WikiLeaks "intended to promote debate"

[Jeffersons Ghost]

The WikiLeaks Release: Blame the State Department, Not the World's Media

What is extraordinary to anyone reading the WikiLeaks material is not so much its content as the manner of its preparation and dissemination in the first place. The leaked documents did not carry a full top-secret classification and were apparently intended to promote debate across the widest possible range of people in the foreign service community. They amount to a running encyclopedia of the views, gossip and analysis of American foreign service officers, made available, we are told, to some 2-3 million authorized accessors to the State Department intranet worldwide.

This material went out uncensored, with names and sources disclosed, on an intranet with an unsophisticated coding system. That it could be downloaded by one, presumably authorised, person is strange enough. It is hard to believe no more menacing power did not have the ability to do likewise. The recklessness of such a casual approach to secrecy beggars belief.

By way of contrast, the five media organizations in receipt of the material went to extraordinary lengths over the past two months to check and "redact" the material that the State Department disseminated so widely. Dozens of names were removed, sources concealed and any danger to current operations censored. Diplomatic agencies were also given the opportunity to warn of risky areas and their views logged and taken into account. Each of the recipient media cross-checked with each other and with WikiLeaks itself. No such precautions were taken by the State Department in preparing its own intranet dissemination. If I were an American source, I would be far more afraid of the State Department than the world's media.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-jenkins/the-wikileaks-release-bla_b_789039.html

[Taverner]

1. It's because the US Government has done nothing to protect any of its data

All of the old standards don't work when you can connect to anything from anywhere

[Jeffersons Ghost]

6. The government could have protected it, if they wanted...

They'd rather spark debate than have online sources report on the war. It gives us something to occupy our time.

[EFerrari]

2. I'm waiting for the transcript but today on Amy's show

Dan Ellsberg said Pvt Manning began on his present course after his superior officer told him to forget about some illegal situation, iirc, related to prisoner abuse or torture. Manning believed he was being made complicit.

If you haven't seen it yet, today's show is on line. The transcript is a little late.

[Catherina]

3. Interesting. Little people fighting back against corruption. Thanks n/t

[EFerrari]

4. An important detail, especially amid the motives being assigned

to Manning, Assange and Wikileaks -- prurience, ego and/or malice.

[EFerrari]

5. Here's that bit of transcript about Manning:

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Clearly what’s possible to 22 year old Manning who was, by the way, seven years younger I think, probably 20 or so when he actually started this process. What is available to him is probably available to five or six hundred thousand people- available to SIPRNet- and notice that the thing that first struck him was his realization that he was involved in the arrest process of people who he later discovered were doing nothing other than writing what he calls, "scholarly critiques of the current administration" for which they were being tortured by the Iraqis to whom we were turning them over with the knowledge of Americans. All of this being blatantly illegal, both for the Iraqis and for the Americans who turned them over to torture. When he reported this to his superior, his superior told him to forget it and get back to work arresting people. The effect that had on Bradley Manning was that he was being asked to participate in a blatantly illegal process and he chose to say no to it, to expose it, to resist it, to do what he actually should have done. One person out of hundreds of thousands who did that.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/29/us_facing_global_diplomatic_crisis_following