I mean there’s enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world – within the EU, between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It’s hard to see.
– Julian Assange
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Samizdata quote of the dayDecember 4th, 2010 |
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Interesting cross-over of Wikileaks with Climategate, reported on at WUWT here.
The power politics behind the CAGW scam is leaking out.
Love that word harmonise. Sing my song or else.
How does one harmonise freedom of speech in the EU or the US, with that in China? Or Russia.
Rename Heckler and Kochs, journalism style manuals?
Or Putin boots ?
As I said on another blog, insofar as Assange is posting videos of war atrocities, or policy documents with appalling amorality, he is a public servant. However, as soon as he started publishing private cables on internal discussions, he lost me. That is not different than hacking Sarah Palin’s email.
The core problem is the fact that it got released. The anger should be directed toward the PFC who released them, and all the way up his command chain, not to mention the system that released them. Will the general in charge loose his billet over this? Probably not.
However, this is a more profound issue here. That is the government’s tendency to make almost everything secret. What happens then is you throw everything from the nuclear bomb code secrets to the color of the President’s underwear, into one bag. That means everyone needs to look in that bag, and the system falls apart.
If they made only the truly secret things secret, there would be far less eyes, the ability to have a far tighter system, and far less possibility of leak.
“Hoist on their own petard” seems the appropriate description.
Jessica:
Like what? Not sure I agree.
Again, as I said on another thread, Assange is an inconstant friend of liberty, as I can see it. He’s published stuff that annoys folk that we like seeing annoyed, but I note from an item over at Instapundit that some people’s lives are now in greater danger than before; it is also going to make some kinds of diplomacy and co-operation between the US and certain countries more difficult, and not necessarily in ways that we would like.
I am also going to contend that “transparency” is not quite the wonderful thing that it is always cracked up to be. It is in danger of becoming a sort of cant expression, such as “socially responsible investment”, etc.
Sadly JP, that is a price I think we all need to pay. Having the state lose some ‘good’ capability is an unavoidable consequence of trying to make the state less able to do bad things. We either want a less powerful state or we don’t.
The Many Headed Monster can either be trusted or it cannot, and it manifestly cannot, hence the only viable attack is a systemic one (try to reveal everything), not a targetted one (just pick the ‘bad stuff’) because the ability to do the ‘good stuff’ is always (and I do mean always) used to justify having the ability to do ‘bad stuff’.
During the Cold War such tactics against a western state were tantamount to supporting the Soviets regardless of your motivations (which is why Rothbard was an utter prick, indeed he was actually a ‘useful idiot’). But the Cold War is over and the truly formidable enemy now is closer to home… indeed it is the regulatory welfare states we live in.
Burn it all I say and let the chips fall where they may. Innocent casualties are unavoidable in any conflict.
Well, Perry, I’m sure the Lebanese minister who was exposed as working against Hezbollah will disagree, among many others in near conflict zones who took risks for the West.
It would also be interesting to see where the chips would have fallen if the D-Day landings weren’t secret or Israel’s preparations to bomb the Osirak reactor were subject to Assange’s attentions.
Well Chip some people do not think Lebanon and Israel’s security needs over ride the need to make it harder for the USA to do the more undesirable things it does.
And in case you did not notice, D-Day was in 1944 and we are in 2010. Nazi Germany… and the Soviet Union… are no longer threatening us and Al Qaeda is little more than a rabid toy poodle by comparison to those threats. Oh and the Turks ain’t at the gates of Vienna either in case you think that matters too.
Security just don’t hack it any more as an excuse to tolerate the vast and ever more pervasive tentacles of state.
Isn’t harmonizing free speech with the EU and China kinda like hiring PETA to plan a barbecue?
Maybe I’m being thick here, but what “enormous pressures”? From whom? Why is this a SQOTD?
All I can see is when countries (such as Ecuador recently) rewrite constitutions or make new laws affecting freedom of speech, Press freedom etc, they generally concede the citizen as little as the electoral equations allow them to: i.e. it’s determined by local balance of power. True, any new restrictions are dressed up in the flavour of current collectivist jargon, to make them more palatable, but that’s the closest I see to there being any “enormous pressures”.
Jessica:
That’s not how it works. NATO countries typically use at least four levels of security classification, in addition to Unclassified (which is everything not in one of the other classifications). Top Secret is the highest level that is publicly acknowledged to exist in most NATO countries, but I strongly suspect there are levels above it that are not even acknowledged to exist.
Tedd (and Alisa), I beg to differ; that’s exactly how it works. Our government routinely classifies anything it deems remotely confidential, or even merely embarrassing. When the Washington Post (a pillar of the left-wing media establishment) reports that 854,000 people in the US have top secret security clearances (not lesser clearance levels), there can be absolutely no question that the amount of materials bearing that classification has exploded far beyond any rational level. When you consider the probable amount of documents having lesser clearance levels (which still aren’t publicly available) the mind boggles.
And it’s not even officially classified information which is withheld. Governments at all levels, but especially the federal government, routinely refuse to honor legitimate “Freedom of Information Act” disclosure requests on the most transparently fraudulent basis. At least the Supreme Court is hearing one such case now. We desperately need to cut back significantly on the government’s reflexive obsession with secrecy. If Assange’s leaks (and his threatened “doomsday” one) help with this it has my support.
Indeed, Laird. Radley Balko’s most recent missive for reason deals with how police tried to remove exculpatory (to the defendant) information from the defendant’s video camera, as the defendant was legally recording an encounter with the police for defensive purposes.
Why Assange is not releasing secret cables from the Russians or the Chinese ? For the same reason that there’s an “artwork” called “Piss Christ” but not a “Piss Mohammed”. Both Assange and that”artist” aren’t afraid of being beheaded by western democratic governments or Christian fundamentalists.
However, wikileaks indeed crossed a line with the Saudis. We’ll see how that turns out.
The problem with this line of argument is that you are just assuming that Assange would, in say, WW2, not have published leaked information from a disgruntled or delusional agent, and that his own, patriotic urges would have taken priority. Well, maybe, maybe not. But given the sheer volume of material that has been published, it is hard to believe that Assange could have read it all, or realised the potential risks. He just dumped the whole shebang for the sheer, adolescent joy of it.
As one commenter noted, the Lebanon minister now in greater fear for his life will not be taking quite such a relaxed view of the matter.
Yes, in viewing the Lebanese and similar situations, I think the fact that we view things from a western meta-context and do not routinely live in fear our lives, is of major significance.
The Turks are not at the gates of Vienna, but their modern counterparts have taken cultural possession of substantial parts of many European cities: Malmo, Paris and Amsterdam, Leeds, Birmingham and lots more.
At current trends Europe will be 25% Islamic in ten years or so, according to Geert Wilders.
Which might not necessarily be a bad thing in itself but if you find freedom of expression invites a summary death sentence in the street it rather detracts from the western experience of tolerance.
Further. It’s not just a rabid poodle but now has the backing of a state, the rulers of which have no problem with death and dying, and would appear to have missiles that can reach all the above cities and more.
But regarding Assagne. If he were to spread his attacks to more hostile targets instead of tamed pussy cats, his liberty credentials would indeed be more convincing.
Tamed pussy cats, eh? The vast regulatory welfare states are…tamed pussy cats? It is good to know that the states which engage in panoptic data gathering on a vast scale, who impose pervasive regulation on almost every aspect of your life and who can project military power around the globe are mere pussy cats. Nice to know we have nothing to worry about.
Ted: refusing to release unclassified info which should be lawfully disclosed is not the same as officially classifying it. It seems to me that the police in your example (and I am aware that there are many like it) are simply breaking the law. Still, I do see Laird’s point.
Living where I am, my view on the subject is not nearly as relaxed as Perry’s, but I do see his point. In any case, bottom line is that even though Assange is not someone I’d have a drink with, people like him and actions like his are the price of freedom of speech, and I tend to think that it is a price (a very real one – see the Lebanese minister) worth paying overall. Of course, my attitude is entirely different towards those who have direct access to such information and who actually disclosed it to Assange. They are traitors, in both the legal and the moral sense of the word.
Sure, for all we know Assange might have published Roman secrets that assisted the Visigoths too. But the Cold War is over. So is WWII. Dumping secrets on the internet now because those sort of actions might have helped the Soviets twenty years ago or the Nazis sixty years ago is not a viable reason for inaction now.
Context is everything. If this was 1944, I would oppose Assange revealing state secrets. But it is 2010 and the biggest threats to my liberty are not the Soviets. Nazis, Napoleon or the Visigoths… or Al Qaeda for that matter… it is the regulatory welfare states that regulate my life. If the state was 1/3rd the size it is now, it would still fight Al Qaeda whilst standing on one leg whistling Dixie. The Turks are not at the gates of Vienna and if it was not for regulatory welfare state enforced dismantling of natural social integration processes via ‘anti-discrimination’ legislation (i.e. anti-freedom of association/disassociation legislation), un-integrated Muslims would not be at the gates of Malmo or Marsailles either.
Of course he did not read it all just like when an RAF Lancaster dumped incendiaries on Hamburg, they were only targeted ‘Hamburg’ rather than any particular target in Hamburg. To understand what Assange is doing you really REALLY need to read this… and read it with a filter that avoids any premature reaction the trigger word ‘conspiracy’.
He is conducting a systemic attack on the very nature of how governments work. He is NOT carrying out a targeted attack on some undesired aspect of government, so to expect him to carefully leak a few embarrassing bits of data highlighting some egregious abuse in, say, NHS hospitals or $1000 toilet seats or EUrocrat expense claims is to completely miss the point of what Wikileaks is doing. Think of it this way: Assange has noticed the target has one weakness…it is inflammable… so he set fire to it. Fire however is not a targeted attack, it attacks everything. But if that is the only way to meaningfully damage the target…
He is attacking the informal communication networks that states use to do the things they do. Now if you think that states are sacrosanct and what they do it too important to condone systemic attacks on them, well then you have to oppose Assange. If however you see modern panoptic regulatory welfare states as out-of-control monsters that need to be rolled back on a systemic level rather than trimmed a bit here and there, ie you seek a fundamental rebalancing of state vs society… then you need to realise that (1) the pervasive organs of states will not go quietly into the night without seriously messing with them (2) that means some revolutionary disorder must be inflicted on the system. Casualties are inevitable.
Alan K Re “Isn’t harmonizing free speech with the EU and China kinda like hiring PETA to plan a barbecue?”
Is it only me? I took that quote as a semi humerous observation pointing out it can go either way and to be careful what way you let it go.
Harmonise with say China and the old freedom of speech is much more limited that if you harmonise with the US.
Maybe I go it wrong?
Perry, you along with a few of us hawks (rightly) supported things such as the NATO attacks on the Taliban, the overthrow of Saddam and his crime family in Iraq, etc; it is surely possible to argue that leaks of intel via a Wikileaks outfit might have compromised those ventures, had they occured. That is why I don’t share your approach here.
Sure, the Soviet Union is gone, WW2 was 70s years ago, etc. But unless one is a barking moonbat Chomskyite, it stands to reason that countries are still going to need to defend themselves and where necessary, zap foreign enemies and make use of field agents on the ground. If they are less able to gain intelligence because of the actions of the Assanges of this world, that is not good, surely.
In any event, this will probably encourage governments into using old-fashioned communcations techniques and make them far less willing to commit vital communications to the internet. I think we are deluding ourselves to imagine otherwise.
Normally I’d be on your side about most of this but the problem is that Assange’s targets are not selected with any sort of precision. He just publishes shitloads of stuff to see what happens. Well, we are starting to see it, all right.
Perry.
Tamed pussy cats insofar as dealing with real enemies are concerned.
They are very good at patting down old ladies at airports, yes, but when it comes to defending words of truth spoken by the likes of Geert Wilders, they shriek in horror, throw up their hands, block their ears and call the police to rescue them from seeing the reality that their civilisation is being taken down around them.
Yes, they have the ability to resist and can be very tough with some, often harmless or even beneficial folk.
Which also makes me wonder why they do it.
If someone is driving a car at full tilt towards a brick wall and comes up with all sorts of reasons and excuses as to why he should not use the brakes, I am forced to wonder why.
Re Julian. I have read the Chinese security services apparently prefer to regard ALL information as potentially secret because sometimes one can put one and two together and work out three.
I guess they have their reasons.
There is a lot of good in western civilisation and if it goes I think we can expect a most awful and vicious totalitarian experience.
Implied in this letter written by Dennis Wheatley in 1947 (hijacked from commenter Michael Fowke at Leg-iron) is the fact that our very technological capability has given rise to some very disturbing possibilities.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/wheatley_letter.pdf
Do they, really – or is it part of their strategy, and in the likes of Wilders they see a worse enemy than the Islamists?
Are you sure it is their civilization?
And, I have some thoughts on the brick-wall point as well.
Sorry, didn’t mean to “bold”, but rather to “blockquote”…
I’m still undecided on this issue, but Perry is making a very powerful case here.
“Normally I’d be on your side about most of this but the problem is that Assange’s targets are not selected with any sort of precision. He just publishes shitloads of stuff to see what happens.”
Johnathan, it’s pretty clear that you didn’t read (or didn’t understand) the link Perry included in his post at 11:54 AM (which I also linked in an earlier thread on this topic). The lack of precision is the whole point.
Even a cursory glance at Wikipedia will reveal that Wikileaks does not only go after western governments. That this line is constantly trotted out is so dishonest it honestly shocks me, surely a brief perusal of Wikipedia is practically a given when reading about something in this day and age?
The very first country Wikileaks had a major leak about was Kenya. And are people suggesting that Wikileaks will not publish Chinese or Russian documents if they got their mitts on them? I’m sure they would. I’m sure they have in the past, in fact.
Wikileaks is not a hacker outfit, it relies on whistleblowers. it doesn’t go after anybody at all, therefore, it merely facilitates whistleblowing via the internet. If there are more US whistleblowers than in other states maybe you should ask why that is.
That said, Perry has been a tad conflicted on this subject too… it has been an ‘iterative process’ on my part 🙂
Actually I was rather more in the “not at all keen on Assange” camp at first… then I had an extended argument with the gf on this subject as I was appalled by the idea of releasing operational military information (and I still am) but I have to say I now ‘get it’. The sheer banality of much of the data had me sneering at first but I now realise it’s a feature, not a bug. Likewise the un-targeted nature of the attack… unavoidable: to clear a field choked with fast growing weeds you need a flame thrower, not a sniper rifle.
So I find myself increasingly unable to be anything but supportive of the overall objective. Did any of you who are genuine friends of liberty and who, like me, rail against the over-mighty state, think inflicting a systemic blow against state would be cost and casualty free?
Yes, saying what we think in the virtual salons of the internet matters and it is an indispensable part of the culture-war… but talk is cheap. Assange on the other hand actually did something… sure, he ended up putting some people at risk, including himself, but like I said, did any of you think a striking a real blow that has caused state world wide to howl would be cost free?
Laird:
There’s no contradiction between what I said and what you said. I was responding to Jessica’s assertion that the government classifies everything the same. They do not. But I agree that more things than necessary are classified as other than Unclassified.
Remember that, from the government’s point of view, everything is classified by definition. It’s just that some things are classified as Unclassified.
Tedd, I think Jessica was making essentially the same point that you are, that government reflexively “classifies” almost everything. I don’t think she was saying anything about technical distinctions between grades of classification. But whatever; we all seem to be in agreement now!
I see that the US Senate is considering a bill to make the Wikileaks publications illegal. Oooh, now that will stop them!
As if the US has jurisdiction over Assange wherever he’s holed up at the moment, or over his actions outside of the country. Or can override the First Amendment with a mere law. Yup, we got us a right smart bunch of fellers up there on Capitol Hill!
I think we’re all going to have to wear brown shirts now when we shop at Walmart.
Laird, I was nodding in agreement, until this: “Or can override the First Amendment with a mere law.” They overrode a bunch of other amendments with mere laws/regulations, why not this one?
FWIW, Alisa, our Supreme Court has been more touchy about prior restraints on speech than with most of the other “constitutional rights”. And there is precedent: see the Pentagon Papers case. Different times, different Court, I know. Still, I rather think we’d get the same result today. Perhaps we’ll get a chance to find out!
A country that can ban beer can ban anything. I always find the faith of Americans in their Supreme Court touching. 😉
I don’t think there is any a-priori faith in a SC as an institution, although people rightly build expectations on a specific court’s composition – in fact, the picking of judges is always a big political issue in the US. Americans are not as silly as some across the pond seem to think.
Not to mention one where so many are obsessed with team sports:-)
Hey, we love our team sports and our beer! In fact, they often go together.
Monday Night Football tonight. Jets vs Patriots; should be a good one. Note to self: stop at the drive-through beer outlet on the way home.
As long as it’s not baseb…sorry, cricket…
I think Perry has articulated what this is all about quite well. This is basically hacker libertarianism taken to the next level. And it resonates with people on the internet because over the course of the weekend Wikileaks has acquired over four hundred thousand Facebook friends. The Pirate Parties and many individuals are also rallying now to provide backup mirror servers.
Somebody said that Julian Assange is a nihilist but I think the more likely theory is that he is creating a kind of indiscriminate apolitical truth bomb to try to provoke open government as well as make the bad look bad and the good look good. Whether this will work or backfire is another question but it is undoubtedly a highly unusual tactic given it’s global intent.
Julian Assange is a former hacker and you can recognise the Crypto-Anarchist concepts he is using to circumvent the reach of governments. For me this is testament to the potentiality of the ideas dreamed up within the American Cypherpunk subculture.
After looking at Wikileaks’ attempts to bulletproof their funding and donation systems I’m starting to think that they knew the full import of what they were doing all along and Perry is right to give Julian Assange man of destiny status. He certainly seems to think that the work of Wikileaks will be pivotal.
The American government has an admirable side to it that genuinely fights censorship and actively promotes free speech. I hope they can absorb this shock.
“The American government has an admirable side to it that genuinely fights censorship and actively promotes free speech. I hope they can absorb this shock.”
Given the way this is playing out, how the State Department’s cables are being received and commented on, who is getting embarrassed, those who say this is all a US plot don’t look so silly.
Do the PTB have an interest in the continued existence of the Internet as we know it?
Bastiat says things and entertains policies with which I disagree.
But the main thrust of what he says and the world he tends towards, I favour.
Likewise this guy:
http://www.humanevents.com/UncommonKnowledge.php (thanks Paul Marks.)
Mr Julian wants to watch it all burn.
Western civilisation is a fragile creature.
Loads not good, okay especially the collectivist trend.
So work on specifics.
I know you guys want to mallet all the hard drives, etc, but you might find there’s not much left afterwards except a nightmare.
John B: problem is, a nightmare is coming anyway. I am not necessarily disagreeing with your point, just adding another one for consideration.
Assange has turned himself in.(Link) I see the latest batch of leaks gave a whole list of potential terrorist targets.
Laird writes:
So, he dumps loads of data, including stuff that might have dangerous consequences, and this does not matter? Huh?
Now of course you could argue that such data could be inferred logically, even without any sort of list; and again, you could also argue that this is not telling us much that might not be apparent already. But some terror groups might nevertheless be less easy to catch and track down because of this.
I guess I am alone here in just not getting why Assange is seen as one of us. Is there something here I am missing?
Being caught whistleblowing in the west doesn’t result in a .22 bullet to the side of the head.
Jonathan: I don’t think he is necessarily seen as “one of us”, but rather as one who serves at least some of our objectives. And, as Perry points out, no objective is ever price-free. You may think though that the price Assange has set is too high, and you’d have a point, at least with me. Question is, is a “lower price” realistically possible. Personally, I don’t know the answer to that.
Johnathan, I never said that it “does not matter”. Of course it matters. But you’re completely missing the larger objective when you keep drawing this back to specifics. I don’t think you’re being intentionally obtuse, but the only other conclusion I can draw is that you still haven’t read the article Perry linked. Read (and digest) it, and we’ll talk again.
Jonathan. As far as relative freedom is concerned, you are correct.
(As in, try running this blog in Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, Middle East, except Israel.)
Sure lots needs to be reformed to align with reality.
Assagne’s way is not the way.
He is not interested in the truth or a better way of life so much as in Assagne.
It is obvious there are better ways.
After much thought, I’m now very much with Perry on this one. Unusually for me, I’ve nothing of my own to add!
I’m totally with Perry. as an aside…
if a totally private corporation such as B&Q does not manage to keep it’s “latest 4-day poorly-fitted kitchen SUPER duper DEAL!!!!!!” secret, allowing Homebase to beat them to it with an even superer deal, then more fool B&Q.
if the King of England can’t keep his “them Saudis are all brown-hatters, what, and by Jove do they pong, Jeeves” remarks secret, then he either shouldn’t make remarks like that, or he should improve his security measures. People in his position or indeed that of US Diplomats should know better.
Shooting Assange – whatever his motives- is pointless.
Somebody who appears to know Julian Assange wrote this of him.
This is a quote from Julian Assange in an interview just published.
And this is from the Forbes interview. I think this is quite an interesting interview.
Laird:
I’m not sure that’s true, so I’ll clarify what I’m trying to say. Maybe the terminology is confusing things. Jessica said, “What happens then is you throw everything from the nuclear bomb code secrets to the color of the President’s underwear, into one bag,” which I took to mean classifying everything the same way. But they don’t. Nuclear bomb code secrets would be in a very different “bag” from the colour of the President’s underwear.
However, two related things that have been mentioned by various people I do agree with. One is that a lot of things that should be in Unclassified end up in a higher classification. The other is that anything in Unclassified should be available via a freedom of information request, no questions asked.
Well Mr Assange – most of your friends support globel government (although they do not like the words – that is what the various agreements and structures they support would amount to).
And you are quite right in suspecting that such “globel cooperation” (by governments – i.e. based on force and the threat of force) would lead to “harmonization” (i.e. censorship and tyranny – with nowhere to run to).
Perhaps you should reconsider your friends – and your own political opinions.
Paul: who are those friends?
The friends of Mr A…….. (not the libertarian cartoon character).
Virtually every leftist organization on the planet.
‘Friends’ because they support his actions in the media, or because he is actively involved with them?