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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

That's just about the most generous possible interpretation of what's been happening with Wikileaks.

A less generous interpretation:

* Wikileaks leaked the video that accompanies a detailed transcript (with quotes) of the same video that appeared in the Washington Post many months beforehand --- a PR black eye to be sure, but in no way a revelation.

* Wikileaks has in fact cultivated confidential sources inside DoD and military service agencies that are talking about forwarding cables and other TS-classified material, and is in fact part of a grave threat to national security (which, true, the real "threat" is clearly the negligent lapses in operational security that allow someone like Manning to leak cables in the first place).

In other words: Wikileaks is less valuable to society than it seems, and at the same time the government has a legitimate (if misdirected) concern with them.

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Do you really believe Manning is the leaker?

I don't care that much, but, what's your theory?

I just found the whole story a quite odd - the Wired reporter and his friend's difficult to believe story, this low-level kid, the obvious desire - and leaked plans - of the US to find and punish leakers to discredit Wikileaks.

I don't care that much either. On net, I think Wikileaks is a good thing, but I've never donated and never would until they are more transparent about their own operations. Re that video, the first half wasn't what disturbed me, but rather the firing of the missiles into the building in the second half.

But there's an obvious strategy for the US to discredit Wikileaks, and that's to find someone - anyone - that appears to have leaked to them, and come down hard on them. Finding an oddball kid suits the story they want to tell, irrelevant of how guilty he may be. But the Wired stuff is just off the wall odd.

Doesn't it bother you that without reliable evidence, you can make a similarly credible narrative out of almost anything else? Maybe it was the Bush-era DoD people who leaked the story to discredit the Obama administration! You can't prove a negative.

I'm working under the assumption that someone named Manning did in fact do something stupid with Wikileaks, which did indeed encourage him to do that stupid thing. That Wikileaks is encouraging stupid people to do stupid things is something that bothers me about Wikileaks; that stupid people are given access sufficient to do stupid and damaging things is something that bothers me about the DoD.

I don't think Wikileaks encourages stupid behaviour - as I understand it, the input avenue is primarily an file upload field.

As to evidence (in the legal sense), I don't have any one way or the other that Manning had anything to do with the leak. I just have media reports, which sound really weird, which makes me not give them much weight.

Regardless of how (say) Manning conveyed files to Wikileaks, leaking classified-TS cables is manifestly stupid. One doubts most of the people who might help Wikileaks from inside the DoD have any idea what they're actually doing. My guess is that it all seems unreal, happening as it does on the always fake-seeming Internet using computers that make everything seem like chat room drama.

Do you have evidence that classified top secret cables were leaked? That one is easy to prove. A quick Google search, though, seems to only turn up rumours.

The only direct source of much of the rumours seems to be the completely unbelievable Wired story. The Salon story on Wired's reporting is the primary reason I don't trust it, nor anything implied by it on other sites:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18...

You're saying it's easy to prove that someone likely to have classified-TS access who said they leaked classified-TS information did or did not leak information?

And to support that argument, you're citing Glenn Greenwald?

You earlier spoke of proving a negative; by easy to prove, I meant that this is a positive, and an existence proof is sufficient.

If something was leaked, but noone can point to it, or the consequences of it, is it really leaked?

The way you phrase your sentence about Glenn Greenwald, you seem to imply that I should know something about him. What are you imputing?

It also seems an ad hominem attack. I cited the article as reason to doubt the Wired story; but the article should be attacked on its own merits. And the reason to doubt the leak of TS cables is because I haven't seen evidence that they've been leaked. The video certainly was leaked - I saw it - but I've seen not a peep of these alleged cables.

It doesn't make any sense. Why would a 22-year old kid have access to thousands of top-secret cables? Why should we trust an attention-seeking ex-convict who says he had an IM with a leaker who spontaneously contacted him for the first time ever (randomly choosing him from twitter #wikileaks, of all things), and boasted to him that he leaked such cables? When Wikileaks denies that they have such cables?

When these stories come up in the news, who benefits?

I am absolutely confident that 22 year old kids have access to ridiculous information; I think that's far more of an outrage than any news Wikileaks has "broken" about the DoD.

On the other hand, I think the risk of the US to the world is greater (far greater) than the risk of the world to the US.

The US is in no danger of being attacked or invaded by anyone; one cannot say the same about other countries with respect to the US.

Even something as substantial as 9/11 was only a crime - a monstrous crime - but certainly not an act of war. There isn't any actor with the capability or will to do any serious damage to the US that wouldn't be annihilated by nuclear retribution; the US's security derives from its obvious and plain-sight strengths, not anything it keeps secret.

>threat to national security

The real threat to national security is the predominance of special-interest groups who are currently in control of the US Military machine, having it fight un-just, disgusting wars, in the name of the United States of America.

The true threat to national security is the Pentagon itself, which simply wouldn't be necessary if it weren't creating its own reasons for war around the world.

You want real national security? Stand down your soldiers, America. That is the only true way to be secure in your beds, Americans.

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