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-   -   US says Wikileaks could 'threaten national security' (https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=227022)

Netto Azure July 26th, 2010 2:04 PM

US says Wikileaks could 'threaten national security'
 
US says Wikileaks could 'threaten national security'

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48490000/jpg/_48490657_98404513.jpg
The US said the leaks could put the lives of Nato and Afghan service personnel at risk


Quote:

The US has condemned as "irresponsible" the leak of 90,000 classified military records, saying their publication could threaten national security.

The documents released by the Wikileaks website include details of killings of Afghan civilians unreported until now.
The records also show Nato concerns that Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency is helping the Taliban in Afghanistan, an accusation Islamabad has denied.
The Pentagon said it might take weeks to ascertain what damage had been done.
Calling their release a "criminal act", spokesman Col Dave Lapan said officials were reviewing the documents to determine "whether they reveal sources and methods" and might endanger US and coalition personnel.


A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was "shocked" at the scale of the leaks, but thought that "most of this is not new".
Mr Karzai's office later said the documents "clearly support and verify Afghanistan's all-time position that success over terrorism does not come with fighting in Afghan villages, but by targeting its sanctuaries and financial and ideological sources across the borders".


The huge cache of classified papers - posted by Wikileaks as the Afghan War Diary - is one of the biggest leaks in US history. It was also given in advance to the New York Times, the Guardian and the German news magazine, Der Spiegel.
The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, said he had no reason to doubt the reliability of the reports.

Just shows the power of the Internet. While WikiLeaks has already caused waves with it's release of that graphic Apache helicopter attack...this is something. But as Mark Mandell of the BBC reports:

Quote:

The Democratic House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton has released a statement saying: "These leaked reports pre-date our new strategy in Afghanistan and should not be used as a measure of success or a determining factor in our continued mission there."
He adds: "It is critical that we not use outdated reports to paint a picture of the co-operation of Pakistan in our efforts in Afghanistan. Since these reports were issued, Pakistan has significantly stepped up its fight against the Taliban, including efforts that led to the capture of the highest-ranking member of the Taliban since the start of the war."
This is fair enough as far as it goes. We can't make a complete judgment on a very fluid situation based on reports from the past five years. But it is also fair enough to ask if much has really changed and, critically, whether the politicians are giving it enough time to change.

twocows July 26th, 2010 5:27 PM

Wikileaks is releasing the Afghanistan data with the names redacted and only up to 2009 or so. The only thing that's remotely sensitive in that release is positional data, and that's all outdated by now. They'll release more recent data in a while, but it'll be with sensitive stuff redacted.

The only people that stand to suffer from this are the officials that are saying it's a security risk. Big surprise.

Zet July 26th, 2010 5:33 PM

I thought Julian Assange was still in hiding in fear of being assassinated.


The only thing thing that the US should feel threaten by is NK's nuclear war threat, not some papers being handed out to most of the world.


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