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0 pointstptacek15y ago0 comments

Doesn't it bother you that without reliable evidence, you can make a similarly credible narrative out of almost anything else? Maybe it was the Bush-era DoD people who leaked the story to discredit the Obama administration! You can't prove a negative.

I'm working under the assumption that someone named Manning did in fact do something stupid with Wikileaks, which did indeed encourage him to do that stupid thing. That Wikileaks is encouraging stupid people to do stupid things is something that bothers me about Wikileaks; that stupid people are given access sufficient to do stupid and damaging things is something that bothers me about the DoD.

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barrkel15y ago· 2 in thread

I don't think Wikileaks encourages stupid behaviour - as I understand it, the input avenue is primarily an file upload field.

As to evidence (in the legal sense), I don't have any one way or the other that Manning had anything to do with the leak. I just have media reports, which sound really weird, which makes me not give them much weight.

tptacekOP15y ago

Regardless of how (say) Manning conveyed files to Wikileaks, leaking classified-TS cables is manifestly stupid. One doubts most of the people who might help Wikileaks from inside the DoD have any idea what they're actually doing. My guess is that it all seems unreal, happening as it does on the always fake-seeming Internet using computers that make everything seem like chat room drama.

barrkel15y ago

Do you have evidence that classified top secret cables were leaked? That one is easy to prove. A quick Google search, though, seems to only turn up rumours.

The only direct source of much of the rumours seems to be the completely unbelievable Wired story. The Salon story on Wired's reporting is the primary reason I don't trust it, nor anything implied by it on other sites:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18...

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