2011-06-13 WikiLeaks Notes: Latest News on #Cablegate Releases & #WikiLeaks

All the times are EST. You can contact me at kgosztola@hotmail.com with any news tips. Twitter username is @kgosztola. Also, if you are looking for some insightful discussion of stories related to WikiLeaks, I encourage you to check out the catalog of podcasts posted here at WL Central from the "This Week in WikiLeaks" show I produce every week.

9:30 PM Peru cables: El Comercio reports Peru sought assistance for removal of 29,000 landmines on border of Peru and Ecuador

9:25 PM From this morning, Marcy Wheeler at Firedoglake writes on the guidelines the US government has given Gitmo lawyers on using the Gitmo detainee assessment reports released by WikiLeaks.

9:20 PM Lulz Security, which hacked PBS's website just after it aired the "WikiSecrets" documentary, now hacks Senate computers.

9:10 PM Providing an example of what members of the US Congress think about cybersecurity and what a congressman might think needs to be done, Rep. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island pens this column for The Hill. He suggests:

Cybersecurity proposals released recently by the White House represent significant progress; however, they are incomplete and Congress must strengthen them.

Two important advances in the president’s plan are national data breach requirements that keep customers informed about hackers stealing and exploiting their private information, and increased penalties and definitions for cybercrime. These efforts go a long way in combating effects of the large-scale breaches making headlines every month.

6:10 PM Artificial intelligence to be used to help US government over-classify more information that WikiLeaks might release at a later date and show us US government has a problem with over-classification of information. That's right—Federal Times reports, "The exploding volume of classified information that agencies generate is overwhelming their abilities to effectively manage, archive and, eventually, declassify it, according to experts." What's the solution?

"Context accumulation" -- Artificial intelligence software could be used to automatically classify information. By using "rules written by humans and past examples of prior classification and declassification decisions, artificial intelligence software can 'learn' what information to classify, release and withhold."

The group pushing this idea is called "the Public Interest Declassification Board, an advisory body based at the National Archives and Records Administration." And, "the six-member panel, mostly made up of ex-government officials, was charged by President Obama with drafting a fundamental redesign of the classification system."

5:50 PM Techdirt on the absurd reality that the State Dept is funding "various tools and services to help dissidents route around online censorship" while censoring forms of internet communication at home, like going after WikiLeaks and Bitcoin, etc.

efforts to censor other forms of internet communication at home. Of course, all that needs to happen then is for people to use the same "stealth" technology here at home as well...

5:20 PM Daniel Ellsberg for The Guardian writes on the 40th anniversary of the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg declares, "What we need released this month are the Pentagon Papers of Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan, Yemen and Libya). We're not likely to get them; they probably don't yet exist, at least in the useful form of the earlier ones. But the original studies on Vietnam are a surprisingly not-bad substitute, definitely worth learning from."

He adds, "We face the same futile effort in Afghanistan to find and destroy nationalist guerrillas or to get them to quit fighting foreign invaders (now us) and the corrupt, ill-motivated, dope-dealing despots we support. As in Vietnam, the more troops we deploy and the more adversaries we kill (along with civilians), the quicker their losses are made good and the more their ranks grow, since it's our very presence, our operations and our support of a regime without legitimacy that is the prime basis for their recruiting."

5:15 PM Here's the review of CNN's "WikiWars" documentary, which aired last night, that I published this afternoon.

5:10 PM Anonymous prepares to launch cyberattack on the Federal Reserve

5:00 PM Saudi Arabia woefully incapable of protecting country's oil? McClatchy reports on cables and what they reveal on Saudi Arabian oil security

3:20 PM Former Sen. Mike Gravel, who helped get the Pentagon Papers into the public record, tells PRESS TV, all WikiLeaks "has done is provide information to the citizens as to what the government is doing and in a democracy that is vital...If people don't know what the government is doing they cannot react to change the policies."

3:00 PM CBS News with more on the story of the FBI expanding its ability to violate US citizens' privacy. David S. Morgan reports that relaxed rules will now allow the FBI to "formally open assessments on subjects before conducting searches for information" and agents will be able to do so without keeping a record. And, "restrictions on the administration of lie-detector tests will be relaxed, as will searching people's garbage, when it comes to evaluating a subject's potential use as an FBI informant."

Again, all tools that will allow for greater repression of people linked to WikiLeaks or those who engage in political activism that can be considered adversarial to US domestic or foreign policy.

12:15 PM National Archives, on the declassification of the Pentagon Papers, notes all "the supplemental back-documentation is included. In the Gravel Edition, 80% of the documents in Part V.B. were not included." Part V.B. are the "Justification of the War" sections that are comprised of "internal documents" on the Vietnam War from each presidential administration.

For example, here's one of the "Justification of the War" sections from the Kennedy Administration -- about 187 MB in size.

12:00 PM Pentagon Papers, after 40 years, finally declassified and posted in full on the National Archives website

11:50 AM Partisan politics debases the notion of government transparency as Republican congressman Darrell Issa beats Vice President Joe Biden to introducing US government transparency initiative.

11:20 AM New York Times posted this report on the FBI pushing the boundaries of privacy (and perhaps violating the Constitution in the process, maybe?). The expansion of these powers are the exact thing that empowers government to target individuals linked to WikiLeaks or activists who engage in political activism. Its 14,000 agents would, under new guidelines, be granted "more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention."