Wikileaks.org - The whistle blower website

[thursday 1]

This video is a very graphic record of events in a helicopter attack in Iraq killing a dozen or so civilians

 

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/04/06/vo.apache.reuters.journalists.cnn

 

Quote:

(CNN) -- In the early 1970s, when Daniel Ellsberg wanted to get top-secret information about the Vietnam War to the public, he leaked the bombshell Pentagon Papers to elected officials and national newspapers.

 

But if Ellsberg, a former U.S. military analyst, wanted to leak secret documents today, he probably would send them to a powerful and controversial new venue for whistle-blowing: a website called WikiLeaks.org.

 

"People should definitely think of WikiLeaks as the way to go" when other methods of leaking information fail, he said recently.

 

WikiLeaks, a nonprofit site run by a loose band of tech-savvy volunteers, is quickly becoming one of the internet's go-to locations for government whistle-blowers, replacing, or at least supplementing, older methods of making sensitive government information public.

 

Some have praised the site as a beacon of free speech, while others have criticized it as a threat to national security.

 

The site gained international attention in April when it posted a 2007 video said to show a U.S. helicopter attack in Iraq killing a dozen civilians, including two unarmed Reuters journalists.

 

At the time, Maj. Shawn Turner, a U.S. military spokesman, said that "all evidence available supported the conclusion by those forces that they were engaging armed insurgents and not civilians."

 

Pfc. Bradley Manning, 22, has been charged by the U.S. military with eight violations of the U.S. Criminal Code for transferring classified data, according to a charge sheet released by the military this week.

 

Manning's military defense attorney, Capt. Paul Bouchard, is not speaking with the media about the charges, said U.S. Army Col. Tom Collins. Bouchard did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment. WikiLeaks may also offer an attorney for Manning, according to Wired.com.

 

The high-profile video has led some observers to say that WikiLeaks is forcing a new era of government transparency.

 

"It's a whole new world of how stories get out," Columbia University journalism professor Sree Sreenivasan told British newspaper The Independent in April.

 

Others have said the website may be a threat to society and the rule of law.

 

A 2008 U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center report (PDF), which was classified until it was uploaded to WikiLeaks in March, says that information posted to WikiLeaks.org could "aid enemy forces in planning terrorist attacks."

 

The report "is authentic, and it speaks for itself," Collins said.

 

What is WikiLeaks?

 

The premise of the WikiLeaks, which has been operating largely out of the public spotlight since 2007, is simple: Anyone can leak documents, videos or photographs, and they can do so while remaining anonymous.

 

The site says that none of its whistle-blowers has been outed because of WikiLeaks.

 

Visitors to the site will notice a large link that simply says "submit documents." Reports, photographs and videos given to the site are reviewed by a global network of editors and then, if deemed to be important and real, are posted online.

 

"Every submitted article and change is reviewed by our editorial team of professional journalists and anti-corruption analysts," WikiLeaks says on its website. "Articles that are not of high standard are rejected and non-editorial articles are fully attributed."

 

But the site does differ from traditional media outlets..

 

In The New Yorker, Raffi Khatchadourian wrote that WikiLeaks is "not quite an organization; it is better described as a media insurgency."

 

In part, this is because of the technology employed by the site.

 

The site's documents and other leaks are backed up on computer servers in several countries. WikiLeaks also maintains several Web addresses to make it difficult -- the site claims impossible -- to remove the secret documents from the internet once they are posted on WikiLeaks.

 

The website is run by an organization called Sunshine Press, which takes public donations. Time.com reported that WikiLeaks has a $600,000 annual budget.

 

Who manages the site?

 

WikiLeaks' elusive editor and co-founder is an Australian named Julian Assange. In profiles, writers describe him as an eccentric who wanders the globe, carries all of his belongings and keeps semi-residences in Kenya, Iceland and Sweden, where the site's Web servers are reportedly located.

 

"In my role as WikiLeaks editor, I've been involved in fighting off many legal attacks," Assange told BBC News. "To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions."

 

Lately, Assange is reported to be living in Iceland, which recently passed laws to protect anonymous speech like that promoted by WikiLeaks.

 

Assange -- who has stark white hair and a deep voice, and appears only occasionally in YouTube videos and in media interviews -- tells reporters that the aim of WikiLeaks is to promote a more open democracy, where government officials and bureaucrats can't keep dark secrets from the public.

 

"We have a mission to promote political reforms by releasing suppressed information," he said in April .

 

Assange did not respond to an e-mail about this story.

 

Site causes controversy

 

In its attempts to unearth and publicize this hidden information, however, the site has stirred a number of controversies.

 

WikiLeaks has published information as varied as former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mails; manuals from the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; e-mails that spawned the "Climategate" global-warming controversy late last year; and documents that Assange reportedly says altered the outcome of the 2007 presidential election in Kenya.

 

'Climategate' review clears scientists of dishonesty

 

Ari Schwartz, vice president and chief executive officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said it's unclear what WikiLeaks' lasting impact will be. If the site publishes state secrets without cause, a public backlash could quickly kill the following the site is trying to build.

 

"If they're publishing just to publish ... the public reaction against that information is going to be so negative," he said.

 

Schwartz said his group has benefited from WikiLeaks, which was able to obtain some congressional public records his organization could not.

 

"They are effective in terms of getting to documents that people have trouble accessing in other ways," he said.

 

Ellsberg , the former U.S. Department of Defense official who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the '70s and who now donates to WikiLeaks, said the site has the potential to change the way the world's governments operate.

 

He says the site will make leaders more accountable to the public.

 

The recently released military videos are "a very small door, so far, into the huge library of broadly withheld information," he said.

 

He called Assange a hero for trying to shed light on those hidden catalogues.

 

 

[thursday 1]

this is a link to the report of the later investigation

 

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/04/06/6--2nd.brigade.combat.team.15-6.investigation.pdf

[Ezorisu 0]

Although this incident did end up involving two news reporters/cameramen, considering the dynamically evolving combat situation that prompted the Apache helicopters being in an orbit around that area in the first place (nearby coalition troops coming under fire), I don't really take issue with what was done, given the information that was at hand to the pilots/gunners and combat commanders (the guys on the other end of the radio that the pilots were talking to to get permission to fire). It is unfortunate that innocent non-combatants die during warfighting, but this is war. The wikileaks spin on the story takes the incident out of the context of the greater battle scene and tries to make you think that the helicopters "just randomly happened upon these guys in the street" and started firing 30mm rounds down at them.

[thursday 1]

What a shame nobody gives a damn about this war.

 

Quote:

Tensions between the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan were further strained today after the leak of thousands of military documents about the Afghan war.

 

As members of the US Congress raised questions about Pakistan's alleged support for the Taliban, officials in Islamabad and Kabul also traded angry accusations on the same issue.

 

Further disclosures reveal more evidence of attempts by coalition commanders to cover up civilian casualties in the conflict.

 

The details emerge from more than 90,000 secret US military files, covering six years of the war, which caused a worldwide uproar when they were leaked yesterday.

 

The war logs show how a group of US marines who went on a shooting rampage after coming under attack near Jalalabad in 2007 recorded false information about the incident, in which they killed 19 unarmed civilians and wounded a further 50.

 

In another case that year, the logs detail how US special forces dropped six 2,000lb bombs on a compound where they believed a "high-value individual" was hiding, after "ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area". A senior US commander reported that 150 Taliban had been killed. Locals, however, reported that up to 300 civilians had died.

 

Other files in the secret archive reveal:

 

• Coalition commanders received numerous intelligence reports about the whereabouts and activity of Osama bin Laden between 2004 and 2009, even though the CIA chief has said there has been no precise information about the al-Qaida leader since 2003.

 

• The hopelessly ineffective attempts of US troops to win the "hearts and minds" of Afghans.

 

• How a notorious criminal was appointed chief of police in the south-western province of Farrah.

 

Speaking at a press conference at the Frontline Club in central London yesterday, Julian Assange, of Wikileaks, the website which initially published the war logs, said: "It is up to a court to decide clearly whether something is in the end a crime. That said, on the face of it, there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material."

 

Four days after it was first approached by the Guardian, the British Ministry of Defence said it was still unable to give an account of two questionable clusters of civilian shootings by British troops detailed in the American logs.

 

They were alleged to have taken place in Kabul in a month in 2007 when a detachment of the Coldstream Guards was patrolling, and in the southern province of Helmand during a six-month tour of duty by Royal Marine commandos at the end of 2008. The MoD said: "We are currently examining our records to establish the facts in the alleged civilian casualty incidents raised."

 

The UK foreign secretary, William Hague, told the BBC that the leaked documents could "poison the atmosphere in Afghanistan" but at the same time insisted they would not affect British troops:

 

Writing in the Guardian, Eric Joyce, a former soldier and parliamentary aide to the former Labour defence secretary Bob Ainsworth, described the leaked documents as a "game changer", adding that some of the questions raised were "stunning in their enormity".

 

The former Liberal Democrat leader and spokesman on defence and foreign affairs, Sir Menzies Campbell, said the documents showed how difficult it would be for UK troops to leave Afghanistan in 2015, the date set by David Cameron.

 

"The leaked documents show just how awesome the task will be to bring the Afghan police and army to a condition where they can be responsible for security," said Campbell.

 

Amnesty International called for reforms to the recording of civilian casualties after a row broke out over an incident in which the Afghan government says 45 villagers were killed in a rocket attack. The coalition disputes that it was responsible. Amnesty called on Nato "to provide a clear, unified system of accounting for civilian casualties in Afghanistan".

 

Daniel Ellsberg compared the publication of the war logs to the Pentagon Papers, which he leaked to the New York Times in 1971. "The Pentagon Papers did not stop or even affect the war but affected public opinion a great deal. Are we really going to do better with another $300bn [spent on the war in Afghanistan] on more bombs, more special forces, more drones? The Taliban are not going to quit."

 

The director of the military thinktank the Royal United Services Institute, Professor Michael Clarke, said in London: "There is no doubt that the leaks are politically pretty damaging. The papers give an impression of a lack of military discrimination in how operations were conducted."

 

The Pentagon said it was conducting an investigation into whether information in the logs placed coalition forces or their informants in danger.

 

Last night President Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, claimed the logs published by the Wikileaks website posed "a very real threat" to US forces: "It's not the content … there are names, there are operations, there are sources, all of that information out in the public domain has the potential to do harm."

 

The Guardian was allowed to investigate the logs for several weeks ahead of publication, along with the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel. The three have published excerpts from the documents which do not pose a risk to informants or military operations.

 

[thursday 1]

Assange concerned over 'natural justice' in Sweden

 

Julian Assange has told the BBC that he is fighting a Swedish extradition warrant because he believes "no natural justice" would occur in Sweden.

 

Mr Assange was speaking in an interview for the Today programme, at the mansion in East Anglia where he is staying under strict bail conditions.

 

The Wikileaks founder suggested the two women who have accused him of sexual assault had got into a "tizzy".

 

Mr Assange denies the allegations and says the case is politically motivated.

 

The 39-year-old is free on bail in the UK while facing the extradition proceedings to Sweden and staying in Norfolk.

 

Mr Assange told the BBC's John Humphrys: "I don't need to go back to Sweden.

 

"The law says I... have certain rights, and these rights mean that I do not need to speak to random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat, and won't do it in any other standard way."

 

He also said the Swedish authorities had asked, as part of their extradition application, that he and his Swedish lawyer be gagged from speaking about the case.

 

"What is requested is that I be taken by force to Sweden and once there, be held incommunicado: That is not a circumstance under which natural justice can occur," Mr Assange said.

 

Mr Assange also said it was possible that the allegations against him arose from the two women going to the police for advice rather than to make a complaint.

 

Legal loopholes

 

He said "one description" of what that occurred was that after having discovered they had each been sexually involved with him, they had got into a "tizzy" about the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases, had gone to the police for advice "and then the police jumped in on this and bamboozled the women".

 

But he also said there were "other people making descriptions" that the women had deliberately abused a loophole in Swedish law, whereby if they went to the police for advice, they could not be charged with filing a false report.

 

The same loophole also existed for approaching the police about sexually transmitted diseases, Mr Assange said.

 

Wikileaks has released thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables - a move that US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said was "sabotaging peaceful relations" between countries.

 

But Mr Assange insisted his mission was "to promote justice through the method of transparency".

 

"The world has a lot of problems that need to be reformed - and we only live once," he said.

 

"Every person who has some ability to do something about it, if they are a person of good character, has the duty to try and fix the problems in the environment in which they're in."

 

Mr Assange said Wikileaks had already done a lot of good: "The gradual unfolding of the process of political reform is something that we cannot see immediately, but already we see that we have changed governments - we have certainly changed many political figures within governments.

 

"We have caused new law reform efforts. We have caused police investigations into the abuses we have exposed."

 

Asked whether the publication by Wikileaks would prevent diplomats from committing to paper their honest opinions, Mr Assange added: "No, they just have to start committing things to paper that they're proud of."

[RobBright 35]

**** Julian Assange, he has become bigger than the site itself, and now surpasses the leaks themselves.

 

**** off to Sweden and undergo investigation, take it like a man, if you are innocent as you say you are, and these ladies are part of a "honey-pot" plot, then you should be found innocent right?

[Curt 1]

Got to feel for the lad, people leaking stuff about him that could taint his reputation.

 

[NoFakie 45]

Sounds like too many groupie shags have gone to the man's head.

 

None of this should be about him though. Its all about the info.

[mitchpee 10]

[Curt 1]

He's made it about him.

The very nature of what he does.

He can't complain.