogation of future suspects.

Wikileaks on 23 July published 76,000 secret US military logs detailing military actions in Afghanistan, an act the US authorities described as highly irresponsible.

The website now says it will release 15,000 further sensitive documents, once it has completed a review aimed at minimising the risk that their publication could put people's lives in danger.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11091595

[Studeo]

CIA memo on United States as 'exporter of terrorism' published by Wikileaks
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7965140/CIA-memo-on-United-States-as-exporter-of-terrorism-published-by-Wikileaks.html
A classified CIA memo discussing the United States as a possible
"exporter of terrorism" because of al-Qaeda recruitment in America has
been posted on website, Wikileaks.

By Alastair Jamieson
Published: 9:00AM BST 26 Aug 2010


The three-page document addressed the hypothetical question of the
impact on the United States if Americans were found to be operating
abroad to carry out acts of terrorism.

The CIA memo, produced by the agency's Red Cell 'think tank' set up
after the September 11 attacks, does not appear to expose any state
secrets and was dismissed by one government official as hardly a
"blockbuster."

It is the latest classified memo to be published by the
whistle-blowing website, which last month released more than 70,000
secret military documents on the allied war in Afghanistan, prompting
an FBI investigation.

It has threatened to release some 15,000 more, despite criticism that
the leaks endangered the lives of sources and exposed sensitive
intelligence gathering methods to enemy fighters.

The latest memo said the United States could lose leverage over allies
to co-operate on terrorism, particularly on "extra-judicial
activities".

"Primarily we have been concerned about al Qaeda infiltrating
operatives into the United States to conduct terrorist attacks, but AQ
may be increasingly looking for Americans to operate overseas," the
document proposes.

"Undoubtedly al Qaeda and other terrorist groups recognise that
Americans can be great assets in terrorist operations overseas."

It said US citizens are valuable to terrorist organisations because
they are harder to detect. They don't fit the typical Arab-Muslim
profile and can easily communicate with leaders through their
"unfettered" access to the internet and other methods, the report
said.

The report cited cases of Americans involved in alleged plots in
Pakistan, India and elsewhere and said "contrary to common belief, the
American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent
phenomenon."

The CIA played down the paper's significance, noting Red Cell teams of
analysts were tasked with taking up hypothetical scenarios and
presenting alternate views, divergent from mainstream thinking.

"These sorts of analytic products – clearly identified as coming from
the Agency's 'Red Cell' – are designed simply to provoke thought and
present different points of view," said spokesman George Little.

It said the United States had a certain amount of leverage with allies
on extradition requests following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but
warned that could change.

"If the US were seen as an 'exporter of terrorism,' foreign
governments could request a reciprocal arrangement that would impact
US sovereignty," it said.

It said foreign governments could request information on U.S. citizens
or request their "rendition," or the secret, extra-judicial transfer
of a terrorism suspect abroad.

"U.S. refusal to co-operate with foreign government requests for
extradition might lead some governments to consider secretly
extracting U.S. citizens," the report said.

It also warned of potential obstruction of U.S. efforts and cited an
Italian case against CIA agents, who were convicted last year of
kidnapping a terrorism suspect in Milan and flying him to Egypt, where
he says he was tortured during questioning.

"The proliferation of such cases would not only challenge US bilateral
relations with other countries but also damage global counterterrorism
efforts," it said.

[Studeo]

WikiLeaks sex scandal details revealed
By ASHER MOSES - Sydney Morning Herald
Last updated 09:24 31/08/2010

Police statements made by the women involved in the sex scandal engulfing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange raise questions over Assange's claims that the charges against him were a Pentagon-initiated smear campaign.

Assange's statements that he was warned to expect the smears by "Australian intelligence" have also been called into question by Australian intelligence agencies.

Meanwhile, Assange's 20-year-old estranged son, Daniel, appears to have queried his dad's claims about the alleged "dirty tricks" campaign, and wrote in a Facebook posting that he "does have a way of making a lot of female enemies", the New York Post reported.

Anna Ardin named in Wikileaks rape scandal.

Earlier this month, Assange, from Melbourne, was facing charges of rape and molestation over a recent trip to Stockholm, Sweden. The rape charges have since been dropped by Swedish prosecutors but the molestation accusation is still outstanding.

British newspaper the Daily Mail has obtained a copy of the police statements made by the two women at the centre of the claims. These indicate that Assange had consensual sex with the women but was reported to police after he refused to use a condom or, later, take an STD test.

One, Anna Ardin, who helped bring Assange to Sweden for a speaking engagement, allegedly let Assange stay in her one-bedroom flat in Stockholm. They went out to dinner and, according to a "police source" quoted in the Daily Mail, "when they got back they had sexual relations, but there was a problem with the condom - it had split".

"She seemed to think that he had done this deliberately but he insisted that it was an accident."

Ardin has told a Swedish newspaper that Assange had "a twisted attitude towards women and a problem with taking 'no' for an answer". She denied the complaints were orchestrated by the Pentagon.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4078297/WikiLeaks-sex-scandal-details-revealed

[truthseekerdan]

Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

What's the big deal with Wikileaks?

Wikileaks allows whistleblowers across the planet to anonymously submit reports of crime by businesses, individuals and governments. Tune in and learn why some people, including the U.S. government, want the site shut down.
Click here to see & hear more... (http://podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/conspiracy/2010-08-20-conspiracy-wikileaks.m4v)