Stop Wikileaks

About WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box). One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth. We are a young organisation that has grown very quickly, relying on a network of dedicated volunteers around the globe. Since 2007, when the organisation was officially launched, WikiLeaks has worked to report on and publish important information. We also develop and adapt technologies to support these activities. (www.wikileaks.com)

Why stop WikiLeaks?

There are many good reasons for stopping an organization like wikileaks.  Now before you turn away and think that all I want to do is limit the amount of information that the American public sees, that is just not the case.  I want to focus on why I think wikileaks should be shut down to three key areas:  Safety, Civilian Knowledge, and Julian Assange is a Ass Hat.

Safety

Safety is a key component to our military.  The Armed Forces spend billions of dollars researching better and more efficient ways to keep our troops healthy and safe.  When documents are exposed that tell of certain actions that a solider, platoon, or company has done it puts all of those individuals at risk, either from retaliation by host nation individuals or extreme scrutiny from people in our own country.  As you all may know, I served in the military during the time of the Iraq War and Afghanistan War.  Anytime you are in combat you are asked to report your actions and the actions of the other individuals involved in the conflict.  This usually takes the form of some sort of extremely long document that gets securely filled away under the "secret" category and sometimes in may get filled under "top secret".  When someone leaks this information to the press or social media, that individual is directly leading to a potential personnel safety issue.  Capt. Morrow the prosecutor in the  most recent wikileaks case against PVT. Manning said it the best when he said "This is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of classified documents and dumped them onto the Internet, into the hands of the enemy — material he knew, based on his training, would put the lives of fellow soldiers at risk,” (New York Times) Document security is as important to the military as personnel security.  

Civilian Knowledge

There are certain things that happen and certain things that go on during a wartime event that the American public just don't need to know about.  This have been this way since the beginning of time. There are many things that this government has kept secret that no one knew existed, until they became declassified:  The Internet, The Manhattan Project, etc.  All of these projects or actions where classified for good reasons.  Another area for concern is the potential judging of individuals serving their country.   Individuals have a different mindset when they go to war, I mean how could you have the same mentality as a Sunday shopping event at the mall, and then try to win a war, it would never happen.  The only way to experience what goes on in ones head during war is to, well go to war!!  That being said the reports that are filled out by troops should be kept secret, they should not be for the greater american public.  My name and the things that I did are in some wikileaks documents.  Its scary to think about my children could be sitting in a computer lab and stubble upon some of my after action reports.  

Julian Assange is an ass hat

Julian Assange started his stellar career as a hacker at the age of 16, Assange began hacking under the name "Mendax".  He and two other hackers joined to form a group they named the International Subversives. Assange wrote down the early rules of the subculture: "Don't damage computer systems you break into (including crashing them); don't change the information in those systems (except for altering logs to cover your tracks); and share information."  

The Australian Federal Police became aware of this group and set up "Operation Weather" to investigate their hacking. In September 1991, Mendax was discovered in the act of hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, the Canadian telecommunications company.   In response the Australian Federal Police tapped Assange's phone line and subsequently raided his Melbourne home in 1991.   He was also reported to have accessed computers belonging to an Australian university, the USAF 7th Command Group in the Pentagon and other organizations, via a modem. It took three years to bring the case to court, where he was charged with 31 counts of hacking and related crimes. Nortel said that his incursions cost it more than $100,000. Assange's lawyers represented his hacking as a victimless crime. In May 1995, he pleaded guilty to 25 charges of hacking, after six charges were dropped, and was released on bond for good conduct with a fine of $2,100. The judge said "there is just no evidence that there was anything other than sort of intelligent inquisitiveness and the pleasure of being able to — what's the expression — surf through these various computers" and stated that Assange would have gone to jail for up to 10 years if he had not had such a disrupted childhood.  (Wikipedia)

Julian Assange is a man that lives with no code of ethics or any kind of ethos.  All politics and personal view aside, he promotes a web site that "provides an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists" (wikileaks.com)  Based on the previous statement if wikileaks was such a secure webiste and organization then why do military members get caught leaking information?  Maybe there is someone inside wikileaks leaking information to the government.  

If that isn't enough for you, I could always remind you on what my mother used to say when I would tattle on some kid when I was younger.  "John, snitches get stitches"