<story><title>US Military Classifies Wikileaks As &apos;Enemy Of The United States&apos;</title><url>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120926/23522220526/us-military-classifies-wikileaks-as-enemy-united-states.shtml</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>EvanKelly</author><text>The New York Times will parse and redact the information that they feel could endanger people from any classified information that they may publish or use in an article. They notably published the Pentagon Papers, which showed that the US had been misled regarding Vietnam. This information did not endanger anyone.&lt;p&gt;Wikileaks, at least with the initial major leak, does not redact or edit information to protect anyone. This has been one of the reasons major journalist outlets (such as NYT) didn&apos;t cooperate with them regarding the initial leak.&lt;p&gt;They simply serve as a clearinghouse for leaked info. The government would almost certainly be able to invoke prior restraint if they were able to take wikileaks to a US court. They were not able to show this in the Pentagon Papers case.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not commenting on the &quot;enemy of state&quot; situation, but I did want to clarify that major difference between an organization such as the NYT and Wikileaks.</text></item><item><author>bo1024</author><text>Wikileaks is a journalistic organization. If someone in the US military emails the New York Times a classified secret, that does not make the Times an &quot;enemy of the United States.&quot;&lt;p&gt;All this nonsense about &quot;most grievous breach in opsec history&quot; and &quot;extracting information&quot; completely obscures the issue by putting the blame on the wrong boot.&lt;p&gt;Hacking, spying, all these things can and should be declared illegal/wrong. But publishing data that was sent to you by a willing informant is much less clear-cut, and certainly doesn&apos;t warrant &quot;enemy of the state&quot; status from any country claiming to respect freedom of the press.&lt;p&gt;The goal of news organizations is to find out information and make it public. If you want to keep information private, fine, make it a criminal offense for &lt;i&gt;your people&lt;/i&gt; to disclose that information to news sources. Case closed.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Without commenting on this particular document, the military has an extremely valid reason for criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active servicemembers; people in the armed services are stewards of all sorts of information that can&apos;t be leaked, and Wikileaks has a stated goal of extracting as much intelligence from the US military as they can.&lt;p&gt;This &quot;declaration&quot; (it&apos;s a Techdirt story; someone could do us all a favor by trying to verify what it actually means) comes in the wake of the most grievous opsec breach in US history. The only reason we&apos;re not outraged by the breach itself is that it got overshadowed by the subsequent disclosure to the press. If it had been Israel that extracted this information and &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; ransomed it to The Guardian, we&apos;d be calling for heads to roll over it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tokenizer</author><text>&amp;#62;The New York Times will parse and redact the information that they feel could endanger people from any classified information that they may publish or use in an article. They notably published the Pentagon Papers, which showed that the US had been misled regarding Vietnam.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;I&apos;m sure if wikileaks had co-operation from officials in this regard, they would have rededacted the information prior to release. Actually, it was publicized before release/after the point was made by officials that they weren&apos;t even going to consider cooperating with wikileaks.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/11/wikileaks-and-state-department-correspondence/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/11/wikileaks-and-state...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;This information did not endanger anyone.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Meaning Wikileaks data did? Sources???&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;Wikileaks, at least with the initial major leak, does not redact or edit information to protect anyone. This has been one of the reasons major journalist outlets (such as NYT) didn&apos;t cooperate with them regarding the initial leak.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Initial leaks? Oh you mean initial AMERICAN leaks. The many first leaks pertained to a Swiss bank, the 2008 election campaign specifically Sarah Palin emails, a corrupt Kenyan leader, Scientology secrets, and a member ship list of the BNP. Also, while true major outlets didn&apos;t want to work with them (in the US), they did anyways, because Assange used them against each other pretty intelligently I might add. They may say he&apos;s a horrible person and dick in one column, but they (NYT + The Guardian) were his two biggest collaborators in these HORRIBLE leaks.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#2006.E2.80.9308&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#2006.E2.80.9308&lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/julian-assange-the-rolling-stone-interview-20120118&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/julian-assange-the...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;They simply serve as a clearinghouse for leaked info.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Yup agreed. Definitely not a mainstream media outlet. It&apos;s been coined the first stateless news organization for a reason.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should really read this though:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iK8J7-6BPd4J:www.law.yale.edu/Panel_1_Networked_Fourth_Estate.doc+%3EThe+government+would+almost+certainly+be+able+to+invoke+prior+restraint+if+they+were+able+to+take+wikileaks+to+a+US+court.&amp;#38;hl=en&amp;#38;gl=ca&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iK8J7-6...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also it&apos;s hard for an NGO to hire workers to redact information when a nation state attacks them economically:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/mastercard_and_visa_to_stop_processing_wikileaks_d.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/mastercard...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if I&apos;ve made you upset or offended you. My sources are an index on censorship article (40+ org advocating free speech), wikipedia..., a rolling stone article with Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, A Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review Article (best source of info IMO), and TPM (12+ blog/)</text></comment>
<story><title>US Military Classifies Wikileaks As &apos;Enemy Of The United States&apos;</title><url>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120926/23522220526/us-military-classifies-wikileaks-as-enemy-united-states.shtml</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>EvanKelly</author><text>The New York Times will parse and redact the information that they feel could endanger people from any classified information that they may publish or use in an article. They notably published the Pentagon Papers, which showed that the US had been misled regarding Vietnam. This information did not endanger anyone.&lt;p&gt;Wikileaks, at least with the initial major leak, does not redact or edit information to protect anyone. This has been one of the reasons major journalist outlets (such as NYT) didn&apos;t cooperate with them regarding the initial leak.&lt;p&gt;They simply serve as a clearinghouse for leaked info. The government would almost certainly be able to invoke prior restraint if they were able to take wikileaks to a US court. They were not able to show this in the Pentagon Papers case.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not commenting on the &quot;enemy of state&quot; situation, but I did want to clarify that major difference between an organization such as the NYT and Wikileaks.</text></item><item><author>bo1024</author><text>Wikileaks is a journalistic organization. If someone in the US military emails the New York Times a classified secret, that does not make the Times an &quot;enemy of the United States.&quot;&lt;p&gt;All this nonsense about &quot;most grievous breach in opsec history&quot; and &quot;extracting information&quot; completely obscures the issue by putting the blame on the wrong boot.&lt;p&gt;Hacking, spying, all these things can and should be declared illegal/wrong. But publishing data that was sent to you by a willing informant is much less clear-cut, and certainly doesn&apos;t warrant &quot;enemy of the state&quot; status from any country claiming to respect freedom of the press.&lt;p&gt;The goal of news organizations is to find out information and make it public. If you want to keep information private, fine, make it a criminal offense for &lt;i&gt;your people&lt;/i&gt; to disclose that information to news sources. Case closed.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Without commenting on this particular document, the military has an extremely valid reason for criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active servicemembers; people in the armed services are stewards of all sorts of information that can&apos;t be leaked, and Wikileaks has a stated goal of extracting as much intelligence from the US military as they can.&lt;p&gt;This &quot;declaration&quot; (it&apos;s a Techdirt story; someone could do us all a favor by trying to verify what it actually means) comes in the wake of the most grievous opsec breach in US history. The only reason we&apos;re not outraged by the breach itself is that it got overshadowed by the subsequent disclosure to the press. If it had been Israel that extracted this information and &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; ransomed it to The Guardian, we&apos;d be calling for heads to roll over it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>trevelyan</author><text>The materials were initially redacted and Wikileaks did attempt to consult with the Department of State prior to publishing the materials and was stonewalled.&lt;p&gt;Given both this and the way these documents were published in a system accessed by several million individuals (including the allegedly mentally unstable), it seems a leap to argue that the fairest portion of blame if someone was hurt (who?) lies on anything except the Department of State for failing to adequately classify source materials, guard access to sensitive documents, and protect/extract imperiled sources when notified of danger to them in advance.</text></comment>