back to article Pentagon braces for Wikileaks' diplomatic dump

The Pentagon expects Wikileaks to expose a huge cache of classified diplomatic communications by as soon as Friday, it has warned politicians. An official told the Senate and House Armed Services Committees the whistleblowing site is working with its regular press partners, The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel on …

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  1. Big Al
    FAIL

    Oh no!

    Shock! Horror! Diplomats say things to each other that they wouldn't say to the foreigners they're talking about!

    And having this shown to us will change the world how, exactly?

  2. envmod

    yawn

    i'm bored of this now wikileaks - either make with the alien shit or don't bother at all.

  3. bbx10
    Dead Vulture

    Wowz

    Can't wait to see what comes of this !

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Captain Save-a-ho
      Grenade

      Did you even read the article?

      They're going to release items that are candid commentary, which means US representatives talking privately behind the backs of their worldwide counterparts. That's not a matter of hiding something you're afraid of. It's about foreign relations, you idiot. Same reason none of us tell you to your face that we enjoyed your mom.

      1. Christoph

        DId you get the point?

        Yes, of course there's stuff they have good reason to keep private. That's presumably the point of that comment - that the claim that "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is complete garbage.

        But it's what we are told when we want to keep things private from government. So they are showing obvious hypocrisy.

      2. Paul Crawford Silver badge

        Yup, mom was good

        Say 'thanks' from all of us.

  5. Cunningly Linguistic

    Her title was "Casserole" as she liked to be done slowly for 3 hours

    "We anticipate that the release could negatively impact US foreign relations,"

    You mean it can get worse?

  6. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    urWish Our Command

    "i'm bored of this now wikileaks - either make with the alien shit or don't bother at all." ... envmod

    Posted Wednesday 24th November 2010 13:49 GMT.

    Does this Beta Capture your Interest and Attention, envmod ? ...... http://amanfrommars.blogspot.com/2010/11/101124.html

    1. envmod
      Alien

      well..

      it's definitely intruiging...reads a bit like a clue to the world's hardest cryptic crossword though.

    2. El Richard Thomas
      Joke

      OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE IT WILL THE WORLD EVER BE THE SAME?

      amanfrommars has a blog!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wikileaks.org website offline

    Maybe this is how the Pentagon deals with leaks?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    What do they really think of us?

    I guess we'll all find out soon, no wonder they're so worried.

  9. JaitcH
    FAIL

    So why is the Pentagon so wound up? It's States problem, surely

    I don't know why Wikileaks even bothered to redact some of the info - they should have just outed the lot.

    At least the U.S. government would treat Wikileaks with respect.

    Why, in the first place, would the military need this stuff, anyway?

  10. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Big Brother

    The Fletcher Memorial Home is that way..

    "The publication of this classified information by WikiLeaks is an irresponsible attempt to wreak havoc and destabilize global security. It potentially jeopardizes lives."

    It's not like bombing and invading random countries or torturing some random dudes to death potentially jeopardizes lives.

    Statist riffraff.

    1. Anton Ivanov

      Fletcher memorial home is fine

      As long as it does not lead to "Two Suns in the Sunset".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        colonial wasters of life and limb

        Excellent album choice, and some of these leaders do need the final solution applied to them ;)

  11. James Micallef Silver badge

    Big Deal...

    "The publication of this classified information by WikiLeaks is an irresponsible attempt to wreak havoc and destabilize global security"...

    More likely it will destabilise some government officials or politicians when it becomes even more apparent how corrupt / incompetent they are, and how they are using the classifiction system to hide their dirty laundry.

    No doubt there'll be a few red faces all round, but lets not kid ourselves. All diplomats know it's a game they all play, they all know that what they say about each other in public is different from what they tell each other in private, or what they tell themselves about each other behind teh other's back

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    worried

    what have the politicians got to worry about?

    Their lies being exposed?

  13. Anomalous Cowherd Silver badge

    Sigh

    "The coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined,"

    I liked Wikileaks so much better when they just let the documents do the talking.

  14. david wilson

    @Christop

    You do have a point, but there is a big grey area between private (as in private to me) and public (as in published).

    The 'nothing to hide nothing to fear' defence for governments infringining privacy certainly is overused, but deep down most people also accept that there isn't absolute privacy - we can sometimes be expected/require to give information to the state when we'd rather not.

    That could be either for some common good (like witnesses being expected to give evidence in criminal enquiries, or at trials), or more directly in return for something we want (privacy infringement in security checks, etc)

    The thing is, even when we've been forced to give up information/privacy (or effectively forced by not getting something we want from the state if we don't), we might at least have some expectation of discretion - if it's not relevant for a prosecution (or defence), we'd hope/expect that evidence we give in an investigation wouldn't be published just for the hell of it, and we'd hope/expect that any amount of other information the state requires us to give up would be treated similarly.

    If, in the course of some investigation, we were required to let the authorities look at our computer[s], we'd hope/expect that if there wasn't evidence of criminality on it, no more than a handful or people would have ended up looking at it, most of whom didn't know us or care about us, and they wouldn't be uploading stuff they found on it at will all over the internet.

    What I think is unsettling about Wikileaks is that there /appears/ to be a presumption that publishing everything is automatically good even if that might well infringe the privacy of any number of innocent individuals, rather than just publishing maturely selected stuff that actually has meaningful journalistic value.

    Either that, or it's a case of more publication being done principally because it's likely to be more of a pain for a government, even if nothing more positive is actually achieved.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    waste of time

    wikileaks started off as a nice idea, but have devalued themselves by releasing so much technically classified, but ho-hum boring waste of space content. Just because its classified doesnt mean the world needs to know. They should save it for the real whistle blowing on serious issues, and then when they say something we'll take note. At the moment they come across as a bunch fools driven by their own egos.

  16. Bristol Dave
    WTF?

    What happened to wikileaks?

    It used to have huge amounts of documents from all over the world, some of them fascinating. I used to enjoy going on there almost daily and seeing the latest leaks.

    Now it's just a load of "classified", but dare I say it - dull - information and memos about the Iraq War.

    When are we going to get the (far more interesting) user-submitted content back?

    1. David 105
      Thumb Up

      The Nature of the Beast

      I agree with what you're saying, but I can also see Wikileaks point of view, and unfortunately it's much more compelling. Whilst the vast majority of war documents are quite tedious and operational, Wikileaks HAVE to release everything they've got. If they start saying "This is boring, you don't want to read this" then they're going to leave themselves open to accusations of censorship and cover up, just like the Pentagon, however inaccurate these claims may be.

      Ultimately, it would seem to go against Wikileaks purpose for them to start deciding what they do and don't leak, which is probably why you enjoyed the user submitted stuff in the first place. The way the Iraq war was (and is) conducted means there are an awful lot of documents associated with it, and releasing them all is obviously going to be their priority over user generated stuff at the moment. By releasing all of them it provides a complete picture of what happened, and I'm glad they're releasing all of them, not just the stuff they think I "need to know"

      Big thumbs up for Wikileaks, keep up the good work, we need to know this stuff about what's being done in our name and the name of freedom and democracy, and we need to be able to hold to account the people who corrupt and pevert the principles we claim to be fighting for to further their own interests

      1. david wilson

        @David 105

        >>"Whilst the vast majority of war documents are quite tedious and operational, Wikileaks HAVE to release everything they've got. If they start saying "This is boring, you don't want to read this" then they're going to leave themselves open to accusations of censorship and cover up, just like the Pentagon, however inaccurate these claims may be."

        It's pretty obvious that to actually act /responsibly/, someone has to decide what information should and shouldn't be released.

        Unless every document is checked before release by people who are actually sufficiently well informed to work out precisely what bits of every document might be damaging to an innocent individual if released (which could involve a /lot/ of specific or local knowledge), there's at least the potential for causing unnecessary harm.

        Get enough documents, and the potential turns into a likelihood.

        It's all very well for people to have some simple principle (information should be free, I have a right to know every single thing happening in any part of the state, all censorship is evil, etc), but there'll almost always be some kinds of information where release would bang up against some other principle, where it isn't possible to use the existence (or convenient invention) of a principle to avoid thinking or taking responsibility.

        Given a real-world situation where blindly following a principle could lead to a bad outcome, that would indicate not that there's something wrong with the real world, but that the principle is not actually universal.

        To me, this kind of situation illustrates better than anything why we actually need journalists, rather than crusading amateurs pissing about on the internet as if reality was a game where no-one was actually in danger, and where no-one needed to take responsibility for what they publish if they can find some excuse not to.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    What your "friend" is really like

    "We anticipate that the release could negatively impact US foreign relations," King told Congress.

    Perhaps if the US wasn't a 2-faced, back-stabbing, megalomaniacal, war-mongering......

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