I have never heard ANYTHING interesting from Wikileaks regarding China or Russia, or releasing any interesting classified information produced in those countries. The "revelations" about Russia and China that you refer to seem to be from documents that are supposed to have come from the US, am I right? Like, things that are possibly the opinions of US diplomats, rather than actual factual documents stolen from Russia and China, respectively saying "Yup we're a Mafia state" and "Yup we engage in cyberwarfare"?

Do you honestly think that contingency plans don't exist in the case of war? I would be shocked if the government didn't make such plans. A couple years back there were some documents that were declassified, regarding contingency plans for some kind of war with Russia. It was interesting stuff.

I think governments need to keep their secrets secure. Occasionally these secrets show something wrong going on but I think more often than not, there's national security at risk. Do you want all of your passwords and credit card information published to the internet, plus your private correspondence with friends and business associates, plus your private diaries, plus every conversation you ever had with someone, that was meant to be in confidence? No? What, do you have something to hide from us?

Quite frankly I think the US hasn't been the "hero" of the world for a very long time, and I am a little annoyed at the US being held to a different standard than everyone else. Every country has its secrets that need to be kept, particularly on the diplomatic end. I am definitely critical of the government when it does something I don't like, and it does plenty of things I don't like, but it isn't an excuse to steal classified information and post it to the internet. Plus, if the information released is to believed, it has shown that the US has, in the overwhelming majority of cases, been doing exactly what it says it has been doing. Iran has gone so far as to claim that the US has purposely made up information and released it for propaganda purposes, which is does indicate to me that the information doesn't portray the US as the "Great Satan" that Iran would like to portray it as.

It would be difficult for wikileaks to get anything from Russia and China, because as societies they are not as free and open as the United States. Assange got most of his information from a disaffected enlisted soldier.

IMO the Assange affair episode carries a similar lesson to that of Hanssen and the FBI: a stricter application of the need-to-know principle, though there can be a tension between this and operational efficiency.

Along with this, IMO it is desirable to have a public interest defence testable by a jury, when someone is accused of leaking state secrets; the revised version of Britain's Official Secrets Act does not have this, thus increasing the power of the state.

On the other hand, over-classifying documents is a danger to avoid.

I think that the U.S. government will need to take time to have an adequate post-mortem concerning the Assange affair.

So if Assange is so concerned about information being free, why his he attacking a society in which information is much more free than it is in some other places?

I do agree with most of your points, Miland. Overclassification is a problem, in most cases moreso than underclassification. With regard to State Department accounts of the behavior of foreign leaders, I was surprised to hear that this information was essentially available to anyone with the appropriate (low-level) clearance. That a low-ranking soldier in a remote outpost in Iraq is said to have downloaded so many documents regarding locations that had nothing to do with the war he was fighting - it was kind of shocking.

Unfortunately "need to know" is more difficult to control than level of classification. But I expect that things will move more in that direction, and hopefully not like the Air Force's draconian measure of blocking the New York Times and other websites from its computer networks.

I have never heard ANYTHING interesting from Wikileaks regarding China or Russia,

Wikileaks was founded maily by russian and chinease dissidents! and they had documents.

Assange is just one of the team and the main part of the leaks was about illiberal states.
But nobody listened.

Now wikileaks is under attak and many peaple safe the information in mirrows.

BUT:
I realy do not like that 1000 mirrows of the cables exist but almost no mirrows of the old leaks.

In the past Wikileaks was a real Wiki. With many documents from many countries.
Now Wiki is just a part of the name.

I have never seen any of these supposed documents from Russia and China, but I do know that regular journalists have been reporting for years on China's cyberwarfare and Russia's government complicity in organized crime. Without any documents from Wikileaks, I might add.

And if free flow of information was important to Assange as he claims it is, he would have ensured that these supposed documents were mirrored elsewhere and available to the public. But he doesn't really seem to spend any time talking about Russian and Chinese documents; he would rather propagate conspiracy theories about the US government.

erinja:Do you honestly think that contingency plans don't exist in the case of war? I would be shocked if the government didn't make such plans. A couple years back there were some documents that were declassified, regarding contingency plans for some kind of war with Russia. It was interesting stuff.

Oh no, I know that countries plan war strategies even against their allies or countries they should never go to war with, but it did remind me of how tragic it is that we are PLANNING to have wars rather than PLANNING to have peace.

Furthermore, from what I've seen, many of the US's so called defence strategies involve invading other countries, even if they haven't been hit by anything. The US military is one that is very good at escalating conflicts, not very good at minimising them or getting them over and done with. It's been like that since Vietnam anyway.

I must say though I say this mostly from the point of view of a person from another country who doesn't want his country to get involved with its "big brother"'s conflicts if they're gonna be like that. I'm alright for the idea of a world police force or a world peace-keeping force, but the (what's their name again? Allies? Coalition?) forces of today are too much like armies to fulfil that role.

And let's face it, the US government is a much better target, especially since he's an Australian. Many people are worried about the amount of power nations like the US, China and Russia have, and would probably prefer some sort of protection from that power (thus nukes) or would prefer that power disarmed, but America is becoming more worrying than it should. And we're also worried since while there is that dangerous side to the US, there are many good things we'd prefer staying intact. So don't take it as an insult to your people, more a general concern we're having towards those with power in you country.

Anyway, I'm limited at what I can talk about here. Wikileaks is very hard to access for me, I'm not sure whether it's the country or the ISP that's the problem. I'm only able to go through what I can see in mass-media format, which is really just stuff about the US, UK and Australia, and some smaller bits about Europe (the latter not being too surprising info).

@ Rano: What are these "mirrow"s? Do you mean mirrors?

Honestly I think it's a bit of an insult that the US would be taken to be a bigger threat than China.

I'm not fan of the endless wars etc. But at least the US is fairly obvious about what it does, which is more than I can say for the economic grip that China is attempting to get on Africa, or the subtle cornering of the market on important commodities.

If we're going to have a superpower, I think it's fair to say that for most people, if they tot up the math in their head, they would rather have this superpower be the US, than China or Russia. (of course I am referring to the governments here - I have the best of feelings about the Chinese and Russian people, and I'm of Russian descent myself)

WikiLeaks FAQ - What Do the Diplomatic Cables Really Tell Us? (spiegel.de)

"... DER SPIEGEL, the New York Times, London's Guardian, Paris' Le Monde and Madrid's El Pais have viewed, analyzed and vetted the mass of data provided to the publications by WikiLeaks..."

erinja:Honestly I think it's a bit of an insult that the US would be taken to be a bigger threat than China.

Dissatisfaction with Assange - Former WikiLeaks Activists to Launch New Whistleblowing Site (spiegel.de)

i just found this Documentary on youtube about wikileaks and its history:

part1
part2
part3
part 4

I think we could discuss here for ages, some people thinks the goverment should work in secret others do not. I think i can not change your opinion but i want you to know the facts, so you can really decide for your own.

Julian is at least backed by Wau Holland Foundation, the Chaos Computer Club and probably the (international) Pirate Party network (in detail wikileaks.ch) The CCC is well-known at least in German newspapers. I.e. they made evidence in public that some e-voting machines can be manipulated and other (EU) citizen data privacy and (EU) software patents issues.

Hacker definition controversy (black hat, white hats and gray hats) en.wikipedia.org