She cites the Guardian who has a history of questionable reporting on Assange and WikiLeaks because they didn't do a good job[1][2].
In fact WikiLeaks made a point of going via the newspapers after being blamed.
Assange tried (at least he claims he tried) to get the US government to help him remove names that it felt should not be released. The US government refused. Which is perfectly understandable: why should the US government tell Wikileaks exactly which names in some leaked documents are the names of actual US government informants? That would be stupid.
Assange then chose to release all the material anyway, putting the life of anyone whose names were in that material potentially at risk. Newspapers, in the same position, did not publish the names. Whether you agree or not with either action, the fact remains that they are clearly different actions, and that one involves publishing people's names and potentially putting their lives at risk and the other does not.
What if you lived in an oppressive regime and believed, rightly or wrongly, that the US was trying to help improve the situation in your country, and you gave the US information? Would you still be OK with your name being published and your life being put at risk?
If that's stupid then complaining asking him to redact names without telling him which ones is even more stupid and gives the U.S. no right to complain. Especially when top secret is used to conceal war crimes.
> Assange then chose to release all the material anyway
Not publishing war crimes because those who commited them refuse to cooperate in redacting names would be a great way for the Pentagon to make sure their crimes stay hidden. In fact it appears that was their goal in not cooperating.
> Newspapers, in the same position, did not publish the names.
Newspapers were NOT in the same position. They published the leaks but Pentagon started cooperating with them by then.
It's remarkable that people exposing war criminals get more blame that actual war criminals who did not face any consequences and laughed about while murdering civilians including journalists.
He should have had the good judgment to redact all names even without being asked to. (Or at least all names that he didn't know belonged to people whose lives would not be put at risk by their publication.) He didn't.
> Newspapers were NOT in the same position.
It is true that newspapers (and other "mainstream" media organizations) have a special relationship with governments (and note that I'm not saying it's right that they do, only that as a matter of fact they do), so they aren't in exactly the same position as Wikileaks. That still does not excuse Wikileaks putting people's lives at risk by publishing their names.
> people exposing war criminals get more blame that actual war criminals
I haven't said anything at all about blame regarding anyone other than Assange, so you have no basis for even making any such comparison.
Also, I'm not blaming Assange for publishing the material itself. I'm blaming him for publishing people's names and putting their lives at risk. As I've already said, he could have published the material without publishing the names. He chose not to.
So how exactly are you supposed to hold officials accountable if you don't have any names to go on?
> I haven't said anything at all about blame regarding anyone other than Assange
Right. That is exactly my problem. When we're talking about war criminals I'd hope the person who exposed it would be the last to get some blame in the matter.
If there issue is that high ranking officials aren't being held accountable, there's no reason to publish the names of some random agent.
That's not as easy as it sounds. Many of the names you'd want to leave up would be of smaller generals whom you may not be familiar with. The actual shooters should perhaps also not be redacted. At least not fully.
> Newspapers seem to have managed to do this just fine for ages.
They do this by being cozy with the Pentagon and asking them exactly for what WikiLeaks has asked them for. The difference is the Pentagon's not going to ignore an email from the NYT. It did ignore WikiLeaks.
Investigative journalism is a difficult profession. Yet people manage. Throwing your hands up is a disservice to the profession. Calling someone who does so a journalist is a disservice to actual investigative journalists.
That's not investigative journalism. It's much closer to muckraking.
The ones that had so cozy of a relationship with the Pentagon that they saw no problem in being government mouthpieces and getting the public to support a war in Iraq that killed 200k+ people on a made up pretense of WMDs. Same for Lybia, Syria etc.?
Because that's how you get the level of government access to be what you'd consider a 'real' journalist.
I am glad that you don't get to define who makes a 'real' journalist and who doesn't. Julian is not one of these[1] indeed.
I consider that journalistic malpractice. Like I said, investigative journalism is difficult. People, including the "real ones" sometimes do it badly. When they do, the good ones apologize and retract.
For what its worth, I don't actually think that you'd need particular government access to do a reasonable job of censoring the names of at risk agents in the documents wikileaks leaked. I'd go far enough to say that me, as a layperson, with practically no journalistic experience could do a better job than Assange did. In fact, I'm certain of that.
That's disqualifying. He didn't even try.
“...Assange wrote that WikiLeaks would consider recommendations made by the International Security Assistance Force "on the identification of innocents for this material if it is willing to provide reviewers."
That’s from your salon.com article.
So Assange would “consider” redacting (not promising anything) and only if a group from the United Nations identified “innocent” names. There’s no mention that the Pentagon has any input at all. And there’s no reason to think anyone at the ISA should know the names of undercover intelligence agents in those documents, especially the documents completely unrelated to Afghanistan... since the ISA was involved only with issues in Afghanistan.
Manning could have told Assange which names were the names of US government officials. (In fact, I'd be surprised if Manning didn't actually do just that; on your own theory of who should be held accountable it would be irresponsible not to.)
We're not. We're talking about Assange. He can still be at fault and worthy of blame for some things he did, even if the US government is also worthy of blame for some things it did.
And that's exactly the problem. No wonder they're still free today while Julian's not.
There's (luckily) no exams (yet) for what makes a journalist. Someone who has a blog is no less a journalist than anyone at a national newspaper.
> They have to rely on real newspapers or the pentagon (!) to do it for them. It’s no defence to say: we tried to get other people to help us do the right thing
Actually it is. That's why intention is regularly taken into account in court cases and it shows WikiLeaks had the intention to redact and if needed even via the Pentagon.
> but we couldn’t, so we did the wrong thing instead.
They did no 'wrong' thing instead. They tried to consult the U.S. Government about any needed redactions and then published vital information to inform the public that the government is committing war crimes of foreign soil in their name.
Not publishing that would've been wrong and was most likely the goal of the Pentagon in not cooperating.
Is similar with zero days, researchers publish them if the vendor doesn't cooperate because not doing so and letting black hats exploit a known bug is way more 'wrong' than publishing the 0day widely is.
No, it shows that Wikileaks can be just as disingenuous as any other "journalistic" organization. Wikileaks made a request to the US government that it had to know the US government would refuse (for the reason I gave in my other post in response to you upthread). It did that so it could disingenuously claim that it gave the US government a chance to protect people's names and the US government refused, making it seem like it's the US government's fault, not Wikileaks's fault, that the names got published. That's not "responsible journalism"; it's Wikileaks playing power politics just like governments and the media do.
> published vital information to inform the public that the government is committing war crimes of foreign soil in their name
Wikileaks could have published that information without publishing anyone's name. They chose not to do it that way.
It's the U.S. government who committed war crimes here and used secrecy to conceal their crimes. Of course it's the U.S. government's fault. The option to not commit war crimes and use the secrets act to conceal it was there. They didn't take it.
The U.S. Government proved it will use 'top secret' to hide not only information that is actually top secret but also information that is embarrassing. This would be a pretty clear motivator for the Pentagon not to respond and for WikiLeaks to go ahead with the publication.
> Wikileaks could have published that information without publishing anyone's name.
No. Names as such are vital. It lets you know WHO needs to be held accountable. Most leaks are published with names in them. There are names that the U.S. government could have suggested (not demand) to be redacted and WikiLeaks could have agreed to either some or all of the requests. They refused to cooperate. It's pretty clearly on them.
I also love how the people exposing war crimes are getting more heat that the actual war criminals who never spent a day behind bars. Speaks volumes.
Even if the US government is at fault, that still doesn't mean Wikileaks can't also be at fault. Two wrongs don't make a right.
> Names as such are vital. It lets you know WHO needs to be held accountable.
Names of US government officials who made decisions that are being questioned, perhaps.
Names of people in other countries with oppressive regimes, who passed on information on the understanding that their names would be kept confidential, no.
Between the two wrongs, am going to focus on the one where the most powerful military on Earth guns down civilians & journalists. Especially given Julian has already paid dearly for exposing what we should have known. The war criminals themselves haven't spent a day behind bars.
> Names of people in other countries with oppressive regimes, who passed on information on the understanding that their names would be kept confidential, no.
WikiLeaks asked for these names so they can redact them. The Pentagon refused. This is on them, as are the war crimes themselves.
No, they asked for those names knowing that the US government couldn't possibly give them since that would expose the identities of people who would then be put at risk of their lives. In other words, they purposely put the US government in a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation. As I've already said upthread.
IMO this would actually be a valid argument--Assange has already effectively served a sentence even though he hasn't been officially tried--but Assange's defense apparently did not make it.\
I note, btw, that this kind of consideration (as well as other considerations you have raised) is also one that a US President could take into account in deciding whether or not to pardon Assange. Do you think the President should do that?