So, they arrested Julian Assange on the Swedish sex crimes warrant.
So what? Say its true, say he's a horrible, horrible little man, how does that affect the WikiLeaks infodump? It doesn't.
Plug got yanked on servers hosting WikiLeaks; mirror sites sprang up. And up and up.
Say he gets locked away for Swedish violations,* then Eric Holder gets him charged with, I don't know, mopery or Sneaking About While Foreign or receipt of stolen doubleplussecretness and Assange never sees the light of a screen again. So what? There's a thousand more just like him and a hundred thousand wannabes behind them and on and on. For good and ill, the pin's been pulled.
Oh, they -- some "theys" -- could try puttin' a bucket over it; the FCC is champing at the bit to do it now. But they can't do it without calling attention the the fact they're doing it, which is like setting up a superfun Giant Hacker Challenge to get around it, whatever "it" might be. (Some things, like throttling bandwidth, are pert' near impossible to hack around -- but try to bury info others want exposed? Once it's out, it's out. You can't unring a bell).
"The internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it" isn't just a matter of system architecture; it's become a cultural meme.
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* I did not check -- I am a Neo-Victorian, you know -- but odds are pretty good you'd find "Swedish Violations" in the adult video section.
A thousand more just like him? No. Imagine the conversation:
ReplyDelete"I wanna be the next Julian Assange the blow the lid off this thing!"
"Oh? You really like prison food? Or dirt naps?"
"You make a good point..."
I think how Assange gets treated may be a detterent. It won't stop all of the wannabes, but it will stop some.
See, that's where the "arrogant jerk" factor comes in; the next impresario of revelation knows he's too clever to get caught that way.
ReplyDeleteYou shut the door to keep the next batch of horses inside. The escaped ones have gone to the great pasture beyond and you can't put the cork back in that bottle (sorry about mixing my metaphors.)
ReplyDeleteCommon sense security. Need to know controls. Supervision of those with access. Compartmentalization of data. Actual reasonableness applied to classification.
And, a professionally applied implementation of black ops against cyber-terrorists. Someone generous soul offers Assange a relaxing vacation from the pursuit at a quiet fishing resort where the guide on a muskie outing looks suspiciously like Lucca Brazzi.
"odds are pretty good you'd find "Swedish Violations" in the adult video section."
ReplyDeleteIT'S IN MY BRAIN NOW.
THANKS FOR THAT.
Good choice of search terms. Here's one result that popped up: http://nonrhotic.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/swedish-news-niggers-nazis-and-naked-cops/
ReplyDeleteSo the next time someone wants to do something like this, they'll just post on some Russian server or such.
ReplyDeleteWe still don't know who leaked the climategate stuff.
John, your comment is in time out until I can vet the link. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteOld Grouch: exactly.
There seems to be a misperception as to how I see A) Mr. Assange and B) this situation.
Him, I rate Chaotic Neutral.
Dragging the secrets of governments, any government, into the light? On the balance, Chaotic Good. A .gov that slinks around in the darkness is up to no good -- or will be, by and by. And so much of this "secret" stuff is trivial. Hilary doesn't trust the Rooshian bosses? Hon, pull up a chair, that's a big ol' table.
If .gov wants OpSec, they should stop writing stuff down. Especially online. And if that is so much extra effort they only do it when they really, really have to? Good.
Bobbi, the simile will shock you Neo-Victorian sensibilities. Difference between a Pregnant Woman and a light bulb.... You can un-screw a light bulb. Wikileaks is the light bulb, the information on wikileaks is one pregnant Monica Lewinski! That isn't getting unscrewed. The genie can be conned back into the bottle if you're an ignorant Arab fisherman in one of Scheherazade's tales. It aint happening here. Are they gonna off the entire intelligentsia?
ReplyDeleteThat's a serious question. Commies have gone there before.
When everything is classified as "Top Secret", then nobody will be able to access information until they have "Top Secret" clearance. So everybody does, which means the information that belongs there is as easily accessed as the stuff that doesn't.
ReplyDeleteIf anything positive comes out of this it will be a reconfiguration of what is classified, and who has access to what.
Antibubba
Everyone knows the archive have archives. If you know and what to look for it's still there some where..
ReplyDeleteYou truly can't stop the signal.
As to the secrets, if they were actually secret then the would still be. Seems the door marked secret has a sticky yellow paper with the password on it next to the terminal. Having done IT Ill bet on it!
If they want to hang someone it's the person that grabbed the stuff or maybe the one that never secured it well in the first place.
Eck!
...And John's comment is back from time out with one caveat: NSFW image, at least if you work where I do. But it was the n-word that concerned me -- yeah, "just a word," only not. It hasn't been Lenny-Bruced yet, more's the pity.
ReplyDeleteBobbi: As for Mr. Assange, his task I might rate as Chaotic Good, but the man himself is Chaotic Evil in my book. I'm in the same 'scene' as his crew, and I have ... testimony from sources I strongly trust that suggest to me that the rape charges in Sweden are not as ginned up as his strong supporters are claiming.
ReplyDeleteNever having encountered him myself, I certainly don't have any hard evidence of that, and you would be wise, of course, to take my claims with a large grain of salt. But I won't be surprised if they present some fairly conclusive proof that he's guilty, shall we say.
Culturally, there could have been some serious comms failures between an Oz male and a Swedish female. Does tat excuse chargable acts? No. Hells no. But the blog at John Shirley's link provides interesting input on the war between the genders in Sweden. This is a country with serious proposals to outlaw urinals 'cos they are emblematic of "male privilege."
ReplyDeleteIn the first 2 sets of documents he brings to light a helicopter knowingly firing on civilians. That there is whistle-blowing--something that SHOULD come to light.
ReplyDeleteNow he's releasing snarky diplomat comments; now he's just another hacker showing his skillz. And so Assange passes into obscurity.