Assange Protected Under 1st Amendment?

[Eddie]

I don't see Assange as the problem. If he gets killed or goes to jail there will always be somebody else willing to air dirty laudry for fun and profit. We had secrets and we failed to protect them. The problem is with the gatekeepers of those secrets and not with the thieves.

 

[Expat]

Seriously? Wow . Maybe we should just open our borders and let them walk right in.

Actually I think you have it right. There is a cabal amongst us that would advocate policies that would destroy this country. Once destroyed then we would not be hated nearly as much by our enemies.

 

[SemperFiUSMC]

I don't see Assange as the problem. If he gets killed or goes to jail there will always be somebody else willing to air dirty laudry for fun and profit. We had secrets and we failed to protect them. The problem is with the gatekeepers of those secrets and not with the thieves.

That's certainly a fair root cause hypothesis. On the other hand if there's no market for this type of information downstream, no one will steal it upstream.

I submit we should address both ends of the spectrum.

 

[Expat]

That's certainly a fair root cause hypothesis. On the other hand if there's no market for this type of information downstream, no one will steal it upstream.

I submit we should address both ends of the spectrum.

We have the main perpetrator in my opinion. An American that betrayed his country to advance his political agenda against don't ask don't tell. Everyone else is a peripheral issue.

 

[ATOMonkey]

There will always be a market for information, becasue information is power.

 

[SemperFiUSMC]

We have the main perpetrator in my opinion. An American that betrayed his country to advance his political agenda against don't ask don't tell. Everyone else is a peripheral issue.

That's your opinion and a perfectly reasonable one. I just happen to disagree with it. Those that use the information to damage this country are just as menacing, especially given that they have more documents and more cables that have not yet been released.

 

[ATOMonkey]

What information, that was released, could damage the country?

 

[Expat]

What information, that was released, could damage the country?

Information that when analyzed would reveal our sources of information in foreign countries which could lead to their deaths or at least removal from their positions. They can also determine the methods that we use to access information in their country and they would then eliminate that access.

 

[Wink and the Gun]

What information, that was released, could damage the country?

Specific capabilities of our military and intelligence agencies which would allow the enemy to circumvent them, or to simply plug up a weakness that we are exploiting.

 

[machete]

Seriously? Wow . Maybe we should just open our borders and let them walk right in.

You could cancel the whole military---wont change a thing... Aint nobody looking to come over here and run things... Do you know how much it costs to run and occupy a country??? Were going broke in our failed attempt to occupy and run two smallish countries... If we cant run small desert countries,,,how is anyone going to run us?????

Anyway,,,aint what I said anyway... I was talking about American interests,,,and you up and made that the same as talking about American soil... Us butting into the Middle East isnt the same as the VIRGINIA COASTLINE!!!!!!!!

Aint nothing that Wikileaks said going to make VIRGINIA any less safe... We may lose our credibility in butting into everyone elses business around the world,,,but we shouldnt be doing that---IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

Chances are,,,Assange did us a favor... Get our noses out of the rest of the worlds business....

 

[ATOMonkey]

Information that when analyzed would reveal our sources of information in foreign countries which could lead to their deaths or at least removal from their positions. They can also determine the methods that we use to access information in their country and they would then eliminate that access.

Well, that hurts them, not us.

It hurts us because our snitch gets whacked, but that's a risk they run. It's also why we pay them large amounts of cash. I'm also betting there are people willing to give up info for a black CIA duffel full of greenbacks.

Even if they eliminate access in one way, we'll find a way to get it in another way.

 

[ATOMonkey]

Specific capabilities of our military and intelligence agencies which would allow the enemy to circumvent them, or to simply plug up a weakness that we are exploiting.

I was under the impression that all of the military info, that was released, was outdated.

They did blow cover, which is unfortunate, but not a show stopper.

 

[machete]

The only reason to assassinate him is because he won't stop doing what he's doing. He's come out now with a statement that Hillary Clinton needs to go. That is certainly open to debate (she was wholly unqualified to start with, but it was the only job they could offer her that they could control her), but he's not a US citizen and none of his f*****g business!

And we aint Iraqi---Afghani---Palestinian---Lebanese---Serbian---Somali---Korean---Taiwanese---Panamanian---Philippine---Syrian---German---etc,,,but we stick our noses in their business...

Espionage is the right charge. He is engaging others to spy on the US and using the information gathered through those sources to damage this country.

He aint hurting this country,,,in the least.... America is American soil,,,not Iraqi oilfields... So he screws up some overseas corporate profits...whaaah!!!! We aint supposed to be using the military for that,,,anyhow.....

 

[mrjarrell]

Well, that hurts them, not us.

It hurts us because our snitch gets whacked, but that's a risk they run. It's also why we pay them large amounts of cash.

Even if they eliminate access in one way, we'll find a way to get it in another way.

To date, factoring in the current (295+ pieces) and previous Wikileaks releases, there has been no evidence that these releases have caused harm to anyone. And we can be certain that the government is looking, desperately, to find a case were someone has been harmed. It's certainly caused the government some embarrassment and opened the eyes of a lot of people (for those that actually read the releases and didn't just b**ch and moan about them), but the case that it's caused any substantive harm has not been made by anyone. Just looking at the info in the new releases on Pakistan is an eye opener and should embarrass the government. Their relationship with this country is a huge cluster frak, at best. Would we know the details of why it's so messed up without this release? Nope, but it's interesting to see how bad things really are and to see what the government's been covering up. It might just force them to go forward in a saner fashion, now that we know about it.

 

[Expat]

Well, that hurts them, not us.

It hurts us because our snitch gets whacked, but that's a risk they run. It's also why we pay them large amounts of cash. I'm also betting there are people willing to give up info for a black CIA duffel full of greenbacks.

Even if they eliminate access in one way, we'll find a way to get it in another way.

Why would anyone want to help us with intelligence when they know that we can not protect their identity? A duffel full of greenbacks does one little good when your identity is revealed and you are executed. If we can not gather intelligence, that hurts us. Part of the problem we have with our intelligence is we have been very weak in the area of human intelligence since the Church hearings. There are some things that you can only discover with people on the ground and unfortunately we don't have enough of those people. This isn't going to help.

 

[ATOMonkey]

Why would anyone want to help us with intelligence when they know that we can not protect their identity? A duffel full of greenbacks does one little good when your identity is revealed and you are executed. If we can not gather intelligence, that hurts us. Part of the problem we have with our intelligence is we have been very weak in the area of human intelligence since the Church hearings. There are some things that you can only discover with people on the ground and unfortunately we don't have enough of those people. This isn't going to help.

Depends on what kind of intell you're going after.

If you're looking for actionable intell, paying off snitches doesn't help at all. It might help you point the satellite or global hawk in the right direction though.

Most of our actionable intell is still obtained the hard way, by putting eyes on the target.

If you're looking for intell on what a government is doing, then yes, that makes sense.

 

[SemperFiUSMC]

I take it you guys have never been in the intelligence gathering and assimilating business. Fair assessment?

Depends on what kind of intell you're going after.

If you're looking for actionable intell, paying off snitches doesn't help at all. It might help you point the satellite or global hawk in the right direction though.

Most of our actionable intell is still obtained the hard way, by putting eyes on the target.

If you're looking for intell on what a government is doing, then yes, that makes sense.

Well, that hurts them, not us.

It hurts us because our snitch gets whacked, but that's a risk they run. It's also why we pay them large amounts of cash. I'm also betting there are people willing to give up info for a black CIA duffel full of greenbacks.

Even if they eliminate access in one way, we'll find a way to get it in another way.

I was under the impression that all of the military info, that was released, was outdated.

They did blow cover, which is unfortunate, but not a show stopper.

To date, factoring in the current (295+ pieces) and previous Wikileaks releases, there has been no evidence that these releases have caused harm to anyone. And we can be certain that the government is looking, desperately, to find a case were someone has been harmed. It's certainly caused the government some embarrassment and opened the eyes of a lot of people (for those that actually read the releases and didn't just b**ch and moan about them), but the case that it's caused any substantive harm has not been made by anyone. Just looking at the info in the new releases on Pakistan is an eye opener and should embarrass the government. Their relationship with this country is a huge cluster frak, at best. Would we know the details of why it's so messed up without this release? Nope, but it's interesting to see how bad things really are and to see what the government's been covering up. It might just force them to go forward in a saner fashion, now that we know about it.

 

[dross]

I take it you guys have never been in the intelligence gathering and assimilating business. Fair assessment?

It seems to be one of the areas the average person understands the least about.

Very rarely do we ever have ironclad proof of anything. Also, every piece of information is useful because it sheds light on other pieces of information.

I don't know how many times I read how you can't gain useful information from torture. Now, I'm not advocating torture, but if you don't think you can gain good info from it, you just don't know what you're talking about. No, you can't pick some random guy and go fishing. But you know things that he knows, and he doesn't know what you know, and if you combine that knowledge with torture, you can damned sure learn useful things you don't know and they'll be reliable.

The same ignorance leads people to say that our not finding WMD (which we did, BTW) was an intelligence failure. That's like saying that Ty Cobb was a poor hitter because over his lifetime he only hit the ball 37% of the time.

 

[Expat]

It seems to be one of the areas the average person understands the least about.

Very rarely do we ever have ironclad proof of anything. Also, every piece of information is useful because it sheds light on other pieces of information.

I don't know how many times I read how you can't gain useful information from torture. Now, I'm not advocating torture, but if you don't think you can gain good info from it, you just don't know what you're talking about. No, you can't pick some random guy and go fishing. But you know things that he knows, and he doesn't know what you know, and if you combine that knowledge with torture, you can damned sure learn useful things you don't know and they'll be reliable.

The same ignorance leads people to say that our not finding WMD (which we did, BTW) was an intelligence failure. That's like saying that Ty Cobb was a poor hitter because over his lifetime he only hit the ball 37% of the time.

Did you notice how quickly the MSM and the libtards removed the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed folded like a cheap suit after being water boarded and sang like a canary, from the story being told about torture (I am not saying that I believe waterboarding is torture however). They reportedly got a lot of actionable intelligence out of him and were able to prevent terrorist strikes. There were others that we got good intelligence from as well, that just don't get talked about. So we have examples of vigorous interrogations working, in spite of the protests to the contrary.

Don't get me started on the WMD thing. The intellectual dishonesty of the Bush lied people died people, gives me heartburn.

 

[Jeremiah]

Are you suggesting that everything that happens in government, including foreign policy information, should be open to the public?

yes. For People to make informed decisions via voting, they need to know what the people they have voted for have done.