DDoS attack, sex warrant won't stop Assange's leaky discharge The main Wikileaks site hosting US diplomatic cables has been downed, again, by an apparent denial of service attack. Various Wikileak mirror sites are available and the "revelations" continue to dominate the news. According to Wikileaks's Twitter feed the attack peaked at over 10 gigabits a second - about three times greater …
Has anyone yet analyzed how much of this tripe never should have been classified in the first place?
Given that this entire leak was apparently the work of one amateur working on his own, has anyone considered how much information has been stolen by the professional spies working with the support of their various governments?
Has anyone considered the anti-free-speech implications of the highly personalized and vindictive witch hunt against the publisher in this case?
Inquiring minds want to know, but not in America, thank you.
It seems you are saying that only the most damaging secrets should be classified. But what would happen then?
If there is a chance of communications being intercepted, best practice is to encrypt everything, so that an attacker doesn't know what to target. It appears that this has been taken to heart. Office gossip, bad-mouthing and the like might be embarrassing, but there is nothing truly revelatory here. And that might just be the point.
and no Ms Palin, that is not a real place, so dont head there first in your "hunt".
Maybe the person you should find is the person that leaked the documents in the first place. Its not as if you find Assange that Wikileaks will crumble in his absence. People will still leak the documents...
Do the 'powers' believe that arresting this Assange guy and throwing him in prison for their own personal revenge will make the slightest bit of difference to the site ?
I think it will just result in a change of management, maybe the next general manager who comes along won't be so media friendly and will just release everything they have in one simple large and widely distributed torrent file.
If I was Assange I would have distributed an encrypted file already via bittorrent and then issue the password to access it at my leisure, once everyone has already downloaded it. Many thousands of people would download it in advance of getting the key.
I would suggest a simple truecrypt volume for the contents of the torrent.
I've seen many calls from Americans saying Assange should be arrested for 'treason', what a laugh. You can only be treasonous against your own country.
No need to charge him. The USA can demand his extradition from the UK if he is here (there seems to be no way to block that, ask McKinnon) and if hat does fail, the USA can just grab him from anywhere they see fit, take him to some island and torture the hell out of him (the USA has form for that too).
I don't see the latest set of leaks putting any lives at risk, nor do I see them being particularly interesting. And whilst I totally agree that some things should be kept secret, I really would appreciate it if politicians would stop spouting bull-crap all the time*; then there would be no need for a sites like WikiLeaks.
Until that happens, roll on the next leak. Just chill the PR assault a big, mm-kay?
*Although it is amusing when one catches the buggers out.
aside from possibly fuelling anti american feeling please provide a link to information that had been made available in the current link that directly endagers the lives of someone.
From what I am aware the newspapers releasing the information have worked with wikileaks to ensure that no specifics identifying names / locations etc. have been released as part of the publicly available material.
I would definitely try to get charged for Treason in Australia.
Think about it, you get what, 2 months in the slammer (Go Australian sentencing standards!), halved because you are a white collar kind of guy, and your lawyer asked nicely, then you get protected from extradition by the government because you had served your time here, and the other country might have a harsher sentence (It has a precedence!).
Bob's your uncle, scott free, living large in Australia, nice one!
Mines the one with the arrest warrant in the pocket!
Regardless of wether or not they should have been released no one has presented any evidence to support the idea that the information released endangers lives.
Yes the information is classified, and the reason it is classified is obvious, because it causes embarrasments to the governments of the states involved. How what has been published could be used to endanger individuals has not been made clear by anyone..
If you could point to a line in the documents that says "xxxx xxxx is an undercover counter terrorist agent of ours" (or similar) without the xxxxs then I would revert to your point of view
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11882092
"...they are classified because their release could cause harm to the state, and or individuals therein."
I've heard it said (although I can't find a cite at the moment) that the menus for the meals served at Number 10 used to be Classified as "Secret"!
The Yanks are more worried because the release of these documents could cause harm to the careers of individuals in their Government.
They don't really care about Assange. They just want to intimidate publishers while continuing to classify ridiculous amounts of ridiculous information. Based on what I've heard so far, I'd estimate that less that about 1% of the stuff is embarrassing, 1% of that (as in 0.01%) was worth secret classification of more than a year or so, and about 1% of that (as in 0.0001%) really should have been classified for the national interest.
At least in the reports I've heard so far, the strongest case was the bit where a government gave us tacit approval for a raid against Al Qaeda. However, I think even that case might be debatable. Depends on whether or not we were able to make the raid in a way that looked plausible, which I really doubt. The very fact that there was a tacit approval already shows that we were already suspected. I'd even bet that we would have raided without the tacit approval--and it wouldn't have made any difference anyway. The important aspect of the raid was whether or not we nailed the targets, and all of the finger pointing about who actually did what and when is not so important...
Loss of trust in the American government? That horse left the barn a LONG time ago.
...Pal A says to Pal B that think this Pal C is a butt-monkey.
Pal A gets all upset when Pal B tells Pal C that they think they are a butt-monkey.
Basic, infantile, playground politics. And the answer is very simple.
Pal A should either not be pals with C at all, or keep their friggin' trap shut!
Stepping back for a moment, I find myself asking why this fool put himself in the position where someone could make these allegations possible. Did he not consider the possibility that use of his todger could put him in trouble? Did he honestly believe that he would not be public enemy number one after throwing large quantities of merde into the public domain?
This story is not over, and there are many turns in the road ahead. I've ordered a lot of popcorn.
It's not just Palin, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Peter King, the ranking Republican Congressman on Homeland Security have also stated Assange is a terrorist. For senior US politicians to cry terrorism is hopefully self-defeating as more people will start to question their 'War On Terrorism'. The only sense came from Robert Gates who basically said 'everyone hates us and we don 't care'.
Assange was a bit naive to act as the lightening conductor for the releases +and+ still have a normal social life. If he is just outside London then he'll soon be blamed for the student protests and the snow.
always a paranoid. Our Julian was always not too tightly wrapped, it would seem: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11893104
So, anyone for bounty hunting in the snow? This could make Hollywood. Closing scene, claret spread across a snowy landscape, Santa stood astride a dead Assange, big grin on his face... ...no wait, what's that you say? Santa's a woman called Palin? A gift of lead for him? ;-)
Sarah Palin is becoming a marketable pundit over here in the US and is starting to weigh in on every topic that comes along. I'm amazed she apparently realizes that Assange is Australian and therefore outside US law. (At least I think he is. Seems like there has been some cases in the Bush admin where they argued that acts on foreign soil were under American jurisdiction, which sounds nutty to me, but then I'm not a lawyer. Thank God.)
You Brits are truly missing a treat with Sarah's show on our TLC channel, "Sarah Palen's Alaska". Beautiful scenery, with every scene showing the multiple reasons why putting this woman in the White House for four years, let alone eight, would be a very bad idea. She needs to be focused on special needs baby and daughters, where she will do an excellent job as a loving hockey mom.
As per current USA legal doctrine acts by American citizens on foreign soil are subject to American jurisdiction. Also, as per same doctrine US law has absolute supremacy over anything and everything.
This has been discussed in great detail around Bush administration reaction to the International Crime court. Just Google it.
Invading Sweden would be too much like addressing the problem. Normal procedure is to invade a country nearby, in the hope that the voters' general ignorance of geography confuses the two adequately.
Those in Finland should be getting nervous.
Linux Penguin, because even the Antarctic is similar enough for some.
is totally unnecessary.
Our government (both sides) are _more_ than willing to kowtow to the demands of the American junta at a moments notice.
They are already suggesting that they are looking for something to hang Assange on, despite the fact that none of his recent activities have been perpetrated in Australia at all.
In fact almost none of them even mentions Australia at all.
So, why the outrage AusGov? Oh that's right, we have to crush the political freedoms of our own people to show solidarity with the Amerikan New World Order.
Right, got it.
Well, it happens occasionally :)
While the people (supposedly) in control are busy doing a character assassination on the guy, aren't they taking their eye off the ball rather? Have they forgotten that there are others involved in Wikileaks?
I have no doubt that these 'others' are busily spreading all this stuff as far as possible right across the net - where other 'terry-wrist'(tm) organisations are storing it all up for future dissemination.
Joke alert cos this whole thing is a bit of a larf.
"I've heard the impact of these releases on our foriegn policy as a meltdown, as a game-changer and so on. I think those descriptions are significantly over-wrought. The fact is governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest. Not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us" - Robert Gates
Which is an arrogant but relatively accurate summary free of the hysterical hyperbole of Clinton and Palin. It also explains why the Iraq Inquiry was nobbled to protect US interests, as revealed by the leak.
Palin should have picked a better example of a manhunt, as Bin Laden has not been caught after ten years of hunting.
Assange may have less to worry about from the USA or Sweden than from countries in the Middle East or Central Asia, where the concept of free speech is unfamiliar and people with wealth and power do not tolerate criticism.
... hunted down like Harry Whittington (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Whittington).
Something over which her friends have more control.
Or possibly a caribou:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/the_real_american_idol/article1687959.ece
She just has to persuade Assange to put on antlers and travel to Alaska. The offer of a quick shag should probably do it.
...perhaps really he's a commie or connie, perhaps Connie Francis or just a complete idiot. Perhaps he's a redneck extremist who believes in what his country does external to the good old US of A. He doesn't realise that those outside the USA who basically understand what America has done for(to) everyone else, know that America deserves this completely...
Greatest idea for an app ever: Palin Control! It's like Parental Control but it filters out anything Palin instead of violence or tits! If someone develops it I'll buy one for my computer, my phone, and my TV. Can someone develop this with the quickness please? Every time I see her or hear her I can feel my brain start to atrophy..... Please random internet developers, you're my only hope.
The only thing that continues to flabber my ghast regarding the Palin woman is how much of the country is still in love with the vacuous idiot.
Her time as governor of Alaska is cited as proof of her fitness to command, yet when the bills for her previous largess came due *mid-term* and the going got tough she got going and quit. No-one is calling her Palin the Quitter in he press, but my question is "why not?"
She is used as an example of the down-home, earthy type we need more of in politics, but it was just such a type that ran the country onto the rocks with both engines at "All Ahead Full" while remaining visibly clueless as to the danger. Can we really afford to make this same mistake again? Can the country really afford to open its coffers one more time to the in-crowd for a personal looting? At what point do these people feel enough shame or get enough sense of the real consequences of their actions to control their urge for the free greenbacks?
And she's still the darling of Fox News despite the fact that just about every time they ask her to speak she derails their message with some clueless inanity that puts her lack of political savvy up front and center. The latest: Last week she said on camera that President Obama should stop being such a wuss and go after those communists in South Korea.
Which I admit was not as classic as deriding President Obama for using a teleprompter and then glancing at the notes written on her hand for why that was bad, but anyone who wants into the White House ought to have *some* grasp of where on the big Map O The World the pinkoes hang out.
Gordon Effing Bennet.
This woman is as redneck as a redneck can be without actually knowing what a redneck is which kind of confirms the redneck-icity. I'm Australian & we shake in terror of the possibility of her taking over the reins from anyone. We've already seen what George Dubbya can do to screw things up but I'm fairly sure that Palin is more stupid than even George...
A friend comments to me:
He's a foreigner who has stirred up criticism of US government policy, without bothering to understand its problems, therefore he has only himself to blame if he is executed out of hand; Palin on the other hand is a citizen who has stirred up criticism of US government policy, without bothering to understand its problems, therefore she should be in charge of it.
And that is NOT a good thing.
Democracies, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom in general.... America, Britain, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland... this guy let out a few interesting snippets showing the back stabbing lies and suddenly he is rendered pennyless (frozen bank accounts), a sex attacker (yeah yeah, timing was very conincidental), arrested....
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