http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/12/reporters-without-bo-1.htmlhttp://en.rsf.org/united-states-open-letter-to-wikileaks-founder-12-08-2010,38130.htmlhttp://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/12/why-reporters-withou.html38130
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Home page - Americas - United States
Open letter to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange: ‘‘A bad precedent for the Internet’s future’’
Published on 12 August 2010
In the same country
6 August 2010 - FCC asked to start over the discussion between the US internet providers
23 July 2010 - "BP is orchestrating the entire operation"
7 July 2010 - US soldier charged for leaking video showing US army war crime
See country files : United States
Julian Assange
Founder
Wikileaks
Dear Mr. Assange,
Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organisation, regrets the incredible irresponsibility you showed when posting your article “Afghan War Diary 2004 - 2010” on the Wikileaks website on 25 July together with 92,000 leaked documents disclosing the names of Afghans who have provided information to the international military coalition that has been in Afghanistan since 2001.
Wikileaks has in the past played a useful role by making information available to the US and international public that exposed serious violations of human rights and civil liberties which the Bush administration committed in the name of its war against terror. Last April’s publication of a video of the killing of two employees of the Reuters news agency and other civilians by US military personnel in Baghdad in July 2007 was clearly in the public interest and we supported this initiative. It was a response to the Obama administration’s U-turn on implementation of the Freedom of Information Act. The White House broke its word in May 2009, when it defied a court order and refused to release photos of the mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is actually an interesting view of Wikileaks. On one hand, they are basically a data collector, they gather data and post it without filtering it. This does help with avoiding Confirmation Bias, but it also means they put out information that can hurt a lot of people. The current one is the complaints about giving away the names of our spies; obviously something that won't help our country in Afghanistan. In the above articles, they talk about reporters picking and choosing what to tell, using "common sense" to filter out the words.
I like Wikileaks because it told us something without those filters. It tells a very raw story about the war, something I think has been whitewashed by reporters, the government, and the press in general. What we see on the news on TV or in newspapers is polished for a specific purpose, which makes it hard to see what is going on.
As I wrote before, I think whistleblowers are an important thing. People in power need to be watched, we need someone to watch over them simply because it will be abused. When you use the government, "national security", or even "financial interest" in a company as a shield to prevent telling things that need to be done, people can get hurt. We have secrets, that part is important, but I've noticed a general trend of making too many things secret, because it is easier to relax those controls than to take something back.
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/13/the-us-has-the-cyber.htmlhttp://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/cyberwar-wikileaks/Wikileaks posted an insurance file. This is a encrypted file probably with a relatively easy key (1024 or 2048) that will be released if someone nails the organization. Not that I think it could easily happen since Wikileaks is basically organized like any good terrorist (or spy) organization. A cellular network, no one actually knowing who is in charge, and (in my opinion) a puppet speaker who believes in the organization but really isn't in charge.
Now, I do think that Wikileaks shouldn't have posted the information about spies. That is probably the worse thing they could have done, but I really love that they took the risk to show this war information just as I liked seeing the other things on their site, like documentation from companies abusing the public, other governments (not just the US) hiding naughty things under the sheets, and basically airing out secrets that hurt people but they don't know it.
