WikiLeaks

Below find some information about the latest in the ongoing saga of WikiLeaks. Click the Bold Links for more information:

WikiLeaks aftermath
By Shuja Nawaz
August 6, 2010

IN STAND-UP comedy and politics, timing is critical. There was nothing “funny ha-ha’’ about the recent leak of US documents about the Afghanistan war implicating Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency. But there was plenty of what the British call “funny peculiar’’ for sure.

The leaks followed a period of growing confidence of the ISI and Pakistan in their quest to work with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to rebuild relationships marked by severe historical distrust. How Afghanistan and Pakistan overcome the challenge posed by intelligence reports linking the ISI to hostile events in Afghanistan will determine Pakistan’s relations in the neighborhood and with the United States, as well as the trajectory of US withdrawal from the region. President Karzai’s press conference following the leak indicates that some damage has been done already to the nascent Pakistan-Afghan entente......
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Pentagon demands Wikileaks return Afghanistan document
5 August 2010 Last updated at 22:11 ET
BBC News

The Pentagon has demanded that Wikileaks remove a trove of secret documents on the Afghanistan war from its website and cancel plans to publish anything more it holds.

But a Pentagon spokesman acknowledged the already-leaked documents' viral spread across the internet made it unlikely they could ever be quashed.

"We are asking them to do the right thing," spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

Wikileaks called Mr Morrell "obnoxious" and appealed for public donations.

The US military documents released last month detail civilian deaths, friendly-fire episodes and other ground-level incidents.

They include allegations the Pakistani intelligence service has backed the Taliban insurgents' fight against the US-led coalition and the Afghan government, and indicate Taliban fighters have acquired surface-to-air missiles. ......

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Politician: Execution OK for Wikileaks source
August 3, 2010 9:48 AM PDT

A Republican congressman who's a member of the House Intelligence Committee lashed out at Wikileaks this week, saying the Web site's alleged source should be executed for treason.

Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan told a local radio station on Monday (MP3 audio) that he believes that Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence specialist who is suspected of being a source for the document-sharing Web site, should be charged with treason.
When the WHMI interviewer suggested that treason in war is a capital crime, Rogers replied: "Yes, and I would have absolutely, I would support it 100 percent. He put soldiers at risk who are out there fighting for their country, and he put people who are cooperating with the United States government clearly at risk."

Rogers added: "If you have an 18- or 19-year-old over there, you want to get your hands on this private first class yourself. I know I do." .....
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Opinion: It's a WikiLeaks World, Get Used to It
(Aug. 5) -- No matter where right or wrong lie in the posting of classified military reports on WikiLeaks.org, one lesson should be clear: This is how it's going to be. Technology will continue to undercut secrecy -- not just in the military, but in all large organizations.

Government and corporate leaders who aren't ahead of this problem may already have trouble on their hands they don't know about.

When 90,000 pages of documents chronicling the Afghan war went online last week, their potential effects on military planning and security caused the White House to strongly condemn their posting as "irresponsible." Differing more than slightly, Salon commentator Glenn Greenwald praised WikiLeaks.org as "one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world."

While there is universal agreement that over-classification in the U.S. government is a problem, leaking government documents isn't a good way to fix it. Nevertheless, a pair of related technology trends will continue to push this "fix" in a disorderly way if it's not solved methodically.

Technology: First, individuals today have tremendous power to collect, transmit and process information. Average people have hand-held computers and phones, huge-capacity flash memory thumb drives, and so on. The tech-savvy have even more powerful information devices, familiarity with encryption, and anonymization tools. We have overcome the natural conditions that made easy-to-censor hand-written letters a minimal threat to "operational security" in World War II.

Culture: Cultural trends are coming into play as well. Military service-members today live in a culture of information sharing that might baffle their senior officers. They expect to be in touch with the outside world during their tours. Their service is long and difficult enough without quarantining them in a communications bubble for protracted periods. Indeed, doing so would undermine military effectiveness by cutting deeply into the morale of young men and women whose stateside lives are "always connected." This is the generation that knows the value and power of sharing information.

So what's to be done? .....