Wikileaks: Ash Watches 3.5 hours of CSPAN So You Don't Have To.

CAWWW!!!

With all the "Unamerican activities dag-nabbit!" and the "someone should assassinate that Assange varmint", the US Government was starting to look like Yosemite Sam. So instead of spinning their wheels ad nauseum, they decided they should probably try and have an intelligent discussion about what laws they're going to use to fight it--and in the spirit of transparency, put it in cable and the internet!

The American House Judiciary Committee had a hearing on Wikileaks yesterday--and you can watch it too!
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Legaland
or
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20101216/index.htm

But I doubt you want to, because it's amazingly, brutally dull. And long. And it's hard to listen to.
If you want the play-by-play notes, I'm your girl--though I reserve the right to editorialize. Also for my analysis to fall apart near the end, while my brain turns to mush by the repetition of the pronunciation of "Wikuhleaks".

Get to the goods after the jump.

Why I'm Worried about the Espionage Act.

these folks are most likely also breaking the Espionage Act.
It's a party in here.

One of the reasons I'm following the Wikileaks and Cablegate-craziness-and-attendant-f*ckery so closely is because I really believe that it's history in action: the way that the world reacts to Assange et al at Wikileaks and the information they released is going to change the way that free speech and freedom of the press work in very fundamental ways. Growing up in a democracy, I recognize the fact that the information I have access to as a citizen--the quality, connotation, frequency and validity of it--changes the way my country runs, and the way that I live my life. This is gonna change my day-to-day, and yours too. I thought I should maybe stay informed.

The problem is that this is fundamentally a question of information. And there seems to be some scary attitudes about the transmission of information from people in power these days. I want to talk about the reasons I'm fretting about the legal arguments happening about these questions of information.

Firstly: because the 1917 American Espionage Act could be interpreted to make me a National Security Risk for talking about the Cables, and YOU one for reading about them.

More after the break:

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Feel free to decide which is which.


Is something true just because power says it is?
"Let me be very clear, WikiLeaks is not a whistleblower website and Assange is not a journalist.”

Hillicon Valley (read: tech+politics blog) reports that since they can't find a law Assange actually broke, they're just gonna make one up.

An argument against the "continued infantilizing of the public"--and an assertion that the cables are going to change the way we listen to edited, elite-printed news bits in the future.

I think this is going to help divide news from spin. How would an earlier leak like this have changed the decision to go to war in Iraq, for example? 

Also, read this:

"It took a libertine to prove that information enriched the functioning of British society, a brave maverick who was constantly moving house – and sometimes country – to avoid arrest; whose epic sexual adventures had been used by the authorities as a means of entrapping and imprisoning him. The London mob came out in his favour and, supplemented by shopkeepers and members of the gentry on horseback, finally persuaded the establishment of the time to accept that publication was inevitable. And the kingdom did not fall."

That's the Guardian's Henry Porter. He's talking about John Wilkes, the guy who ostensibly created freedom of the press in the UK in 1774.

Porter also says this about the leaks:

"I don't argue for a free-for-all, regardless of the consequences. In the WikiLeaks cables, knowledge and the editing and reporting skills found in the old media, combined with the new ability to locate and seize enormous amounts of information on the web, has actually resulted in responsible publication, with names, sources, locations and dates redacted to protect people's identities and their lives."

 And finally: the screenplays and film treatments are only a matter of time--but we've already got the Wikileaks Video Game. Play a fictional Assange, waiting in the Oval office for Obama to fall asleep so he can steal government documents and do other things that have nothing to do with what actually happened.

(It'd be better if it was played as Bradley Manning seeing war crimes in action, fighting personal demons and Drill Sergeants as he obtains the Afghani War Logs and gets them to the anonymous dropbox, but whatevs.)