I've been aware of this for quite some time, and will probably be getting the book anyway. What those of you new to the story are failing to understand, is that they are not just purging names. I agree the names should be purged, but in their press release (too lazy to go find it), they state they want to sanitize names, AMONG OTHER THINGS. This is the key here, using the chance they have to go ahead and take care of any other passages that are a little too embarrassing.... Ideally, I hope someone gets the original, redacts only the names, and then publishes it. Comon wikileaks, get on it.

The potential for abuse is the key here. Do they have to provide any kind of solid evidence of their accusations? If not, they could theoretically (though it would raise flags) just randomly pick people whos info they want, make some shit up, and subpoena for their info. Now imagine that on a mass scale (the internet)

The fact that the "pool" in this case the internet, has a few billion people in it....

Really interest take on the subject that I had never considered. Thanks

Allow me to jump if you will. Industrial, your original statement is a good one, where you basically ask for someone to explain why it feels "cowboyish" to you, but then I feel you misinterpret SmallFurry's intention, you even say "Don't pretend that my statement was about sticking my head in the sand suggesting that I don't want to know where corruption exists. My statement was that the manner in which this is being performed is irresponsible and is harming the cause in those that would normally support something like wikileaks." I feel SmallFurry misdirected his statements at you (he even says so) but what he/she is really saying is that it is a growing trend. Right off the bat there has just been some bad communication here. That aside, both of you in last few posts fall into argument mode and lose focus of the original subject, that being wikileaks methods. You jumped from asking questions with an open mind about wikileaks to firmly stating that you don't and will not support them, and I feel your conclusion a bit premature.

If I may, I feel wikileaks serves and will continue to serve a valuable purpose in the information age. They have made two major mistakes, that everyone has focused on, but I feel and hope they will learn their lesson from. These two major mistakes are IMHO a) the releasing of an edited and editorialized video of the apache shootings and b) not taking the extra time to fully purge names from the Afghan war diaries. If we put these two major things to the side, wikileaks generally does a good job, and is the one that they should stick to, of simply releasing documents with no editorializing. They will quickly undermine themselves otherwise, and that is why they have recently felt "cowboyish". I am a former USMC Iraq combat vet, and still have plenty of contacts in State and DoD, a couple of which are at high levels of intel. They all agree with me (and these are clearance holding guys that advise generals and above) that wikileaks has an important part to play here, mostly due to one of the points Small Furry makes, being the major over-classification of material that shouldn't be, and every single one of them actively acknowledges the US disinfo campaign against Wikileaks.

Yeah because in the past false documents are so hard to notice.... *cough* yellow cake*cough*

I see what you are saying now, that having someone interpret it and make some summaries of the information therein would indeed be valuable.

Meant to say one report in each district...

People only think its infrequent because the police are so good as covering their asses, from blatant cover up to having the most cutthroat lawyer in town as a DA, it is the exception, not the rule, that you actually hear about it. Pick 50 random police districts from a diverse selection of the US, and I bet you can find at least one report within the year of a blatant abuse of power, often followed by a "two month suspension".

Just have to point out, that Echelon makes the rest of what you talked about look like a .20 megapixel camera comared to a true HDR videocamera.. It is a AUSCANZUKUS program, but the real genius behind it is the NSA. The echelon program was started in about 71 as best as we can tell, but has evolved into a monster that no one person knows all about (including the oversight committee) and has technology that is years ahead of the rest of the world. One recent comparison on the matter that has stuck in my head, is that at the Spy Museam in DC, there is (not sure if it is still there) a dragonfly fitted with a microphone for spying on people without drawing attention. The catch? It was developed over 26 years ago... just imagine where they are today. It should also be noted that while the NSA gets a lot of attention, the CIA's office of Science and Technology is at about the same level, and they share a lot of projects and information.

TLDR : Echelon dwarfs just about everything else, and is already implemented....

Why does it need a commentary to be useful? There is plenty of value in seeing the timeline and content of edits as they progress, being able to see what entries survived and remain and which have been done away with. It can give us insights into the process, the type of people that actually take the time to work on a wiki, the value of knowing multiple edits came from a single IP range. Some people like to say Wikipedia is a democracy, but there are people whose sole purpose is to raise the level of quality, that, tempered with the large amount of information coming from all over the globe (the internet is a relatively border-less society) can teach us a whole lot. Now, this is just one article, but I imagine for scientific value many articles of a varying nature would have to be looked at.

Is it strange that I for some reason really want to get my hands on such a database? Why yes Watson!, I do recognize that shoe print, its obviously a recent edition of the Florsheim Imperial, our killer is obviously wealthy and well dressed!

Why the troll mod? I think he has a point. Regarding the right to do it, I feel that though I wholeheartedly disagree with it, they have the right to burn it. Regarding the matter of religion, I feel the reason so many religions are exercise such bigotry towards other religion is that they see the same fallacies in the "others" as they do their own. Religion has a cultural value and context, but if we as a species want to survive, we need to evolve out of it...

It should be noted that there are various certifications which any company hiring vulnerability assessment should look for, many of them cover in depth how to properly use Nessus, Saint, etc.

Yep, makes sense, even with the ease of buying botnets on the underbellies of the net, that technique has a very limited list of counters. There is even a windows version *shudders*