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WikiLeaks cables: US espionage law
The Guardian ^ | 1 December 2010 | Afua Hirsch

Posted on 11/30/2010 8:25:59 PM PST by Racehorse

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To: Justa

Those downloading the stolen data from wikileaks are similiarly guilty of crimes of espionage.

If you download a stolen album, released to a notorious website ahead of the street date, no one in their right mind would claim it is “legal” to grab it.

Big Media owns the legislature and controls the prosecutions.

Obama took down a number of websites last week ACCUSED (not convicted) of providing illegal download content (copyright violation).

This administration is a joke.


21 posted on 12/01/2010 6:35:42 AM PST by a fool in paradise (The establishment clause isn't just against my OWN government establishing state religion in America)
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To: Justa

(A) There are no “cables” (telegrams) being sent much anymore. It’s email.

(B) He used a zip drive and bragged about listening to Lady Gaga while he pilfered documents.

“But he threw away his military career”.

And so did Sgt. Akbar, Nadil Hassan, and I suspect a turncoat at Abu Ghraib who instigated the matter.


22 posted on 12/01/2010 6:37:05 AM PST by a fool in paradise (The establishment clause isn't just against my OWN government establishing state religion in America)
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To: Justa

Does anyone here recall the OUTRAGE when a Republican staffer released Ted Kennedy’s corrupt memos that were on a government server in a public shared folder system?

They called him a “hacker” and a spy.

Red Ted Kennedy was colluding with the NAACP to block some of Bush’s judicial nominees to affect a pending court decision as well as to block Bush’s Hispanic judicial nominees for political reasons.


23 posted on 12/01/2010 6:39:40 AM PST by a fool in paradise (The establishment clause isn't just against my OWN government establishing state religion in America)
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To: Justa

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1138153/posts
Why is Darby a hero, but Miranda a felon?
WorldNetDaily ^ | 5/18/04 | Mychal S. Massie

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1327923/posts
Memogate Prequel The right way to handle a pseudo-scandal.
WSJ ^ | 1/25/05 | WSJ - Editorial

Regular readers of these pages will recall our scoop a little over a year ago on what came to be known on Capitol Hill as Memogate. Our publication of Democratic strategy memos on how to defeat President Bush’s judicial nominees created a stir in Washington, not least because they showed how Senators Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin and others were taking orders from liberal interest groups, even to the point of delaying a vote on a candidate for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals until it had heard the University of Michigan affirmative action case.

More than a year later, it’s not over yet. Federal prosecutor David Kelley is conducting an investigation into the “stolen” memos, which were obtained by Republican staffers courtesy of a glitch in the Judiciary Committee’s computer system. Manuel Miranda, staffer to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and former staffer to the Republican Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, was forced to resign.

Meanwhile, a memo of a different ilk has just come to light that puts Memogate into some long-needed perspective. It’s a 1996 letter from Republican Representative Ben Gilman, then-chairman of the House International Relations Committee, to his Democratic counterpart, Lee Hamilton. (See the full text here.)

The letter describes how Democratic staffers, taking advantage of a glitch in the committee’s computer system, had been reading the private documents of the Republican staff for more than a year. Oh—did we mention that they were funneling them to the Clinton State Department? Their antics were revealed when Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot called Chairman Gilman to protest drafts of two memos on Haiti that hadn’t even reached Mr. Gilman’s desk yet...


24 posted on 12/01/2010 6:44:07 AM PST by a fool in paradise (The establishment clause isn't just against my OWN government establishing state religion in America)
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To: Justa

I don’t think that we are disagreeing here. My point was that the WikiLeaks stuff was all labeled C or S (NOFORN for most of the State stuff) so how come there was HUMINT in there? Because someone was being sloppy in classification which was my point. And yes someone (who had access and was a US citizen) downloaded this stuff and broke the law and should be shot for treason if caught.

As for the front man since he is not a US citizen and did not do this in the US there’s not much you can do to him (at least legally). Don’t much care either way as this is the type of stuff one should expect from foreigner (or foreign powers) that disagree with our “war on terror”. Propaganda and disinformation are tools of the trade, what hurts is that the US basically inflicted this on itself by being so sloppy in handling classified material. It also has provided a valuable service in that most likely the Russians, Chinese, Brits and everyone else has been tapping into this for a long long time, WikiLeaks just exposed how easy it is to do. I would hope that the US takes measures to tighten this stuff up. Well, one can hope.

Lastly, personally I disagree with classifying stuff for CYA purposes which is what the helo video was all about. We should have fessed up about this at the time and made reparations. Would have been a lot better than having it come out like this. In a war zone there’s all kinds of F ups like this, it happens and most (reasonable) people know that and would have accepted it. Now people are wondering well if they covered up this just how much more did they cover up and maybe what the Taliban is saying about them targeting (insert whatever, old, women, babies) is true. Kills our credibility in the future (not that we had that much to begin with).


25 posted on 12/01/2010 5:51:40 PM PST by trapped_in_LA
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To: trapped_in_LA

Well, I have two points.

It is classified information, not material which matters. Otherwise verbal dissemination would be okey-dokey. It is the information which is classified.

As for the helo video. It most certainly should have been classified SECRET//NOFORN. If you check the definition of that classification you will see it applies to the video. The fact the information hurt the US proves it should have remained classified. Just like Barry’s birth and school records. Once he became POTUS anything which could harm him or the US had to be classified due to his position.


26 posted on 12/01/2010 6:46:34 PM PST by Justa
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