Loss of Privacy

Wikileaks has released 92,201 records pertaining to Afghanistan, including intelligence reports and paramilitary operations. In the leak, Pakistan is identified as an insurgent ally.

Wikileaks editor Julian Assange, in an exclusive interview with Channel 4 News said he believes this is “the most comprehensive history of a war ever to be published – during the course of the war”.

The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.

The White House is condemning the release. No surprise there.

Reaction in Washington political circles is already beginning. The Times posted a White House memo to reporters sent Sunday evening, without naming which Obama aide wrote it, seeking to downplay the disclosure as not surprising, and saying that “Wikileaks is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes U.S. policy in Afghanistan.” And Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Foreign Relations Committee, said the release demonstrates that “calibrations” to the U.S. policy toward Afghanistan were necessary.

The time line and spin from the White House at the New York Times.
The Guardian has an interactive map detailing events related to the leak.  They have some of the best coverage detailing the events and the leak.
Channel 4 has several stories and the video below about the unseen Afghan war.

CNN has an article. If CNN does what it usually does, there will be pentagon officials speaking on the news about how bad the leak is and not discussing what’s actually in the leak.
Boing Boing has a story with several links to other places to read and digest the information.
Spiegel also has a story and some photos.
Glenn Greenwald wrote a piece last week about the motives behind the whistle-blower prosecutions. It’s highly relevant to this story.
Reddit also has a very lively discussion on the matter.

WikiLeaks is down at the moment, unable to sustain the weight of the hits it’s receiving over this current leak. The documents in question can be found here and a dedicated website for the information can be found here. In the meantime, you can also grab a torrent of the files and download it. This will help decrease the load on the WikiLeaks page.

One of the more interesting aspects to this entire story is the recurrent question of why does WikiLeaks now do the investigative journalism that the newspapers should be doing? Yes, they are reporting on the story, but it is WikiLeaks that is gathering information and it is Julian Assange that is putting his ass on the line. Granted, he had some major help from places, such as the Guardian, in figuring out what it was that he had, but regular journalists used to perform this task. WikiLeaks essentially become the middleman as the newspapers are afraid to take a stand. Still, credit needs to be given to the Guardian for taking a small stand and sifting through and categorizing the information and helping Assange.

Anyone with even a passing interest in the quagmire that is Afghanistan should be reading this. Then, consider donating to WikiLeaks so they can continue their work.

The “kill switch” has been approved in the House and now heads to the Senate. A Senate committee has already approved the bill and a vote on the floor is upcoming. This is an attempt to stop dissent. When politicians say it’s a good idea and China does it, so we must do it, you should worry about your country.

The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which is being pushed hard by Senator Joe Lieberman, would hand absolute power to the federal government to close down networks, and block incoming Internet traffic from certain countries under a declared national emergency.

Despite the Center for Democracy and Technology and 23 other privacy and technology organizations sending letters to Lieberman and other backers of the bill expressing concerns that the legislation could be used to stifle free speech, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed in the bill in advance of a vote on the Senate floor.

Take a few minutes to watch this video from Public Knowledge’s Legal Director Harold Feld about ACTA and then head to their site to fill out a form to send to the president, letting President Obama know how you feel about ACTA.

Michele Bachmann is nuts. She needs to be voted out as she doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing.

And as proof that liberals are evilly trying to silence right-wingers, Bachmann trotted out … net neutrality.

Bachmann: Oh sure, that’s all they have left now, is they use pejorative terms, hateful terms, against those who are carrying the message. So whether they’re attacking conservative talk radio, or conservative TV, or whether it’s Internet sites — I mean, let’s face it, what’s the Obama administration doing? They’re advocating net neutrality, which is essentially censorship of the Internet!

This is the Obama administration advocating censorship of the Internet. Why? They want to silence the voices that are opposing them.

Net neutrality? Censorship? Really? Well, not really. How about more like the precise opposite?

Here’s a video from Crooks and Liars showing just how insane this woman really is. The number of things she makes up is absolutely staggering.

A surveillance program authorized by the Bush administration to allow the National Security Agency to spy on the internet activities of federal employees is now being expanded. The Obama administration is planning to expand the Einstein internet surveillance software.