Taliban to Wikileaks: "Thanks Guys!"

[Spoonist]

Alright. Wikileaks has done some foolishness. If they cause bloodshed, hit them with the full force of the law for those incidents.

That being said, this is different from 'Blood on their hands!'

Check your facts. The fuckers deliberately hosted their website in Sweden where the law can't touch them.

That was exactly what the pirate bay thought. So its not necessarily true that they have the legaleze covered.

[Shroom Man 777]

Hrm, how feasible is putting a server in international waters? Doing the internet version of L. Ron Hubbard?

[Sarevok]

If your website compromises schemes by major nations hiding in an offshore facility wont save you. It would just make your server site easier to locate and destroy by military retaliation.

[Sarevok]

Edit : what i mean is they will just seize your computers and arrest your employees. At least in a country like Sweeden you have a chance to defend yourself in court first before your website is forcibly shut down.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh! They can put it in Venezuela! Or Cuba! Or CHINA! Yes, better.

[Axiomatic]

Alright. Wikileaks has done some foolishness. If they cause bloodshed, hit them with the full force of the law for those incidents.

That being said, this is different from 'Blood on their hands!'

Check your facts. The fuckers deliberately hosted their website in Sweden where the law can't touch them.

That was exactly what the pirate bay thought. So its not necessarily true that they have the legaleze covered.

You do know that the Pirate Bay is still up and running, right? And that while they have received many legal threats, they have never removed any torrents because of them?

[Sarevok]

Huh ? I thought Thepiratebay.com was sold to another company. The original group no longer runs it after legal troubles.

[CJvR]

Asked on NBC’s “Today” show on Wednesday if the killing of an Afghan as a result of the WikiLeaks disclosure would be considered “collateral damage” in his efforts to make details of the war public, Mr. Assange said, “If we had, in fact, made that mistake, then, of course, that would be something that we would take very seriously.”

That sounds like it came straight from a Pentagon press release after an accidental bombing of the wrong target.

[Atlan]

Asked on NBC’s “Today” show on Wednesday if the killing of an Afghan as a result of the WikiLeaks disclosure would be considered “collateral damage” in his efforts to make details of the war public, Mr. Assange said, “If we had, in fact, made that mistake, then, of course, that would be something that we would take very seriously.”

That sounds like it came straight from a Pentagon press release after an accidental bombing of the wrong target.

True.

The irony, it burns.

[Axiomatic]

Huh ? I thought Thepiratebay.com was sold to another company. The original group no longer runs it after legal troubles.

I don't know about that, but thepiratebay.org is up and running and has been, near as I can tell, at least since 2006.

[Skylon]

Has anyone going through the documents noted any specific naming of Afghan informants? I've noted the names of villages, which could certainly result in reprisals by the Taliban....but no individuals.

[loomer]

I've noted a few names of politicians, police and military figures, but all of them would already be known as resistors by the Taliban.

[Spoonist]

That was exactly what the pirate bay thought. So its not necessarily true that they have the legaleze covered.

You do know that the Pirate Bay is still up and running, right? And that while they have received many legal threats, they have never removed any torrents because of them?

You never read the frontpage I take it?
The guys who used to run it was taken to the cleaners, including their internet provider. Now the higher court is refusing to run the next court instance until after the swedish elections so that he pirate party won't get free attention/votes.

[folti78]

Alright. Wikileaks has done some foolishness. If they cause bloodshed, hit them with the full force of the law for those incidents.

That being said, this is different from 'Blood on their hands!'

Check your facts. The fuckers deliberately hosted their website in Sweden where the law can't touch them.

That was exactly what the pirate bay thought. So its not necessarily true that they have the legaleze covered.

And it took years of lobbying and investigation after the 2006 police raid to start the trial, which is still underway.

Meanwhile TPB's service still up and running and they have polished their skill to set up servers (and/or alternative access routes to their servers) at short notice, if some provider or the police decides to pull the plug on them. Also having up to date backups of your servers out of the police's reach is helpful in case of the police pulling the plug on your servers. Even if it's unintentional like in the 2006 raid where the police confiscated every other server located in the same room with the TPB servers.

If Wikileaks' staff is not totally incompetent, they already took some precautions in case of somebody pulling the plug on them.

[Sarevok]

Problem with wikileaks is that they are pissing on dangerous and powerful people everyday. You don't make habit out of making enemies with people who could arrest your entire staff or make you disappear from face of the Earth.

[Sea Skimmer]

Hrm, how feasible is putting a server in international waters? Doing the internet version of L. Ron Hubbard?

That would mean you are stuck using satellite bandwidth which is very expensive, and every warship on earth has the right to stop and search you for any reason it wants. Pirate radio stations at sea used to be a problem, but the annoyed governments would simply send out a vessel to stop any supplies coming on board, forcing them into port where the folks on board would be arrested (this avoids a messy boarding). Something similar would happen to an ocean going server farm, assuming that government pressure didn't just cut off the satellite link. Most satellite communications companies make a fortune selling extra bandwidth for government and military use, and they aren't going to endanger that to support anything else. All the more so since the government can make life hell on any kind of communications company that owns hardware very easily. Want a permit to dig up that fiber optic cable you spent 5 billion on to repair it? Okay fill out these forms and will get back to you in ten years...

[Drone]

Has anyone going through the documents noted any specific naming of Afghan informants? I've noted the names of villages, which could certainly result in reprisals by the Taliban....but no individuals.

The problem is, it doesn't matter if they name people individually, even though it sounds like there have been names published, because CA Reports have been leaked, and I don't think I've ever submitted one that didn't include, I met this person who said he's from this place, with this many kids, looks like this, feels this way about these things, believes the biggest problems in the area are such and such, and these are his friends, this is how I find him, etc. (Replace this and these with specific details in that last sentance and it makes more sense) Even if you redact the name, you're going to be able to identify who these people are. Stuff like that has NOTHING to do with hiding the war effort from the US people, keeping it secret only helps the locals stay safe when we're not there.

[Axiomatic]

Problem with wikileaks is that they are pissing on dangerous and powerful people everyday. You don't make habit out of making enemies with people who could arrest your entire staff or make you disappear from face of the Earth.

True enough. Hence the huge file labeled "Insurance" that wikileaks put out on a torrent. It's encrypted, and presumably the idea is that in the event that those dangerous and powerful people do something, the encryption key becomes known.

[Sarevok]

^^

That is an intrigueing security measure. Though it could also be a bluff.

[Tanasinn]

Wikileaks chief Julian Assange,whose own organization operates in utter secrecy,

This annoys me. Setting aside the character of this latest leak, it should be no surprise that when you act as a whistleblower against forces that can use the law as a cudgel to imprison, torture, or murder you, you had better operate in secrecy.

[Sarevok]

I imagine the secrecy is to protect their information sources rather than wikileaks employees. Wikileaks website itself can be shut down secrecy or no secrecy.

[Axiomatic]

I mentioned the insurance file earlier, this is where I heard it from:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/0 ... ance-file/

[Archaic`]

Meanwhile TPB's service still up and running and they have polished their skill to set up servers (and/or alternative access routes to their servers) at short notice, if some provider or the police decides to pull the plug on them. Also having up to date backups of your servers out of the police's reach is helpful in case of the police pulling the plug on your servers. Even if it's unintentional like in the 2006 raid where the police confiscated every other server located in the same room with the TPB servers.

To follow up on this....The Swedish Pirate Party took up their hosting, and will be operating the site from within Parliament itself if they manage to get a seat in their upcoming election (they already have seats in the European Parliament, are the third largest party in the country in terms of registered members, and are apparently expected to get a balance of power in the Swedish parliament this election). The Swedish Constitution includes a clause which guarantees them Parliamentary Immunity from prosecution or lawsuit for things done as part of their political mandate, which would then effectively make Pirate Bay untouchable so long as they still have a seat.

[Ryan Thunder]

I mentioned the insurance file earlier, this is where I heard it from:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/0 ... ance-file/

If its anything that would be somehow devastating to whoever went after them, they're hypocrites. Oops. Bluff called.

[CJvR]

The Swedish Pirate Party took up their hosting[/url], and will be operating the site from within Parliament itself if they manage to get a seat in their upcoming election (they already have seats in the European Parliament, are the third largest party in the country in terms of registered members, and are apparently expected to get a balance of power in the Swedish parliament this election). The Swedish Constitution includes a clause which guarantees them Parliamentary Immunity from prosecution or lawsuit for things done as part of their political mandate, which would then effectively make Pirate Bay untouchable so long as they still have a seat.

Unless something truly spectacular goes wrong before the elections the Pirate party will not get a seat.