#cablegate

Besides going over revelations, I wanted to share some of the top #cablegate tweets since this last Sunday. This first one got changed and retweeted so many times that the source couldn't be tracked down:

"The U.S. government just got put thru one of their own airport nudie-scanners."

@carlmaxim - Sarah Palin says 'Julian Assange should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden.' So he should be safe for at least a decade.

@darthvader - A feisty princess, 2 scrappy droids & slews of Bothans have nothing on Wikileaks.

@vamseekamana - The big leaker is watching the big brother. Thats why we should celebrate every whistle blowing event. Orwell says 'Hi'

@peter_lemenkov - "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." ~George Orwell

@Bryan6666 - Do you know how you can tell that @wikileaks is a good thing for the world? By looking at who wants Julian Assange dead.

@SynLeejm - The world is not interested in kill-the-messenger tactics. The world wants to know why revealed corruption goes ignored.

After trending all day Sunday on Twitter and causing an international uproar, was the leak of so many internal cables worth it? Definitely. We have first hand documents from Condoleezza Rice on her involvement with abducting citizens and covering up Guantanamo Bay abuses. We also have proof that prisoners who had been proved innocent were held in the prison because they "knew too much". These are the same prisoners that the Obama administration has cut off from any legal means for redemption. We also know that Hillary Clinton has only continued in these footsteps and that they've bargained with prisoners with the current administration the way that the last administration had. Details on just how much spying goes on using the U.S. embassies, while scandalous, also redeems those who have been called "quacks" for suggesting that this was going on. Even more revelations were covered in The Week.

Ever since releasing the leak, WikiLeaks has been under fire from political, digital and legal actions. The site has been hit with multiple DDOS attack, shutting it down for hours at a time. China, among other countries, censored WikiLeaks just hours after the cables were released. The company Amazon turned off the servers they were mirroring in the U.S. (note that Amazon was hit by a backlash of displeased customers). Interpol released an international arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, while the U.S. has announced they plan bring WikiLeaks to court under the Espionage Act. The truth has always been hunted in this manner... but the digital age has changed things. When the WikiLeaks site went down, people started hosting torrents with archives of the cables. While the U.S. was announcing stories that contradicted themselves (it was embarrassing, actually), WikiLeaks stood their ground: "People need to know this."

While talking about WikiLeaks, one person said: "I think that guy should be boiled in oil." That is precisely the sentimentality that WikiLeaks is fighting against... precisely the world they are fighting against. That dark age mentality of the old world is still here. WikiLeaks is the promise of a new world ruled by information, honesty and openness. And what happens next? Assange, in this interview with Forbes, gives us a glimpse of the next leak.

Links for Cablegate:
* WikiLeaks dot CH - Main Site
* The Guardian's Cablebrowser
* The #cablegate conversation on Twitter
* The Guardian's Review of the Cables
* TIME Interview: Assange on Secrecy, China and WikiLeaks' Growth
* The Guardian - Wikileaks under attack
* So, Why Is WikiLeaks a Good Thing Again?

2010-12-02 Update: Senators are calling for WikiLeaks to be classified as "Foreign Terrorist Organization" and the government is putting pressure on Twitter to close the WikiLeaks account. Senators, as well as journalists, are talking about marking any person or company who donates funds or allows WikiLeaks access as "aiding and abetting terrorists". The truth is now a terrorist. "Terrorist" now equals "anyone who doesn't support us".

2010-12-03 Update #1: The digital attacks on WikiLeaks have continued under political pressure. WikiLeaks.org is now a dead domain. They've switched to the Swiss DNS http://wikileaks.ch/. If that goes down, here is a list of raw IP addresses that will get you there: http://213.251.145.96/, http://46.59.1.2/, http://88.80.13.160/. Also, the site http://wikileaks.info/ is listing mirror IPs in the event they are needed. Lastly, my respect for the Justice of Pakistan has skyrocketed. Despite political pressure for him to ban WikiLeaks throughout their entire nation, he (Sheikh Azmat Saeed) stated: "We must bear the truth, no matter how harmful it is."

2010-12-03 Update #2: Today, I witnessed an ex-marine step out in defense of WikiLeaks. I watched as he was attacked verbally on every level for his actions... then watched as a second marine stepped forward and silently joined him. Something shifted. Silence. I will remember this day. Today I saw a journalist from Salon and a journalist from The Atlantic actually agree with each other in defense of WikiLeaks. They not only agreed, but linked to each other's articles... despite the opposition between their organizations. These are no small journalists. This is Glenn Greenwald with Salon and Jeffrey Goldberg with The Atlantic. I never thought I'd live to see this day. But the day isn't over. Today, I saw a person who avidly hated and attacked WikiLeaks make a U-turn and begin supporting them with everything they've got. Something is happening. Germany has already fired execs who spied for America, and this morning brings news of Tamil supporters calling for the imprisonment of an Indian general who supported the massacre of 40,000 civilians. I've never seen so many changes made in such a short amount of time... and haven't felt such a high level of hope in years. I highly suggest this article by Glenn Greenwald.

2012-12-04 Update #1: The Tech Herald has an incredible article covering all the attacks (digital and political) on WikiLeaks: WikiLeaks faces more heat in the wake of cablegate. It also brought up Lieberman's SHIELD Act, that would cut off all news sources from ever telling us about Guantanamo Bay or any other sensitive items the government labels "state secret". This follows in Obama's footsteps of denying torture victims, even innocent ones, any right to try those who tortured them... as any case now labeled "state secret" cannot be brought to court under Obama's Supreme Court Ruling.

2012-12-04 Update #2: Anonymous (aka, 4CHAN), has temporarily pulled out of their war against the RIAA and turned their legions on PayPal. This follows in the wake of PayPal freezing the WikiLeaks donation account. The PayPal Blog was hit with the first DDoS attack by 4CHAN and, as of these writings, has not returned for public access. With the largest group of digital freedom fighters now siding with WikiLeak, it is without a doubt that first real infowar has now been fully engaged.

anonymous is legion
we do not forgive
we do not forget

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
~Thomas Jefferson (to Edward Carrington, 1787)