The Wikileaks collection

[huskerguy7]

Last night, I was browsing some of the raw documents and appalled by what I found.

After opening one report, I came across an informant's name, elder's name, and the source's phone number. Several email addresses were also listed.

I know that the NY Times and The Guardian pledged to hide their sources (for some reason, I was under the impression that Wikileaks also deleted the names). However, even the private information is publicly available. If I can find it, I'm sure that anybody can find it.

What does this mean? With the Taliban's decision to now attack Afghan civilians who are cooperating with the Coalition, the situation is much more disturbing. With the leaked documents (which also provide location details) publicly available, the Taliban could easily make a hit list of hundreds of Coalition informants within 24 hours. If this is done (or something along these lines), then working with the locals in some cases will be much more difficult. It's to bad that sensitive, private information about Afghan civilians was leaked.

[Kiwigrunt]

On TED.com: (20 min)

The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished -- and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.

[gute]

I am finding it difficult to write about this because it obsolutely infuriates me so I'll tell you about the nice dream I had last night - Assange, PFC Manning and Seymour Hersh had their heads sawed off by the Taliban on national t.v.

[JarodParker]

WikiLeaks posts huge encrypted file to Web Link

LONDON – Online whistle-blower WikiLeaks has posted a huge encrypted file named "Insurance" to its website, sparking speculation that those behind the organization may be prepared to release more classified information if authorities interfere with them.

Somebody tell this guy that he isn't Will Smith and that this aint "Enemy of the State."

[Lorraine]

According a Huffington Post story, this week the Navy issued an official memo notifying sailors that they should not and are not authorized to view the classified documents on WikiLeaks. Huffington Posts quotes the memo:

"There has been rumor that the information is no longer classified since it resides in the public domain. This is NOT true."

The Navy memo articulates an important message to military and civilian alike -- viewing the classified documents at WikiLeaks expands the reach of sensitive info and reinforces WikiLeaks' role as a legitimate infomation provider.

I agree with the Navy -- tempting as it may be, there are few, if any, compelling reasons for most of us to view the classified information.

[Pete]

The real problem is whether information in the leaked documents helps the bad guys, not the expansion the reach of classified information. DoD his pointed out that certain of the documents identify persons who have cooperated with our forces. On the other hand, most of these documents are mundane as they could be, not at all like the high-level stuff in Ellsburg's Pentagon Papers in 1972.