famousringo said:
Joelcool7 said:
famousringo said:
Joelcool7 said:
I wouldn't classify them as just plain terrorists. However I would call them cyber terrorists. Also they are using fear and Coercion. What about Assanges threat that if he is charged , killed or anything happens to him thousands more documents will be leaked? He's taking the entire United States hostage as these facts damage the countries reputation and also damage specific people.
Example the King of Saudi Arabia asking the US to bomb the shit out of Iran? He asked that in confidence and now if Iran gets a weapon guess who now might be a target? Or how about the Afghan informants who only wanted to live in peace and spread democracy, now they are being hunted down and killed thanks to these leaks. These leaks have also brought to light several soft targets as others have said.
When an organisation uses fear and threats of fear to control people. When an organisation attacks civilians by leaking out dangerous info. When a group funds virtual attacks on other governments then that group is called a cyber terrorist group.
You might think, well this only hurt the US why should I care? Well it doesn't it hurts every one of America's allies and you probubly live in one of the countries affected.
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I was wrong. Wikileaks is not releasing this information indiscriminately:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html
WikiLeaks has posted to its website only 960 of the 251,297diplomatic cables it has. Almost every one of these cables was first published by one of its newspaper partners which are disclosing them (The Guardian, theNYT, El Pais, Le Monde, Der Speigel, etc.). Moreover, the cables posted by WikiLeaks were not only first published by these newspapers, but contain the redactions applied by those papers to protect innocent people and otherwise minimize harm.
Are The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, El Pais, and Der Speigel cyber terrorists, too? If so, how do you propose we sanitize these journals so they stop saying terrorist things? If they aren't, why is Wikileaks a cyber terror group?
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No they aren't also terrorist organisations. If they didn't report the news Wikileaks would release cablessomeone else would anyways and they would loose out on stories. News organisations are to report the news Wikileaks tells them that they will release these cables then it is the job of the media to report these cyber terror attacks.
Thats like saying man CNN reported 9/11 live so they are to be held as responsable as the terrorists attacking the two towers. P.S the site you list as a source isn't from any of these major papers is it. I somewhat doubt that these reporters released that many cables in such a short time and that they had input into what was released by Wikileaks and what wasn't.
If a reporter decided to leak a document on their own not from Wikileaks and that document named people who's lives might be taken do to the release of that document. Then that person is a murderer because they are the ones responsable for that person being killed.
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By this line of thinking, WikiLeaks is not a cyber terrorist either. If they did not release these documents, the people who leak them would just go to some other media outlet and the story would still get out.
WikiLeaks does not actually fetch this information themselves. Informants give them this information, just like they might give information to any other journalist. An attack on WikiLeaks is an attack on journalism.
What you don't seem to be getting is that WikiLeaks is only releasing the information that their newspaper partners tell them it is okay to release. This being the case, I don't understand how one member of the team is a terrorist and the rest are A-okay-democracy-as-usual.
Cut the cognitive dissonance. Do you want a free press or not?
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I briefly read the link you gave and did not see the part where these newspapers are said to be okaying everything that is released. I also didn't see the part that says these leaks were not actually called for by Wikileaks and that these individuals just came out of the blue and looked to them to leak it.
You say that these people would have brought these leaks to other individuals if they didn't to WikiLeaks right? If so why didn't any other organisation leak these leaks before WikiLeaks? I'm sure these individuals would have approached more reputable journalistic organisations before resorting to a small time site. The first leaks leaked awhile ago about Afghan informants etc...etc... Are you saying that the people found WikiLeaks before it was known and told them this stuff trusting them with no reputation to leak the information?
WikiLeaks had to have been involved directly with the leaking or they wouldn't be the only one leaking cables. This is a globalized world and their are hundreds of more qualified news organisations to leak to. You say WikiLeaks is only leaking what newspapers and such are authorising. Well considering your list includes so many news organisations all Assange has to say is "I want to release this article" then half of them say no but one or two say yes so their for its okay.
WikiLeaks is an organisation and it can't use scape goats to make it look better. No body else released these documents, WikiLeaks did. If indeed these individuals were hell bent on leaking these documents then why is WikiLeaks the only organisation leaking them? Why isn't the New York Times or the Sun. Or AP.
WikiLeaks leaked them and they should be held completely responsable for leaking them. Plus chances are if WikiLeaks didn't leak these documents no other media organisation would. Because these media organisations know the damage these cables would do and I doubt any reputable one would leak them.
