I've recently read a good book that I think is insightful here. It was written by a Bush Administration official and is called "How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack."<p>No matter how you feel about the obvious pro-Bush slant this book is worth reading for two reasons...<p>1. The author actually spent time talking to the CIA people who carry out Ops. He got to ask them "why do you do this?" and "why does this work?"<p>2. The information shared wasn't available until the Obama administration declassified it. So it gives an unprecedented look into how intelligence agencies work and how much of their work is simply psychological.<p>After reading the book my opinion is they're screwing with Wikileaks. Again, the real expertise the CIA has built up over the years is in how to get people to think what the CIA wants them to think. In this case I believe they want this editor to think he's being spied on at every turn.<p>Increased paranoia, especially on someone who is already prone to it, will eventually drive a person over the edge. As this post shows his instinct is to fight back in public meaning the more paranoid they can make him the more likely it is he'll start ranting in public and (they hope) discredit himself.
Did anyone else draw a parallel to the current Internet censorship in China?<p>There are differences of course, but they are both instances in which the government feels threatened by the power of information that the Internet gives the individual.
I want to help them out by writing software, but I live in a CIA-infested country (the UK) and these reports make me genuinely afraid of reaching out. While I greatly admire their courage and respect their cause, I'm not really brave enough to sacrifice myself for the greater good.
Alright, has anyone actually read some of these documents.<p>Check out the US'govt report about WikiLeaks posted on WikiLeaks.<p><a href="http://file.wikileaks.org/file/us-intel-wikileaks.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://file.wikileaks.org/file/us-intel-wikileaks.pdf</a><p>Am I the only one that after reading it agrees with the government?<p>Specifically WikiLeaks posted classified documents showing troop equipment allocation and anti-IED jamming equipment specs. What possible purpose does this serve? There is nothing embarrassing/illegal about what our troops are carrying and how they are fighting IEDs, but there is a lot of extremely valuable intel for the enemy in those documents. Honestly the guys at WikiLeaks are lucky as hell they live in a country where they are not strung up for treason already. You would not be seeing Tweets from these guys in many parts of the world.<p>Frankly I don't WANT to help WikiLeaks. If you are endangering my friends actually deployed, what is the purpose of leaking this stuff? To show how good your sources are? So the guys running WikiLeaks value their journalism cred and their own ego over the lives of people actually relying on IED jammers to work?
I've got some very mixed feelings about this.<p>On one hand, the more open the society is the better it is for everybody. Wikileaks performs an impressive and valuable service by allowing a place for information to get published.<p>On the other hand, even in a perfect world, hell if everything should be out in the open for everyone. There are lots of examples, going back as far in history as you'd like, of state secrets serving a necessary and important role. Even averting war.<p>So my question to the wikileaks folks is this: where's the line? Would you publish anything, and the more secret the better? Or is there some kind of rule you use? Would you publish nuclear launch codes? The identities of spies in countries that would execute them for it?<p>There is way, way, way too much secrecy in the world, especially among U.S. Agencies. They classify anything they want, and the biggest reason is political CYA. Having said that, I can't give carte blanche to Wikileaks either. Before I support them, I need to know what standards they have.<p>Even more serious, this isn't bean bag, guys. A country pays a few billion to keep something secret and you blow the whistle? You might want to make sure your life insurance is up to date.<p>So is wikileaks there for the leaks? Or there for the public? I don't think the two goals are the same thing.
The problem of Wikileaks is that it is centralised and, therefore, is vulnerable. Freenet offers a much more resilient approach. It is true that Freenet is not yet easy enough, but it is just a java application which almost anyone can run. Of course, writing wikileaks.org on the browser bar is easier and faster than installing Freenet, but it puts lives in danger. By the way, there is a wikileaks mirror on Freenet. It might be better to do the other way round, wikileaks should be a mirror of the freesite.<p><a href="http://freenetproject.org/" rel="nofollow">http://freenetproject.org/</a><p>update: of course, the lives in danger are those of the editors of wikileaks.