Wikileaks - America the land of free speech no more?

[PilotMan]

Shares of Mastercard were up nearly $4 today. I'll take it.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Tigercat

Wikileaks is endangearing peoples lives, which if they were consciously doing so in the name of free press or giving out specific free information, I might be inclined to side with them.

This is the thing I don't like. They aren't the ones endangering lives. The source of the information perhaps, or the person who leaked it to Wikileaks. But Wikileaks is just a site that posts stuff that is sent to them. They are not stealing this information or creating it, they are simply posting what is given to them.

It's like a guy who cheats on his wife. One of his friends outs him to people. Then coming back and blaming that friend for ruining the marriage while ignoring the real cause was the guy who cheated on his wife.

I still don't think this has much to do with the government files leaked. Sure some of it was embarrasing, but they've released stuff before. When they started going after the banks though, that's when the heat got turned up. You can fuck with the government a great deal, but you can't fuck with the guys who buy it.

[RainMaker]

Question for those for the arrest of Assange. Lets say that the government accidently left pages open to the public somehow that contained top secret government files. Now lets say that Google indexed those pages and started showing them in the search results.

Would you be for the arrest of the people in charge of Google for posting top secret information that could cause harm to people's lives?

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Is Obama going to get a shit-ton of pizzas delivered to his house?

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by RendeR

You touch on a key element to all this Chief.

The Press. journalism in its entirety in this country and many others has been stripped of its ethical controls. There are no true journalists anymore. there are only promoters looking for a way to make ratings and in doing so make more money.

Why, as someone earlier in teh thread put it, does the media just nod and smile at the war drums beating hard about Assange and wikileaks? Why? Because as that person noted, if its not about one party or the other, they don't give a shit.

There is no standards in journalism anymore. its about hype, its about making yourself famous and its about Money.

This is why Wikileaks exists, this is why we in America can't turn on ANY news channel and actually believe more than 2 words in 10 of what we're being told.

It's always been about making money. A newspaper couldn't stay afloat at any point in history without a large readership. The problem is really chicken/egg.

Did the media make the public become idiots or did the people want the media to give them garbage? In 1961, nobody gave a crap that Mickey Mantle cheated on his wife and got plowed every night. An athlete doing that today will have his picture on all the dailies.

In the end, it doesn't matter. There is little journalistic integrity left. . . but at least there is some and a major news organization still has to have some controls. An organization like wikileaks has no/little controls and becomes a dangerous because of that. Jeff may be looking at this globally, but the reality is it will come down to a national and local level every single time. And what some of these governments will do to keep their secrets will not be pretty.

Of course, that's being pure 150% naive there. There is no way in hell we get to that point. There will always be secrets in the government. Like I mentioned above about Hillary. She'll likely lose her job over the documents if they are real. Her replacement? He/she will do the same damned thing. That's where the context comes in. I can promise you the US isn't the only country trying to get information on diplomats of other countries. They just got caught with a document this time. They won't give out more information on what they are doing next time, they'll make sure there is less paper and less people in the loop.

And the world will go on.

[molson]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

This is the thing I don't like. They aren't the ones endangering lives. The source of the information perhaps, or the person who leaked it to Wikileaks. But Wikileaks is just a site that posts stuff that is sent to them. They are not stealing this information or creating it, they are simply posting what is given to them.

It's like a guy who cheats on his wife. One of his friends outs him to people. Then coming back and blaming that friend for ruining the marriage while ignoring the real cause was the guy who cheated on his wife.

I still don't think this has much to do with the government files leaked. Sure some of it was embarrasing, but they've released stuff before. When they started going after the banks though, that's when the heat got turned up. You can fuck with the government a great deal, but you can't fuck with the guys who buy it.

How you obtain the information isn't a defense to the crime (though it may be evidence of willful intent to harm).

I'm looking forward to him harming a bank and then seeing the government bail out that bank.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Question for those for the arrest of Assange. Lets say that the government accidently left pages open to the public somehow that contained top secret government files. Now lets say that Google indexed those pages and started showing them in the search results.

Would you be for the arrest of the people in charge of Google for posting top secret information that could cause harm to people's lives?

Legally, Google could probably get away with that. if it endangered peoples lives, they would have an ethical problem.

But that's not what is happening here. wikileaks is actively recruiting for information they know is classified. So, yeah, any death caused by them doing that is on them as much as it's on the dick who gives them the information.

I mean, it's nice to rationalize our actions.. (Sure, I paralyzed him, but he stole my lunch) But in the real world, our decisions turn into consequences. If you or Google or WikiLeaks can sleep with blood on your hands, that's your call. But don't rationalize it away, there is blood on your hands.

[Drake]

In the Google scenario, there would be blood on the algorithms hands, not any one person's. I don't believe they have a room full of dudes saying "index that page" each time something gets put up on a web server somewhere.

Not to mention, you drop a good robots.txt file on your site and you should be able to keep Google's grubby algorithms off of it. So in that case, somebody leaves up confidential info, the blood is on their web designer's hands.

Actual Google people don't enter the equation until the government comes to them and says, "Hey, can you take out the confidential bits we accidentally left open?" and Google says, "No."

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by molson

How you obtain the information isn't a defense to the crime (though it may be evidence of willful intent to harm).

Then when does Google get arrested for posting stolen credit cards? They frequently index pages that have credit cards listed on them.

And when do they get put on the sex offender list? They routinely spider and cache child pornography.

As you said, how you obtain the information is not a defense. So why are they not in jail?

[Tigercat]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

This is the thing I don't like. They aren't the ones endangering lives. The source of the information perhaps, or the person who leaked it to Wikileaks. But Wikileaks is just a site that posts stuff that is sent to them. They are not stealing this information or creating it, they are simply posting what is given to them.
.

And Wikileaks doesn't have to take any responsibility? Over massive amounts of protected information that they publish for no reason but for notoriety? (Talking mainly about the state department leak here) No responsibility taken for leaking information without looking through it all to make sure they should? At least the press actually reads what they release and make an editorial decision there, there is ethical ground to stand on in those instances. To blindly throw out information that at least some of which is protected to protect lives...

Someone brought Wikileaks the equivalent of a dumpster full of someone's personal information, and Wikileaks is perfectly ok to share it with the world?

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Drake

In the Google scenario, there would be blood on the algorithms hands, not any one person's. I don't believe they have a room full of dudes saying "index that page" each time something gets put up on a web server somewhere.

Actually they do. They actively prowl the internet gobbling up every bit of information that they possibly can. They use not only links but user data from their own toolbar to find new sites/pages and get them in their search engine.

Originally Posted by Drake

Not to mention, you drop a good robots.txt file on your site and you should be able to keep Google's grubby algorithms off of it. So in that case, somebody leaves up confidential info, the blood is on their web designer's hands.

Seems a bit hypocritical. So the blood is on the web designer's hands and not the person the people who post it on the web when it involves Google. But if it's WikiLeaks, the blood is on the people who post it on the web. If they changed their name to Google, do they get to play by the same rules?

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Tigercat

And Wikileaks doesn't have to take any responsibility? Over massive amounts of protected information that they publish for no reason but for notoriety? (Talking mainly about the state department leak here) No responsibility taken for leaking information without looking through it all to make sure they should? At least the press actually reads what they release and make an editorial decision there, there is ethical ground to stand on in those instances. To blindly throw out information that at least some of which is protected to protect lives...

Someone brought Wikileaks the equivalent of a dumpster full of someone's personal information, and Wikileaks is perfectly ok to share it with the world?

No, I'm saying that if you are going to go after the people from WikiLeaks, you should be going after the people from Google who do the same exact thing.

[molson]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Then when does Google get arrested for posting stolen credit cards? They frequently index pages that have credit cards listed on them.

And when do they get put on the sex offender list? They routinely spider and cache child pornography.

As you said, how you obtain the information is not a defense. So why are they not in jail?

Can you prove they do these things to harm the United States?

Edit: Because that's the trickiest element here. In a way, wikileaks might have a better defense if they just posted everything without looking at it. But a good prosecutor could tear that defense apart. Since this guy's a media whore, we know exactly why he does this.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by molson

Can you prove they do these things to harm the United States?

Edit: Because that's the trickiest element here. In a way, wikileaks might have a better defense if they just posted everything without looking at it. But a good prosecutor could tear that defense apart. Since this guy's a media whore, we know exactly why he does this.

I can't prove that the posting of child pornography harms an individual, but I'm assuming it does. Just as I'm assuming that credit cards being posted online harm the owners of them.

Is something only illegal if it harms the United States?

[molson]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

I can't prove that the posting of child pornography harms an individual, but I'm assuming it does. Just as I'm assuming that credit cards being posted online harm the owners of them.

Is something only illegal if it harms the United States?

Something only violates the Espionage Act if you can prove that intent of trying to harm the United States.

As for other crimes, it depends on the statute, case law of that jurisdiction, but criminal intent is always going to be tough to prove if we're talking Google, where a legitimate business does the same thing for billions of websites, some of which happen to be criminally oriented. We've talked about this before here, I think Craigslist and their prostitution section would be a easier potential target than Google. But there's so many grey areas in these kinds of crimes, all you need is a willing prosecutor and a receptive jury.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by molson

Something only violates the Espionage Act if you can prove that intent of trying to harm the United States.

As for other crimes, it depends on the statute, case law of that jurisdiction, but criminal intent is always going to be tough to prove if we're talking Google, where a legitimate business does the same thing for billions of websites, some of which happen to be criminally oriented. We've talked about this before here, I think Craigslist and their prostitution section would be a easier potential target than Google

This doesn't jive with what you said earlier.

Originally Posted by molson

How you obtain the information isn't a defense to the crime (though it may be evidence of willful intent to harm).

[molson]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

This doesn't jive with what you said earlier.

How you obtain the stuff isn't an element of the crime, but certainly, the prosecutor can use it to prove what your criminal intent is.

Wikileaks can be prosecuted even if they didn't pay for the documents, but if they posted an ad, "documents wanted to bring down U.S. government, big cash reward offered", that's pretty good evidence of intent. It's up to a prosecutor, a defense team, and a jury what to make of more subtle evidence of intent. Or, the government can prove intent in some other way. (maybe internal emails).

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by molson

How you obtain the stuff isn't an element of the crime, but certainly, the prosecutor can use it to prove what your criminal intent is.

Wikileaks can be prosecuted even if they didn't pay for the documents, but if they posted an ad, "documents wanted to bring down U.S. government, big cash reward offered", that's pretty good evidence of intent. It's up to a prosecutor, a defense team, and a jury what to make of more subtle evidence of intent. Or, the government can prove intent in some other way. (maybe internal emails).

They don't do that though. They basically say "We publish material of ethical, political and historical significance". Nothing about taking down a government. Nothing about taking down a religion. Nothing about taking down a company. Just posting things that the public may find important.

I guess my argument is that shouldn't the pressure be on the people who made dumb statements in their diplomatic conversations or the person who leaked it to WikiLeaks? Go after the real people who endangered lives, not the messenger.

[molson]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

They don't do that though. They basically say "We publish material of ethical, political and historical significance". Nothing about taking down a government. Nothing about taking down a religion. Nothing about taking down a company. Just posting things that the public may find important.

I guess my argument is that shouldn't the pressure be on the people who made dumb statements in their diplomatic conversations or the person who leaked it to WikiLeaks? Go after the real people who endangered lives, not the messenger.

I agree - it would be very difficult to prosecute wikileaks, and the fed generally doesn't like to take on cases they might lose. I'm speaking hypothetically about kinds of things a prosecutor COULD use to try to prove intent, but it would definitely be an uphill battle, and they would probably need a lot more about the operation than we know publicly right now. (I maybe have sounded like I thought it was a better case at first, but on reflection, I agree it would be harder).

As for the person who leaked it - ya - that's much easier, and that guy (or one of those guys) is in jail now.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

They basically say "We publish material of ethical, political and historical significance".

Only a damned fool would believe that's the motivation of this sack of shit & his cronies.

That said, I'll readily admit to the difficulty in finding a jury of 12 people that doesn't have at least one damned fool on it, the odds definitely aren't in the prosecutions favor.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Only a damned fool would believe that's the motivation of this sack of shit & his cronies.

That said, I'll readily admit to the difficulty in finding a jury of 12 people that doesn't have at least one damned fool on it, the odds definitely aren't in the prosecutions favor.

LOL - you're really amusing

[Maple Leafs]

Originally Posted by RendeR

Why, as someone earlier in teh thread put it, does the media just nod and smile at the war drums beating hard about Assange and wikileaks? Why? Because as that person noted, if its not about one party or the other, they don't give a shit.

Just for thre record, since I'm the person who made the comment you're referring to, I don't agree with your premise that there's no such thing as true journalism any more.

[EagleFan]

Originally Posted by jeff061

Wikileaks itself? They probably won't and very well may not exist in 6 months. I'm hoping copycats not only spring up but become the constant and accepted norm.

Where you see long term harm, I see a potentially painful breakdown resulting in a fundamental change. This is just in it's infancy, who knows where technology will be 30 years from now. The way we are trending it may become a fact of life that secrets, by anyone, can not be kept. The instant an idea is hatched it's spread the world over. Obviously that would cause a huge change in the status quo and change things rather fundamentally, which is what you may call harm. I don't.

This is going to happen at some point in time. The only way to prevent this is for all the world's governments to unite and physically take down the global technology infrastructure. Send us back to the(relative) dark ages. Those are our 2 choices. Like I said I'm talking 50 years down the road, but I do believe this is the beginning.

As for spying and treason and other nationality based notions, I'm just not viewing it at the national level.

In short, this is why I didn't want to get into it

Then don't come crying when you lose all your privacy...

[jeff061]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

Then don't come crying when you lose all your privacy...

Kinda the whole point. Most people commenting on my post are thinking smaller than I am.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Only a damned fool would believe that's the motivation of this sack of shit & his cronies.

That said, I'll readily admit to the difficulty in finding a jury of 12 people that doesn't have at least one damned fool on it, the odds definitely aren't in the prosecutions favor.

Why not move to North Korea where your beliefs will be more in line with the governments?

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

In totally unrelated news:

WikiLeaks cables: US 'lobbied Russia on behalf of Visa and MasterCard' | World news | guardian.co.uk

(although to be frank thats about as surprising as a kettle boiling imho ...)

Not sure exactly what the big hoopla here is. That the U.S. lobbied for its businesses?

Someone posted this article earlier about the Saudi/Arab elite partying it:

Partying Saudi style: elite, boozy and secret - Yahoo! News


Not really surprising considering the stories you hear of their parties when they go London, Monaco, and the other hot spots in Europe.



I guess the question now does WikiLeaks still have "Leaks" in terms of getting new information since this all came out? Or has the government and businesses taken steps to change its security?

[jeff061]

My understanding Manning only had access due to security restrictions being eased in the wake of 9/11 to help interdepartment cooperation. Once Manning was arrested in July those changes were rolled back. These cable leaks I believe date until February 2010.

If they have more it's from a different source with higher access. I'd be surprised if we see things like embassy cables. It grabbed a lot of headlines, but I think people willing to stick their neck out in the future will do it for more important causes.

[Marc Vaughan]

Some interesting stuff here:

Wikileaks FAQ :: The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It

This answers quite a few of the questions people have asked here about how things are verified - its also interesting that in total only around 1,000 items have been released so far because of the need to check things out before hand (so far fewer than most people think).

A couple of snippets for people too lazy to click the link:

Originally Posted by Linked Article

What news organizations have access to the diplomatic cables and how did they get them?
According to the Associated Press, Wikileaks gave four news organizations (Le Monde, El Pais, The Guardian and Der Spiegel) all 251,287 classified documents. The Guardian subsequently shared their trove with The New York Times.

So have all 251,287 documents been released to the public?
No. Each of the five news organizations is hosting the text of at least some of the documents in various forms with or without the relevant metadata (country of origin, classification level, reference ID). The Guardian and Der Spiegel have performed analyses of the metadata of the entire trove, excluding the body text. The Guardian’s analysis is available for download from its website.

Wikileaks itself has released (as of 1:06pm on 7 December 2010) 1095 documents out of the total 251,287. The Associated Press has reported that Wikileaks is only releasing cables in coordination with the actions of the five selected news organizations. Julian Assange made similar statements in an interview with Guardian readers on 3 December 2010. Cables are being released daily as the five news organizations publish articles related to the content.

PS - This method of verifying and releasing the information is interesting and indeed might account for the 'gossip' nature of the releases from the cables somewhat (ie. while wikileaks itself seems to have concentrated mainly on more 'extreme' instances obviously the mainstream media who are now involved are getting good milage/interest out of the gossip they're releasing .... however what confuses me most is if the cables are all with the papers as well as wikileaks why is no one going 'after' the media who are involved, just wikileaks?

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by jeff061

My understanding Manning only had access due to security restrictions being eased in the wake of 9/11 to help interdepartment cooperation. Once Manning was arrested in July those changes were rolled back. These cable leaks I believe date until February 2010.

If they have more it's from a different source with higher access. I'd be surprised if we see things like embassy cables. It grabbed a lot of headlines, but I think people willing to stick their neck out in the future will do it for more important causes.

Are the corporate documents from the government cables? It wasn't leaked from the company documents and cables, but the government's cables on how they dealt and the information they got from the company?

[Galaxy]

Interesting how Israel's PM and the Israeli analysts sees the leaks:

In Arab states' fears, Israel sees impetus for action against Iran

[Carman Bulldog]

I always thought Wikileaks was similar to steroids in MLB. When a report gets released, while it may be a water cooler talking point for the general public, the only people that ultimately care are the government and the media.

[jeff061]

Originally Posted by Galaxy

Are the corporate documents from the government cables? It wasn't leaked from the company documents and cables, but the government's cables on how they dealt and the information they got from the company?

Corporate docs are something else altogether, not sure who leaked those.

[jeff061]

Russia says Nominate Assange for Nobel prize.
Julian Assange should be awarded Nobel peace prize, suggests Russia | Media | guardian.co.uk

Clearly this is a dig at the west's support of Liu Xiaobo getting it.

Still.... Is this Russia keeping their potential enemies close or just a moronically short sighted move?

[panerd]

I tend to always see things from a mistrusting (conspiracy) angle so just ignore me if this is too out there. It seems to me that the leaks aren't all that damning and some of the mainstream media's "analysis" of them seem to press for more war with Iran and more war with North Korea. Am I wearing a tin foil hat if I think...

A) The government doesn't really care all that much that this info is out there. (obviously the Republicrats are going to cause a big stink that takes the attention away from their complete ineptitude)

B) Is it possible the Assange is a company man?

C) The extreme tin foil in me wonders if this will be the tipping point the general public will except for the US government monitoring the internet. (This guy is hacking credit card companies and endangering lives I don't care if you censor the internet just don't take away facebook, google, and TMZ)

[molson]

Originally Posted by panerd

B) Is it possible the Assange is a company man?

I don't think anyone in government is nearly competent enough to pull something like that off - though he'd definitely be useful on the payroll. They could release "insider" documents that another great depression X 10 is right around the corner and thus WE MUST GIVE BILLIONS MORE TO BANKS!!!

[panerd]

Originally Posted by molson

I don't think anyone in government is nearly competent enough to pull something like that off - though he'd definitely be useful on the payroll. They could release "insider" documents that another great depression X 10 is right around the corner and thus WE MUST GIVE BILLIONS MORE TO BANKS!!!

Yeah I'm not talking typical government bureaucrat though. I am talking deep MI-6/Mossad type operation. I think the federal government as a whole is very inept but I think some of the spy agencies are very competent and even when "exposed" by the media are just crazy like a fox.

I fear you are dead on with the upcoming bank releases. I think it will be steered towards how close they were to failing and not towards them owning the Congress. I really don't trust that wikileaks is really out to get us and do fear they may actually be us.

[JediKooter]

This just in: Julian Assange Fired From IT Job At Pentagon | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

[EagleFan]

Originally Posted by panerd

Yeah I'm not talking typical government bureaucrat though. I am talking deep MI-6/Mossad type operation. I think the federal government as a whole is very inept but I think some of the spy agencies are very competent and even when "exposed" by the media are just crazy like a fox.

I fear you are dead on with the upcoming bank releases. I think it will be steered towards how close they were to failing and not towards them owning the Congress. I really don't trust that wikileaks is really out to get us and do fear they may actually be us.

Let me guess... 9/11 was an inside job too?

[EagleFan]

dola: and beware the contrails...

[Mustang]

I take it Janek's Black Box wasn't much help with Assange's encrypted file?

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by jeff061

Corporate docs are something else altogether, not sure who leaked those.

If that is true, the sources and the relationships he has seem kind of strange. Or people may just be really pissed off at what their government and/or businesses are doing?

Originally Posted by panerd

C) The extreme tin foil in me wonders if this will be the tipping point the general public will except for the US government monitoring the internet. (This guy is hacking credit card companies and endangering lives I don't care if you censor the internet just don't take away facebook, google, and TMZ)

He hacked credit card companies?

[jeff061]

If that is true, the sources and the relationships he has seem kind of strange. Or people may just be really pissed off at what their government and/or businesses are doing?

He doesn't have sources or relationships. Wikileaks is a website with an upload button. Anyone that wants to leak something to the public anonymously can go there. If you yourself had information you wanted to make public you don't need to know Assange, just goto their site and upload it. What supposedly sets them apart and why they attract submissions is the ability to make sure that your submission can not be tracked back to you.


That's all "Wikileaks" is. That's why it doesn't matter what happens to Assange or Wikileaks, other sites will pop up that do the same and Wikileaks will go on with or without Assange.

[jeff061]

He hacked credit card companies?

Heh. There was a twitter feed out there not related to Assange or Wikileaks explaining how to target companies for DDOS attacks and pointing out date and time of targets. Had/has a large following. Despite all the tags(4Chan, Anonymous, Hackers, whatever) it's honestly simply the public as a whole doing this.

[Marc Vaughan]

C) The extreme tin foil in me wonders if this will be the tipping point the general public will except for the US government monitoring the internet. (This guy is hacking credit card companies and endangering lives I don't care if you censor the internet just don't take away facebook, google, and TMZ)

That'd be quite a trick as at present he's turned himself into police in London and doesn't even have internet access ....

It'd be near impossible to restrict internet access (as China have found) without some really clever trickery and software; even then its impossible to restrict the flow of information - it'd just be passed more carefully in an encrypted format (same sort of theory as wikileaks just driving diplomatic communications to more discrete channels).

In this day and age if western countries tried to restrict data comms then it'd have a huge crash effect on their economies (think of the amount of data transmitted by financial services back and forth, heck even me as one person regularly transmits literally gigabytes of data on a secure connection back and forth to our London office).

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by jeff061

Heh. There was a twitter feed out there not related to Assange or Wikileaks explaining how to target companies for DDOS attacks and pointing out date and time of targets. Had/has a large following. Despite all the tags(4Chan, Anonymous, Hackers, whatever) it's honestly simply the public as a whole doing this.

I wouldn't say the public as a whole, exactly. Some portions of it who seem to have anarchistic or just plain troublemaking bents, sure. I don't see hackers, pirates, 4Chan, etc as any kind of "freedom fighters" with any higher purpose. They're in it to eff things up for the lulz.

[jeff061]

Yeah, what I mean by as a whole I meant it's not a specific subset you can lump together. It can be anyone with a twitter account, doesn't require any specific knowledge, contacts or website membership. These attacks have worked because they have recruited people far outside the realms of 4Chan.

Of course they were able to do that with Facebook and Twitter, who have started to shutdown their promotional accounts, I wonder if they will be able to continue without them.

[panerd]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

Let me guess... 9/11 was an inside job too?

Blindly trust the goverment or everything is a conspiracy. Of course there are only two choices.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

there's nothing in the cables. it's a bunch of teenage gossip. this person doesn't like this person, this persons snooty. etc. etc.

the 'hacktivism' is the far bigger story at this point.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by NorvTurnerOverdrive

there's nothing in the cables. it's a bunch of teenage gossip. this person doesn't like this person, this persons snooty. etc. etc.

I thought this as the main things have been gossip - however if this is verified then its a fairly big deal imho ...

WikiLeaks: Texas Company Helped Pimp Little Boys To Stoned Afghan Cops
WikiLeaks: Texas Company Helped Pimp Little Boys To Stoned Afghan Cops - Houston News - Hair Balls

This has also been reported through the Guardian newspaper in the UK:

Foreign contractors hired Afghan 'dancing boys', WikiLeaks cable reveals | World news | guardian.co.uk

But no where else appears to be carrying the story outside of blogs so far ...

(the company in question incidentally is reported to be part US government funded - don't know if thats confirmed or not)

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

yeah but dyncorp is like a merc army in an anti-war film. their wiki page reads like a rap sheet.

and the dancing boy/bacha bazi stuff isn't a revelation either.