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List of facilities 'vital to US security' leaked

Catz Part Deux said:
The documents that are being leaked are not top-secret. They are classified, which means that there are perhaps 1 million people in the U.S. (out of 300 million) that have access to them. That would include any and all federal analysts, investigators, and a hefty percentage of military personnel.

It's important to understand the difference between classified material and top secret material. There are a ton of documents that are listed as classified that probably shouldn't be. A comparable issue is "law enforcement sensitive" material.

Boyfriend was telling me that many military personnel have access to this stuff through the base computer systems.
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You proved my point. Government employees are part of the Obama administration. He needs to find out how this information is getting released and fix it
 
Any serious terrorist group or world government would already know all of the locations on that list. It's redundant information.

Am I the only person in this world that thinks that while state security is important, that maybe if countries and officials conducted themselves and their affairs with honesty, integrity, and transparency, that maybe people like Assange wouldn't be able to garner any kind of attention at all?

Example: My colleagues and I correspond on a continuous basis by email. If our email servers were hacked, and our emails published, I can guarantee you that none of our clients would be overly distressed or surprised. And that includes several that have some fairly bad words in them.

So, if the company that I work for can keep our chatter and planning civil, how is it that entire branches of government - who are accountable to multiple layers of supervision and oversight - can't even seem to make a simple communique fit to be read by the community at large?

People have no right to be angry at Assange. He is a media agent. If you value free speech then you shouldn't care. The problem is the sources that are leaking the info within your own country. Take responsibility for your own actions. Hypocrites.
 
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Kandahar said:
Yes
1234567
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There is nothing about U.S. Federal Code which seems to apply to people who don't live in the U.S. and were never citizens of the U.S.
 
Hatuey said:
There is nothing about U.S. Federal Code which seems to apply to people who don't live in the U.S. and were never citizens of the U.S.
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That information is the property of the United States Government. I would think that it doesn't matter where Assange was at, when he stole it.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
And calls for him to be treated as a terrorist, killed etc are not threats?

What he said is not a threat, but a warning if he is killed, thrown into gitmo etc, that truely US national security information will be released.
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R U acting as an apologist for people who are arguably endangering American or friendly Afghan lives?
 
Albert Di Salvo said:
R U acting as an apologist for people who are arguably endangering American or friendly Afghan lives?
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Nope I am not apologising for the actions of Wiki leaks


Any and all of those sites would have been on a target list. The ones in Canada would have been on mine had I wanted to target US energy supplies.

Oil and gas pipelines, public knowledge, electrical transmission lines, power plants (coal and nuclear), damns, oil export facilities, narrow shipping lanes like the straight of Hormus.

By god if a group of terrorists did not think about these types of sites as targets they are pretty darn worthless as terrorists.


Give me a bunch of bombs and detanators along with 10 intelligent people and I could knock out about 15% of US energy supplies just from Canada. I didnt need wiki leaks to inform me of the potential targets in Canada
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
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By god if a group of terrorists did not think about these types of sites as targets they are pretty darn worthless as terrorists.

Give me a bunch of bombs and detanators along with 10 intelligent people and I could knock out about 15% of US energy supplies just from Canada. I didnt need wiki leaks to inform me of the potential targets in Canada
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1. We have many stupid young jihadis living in America who shouldn't be given ideas or targets. People like the recent Portland, Oregon Somali Jihadi who pretended to be American.

2. You can't find 10 intelligent people in all of Canada (except for BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan).
 
Catz Part Deux said:
The documents that are being leaked are not top-secret. They are classified, which means that there are perhaps 1 million people in the U.S. (out of 300 million) that have access to them.
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IMO, for purposes of better protecting information, that number should be a fraction of what it is. The "need to know" should guide who does/does not have access to such material. Most contractors, most military personnel (all at the lower ranks) should not have access to such data. There is no operational need for them to possess such info.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
And calls for him to be treated as a terrorist, killed etc are not threats?

What he said is not a threat, but a warning if he is killed, thrown into gitmo etc, that truely US national security information will be released.
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By releasing info. that clearly indicated that it referred to vital installations, it is clear that Mr. Assange is interested not in transparency, but in damaging U.S. interests. That one could obtain at least a significant part of that informatio on one's own through extensive research is irrelevant. The information is in a single inventory and that inventory is based on how U.S. officials assess the importance of various facilities. No nation can allow one to deliberately damage its critical interests with impunity. Neither can the U.S. That Mr. Assange has become somewhat of an information age folk hero is irrelevant.
 
Does anyone else find it somewhat amusing that the big, bad USA can be tied up in knots by some insignificant guy with a laptop? This certainly shows the rest of the world what a paper tiger the USA really is.

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donsutherland1 said:
From the BBC:



BBC News - List of facilities 'vital to US security' leaked

This latest leak makes abundantly clear that Mr. Assange is less interested in transparency than in publicizing U.S. vulnerabilities and practices. One is no longer dealing with embarrassing diplomatic cables. Instead, a strategic inventory of sites has been disclosed. This latest leak is of potentially significant value to U.S. enemies, as they have in their possession a list of critical facilities that they could target.

IMO, no nation can or should allow its critical or vital interests to be threatened with impunity. The U.S. should act either through appropriate legal channels to bring Mr. Assange to justice or, if such options are not available, through covert means so that he can be prosecuted. It should not allow its national security to be undermined without acting to bring an end to that situation.
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Chances are that the terrorists already knew the list or parts of it. 3 million plus people had access to the exact same information in the US, and you are not telling me that at least one of those does not have sympathies for the other side or is greedy...

This case is totally overblown, especially by the US right. This stuff aint secret, but private.. huge difference.
 
donsutherland1 said:
IMO, for purposes of better protecting information, that number should be a fraction of what it is. The "need to know" should guide who does/does not have access to such material. Most contractors, most military personnel (all at the lower ranks) should not have access to such data. There is no operational need for them to possess such info.
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I think that will be the primary result of this situation, access to such data will be more strictly curtailed. On the other hand, I don't consider a lot of this information to be "secret," strictly speaking.
 
TOJ said:
Does anyone else find it somewhat amusing that the big, bad USA can be tied up in knots by some insignificant guy with a laptop? This certainly shows the rest of the world what a paper tiger the USA really is.
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I personally consider a lot of this to be a huge overreaction. Some of this information, such as the cables between our embassies, is embarrassing, but hardly top secret. This list that people are having a conniption fit about isn't something that a good researcher with an internet connection couldn't have put together.
 
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Catz Part Deux said:
I think that will be the primary result of this situation, access to such data will be more strictly curtailed. On the other hand, I don't consider a lot of this information to be "secret," strictly speaking.
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It is not classified as secret but as private. Big difference legally and in reality.
 
Catz Part Deux said:
I personally consider a lot of this to be a huge overreaction. Some of this information, such as the cables between our embassies, is embarrassing, but hardly top secret. This list that people are having a conniption fit about isn't something that a good researcher with an internet connection couldn't have put together.
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So why is your President, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and everyone on down the line going ballistic? Are they misinformed or are they just playing to the dumbmasses?

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Catz Part Deux said:
He didn't steal it. He RECEIVED it.
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I know you've been involved around law enforcement before so you may know better than me. But is it particularly legal or looked at as much lesser if you recieve stolen property and then leverage it for your own gains while knowing its stolen?
 
TOJ said:
So why is your President, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and everyone on down the line going ballistic? Are they misinformed or are they just playing to the dumbmasses?

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It is embarrassing. :shrug:
 
Zyphlin said:
I know you've been involved around law enforcement before so you may know better than me. But is it particularly legal or looked at as much lesser if you recieve stolen property and then leverage it for your own gains while knowing its stolen?
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It's just a different charge. Technically speaking, Julian Assange did not steal this information. He received it from a source.

That makes him not a lot different from Woodward and Bernstein.
 
Zyphlin said:
I know you've been involved around law enforcement before so you may know better than me. But is it particularly legal or looked at as much lesser if you recieve stolen property and then leverage it for your own gains while knowing its stolen?
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The information that was leaked isn't stolen property, either.

"Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests... The abolition of secret diplomacy is the primary condition for an honest, popular, truly democratic foreign policy... The workers’ and peasants’ Government abolishes secret diplomacy and its intrigues, codes, and lies. We have nothing to hide." - Trotsky, WWI
 
[GOOGLE][/GOOGLE]
Catz Part Deux said:
It is embarrassing. :shrug:
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So they are lying when they claim it is harmful to USA security? I would call that playing to the dumbmasses. :shrug:

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TOJ said:
[GOOGLE][/GOOGLE]So they are lying when they claim it is harmful to USA security? I would call that playing to the dumbmasses. :shrug:

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I mean, it's not helpful to us to be internationally embarrassed, but I don't believe there is anything that has been leaked that is really a serious threat to national security. In fact, some of the leaked documents make U.S. diplomats from the state department look pretty compentent in the face of global idiocy. It's a mixed bag.

I certainly don't have my panties in a wad about it, I must confess that i'm somewhat enjoying the spectacle.
 
Catz Part Deux said:
I think that will be the primary result of this situation, access to such data will be more strictly curtailed. On the other hand, I don't consider a lot of this information to be "secret," strictly speaking.
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I agree. Fortunately, none of the information is "top secret." Nonetheless, given the description of the inventory of facilities as being "vital" to U.S. security, Mr. Assange's motives are fully transparent. In releasing information that the U.S. considered "vital," it is clear that his intent is not some high-minded effort to bring transparency to the public, but a narrow pursuit aimed at damaging U.S. interests. No sovereign state can or should allow such willful effort to damage its interests to proceed with impunity.
 
Catz Part Deux said:
I mean, it's not helpful to us to be internationally embarrassed, but I don't believe there is anything that has been leaked that is really a serious threat to national security. In fact, some of the leaked documents make U.S. diplomats from the state department look pretty compentent in the face of global idiocy. It's a mixed bag.

I certainly don't have my panties in a wad about it, I must confess that i'm somewhat enjoying the spectacle.
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I am also enjoying the spectacle, but then I don't have a dog in the fight. If is causes problems for the USA government, all the better. :shrug:

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