US MEDIA ON WIKILEAKS

TIME.COM ONLINE BELOW TAKES A COMPREHENSIVE AND IN-DEPTH LOOK AT WIKILEAKS. VERY ENLIGHTENING.

WikiLeaks’ War on Secrecy: Truth’s Consequences – TIME

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034276,00.html?xid=newsletter-daily

The Army says it was a crime. When Private First Class Bradley Manning downloaded tens of thousands of diplomatic cables to a CD-RW disc at an Army outpost in Iraq from November 2009 to April 2010, he broke 18 U.S. Code Section 1030(a)(1) — which criminalizes unauthorized computer downloads. But this was no ordinary crime. When Manning allegedly passed those electronic records on to self-described freedom-of-information activist Julian Assange and his revolutionary website, WikiLeaks, he did something much more far-reaching: he caused governments to ask what is really a secret and to assess how their behavior should change in an age when supposedly private communications can be whizzed around the world at the stroke of a key.

WikiLeaks’ publication starting Nov. 28 of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables was the largest unauthorized release of contemporary classified information in history. It contained 11,000 documents marked secret; the release of any one of them, by the U.S. government’s definition, would cause “serious damage to national security.” In the U.S., the leak forced a clampdown on intelligence sharing between agencies and new measures to control electronically stored secrets. And diplomats from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the lowest political officers worked to diminish the disclosures’ impact on foreign counterparts……

Not everybody is that nonchalant, which is why the President’s real goal is to find a balance between keeping secret what should be secret, making transparent what should be transparent and doing it all in such a way as to augment the effective conduct of government. Potter Stewart had a go at defining such a balance in his Pentagon papers opinion in 1971. “The hallmark of a truly effective internal security system,” the Justice said, “would be the maximum possible disclosure, recognizing that secrecy can best be preserved only when credibility is truly maintained.” Wise words, from the heart of the American establishment. Words that Assange admiringly cites on the WikiLeaks website.

TED.COM HAD A INTERVIEW WITH WIKILEAKS’ FOUNDER. CLICK THE VIDEO FOR THE INTERVIEW AND HEAR WHAT JAMES ASSANGE HAD TO SAY.

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks | Video on TED.com

http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html

PEER INTO THE INNER THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS OF WORLD LEADERS.

ABCNews.com – Breaking news, politics, online news, world news, feature stories, celebrity interviews and more – ABC News

http://abcnews.go.com/ad/gmaintroad.html?goback=http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wikileaks-releases-classified-diplomat-cables-us-state-department/story?id=12260376&tqkw=&tqshow=WN

The huge trove of documents released today by the whistle-blowing Website WikiLeaks reads like something out of a spy novel and lifts the curtain on the secret communications between Washington and U.S. diplomats stationed around the world….