WikiLeaks

[TheMercenary]

Off to jail for the scumbag....

LONDON – A British judge sent Julian Assange to jail on Tuesday, denying bail to the WikiLeaks founder who vowed to fight efforts to extradite him to Sweden in a sex-crimes investigation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/wikileaks

[Stormieweather]

Are they going after all the other media distributing the cable info now?

[TheMercenary]

Wikileads is not a media source, newspaper, or news orgainzation. Although they would like you to think they are.

[glatt]

What are they, then?

[TheMercenary]

If I had my way I call them a terrorist organization and I think they should be treated as such. They obtained stolen classified information and have released it to organizations and states which are known enemys of the United States, through wholescale public disclosure via news orgainzations. Traditionally news organizations are usually protected, Wikileaks is not one of those.

[TheMercenary]

I am no fan of FEINSTEIN, but in this case I have to agree with everything she said.

Prosecute Assange Under the Espionage Act

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...pinion_LEADTop

[Lamplighter]

There Wikileaks goes again, exposing the CIA's use of rendition and torture.

NY Times
Officials Pressed Germans on Kidnapping by C.I.A.
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: December 8, 2010

BERLIN — American officials exerted sustained pressure on Germany not to enforce arrest warrants
against Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in the 2003 kidnapping of a German citizen
mistakenly believed to be a terrorist, diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks show.

Mr. Masri was seized on Dec. 31, 2003, as he entered Macedonia while on vacation;
border security guards confused him with an operative of Al Qaeda with a similar name.
He says he was turned over to the C.I.A., which flew him to Afghanistan,
where he says he was tortured, sodomized and injected with drugs.
After five months, he was dropped on a roadside in Albania. No charges were brought against him.

[Undertoad]

This particular fuckup was already known about, what is exposed is the US pressure on Germany not to do anything about it.

[Lamplighter]

UT, and your point is ?
Sorry, I realize that's being a bit sarcastic.
But quotes are from the article, and I feel they are needed for understanding of the situation.

What Wikileaks exposed is the the US diplomatic pressure on Germany being accomplices
to the actions of the CIA's actions of rendition and torture.

[Lamplighter]

Fair and balanced in America

The link also provides a video of the TV segment.

Huffington Post
Dec 9, 2010

A Democratic Fox News analyst called for the assassination
of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Speaking on the Fox Business show "Follow The Money" on Monday,
Bob Beckel excoriated Assange for leaking the State Department cables
that have roiled the world in the past week,
and said that American special forces should kill him.

"A dead man can't leak stuff," Beckel said.
"This guy's a traitor, he's treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States.
And I'm not for the death penalty, so...
there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch."

The other guests on the program all agreed with Beckel.

[Griff]

Treason? Beckel must be using a different dictionary than everybody else.

[W.HI.P]

I can't even read your comments.
Is brainwashing that effective?
Take a fucking step out of your little shells, and take a look at the bigger picture.

[Flint]

Traditionally news organizations are usually protected, Wikileaks is not one of those.

What defines a news organization? More to the point, once the precedent of howWikileaks (whatever they are) is handled in this situation, how can that be made to NOT apply to news organizations? What is the clear, legal separation?

What about unaffiliated individuals who may see information on the internet and post a link to it somewhere else (such as this message board)? Are we protected from prosecution? Is Undertoad?

This is genuine curiosity on my part--I'm not asking because I think I already know the answer.

[Lamplighter]

Flint, I think the old definitions of "news organization" is extinct.

But it is just because of your remark/question about liability, and copyrights,
when I re-post some item that I try to take real care with links, citations, and quote-boxes for the copied text.

My understanding is that copyright infringements are avoided if there is a good faith effort
to provide the citation AND the copied material is not the entire document.
That way, the reader has reason and means to go back to the original.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Flint

What defines a news organization? More to the point, once the precedent of howWikileaks (whatever they are) is handled in this situation, how can that be made to NOT apply to news organizations? What is the clear, legal separation?

What about unaffiliated individuals who may see information on the internet and post a link to it somewhere else (such as this message board)? Are we protected from prosecution? Is Undertoad?

This is genuine curiosity on my part--I'm not asking because I think I already know the answer.

I guess my take would be based on "intent". What is Wikileaks intent on publishing the data, and what is a news organizations intent on publishing the data. I don't ever recall that the NYT or any other news organization stated their intent was to go after governments and try to bring them down. Assange has declared himself to be the judge of what is right and wrong. He is nothing more than an internet terrorist and should be treated as such.