Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Julian Assange - Hero or villain?

It seems most reputable sites and countries are trying to cut the information off but,
It's not realistic that the information is going to be stopped

Note from the following linked site that he was born in Townsville and spent a lot of his childhood on Magnetic Island.

The "knowledge" that he has uncovered and disseminated is raw, extensive and does not "take sides" in terms of censorship - It's all there and available for anyone to read and make their own judgement.

He has been successfully demonised, especially by the USA, but I am unwilling to make any judgement at all except for that which I check on specifically.

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

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikileaks-goes-underground--in-a-bunker-deep-in-sweden-20101206-18mii.html

4 comments:

Chris Fellows said...

Are you making Assange T-shirts yet? Sign me up for one.

My concerns are: (1)Particular threats to the lives of individuals, specifically informers in Iraq and Afghanistan, arising from the previous tranches of classified material; (2) Since this release of information does not reflect a game-changing technological advance, as in 'The Light of Other Days', but just a security failure, I am afraid the net effect may be to reduce government transparency instead of increase it.

I think the Theophanes administration is doing the right thing by downplaying the leaks - demonstrating the resilience of more open societies. I hope they are quietly offering resettlement opportunities in Dearborn to address point (1).

Anonymous said...

It may well be that governments, in future, will attempt to tighten down even more than they have so far. But will they be able to do so?--- Some of the information that has been leaked is extremely interesting. One may have suspected, now one knows. Imagine a world in which everything of public interest may be leaked and is leaked. A worse or a better world? Not dependent on misinformation spread by governments and biased media. Klaus

Marco Parigi said...

The precedents don't seem to support the assertion that it has put anybody's life at any more risk. Because both enemy and friends are privy to the same new information, risks can easily go the other way. One eerie similarity to the modus operandi of Assange and the LOOD book is the mentioning of plausible deniability. Assange takes the safety of whistleblowers seriously in the way leaks are accepted and disseminated.

Marco Parigi said...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11882092

explains why the threats to individuals is dubious at best.

The 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers is a similar example in point.