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Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s finish the job.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

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I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

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Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

You are here: Home / Media Can’t Own This Press

Media Can’t Own This Press

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Here’s Amazon’s rationale for banning Wikileaks:

We’ve been running AWS for over four years and have hundreds of thousands of customers storing all kinds of data on AWS. Some of this data is controversial, and that’s perfectly fine. But, when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere.

This means that no real media outlet can host its files on Amazon. The New York Times, Talking Points Memo and even Radar Online regularly post original files that aren’t “rightfully theirs”, and sometimes their stories may “injure others”.

Though Amazon denies it, let’s not pretend that Lieberman’s call to ISPs to stop hosting Wikileaks didn’t have something to do with this. We live in a corpotocracy where corporations curry favor with DC players who cut them breaks in legislation. Bernie Saunders or Ron Paul can issue press releases all day, and corporations can ignore them because they don’t really control any serious money. But when Lieberman speaks as the chair of Homeland Security, he also speaks as a guy on top of one of the biggest pots of gold in that dirty old town. Corporations listen to him.

Media has yet to catch a clue, but it’s bloody obvious to anyone paying attention. Internet transit in this country is controlled by a few large corporations. Those corporations are beholden to a few legislators in key positions. When one of those guys decides that a plug needs to be pulled, the corporation will pull it. Lieberman used enough code words to make it happen. Others are watching, and they’ll use those words the next time some media outlet publishes something they don’t like.

Reader Interactions

127Comments

  1. 1.

    bkny

    and now holy joe has an opening:

    “Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” said Lieberman.

  3. 3.

    JPL

    The NYTimes published the specific information that Amazon has banned. Seems to me that if Amazon really felt that way, The Times would not be operation this morning.

  6. 6.

    Captain Haddock

    Lieberman’s enthusiastic involvement, the media’s coverage, and the DOS attacks makes me think there are some embarrassing documents regarding our relationship with Israel deep down in there somewhere.

  8. 8.

    jcgrim

    Leiberman’s bullying of Amazon exemplifies Noam Chomsky’s astute observation of our political/corporate class: Wikileaks cables “reveal profound hatred of democracy on the part of our political leadership”.

  9. 9.

    Michael

    {cue the silly Greenwood paean to trailer trash music sensibilities of shit drawling Southerners – can somebody go and make him eat one of his stupid fucking CDs?}

    “Ah’m proud to be ‘Murkan, where at least Ah know Ah’m fraaaeeeeeeeeeeee…”

  11. 11.

    djheru

    I’m sure the Lieberman staffer only had to say three words to ensure Amazon’s swift compliance:

    “Online Sales Tax”

  13. 13.

    jwb

    @Captain Haddock: Yes, it is a good question as to why Liebermann chose to go nuclear now rather than on the previous dumps. Another reason could be he (or rather his paymasters) think they can prevent future dumps, especially the rumored one of the US bank.

  14. 14.

    matoko_chan

    Netflix is also hosted at everyDNS.
    Bad news for Cole.
    First they came for the Wikileaks……

    isnt it FCC illegal for the US gov to pay spammers and skiddies to DDOS an american IP provider?
    i think the feds should just quit going all medieval keystone cops on Assange and offer him a fucking job.
    that is SOP for hackers that break our ice.
    besides, it isnt working. right now the rest of the cables are being released one per hour, in conformance with Assanges paranoia frag bomb/OODA loop-killer specs.
    what happens when the US gov pays spammers and skiddies to attack French and Swiss IP providers?

    i say…..Release the Kracken Garani Massacre video!

  15. 15.

    Bullsmith

    Remember when liberty was valued as an actual concept? Now it seems more like a hollowed word that in America means keeping your mouth shut and overseas means bombing brown people.

  17. 17.

    magurakurin

    I don’t really understand exactly why Amazon has to have a justification for allowing or disallowing anyone to use its servers.

  18. 18.

    NonyNony

    @Bullsmith:

    Remember when liberty was valued as an actual concept?

    Yes. I believe I was 12. As I grew up I realized that the “value of liberty as a concept” in America is actually about as real as Santa Claus.

    Now it seems more like a hollowed word that in America means keeping your mouth shut and overseas means bombing brown people.

    You mean unlike the rest of the history of our country where we didn’t have to go overseas to kill “brown” people? Like, oh, the first nearly-a-century of our existence where slavery was not just tolerated but a foundation of the economy and written into our Constitution? Or when we trumped up a war with Mexico to grab land? Or trumping up a war with Spain to grab more land? And that’s without even getting started on the absolutely vile treatment of the native population of the continent – rounding them up into camps, refusing to even allow them citizenship when they wanted it, breaking treaty after treaty after treaty all with the goal of grabbing more land and more natural resources.

    There has NEVER been a time when our country has truly valued liberty as a concept in and of itself for everyone. There have been times when we paid it lip service, but since the birth of the Republic we have consistently been a nation of hypocrites when it comes to liberty. Liberty for white, monied, landed gentry has never been in question, but liberty for anyone else? That’s been a constant struggle that continues today.

    There has never been a Golden Age of America where Freedom and Liberty and Justice For All truly existed. Those have always been ideals to reach for, not a reality that had been achieved and is now lost.

  20. 20.

    Michael

    @Bullsmith:

    Remember when liberty was valued as an actual concept? Now it seems more like a hollowed word that in America means keeping your mouth shut and overseas means bombing brown people.

    When a former bidness partner of mine was in a wingnut phase, he told me that to him, “liberty” was about ordering the sort of society in which he wanted to live and raise his kids. For him, that included a religiously themed set of civil laws directed at issues of abortion and contraception, and included certain legalized discriminations against gays, race, religion and national origin.

  21. 21.

    Nutella

    One of the lessons to be learned from this is that any cloud computing provider, including the giant ones like Amazon, can drop you and your web site in a flash for political reasons or for technical reasons or for no reason at all.

    Smart web publishers and programmers know this and keep their own up-to-date copies of everything so they can move to a new provider quickly but I’m sure there are many who are not prepared for that. I hope they all learn from this dramatic example of the danger of having a different company controlling your web presence.

  23. 23.

    J.W. Hamner

    @JPL:

    In fact, private companies can discriminate. Ever heard of “whites only” golf courses? They still exist and are not illegal.

    This is the dumbest notroversy I’ve ever heard of.

  24. 24.

    Pococurante

    Amazon doesn’t have to justify which customers they serve, anymore than a white short-order cook has to serve someone with “too much” melanin. /rimshot

    More seriously, the question is, would Amazon have taken this action without pressure by powerful players within the US Government.

    Which leads to the issue: Amazon is being forced to this action by the government. It’s already clear they have no actual policy that justifies (e.g. makes predictable to the marketplace) this action.

    So yes, defend Amazon’s privilege. But be careful defending an environment where the government censures without legislative mandate.

  25. 25.

    mikefromArlington

    For decades the NYT and Washington Post have been a medium for secret and event top secret leaks. Some of them have been devastating.

    If they’re gonna do anything, they need to follow a law and be consistent.

  28. 28.

    Nutella

    @magurakurin:

    Amazon has to justify this to avoid a lot of lost business.

    They have to have a good story to tell their many customers to reassure them that if they have an account with Amazon it won’t suddenly be shut down. Prudent business do not use unreliable vendors for any important business function.

    The story they are telling is weak. NYT points out that the Guardian is hosted on Amazon so they are still serving these documents that they say they can’t. What Wikileaks had is the same as what the Guardian still has on Amazon.

  29. 29.

    WyldPirate

    @NonyNony:

    You mean unlike the rest of the history of our country where we didn’t have to go overseas to kill “brown” people? Like, oh, the first nearly-a-century of our existence where slavery was not just tolerated but a foundation of the economy and written into our Constitution? Or when we trumped up a war with Mexico to grab land? Or trumping up a war with Spain to grab more land?

    LOL. Sounds like you’ve been curled up reading Howard Zinn or that you actually paid attention in history class, didn’t buy all of the greatness and Manifest Destiny BS and said to yourself “WTF?”, NonyNony.

  30. 30.

    UncommonSense

    Four words: Icelandic Modern Media Initiative.

    Wikileaks has already registered as formal legal entity in Iceland. It is easy to imagine others following their example if the U.S. government really does begin pressuring ISPs to deny service to media companies who publish leaked government documents. Wikileaks did not do anything that the New York Times has not done. These people had better wake up and see this phenomenon for what it is. It is the end of freedom of the press.

    Iceland, in offering safe haven to journalists from their governments, could become the new Switzerland. Except that instead of protecting money, they will be protecting freedom.

  31. 31.

    Pococurante

    @J.W. Hamner:

    Ever heard of “whites only” golf courses?

    Um. There is a different between a private club (hence a constitutional right), and a public business with an open “storefront”. Welcome to late-1960s civil rights judicial decree, decided as recently as last year for churches wanting to run a public business but deny access by gays.

  32. 32.

    Nutella

    @J.W. Hamner:

    Whites only golf courses are illegal in the US, as are whites only lunch counters. They exist, of course, but they have to pretend to be desegregated to keep out of major legal trouble.

  33. 33.

    J.W. Hamner

    @Nutella:

    Amazon has to justify this to avoid a lot of lost business.

    Oh please. The 5 progressives who stop using Amazon over this won’t hurt their bottom line. I think their stock will be fine.

  34. 34.

    djheru

    @J.W. Hamner: The civil rights act of 1964 exempts private clubs from the non-discrimination requirements.

    I agree that this is not surprising or a big deal, although it does suck that the government would place that kind of pressure on a private company to target a private enterprise.

    The answer, of course, is to either base your operations out of a country that takes the concept of Liberty seriously, or use some type of distributed network. Personally, I would like to see future releases distributed via bittorrent.

  35. 35.

    terraformer

    @Josie:

    I gave Al a hundreds bucks because I believe in what his group’s trying to do – restore authentic journalism. And I ain’t made of money.

    I think a new tag should be added to stories like these – it’s not just “Our Failed Media Experiment”, it’s also “Our Failed Government Experiment”. But then that tag would be applicable to most posts these days. Alas.

  36. 36.

    JPL

    @J.W. Hamner: I’ve never seen Amazon advertise as a membership only society. Join our club and we also, too will allow you to follow the Government mandates.

  39. 39.

    R-Jud

    From the horse’s mouth:

    Guardian commenter: “Annoying as it may be, the DDoS seems to be good publicity (if anything, it adds to your credibility). So is getting kicked out of AWS. Do you agree with this statement? Were you planning for it?”

    Assange: “Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit in order to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases.”

  40. 40.

    matoko_chan

    @R-Jud: Assange is six steps ahead of the feds keystone cops. Even if he is arrested(after chillin in G.B. since early october), it will generate EVEN MOAR publicity.
    and the “Unipolar Power” hasnt been able to do jackshit about stopping him.
    the reason the remainder of the diplo cables are going out one per hour is to increase the paranoia level on the system and frag the OODA loops.
    its by fucking DESIGN morans.
    i say offer him a fucking job.

  42. 42.

    Suffern ACE

    @J.W. Hamner: Have to agree with you on that. I’m not certain what analogous event could be used, but getting a seat on a public bus or at a lunchcounter isn’t what is going on here and running the analogy that way is just going to confuse the issue further.

  43. 43.

    Corner Stone

    For those who seem to be confused, this isn’t about Amazon making a business decision, or even an ethical one.
    It’s about the US Govt telling them to remove content that is legally protected speech, and Amazon complying.

  44. 44.

    Flugelhorn

    @JPL: Simply, no. They can take your business or not take your business, but they can not refuse it based on race, religion, gender, etc. you know the drill. Try not to be obtuse.

    Amazon does not have to justify itself to you people. If they find that one client is causing detriment to their other clients and themselves by association, then they would be stupid not to boot Wiki leaks. They also received a very large number of complaints from their Amazon.com consumer base. Many threatened to never shop there again if they continued to host Wiki leaks. I suppose that sort of action is OK for you folks and Glenn Beck, but not for Wiki leaks.

  45. 45.

    Corner Stone

    It’s obvious that a lot of people that comment here have misunderestimaed Mr. Assange. Or more aptly, couldn’t see past their bias to properly evaluate actions undertaken by Assange.

  46. 46.

    Nutella

    @J.W. Hamner:

    True, their stock will be fine and very few customers will cancel their accounts and storm off today, but they’ve shown themselves to be capricious and unreliable which is bad for their business in the long run. If they had just not accepted Wikileaks as a customer nobody would have noticed or cared.

  47. 47.

    General Stuck

    @Corner Stone:

    I don’t think stolen US classified material falls under legally protected speech/ Except maybe riding in the front of the BJ Clown Bus. Amazon is not a newspaper.

  48. 48.

    J.W. Hamner

    @Corner Stone:

    It’s about the US Govt telling them to remove content that is legally protected speech, and Amazon complying.

    No, at most they asked them. The difference is important. I know that a lot of people her want the intertoobs to be a government run utility, but it’s not, so the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply.

  49. 49.

    jwb

    @matoko_chan: You sure he isn’t already on the payroll? Actually, if they really wanted to discredit Assange, they wouldn’t work the sex scandal, they would plant evidence that he was working for the CIA (or some other intelligence agency).

  50. 50.

    matoko_chan

    @Corner Stone:

    It’s obvious that a lot of people that comment here have misunderestimaed Mr. Assange. Or more aptly, couldn’t see past their bias to properly evaluate actions undertaken by Assange.

    nah.
    cudlips will be cudlips.
    when the oligarchs hold up the ATTACK NAOW sign they just go for it.

    Ours is not reason why
    ours is but to do or die
    into the valley of death rode the six hundred.

  51. 51.

    brendancalling

    we are becoming so much like the old USSR it’s not even funny.
    Entrenched one party system? Practically, when both parties want to pass tax cuts for millionaires while cutting social security.
    Oligarchs? Check.
    Citizens conversations and movement monitored? Check.
    Pravda? Check.
    War in Afganistan? Check?
    Burgeoning secessionist movements? Coming close.

    I give us another ten years, tops. Then we’ll break up entirely, and have a bunch of autonomous regions.

    It’s not going to go so well.

  52. 52.

    Flugelhorn

    @matoko_chan: You know, every time you use that fucking word, it reinforces everyone’s perception of how immature and moronic you are. Get a thesaurus, learn to capitalize, punctuate and format a paragraph, then come back here when you can show you belong at the big kids table. You say the same shit over and over again and add nothing new to the conversation.

  53. 53.

    WyldPirate

    @Corner Stone:

    Yep. The same sort of quid pro quo that brought the telecom giants in on spying on their customers for the government.

    Which Obama seemed fine with….

  54. 54.

    matoko_chan

    @jwb: nah. if Assange took the job the feds would have to go open information.
    Assange is a True Believer, a hacktivist.
    havent you read any of my linkage?

    “To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not. Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective action.”
    Julian Assange, “State and Terrorist Conspiracies”

  56. 56.

    WyldPirate

    @General Stuck:

    don’t think stolen US classified material falls under legally protected speech/ Except maybe riding in the front of the BJ Clown Bus. Amazon is not a newspaper.

    So Stuck, where do you draw the line? Only “journalists” at newspapers have first Amendment rights? Does Josh Marshall and his gang over at TPM–because they are an “internet site”–not have the right to first amendment protections because they are not a “newspaper”?

    Assange skipped the fucking middleman.

  60. 60.

    J.W. Hamner

    @WyldPirate:

    If TPM’s hosting site decided to drop them because they were “too controversial” or whatever I would have zero problem with it. There are tons of hosts whom would love to have their business, in this country or another. This is simply not a big deal.

  62. 62.

    General Stuck

    @WyldPirate:

    no one forced Amazon to do anything. We accept and allow the 4th estate a free hand, because of their constitutional role to keep us informed and keep an eye on the government. But I doubt even they, technically speaking legally, have an inherent right to publish stolen state secrets.

  63. 63.

    Judas Escargot

    @J.W. Hamner:

    In fact, private companies can discriminate. Ever heard of “whites only” golf courses? They still exist and are not illegal.

    Yay! Freedom!

  64. 64.

    WyldPirate

    @J.W. Hamner:

    I get your reasoning, J.W., I was simply objecting to Stuck’s rationale about “free speech”. Perhaps I’m still too foggy this morning to see where you are going. I’ll take a stab.

    I agree that a private entity that has a web hosting business has the prerogative to “serve” or “not serve” whatever customer they wish–particularly if that customer causes their customers and business problems (via, say, DNS attacks).

    Where I draw the line is government interference and threats of coercion. I see what Assange is doing as public good. It shines a light on the idiocy and criminality of our own government which is getting harder and harder to do. For instance the widespread theft in Afghanistan by government officials of US taxpayers money essential shines a light on why our troops are dying–to prop up a bipolar petty extortionist. Period. Full Stop.

  65. 65.

    jwb

    @matoko_chan: What better way to “legitimate” the “secret” material you want other spooks and governments to see than through a figure like Assange. Spycraft 101. But the whole point is that the actions of the government have been very much, as you put it, keystone cops. If you believe that our government professionals, especially those in the intelligence agencies and state department, are actually highly competent, then it should make you ask whether the keystone cops act isn’t in fact an act, that is, exactly what they want the rest of the world to see. Is Assange being played? is Assange a player?

  67. 67.

    Svensker

    @General Stuck:

    But I doubt even they, technically speaking legally, have an inherent right to publish stolen state secrets.

    When everything is secret where’s the line.

    Joe Lieberman is little shit, and a perfect example of the National Security State run amok. The weaseliness of evil.

  69. 69.

    J.W. Hamner

    Where I draw the line is government interference and threats of coercion. I see what Assange is doing as public good. It shines a light on the idiocy and criminality of our own government which is getting harder and harder to do. For instance the widespread theft in Afghanistan by government officials of US taxpayers money essential shines a light on why our troops are dying—to prop up a bipolar petty extortionist. Period. Full Stop.

    I don’t really care about Assange one way or the other… none of the stuff he’s revealed has surprised me (yet). Regardless, I can see the righteous outrage if Obama sends some stormtroopers into Amazon’s office to shut them down… but what we are talking about here is a powerful person using his influence to get a private company to do what he wants. It does tarnish Amazon a bit in my eyes, but there is nothing particularly terrible about it. The fact that said powerful person is a Senator is immaterial… a random billionaire probably could have accomplished the same thing with a phone call.

  70. 70.

    WyldPirate

    @General Stuck:

    But I doubt even they, technically speaking legally, have an inherent right to publish stolen state secrets.

    Ellsberg stole “classified state secrets” and the NY Times published them. It has happened over and over.

    What you are saying is that you have to have the imprimateur of corporatism and “journalism” to be afforded “free speech”.

    And yeah, I know the government gets away with limiting this sort of “stolen” speech all the time if one doesn’t have the classification of “journalist”. The internet has changed the rules, however. On top of that, the US can’t necessarily enforce laws on its books when the internet is border-less.

  71. 71.

    jwb

    @matoko_chan: If you came at this from outside your little box of belief, you might ask whether an intelligence agency wouldn’t want to construct Assange exactly in this fashion. And if his stated beliefs accurately reflect his actual beliefs, that would make him extremely easy to be played by any intelligence agency that wanted to play him.

    In any case, my point is that no one has sought to discredit him in the way that would be most effective in terms of undermining the legitimacy of the information leaked, which would be to make the case that he is being worked, wittingly or not, by intelligence agents. Personally, I don’t think that is an accident; because it means that the intelligence agencies, however they may feel about him, at least don’t want to use their considerable resources to discredit the information. In fact, everything done so far has served only to authenticate the information. Though it probably places me on the loony side of conspiracy theory, it nevertheless makes me suspicious.

  72. 72.

    SadOldVet

    Riddle me this?

    Wikileaks started their cable dump on Sunday, the 28th. Amazon did not shut down Wikileaks on the 28th. Amazon did not shut down Wikileaks on the 29th.

    Late on the 29th, Wikileaks announced they will have a forth-coming dump on a ‘major U.S. bank’.

    On the 30th, Amazon shuts down Wikileaks!

    Coincidence? Or is the reality that it is ok for Wikileaks to dump on the government, but action is needed when they threaten to dump on a corporation?

  73. 73.

    WyldPirate

    @J.W. Hamner:

    I fully agree. The government is arm-twisting. That sucks. Amazon complied. That’s their right.

    I think that the US govt. is up to much more sinister activities. They are most likely behind the DNS attacks on Wikileaks’ host servers. It’s about the only tool they have right now to suppress the cables.

  74. 74.

    sparky

    @Corner Stone:

    It’s obvious that a lot of people that comment here have misunderestimaed Mr. Assange. Or more aptly, couldn’t see past their bias to properly evaluate actions undertaken by Assange.

    and right on cue

    @General Stuck:

    I don’t think stolen US classified material falls under legally protected speech/ Except maybe riding in the front of the BJ Clown Bus. Amazon is not a newspaper.

    comedy gold or conspiracy quagmire?

  75. 75.

    WyldPirate

    @Svensker:

    The weaseliness of evil.

    Nice, Svensker. This should be a tag.

    And Lieberman is the personification of the “weaseliness of evil”. Also, too.

  76. 76.

    Corner Stone

    @J.W. Hamner:

    but what we are talking about here is a powerful person using his influence to get a private company to do what he wants. It does tarnish Amazon a bit in my eyes, but there is nothing particularly terrible about it. The fact that said powerful person is a Senator is immaterial

    Are you out of your fucking mind? That is, in fact, the entirely material point here. Do you not understand what happened here?
    The govt does not need to send jackbooted thugs in to throw computers and monitors on the ground while they trash file cabinets.

  77. 77.

    General Stuck

    @Svensker:

    As I have always maintained, I am full square for leakers and publishers to bring to light of day, government lawbreaking and general malfeasance regardless of the source. And in any case would likely become an urban guerrilla if the government were to take punitive or other coercive methods against our news providers to prevent them from publishing the Assange Files.

    But I have no time for anyone leaking classified info for the sole general purpose that they don’t like the US and want to harm it in any way they can. And I believe that the government can request any time they want, that Amazon, a private company to consider the situation and decide to not publish these ill gotten files. It happens all the time, even for serious and substantial leaks, the government requesting news folks to not publish this or that material, and new papers make their own judgments in the cause of public service, versus malicious intent, and sometimes do not publish classified materials.

    The point is, there is a line where stealing and publishing such material serves the public good, or it does not and causes, or could case malicious harm.

  78. 78.

    matoko_chan

    @jwb: like i said, im mostly uninterested in the ethics…..im passionately interested in if Assanges paranoia frag bomb/ OODA loop killer strat can actually work.
    so far he is following his mission statement, if you have read any of my links.
    from the narcosphere.

    The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.
    and in fact, only 607 have been released to date. The Guardian et al. are going a bit faster, to be sure, but I don’t think WL itself can be accused of an indiscriminate dump here.

    the steady drip drip drip of state secrets is designed to amp up the paranoia lvl of the system, like Bady explains in his analysis.

    But the whole point is that the actions of the government have been very much, as you put it, keystone cops.

    sadly, i think there is a tech gap. the feds are mad proud of STUXNET, but that is just a worm, 20 year old tech.
    the US is way behind in hacker tech, because hackers are anti-pathic to secret closed systems and unjust regimes.
    One of my diffy-q professors once explained to me why the sovs fell so far behind in computer tech before their crash. he said the sovs had fantastic mathematicians, the Journal of Differential Equations was mostly russians , but they could not have PCs , because PCs were home printing presses.
    A closed, unjust society carries the seeds of its own destruction.
    Assanges information transparency is ideological death for the conservatism that has run this country for the last half century.
    We are in the middle of field test #1 !!
    its fabuloso.
    :)

  79. 79.

    WyldPirate

    @sparky:

    conspiracy quagmire. They are one and the same. Alter ego sockpuppets. ;)

    Gotta add that I like both of them. Part of the range of opinion that makes BJ such an awesome intertoobz Tower of Babble.

  81. 81.

    sparky

    @jwb: interesting argument, but i disagree with it for two reasons.

    first, it would require that a large organization that has repeatedly shown itself to be bumbling at least when caught in the public eye somehow overcame all of its usual deficiencies to manage this. if the relevant agencies were half as good as your theory required the world would be a quite different place.
    shorter version: never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity.

    second, i think you are in error as to the discrediting. the powers that be have used the best public tool at their disposal: discrediting via sexual accusations. much more effective than anything else. that’s what they did with Scott Horton and are trying to do here. also, it gives them a legal fig leaf to put him in custody so the Europeans can (must) turn him over to the americans or the americans will be mean to them.

  82. 82.

    jwb

    @WyldPirate: But it’s useless to suppress the cables. It may slow their spread and make them more difficult to obtain, but those who really wanted them already have them. And the government has to know that. All the attacks do is continue to authenticate the notion that the cables contain (true) information that the government doesn’t want disseminated. Which, of course, only ensures that they are further disseminated. The only more innocent explanation I can come up with is that the government is using this situation to test its ability to control information spread on websites.

  83. 83.

    sparky

    @WyldPirate: wouldn’t that be interesting if they were? if it is it/she/he is doing a fabu job.

    DougJ: is they youze? come out and claim your prize, man.

    WP: as to babel, you’re right. stream of unconsciousness?

  84. 84.

    Corner Stone

    @jwb:

    In any case, my point is that no one has sought to discredit him in the way that would be most effective in terms of undermining the legitimacy of the information leaked, which would be to make the case that he is being worked, wittingly or not, by intelligence agents.

    If it were just these non secret gossipy cable dumps I would give this argument some weight, and seriously consider it.
    But given the helicopter massacre video, the purported Garani massacre video yet to come, and my general belief that an organization as vast as the “intelligence apparatus” is rarely so tightly efficient as to pull this off, I have to conclude that for now my belief is Assange is not a false flag op.

    And I’m aware of the old saw that the only things we ever find out about are the ones “they” want us to find out about, but I am doubtful of this apocryphal meme.

    We’re talking about an apparatus that not only couldn’t accurately predict Soviet grain production 30 years ago, but one that also couldn’t put together the blaring clues to stop the 9/11 plot.
    Yet they are going to run Assange et al like a fine watch?

  85. 85.

    Corner Stone

    @Corner Stone: And further, I guess the Apache video could be argued to be a “bona fides”, like an undercover agent making that first small drug buy, but I am extremely doubtful. IMO.

  86. 86.

    jwb

    @sparky: A sex scandal may discredit Assange, but it does nothing to discredit the information. That’s why it fails as a strategy for this situation, and I believe the intelligence agencies would recognize this. Consequently, I believe that the intelligence agencies do not want to discredit the information. The question is why.

  87. 87.

    sparky

    @matoko_chan:

    A closed, unjust society carries the seeds of its own destruction.
    Assanges information transparency is ideological death for the conservatism that has run this country for the last half century.
    We are in the middle of field test #1 !!

    intriguing argument, and AFAIK everyone agrees with the closed society premise. two questions:

    1. has the empire reached a fully closed state (assuming it’s necessary)?

    2. dissolution from ossification is not the same thing as active efforts at subversion. the latter is really more in the mode of a classical political attack, i would think, whereas the former is shall we say organic and occurs imperceptibly. it would seem to me that this “project” is really, the propenents’ contentions notwithstanding, really more of the latter. or what am i missing?

  88. 88.

    Corner Stone

    @jwb: And more so, we have to answer the question, who benefits?
    Are we going to war with Iran over these? Or bolstering the case for more stringent actions?
    Who comes out looking the worse for it? Or the best?
    What case is made or shattered?

    The conundrum of “how did a Pfc get ALL THIS SHIT?” is an interesting one, I will grant that.

  89. 89.

    Corner Stone

    @jwb: the sex scandal does discredit the info. Because a lot of individuals, fully represented at BJ btw, look well past the actual event and focus on Assange.
    The sex charges are titillating and give the moral scolds a change to change the subject. IOW, they are perfect for what their purpose is.
    Now, of the population that give one tiny shit about these dumps, at least some percentage will never give them a second look because they are being pushed by a perv.
    The sex charge is -perfect- I should say “very useful”.

  90. 90.

    sparky

    @jwb: fair point, though i am not sure i agree with your proposition, if only because at least in the US, discrediting the messenger has been shown, repeatedly, to be an effective method of rendering the information distributed by that messenger invisible.

    that said, it’s certainly possible that the US has no problem with letting the Saudis be embarrassed, for example. certainly easier than saying so to the king’s face. still, i would think that given the US establishment’s penchant for control, overall they would see this as a negative with some incidental benefits.

  91. 91.

    jwb

    @Corner Stone: Yes, for some reason, I’m definitely in conspiracy mode today. The question of who benefits from the release of the information is certainly pertinent and skepticism over whether any intelligence agency could actually pull off a false flag op is, as always, warranted. I just feel like there are shiny objects being thrown right and left but all of them seem to be working to distract from asking basic questions about the dump itself.

  92. 92.

    Dollared

    And Jeff Bezos just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars here in Washington blocking a desperately needed and well designed state income tax because – wait for it – he’s a “principled libertarian.”

    With glibertarians, it is always about the money – their money.

  93. 93.

    sparky

    @jwb: incidentally, i’m not saying your theory is impossible, just that it requires a degree of, well, ability that just seems unlikely in the extreme.

    i agree that there is a lot of shiny shiny flying around, but that seems to me SOP in US politics for the last, say 25 years, and it’s beyond cavil that in the intertubz age shiny shiny works like a charm.

    edit for clarity: it seems reasonable to assume that at least WRT the american public shiny shiny is an effective response strategy by the powers that be. it pretty much works all the time–just look at how it has operated over time on this blog.

  94. 94.

    IrishGirl

    Don’t know if anyone has mentioned this or not, but the Govt. hired a bunch of freelance hackers and they were hammering the Amazon hosted site with a Denial of Service attack. And by doing so, all Amazon customers were affected because the entire server is brought down. On NPR this morning, a reporter stated that this was the actual reason for Amazon refusing to host Wikileaks any longer. Don’t know if its true, but this is a legitimate, business argument for Amazon to make.

  95. 95.

    Corner Stone

    @IrishGirl: This is the same thing as Lieberman telling them to ditch WikiLeaks.
    If the govt can hire people to deny service to legitimate customers, not through legislation but through intimidation, then what the fuck do people think is going on here?

    God damn, what the fuck is going on here? This isn’t about business. Fuck!

  97. 97.

    Corner Stone

    God dammit people. If this holds then we won’t have to give a flying fuck about “net neutrality” legislation or any of the kabuki surrounding it.
    A couple very large corporations, aided and abetted by the US GOVT, will determine what we are allowed to interact with.

  98. 98.

    lawnorder

    Media has yet to catch a clue, but it’s bloody obvious to anyone paying attention. Internet transit in this country is controlled by a few large corporations.

    You are assuming the media isn’t controlled by large corporations

    One interesting side effect of Wikileaks existing and leaking: Serious journalists don’t have to be terrified of losing access. Leakers open sourced the access to secrets.

    Journalists can still be bought and intimidated by the old traditional methods though.

  100. 100.

    J.W. Hamner

    @Corner Stone:

    Are you out of your fucking mind? That is, in fact, the entirely material point here. Do you not understand what happened here?
    The govt does not need to send jackbooted thugs in to throw computers and monitors on the ground while they trash file cabinets.

    What exactly did Lieberman accomplish with his awesome powers of coercion? Wikileaks changed hosting services. ZOMG! Our precious freedoms!

    Anyway, a bomb shelter seems waaaaaaay cooler than Amazon.

  102. 102.

    soonergrunt

    @Corner Stone:

    The conundrum of “how did a Pfc get ALL THIS SHIT?” is an interesting one, I will grant that.

    You won’t believe this, I’m sure.
    It really doesn’t take a conspiracy. It takes that Soldier not being properly supervised, and the personnel responsible for the actual file/network security not doing their jobs.
    Manning was supposedly being released early from his contracted commitment after having received an Article 15 non-judicial punishment for fighting. This would be his second Article 15 in his career. He received one at Fort Huachuca, New Mexico for posting sensitive information on his facebook page in violation of orders.
    That’s background information, that leads to the real question later.
    He deploys with his unit, Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade 10th MTN division to Iraq, and he’s doing his intel analyst thing in a Fusion Cell.
    A Fusion Cell, you may or may not know, is really nothing more than an oversized intel center. People from various agencies and organizations are constantly running in and out of the place at all hours of the day and night. Access is by Serialized ID and Access Roster. You have to both be on the roster and have a special ID to get in. The guy at the door doesn’t know you from Adam. You have the right ID, and your name and the ID number are on the list. You’re in, and he doesn’t go in there. What’s clear is that once in, he wasn’t being adequately supervised. Nobody was checking on him to ensure that he was doing what he was supposed to be doing and not what he wasn’t. Likely that his NCO wasn’t hearing complaints about him and so wasn’t checking on him. The Army Times had an article a while back that mentioned that the unit was short handed of both junior enlisted and NCOs. That same article contained quite a bit of information about the Fusion Cell’s day to day operations, and what a clusterfuck it was.
    The other part of the equation is file/folder access. With physical files, we use safes. You get the combination for the safe that contains your working materials. With computerized stuff, we use Active Directory user and group restrictions. I don’t know what you do or do not know about MS Windows Server Active Directory, but it’s pretty clear that his (and most likely everybody else’s) access wasn’t being properly restricted. I wasn’t there, but that would fit with my experience in the past, as well as the capabilities of the systems involved. Further, there should have been no capability to burn CD-R(W)/DVD-R(W) at all. That should’ve been completely locked down by Group Policy Object as well as the ability to connect anything but a keyboard or mouse to the USB ports. It clearly wasn’t. Also concerning is the fact that the optical drives were present at all. They should’ve been removed when the computer was installed in the facility.

    In the chats that he did with Adrian Lamo, he stated that he would sit there acting like he was rocking out to Lady Gaga while he was burning files. He should never have been allowed in the facility with any recordable media at all, let alone a player of any type. That just isn’t supposed to happen. But further, many people must have seen him, and nobody stopped him. That’s also concerning. The security training is only useful if it’s actually done and adhered to.
    Manning also said to Lamo that he was looking at JAG stuff (he found the ‘colateral murder’ original file in a JAG investigator’s folder) and various other folders. Why the JAG folders weren’t restricted to the JAG personnel and other folders similarly restricted is beyond me, but it comes down to laziness on the part of the facility admins. The IT guys weren’t enforcing basic file discipline.

    So we have inadequate physical and electronic barriers to access, and that explains how PFC Manning got access to all that data and how he got it out.
    It’s another, probably longer, post to discuss how PFC Manning got to the point of breaking the laws that he surely knew about, and that one is a lot more subjective, but I’ll bet a month of my pension that it starts as it always does, with failure by his leadership to take his needs as a Soldier and a person into account, and to care for him as a leader should. Manning clearly felt no loyalty to his chain of command or his fellow Soldiers in his unit. Not only his actions, but his own words to Lamo proclaim as much. His chain of command failed him on many levels, over a substantial period of time. That does not mitigate or extenuate what he did, but it does go a long way to explaining part of his motivation.
    I feel sorry for the kid on one level. He must have felt himself very much alone with no moral or emotional support from the very people who were supposed to care for him. Again, that doesn’t excuse his actions and it doesn’t mean that if he is convicted that he won’t deserve punishment.

  103. 103.

    soonergrunt

    @IrishGirl: And of course, you have proof of this, or at least something like a guy saying “hey, I was paid by the government to DDOS Wikileaks!”

  104. 104.

    matoko_chan

    @Omnes Omnibus: you mistake me. i am uninterested in YOUR interpretations of the ethics.
    Assange and i are fellow quellists. i dont doubt his ethics.
    im uninterested in cudlip ethics, because those just mean spew w/ev the oligarchs plant in your lizard brains. :)
    @soonergrunt: i just found out the reason Manning could slurp the diplo cables off SIPRnet was that all the diplo cables are CONFIDENTIAL. so Manning with SECRET could read them all. cant read up, cant write down.
    but he did write down.
    sloppy, sloppy. never would happened with moslers and two-man rule. but…..if the US sec protocol BECOMES all moslers and two-man, then that bogs down the OODA loop, and Assanges strat works even better.
    :)

    All: Assanges strat is already working. Sooner and others reported that people with access are getting threat mail not to go Wikileaks site or lose clearances. (i dont have access n/e more).
    i think…Assange expects to be arrested and he is just surrounding himself with moar kabuki for MAXIMIZE EXPOSURE.
    This is so great!
    he’s ten hops ahead of the feds keystone cops.

  105. 105.

    matoko_chan

    @IrishGirl: go to cryptome. they know all about it.
    DOITFORTHELULZ, cele, angyl and xyrix are implicated. they are the skiddies that held 4chan for ransom for 2 hours..
    and Sooner, btw, is a fucking govfag spinner, he said himself some script kiddie was hired by the feds and bragged about it. dumbass.
    @soonergrunt: you said that YOUR BIGSELF when another commenter pointed out OUR GOVERNMENT was using taxpayer funding to pay FUCKING SPAMMERS to help with DDOS.

  106. 106.

    matoko_chan

    But further, many people must have seen him, and nobody stopped him.

    because those people are already turned. and they probably helped him. i know this because i would have.
    :)

  107. 107.

    matoko_chan

    @sparky: its systems analysis and information theory.
    alien-radio said it great– i cant improve.

    To massively simplify. Success is built on having a nice open functioning OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) loop. When A paranoid system adds layer after layer of security, bluffs, FUD, etc. at increasing strength as the core of the system is approached, Information flow across the entire system is compromised, and the OODA loops of the component parts start getting more and more out of whack,they respond to information more and more slowly, make decisions slower, or worse always make the SAME decision etc. This is how non linear information systems collapse.
    If you can complete your OODA loop faster than your opponent you will win.
    Quite aside from what else Wikileaks accomplishes it’s an elegant hack

    .
    The drip drip drip of the diplo cables (only 600 actually released so far, and they are coming 1 every hour right now from wikileaks, a lil faster from the Guardian archive) is intended to amp up the system paranoia (according to the multiple links i have shared here).
    Assanges strat is to ossify the OODA loops with a paranoia frag bomb.

    Bady:After all, why are diplomatic cables being leaked? These leaks are not specifically about the war(s) at all, and most seem to simply be a broad swath of the everyday normal secrets that a security state keeps from all but its most trusted hundreds of thousands of people who have the right clearance. Which is the point: Assange is completely right that our government has conspiratorial functions. What else would you call the fact that a small percentage of our governing class governs and acts in our name according to information which is freely shared amongst them but which cannot be shared amongst their constituency? And we all probably knew that this was more or less the case; anyone who was surprised that our embassies are doing dirty, secretive, and disingenuous political work as a matter of course is naïve. But Assange is not trying to produce a journalistic scandal which will then provoke red-faced government reforms or something, precisely because no one is all that scandalized by such things any more. Instead, he is trying to strangle the links that make the conspiracy possible, to expose the necessary porousness of the American state’s conspiratorial network in hopes that the security state will then try to shrink its computational network in response, thereby making itself dumber and slower and smaller.

  108. 108.

    soonergrunt

    Where did I ever say that either the guy was hired by the US government or say that the guy said he was hired by the US government?
    Oh, look–nowhere.
    Try again, dipshit, and (I know this part will be a strain for you) don’t be so transparently stupid next time.
    Because when you lie about something so easily debunked, nothing else you say can be taken at face value. If you don’t respect me enough to not lie about me right in front of me, at least try to have enough respect for yourself to want for other people to believe and value your input.
    It’s what adults do.

  109. 109.

    matoko_chan

    Assange is trying to collapse a non-linear information system– our classified data system.
    i dont know if it will work.
    but its damned fascinating to watch.

  110. 110.

    matoko_chan

    @soonergrunt: your a govfag spinner. you said that in response to another commenter saying the feds had hired spammers with tax dollars to bring down wikileaks server.
    ever thing you say is spin and rationalization because you cant bear to admit that your gov views you and your fellow soljahs as fungible proto-hamburger to be expensed in a meaningless, immoral, and UNWINNABLE war that they have consistantly LIED about and covered up for ALMOST TEN FUCKING YEARS.

  113. 113.

    matoko_chan

    @Omnes Omnibus: no, the US system is the field lab experiment for Assanges design of a paranoia frag bomb on non-linear classified data systems. It is designed to amp up the paranoia until the system shuts itself down.
    The beauty of Assanges system killer (if it works) is that the more unjust a regime is, the more vulnerable it is to this attack.
    Regimes with information transparency are simply not vulnerable to this style of cyber-warfare.
    The defense is simply, dont be evil.

    i think this is the argument you are trying to make Omnes.
    that is an interesting argument.

  114. 114.

    soonergrunt

    I have the link to what I actually said. It’s the link to the only time I’ve ever used the phrase “script kiddie”.
    Would you like to restate your bullshit now?

    https://balloon-juice.com/2010/11/30/harass-snatch-or-neutralize/#comment-2241972

    That’s OK, little one. You just keep being your special little self! It only gets funnier and funnier as you keep going round and round trying to keep track of which things you told to whom. You might want to invest your paper route money in a white board so you can keep track of them all. You can hang it next to the Hello Kitty poster in your bedroom if mom will let you.

    And the pie filter is back on. Permanently.

  115. 115.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @matoko_chan: Not exactly, tearing down a system, especially one which provides necessary services, without having a replacement on tap causes harm.

    To me, the targeted release of data illustrate injustice or to stop an immoral act has justification. Note though, the release must be targeted, it must be proportionate, and it should not harm the innocent. The first two Wikileaks dumps arguably fit these parameters. The latest seems more like the Joker just wanting to see the world burn. YMMV.

  117. 117.

    matoko_chan

    @soonergrunt: umm…no.

    polyorchnid octopunch
    There’s one thing I can tell you; the US has mobilized tremendous internet resources in an attempt to shut down wikileaks. I admin the mail servers at a major national ISP in Canada. We typically receive many tens to hundreds of thousands of connections a day from various botnets attempting to send us spam. Right around the time that wikileaks started suffering from their current DDoS attack, those connections dropped to almost nil. I have communicated with some of my peers at other ISPs around the continent, and we’ve all experienced the same thing.
    There is only one possible conclusion, really; the US government’s security apparatus has hired organised criminal networks to take down wikileaks. Yep… your taxes are going to pay the people who have nearly managed to render the email system unusable and compromise many thousands of computers a day in the furtherance of their criminal profits. The quick turnaround can only mean that the money that was offered was inducement enough to get them to tell their current customers (mostly penis pills, diploma mills, and lonely Nigerian gazillionaires) that they’re just going to have to wait a while before they can get back to fleecing the credulous.

    your response.

    @polyorchnid octopunch: Oh, wow. Except that, umm, no.
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2…..dos_again/
    The source or sources of the attack remain unclear, but Arbor’s early analysis lends credence to the theory that more sophisticated application-level attacks targeting vulnerabilities in Wikileak’s server rather than a simple packet flood were behind its brief outage on Sunday….One hacker, Jester, who has a history of attacking jihadist sites, claimed he used low bandwidth application layer attacks to take out Wikileaks, instead of relying on a more technically unsophisticated attack that relied on fake traffic from a large botnet. This explanation is “consistent” with data from Arbor networks of hundreds of monitor in the networks of its ISP and telco clients, the security firm said.
    Jester is a well known, rather lightly skilled script kiddie.

    you were obviously replying to poly. why would jester attack wikileaks without compensation?

  122. 122.

    Anne Laurie

    @Captain Haddock:

    Lieberman’s enthusiastic involvement, the media’s coverage, and the DOS attacks makes me think there are some embarrassing documents regarding our relationship with Israel deep down in there somewhere.

    Some people say that Lieberman’s enthusiastic involvement supports the theory that “someone” within the Israeli government was responsible for the original leak. Whether that someone was a Jewish PFC Manning, or an Israeli version of Scooter Libby, is still open for discussion…

  123. 123.

    Nutella

    @IrishGirl:

    Amazon said it wasn’t the DDoS, that they were able to handle that without a problem. Maybe the lied, but that’s what they said.

    Here’s a better explanation than mine of why Amazon dumping Wikileaks is dangerous.

    Whatever you think of Lieberman and what he did, Amazon has pretty conclusively shown themselves to be a vendor only a fool would use for anything important. And yes, that is an issue at least as important as Lieberman demanding censorship.

  124. 124.

    Name (required)

    1st Amendment issues rightfully pertain to government attempts to suppress free speech, but I have to wonder how all of that relates to current conditions, when government and big business are becoming ever more incestuously intertwined.

    Seems like an update is in order, no?

  125. 125.

    matoko_chan

    @Omnes Omnibus: quit with the fucking bullsytt, Omnes.
    covering up death stats, torture, massacres, the fact that WE ARE FUCKING LOSING, the fact THAT WE CANNOT WIN are not minor imperfections. If Obama could have been honest today he would he would have told the troops in A-stan grab your gear we are GTFO of the Graveyard of Empires before any more of you get turned into hamburger FOR FUCKING NOTHING.
    You dumb cudlip WE ARE GOING TO BECOME A FUCKING POLICE STATE because we cant BEAR TO ADMIT THE TRUTH!
    The Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free is A FUCKING LIE!
    We are pantshitting cowards that are terrified of the world finding out how bad we screwed up.
    WE are going to burn the world because we cant bear to admit how fake we are.

  127. 127.

    matoko_chan

    this is a perfect example of why i am the most hated commenter at BJ.
    Sooner replied to poly’s post that the US gov is paying spammers to attack wikileaks with an example of a skiddie ALREADY on the US payroll to attack jihaadist websites.
    Skiddies dont work for free.
    Then he tells Irishgirl to give a link on SOMETHING HE ALREADY PROVED.
    when i call him on this, he sticks his fingers in his ears and pies me.

    you hate me because i wont let you dumb cudlips lie to yourselves.

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