Wikileaks

Wikileaks arsehole Julian Assange has been wikileaked himself and boy is he pissed:

Well, hello, irony: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today condemned his British book publisher for releasing drafts of a much-anticipated memoir without his approval—but he won’t be returning the £500,000 ($779,000) advance he received months ago:

British publisher Canongate announced that the book, billed as an “unauthorized autobiography,” will go on sale in stores and online Thursday. Canongate – which paid the 40-year-old Assange for the rights to the memoir last year – said that Assange began working with a ghostwriter on the book, but later backed out and tried to cancel his contract.

Julian Assange is a nasty, hateful, little man. Nick Cohen in the Observer notes the inherent evilness of Julian Assange:

“A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. “Well, they’re informants,” Assange replied. “So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.” A silence fell on the table as the reporters realised that the man the gullible hailed as the pioneer of a new age of transparency was willing to hand death lists to psychopaths.”

I said at the time if Wikileaks that people would die as a result. Julian Assange probably has blood on his hands.

In Ethiopia, however, Assange has already claimed his first scalp. Argaw Ashine fled the country last week after WikiLeaks revealed that the reporter had spoken to an official from the American embassy in Addis Ababa about the regime’s plans to intimidate the independent press. WikiLeaks also revealed that a government official told Arshine about the planned assault on opposition journalists. Thus Assange and his colleagues not only endangered the journalist. They tipped off the cops that he had a source in the state apparatus.

Wikileaks tipped off Police! Not only that but the police of a corrupt dictatorship.

Once we have repeated Orwell’s line that “so much of leftwing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot”, there is work to do. First, there needs to be relentless pressure on the socialist socialites and haggard soixante-huitards who cheered Assange on. Bianca Jagger, Jemima Khan, John Pilger, Ken Loach and their like are fond of the egotistical slogan “not in my name.” They are well-heeled and well-padded men and women who know no fear in their lives. Yet they are happy to let their names be used by Assange as he brings fear into the lives of others.

I’ll start the cause here in New Zealand by naming one Martyn Bradbury as one of those who cheered on Julian Assange, and Malcolm Harbrow. While we are compiling names at in too Keith Locke and John Minto. Liberty Scott comments on these guys and Martyn Bradbury in particular.

Some are empty heads, others are typical left wing no thinkers.  However, it’s hard to beat Bomber for the utterings of hyperbolic vacuity:

“Assange and wikileaks will be seen as a threat that needs utter annihilation because he disrupts the balance of power in a way no person ever has“.

Bomber’s an idiot, but Assange is a vile evil little prick who revels in his celebrity status, whose kiddi-socialism has gained him lots of sycophantic followers with similar levels of adolescent simplicity in their beliefs.   The types that attack the West, while living in it, because they like to be rebels, they want to believe that politicians don’t tell you everything, that there are grand conspiracies between business, government and media to make sure you don’t know the truth.  They ignore real dictatorships because that’s not counter-establishment enough, after all the US, Europe and other Western countries already oppose Syria, Belarus, North Korea and the Taliban.

I spotted this on Facebook. Nearly spat my Mountain Dew all over the keyboard.

The thought of the 50 something, self described campaign expert and political hack, Scott “Wikileaks” Simpson getting campaigning and door knocking tips from the youngest and newest MP in parliament is just so deliciously ironic I had to post it.

But Deputy Prime Minister Bill English on Thursday criticised Mr Goff’s attack on Dr Tucker.

Mr English says he knows who he believes. “If you were given the choice, I think a senior civil servant who has advised the previous prime minister and the current prime minister on issues of national security – a man of integrity – I’d believe him.”

Yep, I know who to believe too. In a question of integrity between the man who keeps NZ’s secrets and Phil Goff, a man who blabs secrets, I trust Dr Warren Tucker.

More at 6pm.

The record for Philip Bruce Goff lying on foreign affairs issues is not good:

Kiwiblog: Goff exposed

First the SAS quote:

Goff told the General that he could expect a positive outcome on redeploying the PRT past Sept 2006 and was reasonably assured the SAS (Special Forces) would deploy again after regeneration.

And the Iraq quote:

Goff noted Senator McCain’s comment that New Zealand should think about replicating its success in Bamiyan by heading a PRT in Iraq.

The Minister said he told McCain that New Zealand was not averse to doing so once the security situation had stabilized.

If I was a Young Labour member who has stuck up posters about how Don Brash would send troops to Iraq, I’d be looking for a new party, or at least a new leader, about now.

and Fran O’Sullivan: WikiLeaks a quid pro quo for Phil Goff

He had no compunction using notes of a private meeting between former National leader Don Brash and a visiting United States delegation to claim New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy “would be gone by lunchtime” under a National government.

The WikiLeaks documents have something to say on this score too.

Former United States ambassador Bill McCormick wrote in November 2006 that Goff had “misquoted” an Mfat staffer’s notes from the meeting to claim that Brash had promised the nuclear ban would be “gone by lunchtime”.

“Brash denied he intended to get rid of the ban without a referendum, but was unable to respond credibly when Labour said that must mean he was planning to scrap the legislation, which many Kiwis view as an iconic part of the country’s identity,” McCormick said.

It’s notable that Goff refused the Herald’s request under the Official Information Act to release the full notes of the meeting that Brash had with the six visiting Republican senators.

And, Labour was still telling the lie as recently as May 2011 – five months after the falsehood was revealed.

You can’t trust Labour and you can’t trust Phil Goff for anything other than for them to lie.

Now Phil Goff is lying again, this time about a briefing he said he didn’t get.

A spoof of the fact that major credit card and online payment companies have withheld over $15 Million in donations to WikiLeaks.

Even in jurisdictions where competent officials operate, unlike the Labour Party who have demonstrated ineptitude of immense proportions, they have ptretty much given up on trying to stop leaks. You simply can’t.

Suffice it to say, there are several ways to read the government’s decision to back down. One is that it is extremely difficult to prosecute leakers of classified information.  Another is that the demise of the Drake case suggests the government may be spinning its wheels. That, in turn, implies that the main argument against such prosecutions –- that it chills speech and discourages whistleblowers — may not be very strong.

In fact, the opposite might be true, at least in the national-security realm.

Though the less-painful penalties for being caught – shame, loss of a security clearance, suspension – might deter some would-be leakers, whistleblowers tend to get away with it. The law is not straightforward, and when you combine it with perverse incentives inside the intelligence community and with a cannon of decisions (forrmal and informal) that defer to the prerogatives of major news entities, it tends to provide a measure of protection.

That’s not to say that the government isn’t trying. They just aren’t very good at it. One strategy has been to try to test the notion that journalists can be prosecuted for disclosing classified information under the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the disclosure of sensitive communications or intelligence sources, methods, and ciphers by anyone to anyone.   (In theory, the government could sue to stop publication, but the Nixon administration chose a stupid case – the Pentagon Papers – to test this principle with the Supreme Court; it lost, thereby giving publishers wide latitude.)

The George W. Bush and Obama Justice Departments have said, yes, absolutely, reporters can be held liable for publishing classified information. A task force of the smartest minds in government is trying to figure out if there is any way to punish WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Privately, the Justice Department can’t figure out a formal way to distinguish Assange from The New York Times, unless it can prove that he helped procure the information.

You especially can’t stop leaks when you don’t even have basic security in place. Labour didn’t even invest in a simple index.html file or even a simpler robots.txt.

The Southland Times Editorial has finally grasped what tis who issue is about. Labour were caught pantsdown but at the same time have also been outed as abusing the Parliamentary Services budget to benefit the labour party.

Editorial: Privacy with the door open

Bad enough that Labour now stands exposed as a breathtakingly inept guardian of confidential information supplied by its donor supporters.

But could the party at least spare us any attempt to disguise its red face as reflecting legitimate indignation rather than humiliation?

That material, and what may prove some discomforting internal memos as well, are now in the clammy hands of Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater because either Labour’s IT wonks, or whoever was meant to be reconnecting them to the real world, failed entirely to protect it. Not against any illegal break-ins. Just stickybeakers, really.

Labour speaks in terms of a “malicious breach” of its online party contact database, which “exploited” a “system vulnerability”.

All of which is a rather unconvincing way of complaining that someone left mucky footprints all over the welcome mat that had been left stretched out. And not even with a key under it. None was needed.

If anything, this was more like some subconscious expression of the party’s nostalgia for the days of a kinder, gentler New Zealand when you could leave your home with the front door unlocked, the back door open, the radio on, and a wee notebook by the door for anyone to leave a message if they’d come when you were out.

Whoever fed the information to Mr Slater didn’t need any hi-tech crowbar to get it. If you registered into Labour’s healthyhomeshealthykiwiw.org.nz website, it gained you access into the party’s web server and – for reasons that defy explanation without resorting to forehead slapping – to archived material, apparently put there as a backup from the holy huddle of the party’s inner sanctum.

Labour insists that credit card information was not among the accessible material. Forgive us if we await the passage of time before accepting that this didn’t happen. But, in any case, there are strong indications that it might have, because for months stickybeakers had potential access to password information which might, in turn, have led to compromised security in a bunch of different directions.

Just what use Mr Slater now makes of the information, selectively or not, remains to be seen, but the Privacy Commissioner is right to be concerned and to be keeping a steely watch. Even if the information was not illicitly obtained, it does not mean that people’s legitimate expectations of privacy have evaporated into a puff of public curiosity.

Then again, the rest of us don’t know what we don’t know. Perhaps matters of legitimate public interest do lie within the information.

Labour itself is surely aware that public mood is increasingly towards greater exposure of party support mechanisms, and of the correlation between financial support and subsequent influence.

Why, Labour, itself, has supported in principle the proposed private member’s bill from Green MP Sue Kedgley to require registration of lobbyists, agreeing that those who lobby Ministers for a living should have to register their activities.

Mr Slater is already chewing into some of the internal party documents, including one which does suggest Labour use Parliamentary Services’ resources for party business. This is, emphatically, against parliamentary rules.

Meanwhile it looks like tech magazines around the world are busting labour’s chops. They know that Labour’s spin about hacking and malicious intent is bollocks. They got pantsed. The best thing they could do would be to suck it up, shut up and apologise, followed by a senior official falling on their sword.

WhaleOil issues ‘demands’ to Labour
Newstalk ZB
Labour is playing into the hands of blogger Cameron Slater as it goes into damage control over the information he found on the website. Mr Slater is sitting on personal details of the party membership and is threatening to name some supporters. …

New Zealand Labour Party Hacked
eSecurity Planet - ‎57 minutes ago‎
By eSecurityPlanet Staff A right-wing blogger recently took advantage of a security flaw on the Web site for the New Zealand Labour Party to access membership, credit card and other details. “Today, Cameron Slater, who runs the Whaleoil blog, …

NZ Labour members’ details exposed online
Australian Techworld - ‎Jun 14, 2011‎
New Zealand’s main opposition party says a website botch-up has exposed its members’ personal details. A database containing about 18000 supporters’ personal information could be freely downloaded from the Labour Party’s website until the problem was …

NZ Labour members’ details exposed online
Computerworld Australia - ‎Jun 14, 2011‎
New Zealand’s main opposition party says a website botch-up has exposed its members’ personal details. A database containing about 18000 supporters’ personal information could be freely downloaded from the Labour Party’s website until the problem was …

There is much outrage from the paid lap-bloggers at The Standard. Funny thing is they are speaking, Jenny (Eddie) Michie in particular like official Labour spokes-people despite no public utterance from labour anywhere.

They should remember what they post though. Google is helpful.

Wikileaks Good!

http://thestandard.org.nz/wikileaks-shows-internets-resilience-against-fools/
http://thestandard.org.nz/isoc-on-wikileaks-looks-at-the-extra-legal-activity/
http://thestandard.org.nz/marianne-ny-making-an-arse-of-swedish-law/
http://thestandard.org.nz/assange-voluntarily-goes-to-british-court-on-extradition/
http://thestandard.org.nz/diplomatic-stupidity/
http://thestandard.org.nz/welcome-to-the-21st-century/
http://thestandard.org.nz/whistleblowers/ (thats a good one)

Red Alert also wax lyrical about Wikileaks
http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2011/01/08/wikileaks-sunlight-the-best-disinfectant/
http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/12/12/wikileaks-express-your-views/
http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/12/08/how-wikileaks-is-reshaping-our-democracies/
http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/12/04/wikileaks-the-balance-between-security-and-civil-liberty/
(these all good too)

Somehow though, all of a sudden Whaleleaks bad!

Labour, Trevor Mallard at least, is frothing at the mouth over the Brash coup. While he is focussing on Brash and ACT though National is getting away under the radar. I have no problems with Labour doing this, it means Don Brash gets to talk about himself and ACt and their policies and it means that labour sees them as a credible threat thereby lending credence to anything the good Doctor has to say.

What I do object to though is the blatant lies that Trevor is now spreading. He is still running the now proven lie that Don Brash said that our nuclear free policy would be “gone by lunchtime”.

Wikileaks proveed this to be false. Further Wikileaks proved that Phil Goff lied about it too.

Goff’s problem is that he is embarrassed by the WikiLeaks revelation.

He should look closer to home.

He had no compunction using notes of a private meeting between former National leader Don Brash and a visiting United States delegation to claim New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy “would be gone by lunchtime” under a National government.

The WikiLeaks documents have something to say on this score too.

Former United States ambassador Bill McCormick wrote in November 2006 that Goff had “misquoted” an Mfat staffer’s notes from the meeting to claim that Brash had promised the nuclear ban would be “gone by lunchtime”.

“Brash denied he intended to get rid of the ban without a referendum, but was unable to respond credibly when Labour said that must mean he was planning to scrap the legislation, which many Kiwis view as an iconic part of the country’s identity,” McCormick said.

It’s notable that Goff refused the Herald’s request under the Official Information Act to release the full notes of the meeting that Brash had with the six visiting Republican senators.

If Labour’s best defense against a resurgent ACT party is a lie then they really are screwed. But thanks to Trevor for reminding us that their leader is a liar and a leaker.

Helen Clark says she was bullied by US envoys.

Oh come on, is this face of some who looks like she could be bullied?

Bully this? Yeah right

Helen Clark is acting like a big sook and squealing like someone upset that her dirty little secrets have been revealed. She should just STFU and go tramping or whatever the hell she is going to do while here. Wikileaks is revealing Labour’s dirty laundry and boy are they upset by it all.

On the plus side every time she opens her gob right now she is putting Kiwis off their Christmas dinners and curdling mothers milk and reminding people just exactly why it was that they tossed labour from the government benches.

To quote Helen Clark when she was confronted with her own bullying in parliament, by John Key… “Diddums”