Vote: Should Wikileaks be closed down?

Discussion Open Forum
1

Should Wikileaks be closed down?

  • Yes, it is dangerous to national security and may lead to military casualties, outing of spies etc.
  • Yes, Julian Assange is a rapist and I just don’t like the way he keeps his hair.
  • No, freedom of speech is fundamental to the proper functioning of democratic societies by making the social contract between government and citizens ultimately more robust.
  • No, it’s the Internet. This is what we want from it. They are doing a good job with limited resources so what has the main stream media been doing? Wikileaks is keeping the bastards honest.
0 voters

Here’s a chance to vote on whether you think Wikipedia should cease and desist (be shut down) or continue as shutting down the site is an intrusion on our civil liberties and an insult to our intelligence. Who owns content generated by our tax dollars? I use our very loosely.

Mod note: The thread title has been edited from Wikipedia to Wikileaks to match the poll question content.

Which is a very good thing too.

2

duhh, Homer, you mean “WikiLeaks”???

3

I think your title needs a bit of fixing. Do you want to close down wikipedia or wikileaks?

4

It’s the imminent defeat in the Ashes that’s vexing him. He’ll be back to his normal self in a month. :smiley:

5

Wikileaks should be shut down and their management should be brought to justice.

They are reckless and in violation of many laws.

Wikipedia, while chock full of errors, is still a great site for settling arguments and getting rudimentary info on basically anything.

6

Wikipedia should be shut down. It disturbs me greatly that I can find out what happened in the year 343.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/343

See? Clearly a threat to someone, especially since much of the information at Wikipedia is available to people who speak languages I don’t speak or didn’t even know existed. There are more than 753,000 articles in Polish alone. Scandalous.

7

[quote=“Deuce Dropper”]Wikileaks should be shut down and their management should be brought to justice.

They are reckless and in violation of many laws.

[/quote]

Have they? What laws are they actually in violation of?

8

[quote=“cfimages”][quote=“Deuce Dropper”]Wikileaks should be shut down and their management should be brought to justice.

They are reckless and in violation of many laws.

[/quote]

Have they? What laws are they actually in violation of?[/quote]

Espionage laws.

But no they shouldn’t be shut down. They do leak information that was actually shit on governments before they got all America obsessed.

9

[quote=“Satellite TV Jr”][quote=“cfimages”][quote=“Deuce Dropper”]Wikileaks should be shut down and their management should be brought to justice.

They are reckless and in violation of many laws.

[/quote]

Have they? What laws are they actually in violation of?[/quote]

Espionage laws.

But no they shouldn’t be shut down. They do leak information that was actually shit on governments before they got all America obsessed.[/quote]

What espionage laws? The most recent release was of American documents. Leaving aside the freedom of the press that’s enshrined in the US constitution, how is an organization that’s not in America and is not American guilty of breaking American laws?

Does that mean in a woman goes topless on a beach in Australia it’s considered breaking the law because it’s illegal in the US? Or someone smokes a joint in a cafe in Amsterdam they’re criminal because it’s illegal in America? Or a 19 year old Canadian breaks the law when he drinks in a Vancouver bar because it’s illegal in America?

10

[quote=“cfimages”][quote=“Satellite TV Jr”][quote=“cfimages”][quote=“Deuce Dropper”]Wikileaks should be shut down and their management should be brought to justice.

They are reckless and in violation of many laws.

[/quote]

Have they? What laws are they actually in violation of?[/quote]

Espionage laws.

But no they shouldn’t be shut down. They do leak information that was actually shit on governments before they got all America obsessed.[/quote]

What espionage laws? The most recent release was of American documents. Leaving aside the freedom of the press that’s enshrined in the US constitution, how is an organization that’s not in America and is not American guilty of breaking American laws?
[/quote]

Freedom of speech does not protect the release of classified information en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

You can still get charged with espionage or as an enemy to the Government of the US even if you’re not a US citizen, it’s just whether would any country would extradite you. The Australian gov already announced that it would help the US try Assange and they’re looking at if Assange broke any Australian laws as well.

smh.com.au/technology/techno … 18fee.html

11

Then they also need the charge every single media organization that published them, in particular the 5 that published first. I don’t see them going after NYT or the Guardian though. Wikileaks is no different.

If the US officials etc hadn’t done anything wrong in the first place, there’d be nothing for them to worry about other than a little embarrassment. That’s what makes the whole thing so ridiculous - a little embarrassment seems to be all it takes to get the US riled up. The reactions to previous leaks that actually showed wrongdoing and illegal actions by American soldiers and officials weren’t anywhere near as severe as they are this time.

12

I voted no. I don’t think we should give governments the power to arbitrarily close down sites that might endanger anyone. The burden of proof lies on the accuser.

It’s a non-US organisation, should be outside US jurisdiction. End of story.

Almost.

There is a place, even a need, for information to be released in a responsible manner that others would prefer to see suppressed. But doing it in order to exercise your own brand of justice is not beneficial to the rest of us. Discretion should be exercised, judgement should be used to tell the whole story. If they can’t do that, then they’re as bad as Fox News.

13

That’s what they always argue when they want to tap your phone or put surveillance cameras on the street.

14

I voted no. I think I have the right to see what governments are doing.

It’s good that this stuff is out on the open:

[quote]WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cashpoint for terrorists
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton[/quote]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cables-saudi-terrorist-funding

[quote]WikiLeaks cables: Saudi Arabia rated a bigger threat to Iraqi stability than Iran
Baghdad says it can contain influence of Shia neighbour, unlike powerful Gulf state that wants a return to Sunni dominance . . .

Iraqi government officials see Saudi Arabia, not Iran, as the biggest threat to the integrity and cohesion of their fledgling democratic state, leaked US state department cables reveal.

The Iraqi concerns, analysed in a dispatch sent from the US embassy in Baghdad by then ambassador Christopher Hill in September 2009, represent a fundamental divergence from the American and British view of Iran as arch-predator in Iraq.

. . .

Hill’s unexpected assessment flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that Iranian activities, overt and covert, are the biggest obstacle to Iraq’s development.

It feeds claims, prevalent after the 9/11 attacks, that religiously conservative, politically repressive Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9/11 terrorists came from, is the true enemy of the west.[/quote]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cables-saudi-meddling-iraq

And:

http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2010/11/29/16356456.html

Now we just need the media to start doing their job properly.

15

I wonder if it has been already shut down.I haven’t been able to connect with the website all day.It is still.I assume. http://wikileaks.org

16

Voted “no”. I’m not naive enough to believe that fundamental human rights of free speech are not without exceptions. But I have yet to see what has been more harmful to individuals in harms way than MSM. And what I have read has been pretty effing damning of my country’s government .

17

[quote=“BigJohn”]I wonder if it has been already shut down.I haven’t been able to connect with the website all day.It is still.I assume. http://wikileaks.org[/quote]It’s not working for me, either.

They will be shut down, only to keep doing what they do on a different domain.

18

Wikileaks’ domain host has cancelled their .org address, citing terms of use violations. It is still available via the IP address at 213.251.145.96/ - other mirrors are springing up all the time.

19

Ooh! Oooh! They broke the law and you’re helping people get round it. That’s against the rules. You’ll end up in a Swedish jail, sandwiched between the Pirate Bay team and Julian the Rapist.

20

That’s what they always argue when they want to tap your phone or put surveillance cameras on the street.[/quote]

That wasn’t really what I meant but I guess it could be seen that way. I don’t think the two situations really compare though. I was using that more to illustrate my point about embarrassment that seems to be causing a more extreme reaction than things like torture revelations did.