<story><title>Anonymous stops dropping DDoS bombs, starts dropping science</title><url>http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/09/anonymous-stops-drop.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dkarl</author><text>I&apos;ve read the &quot;best of&quot; coverage of the leaked cables, and honestly, speaking as somebody who usually doesn&apos;t have a problem getting interested in world affairs, it didn&apos;t seem like there were any big revelations.  The coverage was all along the lines of, &quot;Everybody knew this, but it&apos;s humorous/scandalous/juicy that somebody got caught saying it.&quot;  If Anonymous finds anything shocking in the cables, they will make the MSM look lazy and incompetent.</text></item><item><author>pigbucket</author><text>The focus of a large portion of media coverage here in the United States since the cables were released has been on the political response to Wikileaks&apos; action, on the allegations of Wikileaks&apos; criminality, on the severing of ties with the organization by major corporations in response to Lieberman et al., and on Assange and his legal woes. All of that is newsworthy, but it has come at the cost of focusing on the stories told by the cables themselves. The things said and done by US agents, in the name of the American people, have been, to judge by the cables I&apos;ve read, sometimes good, sometimes innocuous, and sometimes unconscionably unethical and criminal. I&apos;m all in favor of any action that brings the focus back where it belongs, and tries to defeat what I suspect has been a deliberate, massive US campaign of noise and distraction, albeit a campaign that increasingly seems of a rather dated style. I&apos;ll be massively impressed if Anon can achieve anything close to those stated ends. I understand people&apos;s skepticism, and even the occasional condescension, but I&apos;m not ready to dismiss a phenomenon I don&apos;t really understand just because the participants are unseasoned and untutored in the art of studied apathy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smokinn</author><text>No big revelations? What about DynCorp?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;US-based private security contractor DynCorp, who was hired by the US to train Afghani police, was apparently supplying drugs and young boys for a sort of sex party.&lt;p&gt;The details are horrifying. The Afghani interior minister apparently went to US officials to warn them that reporters were sniffing around this story, and urged them to try to kill the story. He specifically warned that this would look bad if the connection to DynCorp was made clear (he called them &quot;foreign mentors&quot;). Apparently, US diplomats told him not to worry, and the eventual story was in fact watered down greatly (until now, of course) calling the whole thing a &quot;tribal dance,&quot; rather than a party where young boys wear &quot;scanty women&apos;s clothes&quot; and &quot;dance seductively&quot; before being &quot;auctioned off to the highest bidder&quot; for sex.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101208/00221812176/so-wikileaks-is-evil-releasing-documents-dyncorp-gets-pass-pimping-young-boys-to-afghan-cops.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101208/00221812176/so-wik...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&apos;s also the fact that everyone knows the Afghani election was rigged but while the Canadian ambassador wanted  to do something about it the US didn&apos;t.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/250218&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Anonymous stops dropping DDoS bombs, starts dropping science</title><url>http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/09/anonymous-stops-drop.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dkarl</author><text>I&apos;ve read the &quot;best of&quot; coverage of the leaked cables, and honestly, speaking as somebody who usually doesn&apos;t have a problem getting interested in world affairs, it didn&apos;t seem like there were any big revelations.  The coverage was all along the lines of, &quot;Everybody knew this, but it&apos;s humorous/scandalous/juicy that somebody got caught saying it.&quot;  If Anonymous finds anything shocking in the cables, they will make the MSM look lazy and incompetent.</text></item><item><author>pigbucket</author><text>The focus of a large portion of media coverage here in the United States since the cables were released has been on the political response to Wikileaks&apos; action, on the allegations of Wikileaks&apos; criminality, on the severing of ties with the organization by major corporations in response to Lieberman et al., and on Assange and his legal woes. All of that is newsworthy, but it has come at the cost of focusing on the stories told by the cables themselves. The things said and done by US agents, in the name of the American people, have been, to judge by the cables I&apos;ve read, sometimes good, sometimes innocuous, and sometimes unconscionably unethical and criminal. I&apos;m all in favor of any action that brings the focus back where it belongs, and tries to defeat what I suspect has been a deliberate, massive US campaign of noise and distraction, albeit a campaign that increasingly seems of a rather dated style. I&apos;ll be massively impressed if Anon can achieve anything close to those stated ends. I understand people&apos;s skepticism, and even the occasional condescension, but I&apos;m not ready to dismiss a phenomenon I don&apos;t really understand just because the participants are unseasoned and untutored in the art of studied apathy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ThomPete</author><text>As I understand it the point of the leaks or not the documents per se but the actual leak of them.&lt;p&gt;As stated elsewhere&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;According to his essay, Julian Assange is trying to do something else. Because we all basically know that the US state — like all states — is basically doing a lot of basically shady things basically all the time, simply revealing the specific ways they are doing these shady things will not be, in and of itself, a necessarily good thing. In some cases, it may be a bad thing, and in many cases, the provisional good it may do will be limited in scope. The question for an ethical human being — and Assange always emphasizes his ethics — has to be the question of what exposing secrets will actually accomplish, what good it will do, what better state of affairs it will bring about. And whether you buy his argument or not, Assange has a clearly articulated vision for how Wikileaks’ activities will “carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity,” a strategy for how exposing secrets will ultimately impede the production of future secrets. The point of Wikileaks — as Assange argues — is simply to make Wikileaks unnecessary.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-an...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>