Wikileaks: The Cables and A Hacking...

Obama and Clinton do not look happy!

Is there a cable between the US and the US Embassy in Sweden detailing a plan to derail Wikileaks by derailing its founder, Julian Assange, with trumped up rape and sexual molestation charges? The mind boggles!

Wikileaks is a bit of a juggernaut when one considers what they have been able to obtain and release over the last month or so. Let's face it, the Afghan and Iraq war documents that, among other things, detailed military and civilian casualties was a real eye-opener for many. The 250,000 cables that Wikileaks claim that it is preparing to release over the next 24 hours will be a revelation of the inner workings of US diplomacy as these cables will detail some of the nitty gritty that goes into negotiations throughout the world. The cables, particularly the public release of them, is going to ruffle a lot of feathers.

Interestingly, Wikileaks might have to release a lot of these cables through other channels as the Wikileaks website is currently subject to a "denial of service" attack. Essentially, access to Wikileaks has been compromised on a wide scale. The attack, though, is unlikely to prevent the release of the documents. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and an Australian, has been noted as stating that the distribution will go on through other outlets if Wikileaks remains down.

Furthermore, Assange believes that the release is tantamount to the diplomatic history of global affairs. However, my understanding is that the majority of the cables relate to diplomatic exchanges over the past three years. So, whether their release is accurately described as a global history of diplomatic affairs remains to be seen. That said, preliminary indications suggest that there is a lot of "juicy" stuff in the cables to be released.

The US government has been clear in stating that it will not negotiate with Wikileaks over the documents. The simple rationale being that the US government position is that the documents have been illegally obtained and as a result Wikileaks cannot legally publish them. If Wikileaks does publish the cables then it will be breaking US law. Nevertheless, the US government has sent a letter to Wikileaks requesting that Wikileaks does not go ahead with the planned release. The US has made it plain that any release of the cables is going to put countless lives at risk.

In essence, the letter places the ball firmly in Wikileaks court. If Wikileaks goes ahead with the release then any subsequent deaths are blood on the hands of Wikileaks. This poses an interesting moral and ethical dilemma; the need to ensure people are protected and the right to know information that effects and affects the lives of ordinary people. It would seem to be a precarious balance that Wikileaks will have to strike. Yet, judging by past history, Wikileaks seems destined to publish these documents based on the mission and vision that it has adopted with respect to making information known, particularly considering that Assange maintains that no single individual has come to any harm as a result of a Wikileaks expose of classified documents.

On that point, the cables are primarily classified as secret and / or confidential. There are no Top secret cables in the batch acquired by Wikileaks according to reports on the website Politico.

The counter position to this is basically that any release will jeopardise counter-terrorism operations and place all of the US relationships with allies and others at risk. This might be true when it is being reported that some of the cables have some pretty frank assessments of world leaders; Vladimir Putin is an 'alpha dog', Hamid Karzai is paranoid, Angela Merkel avoids taking risks at all costs, Ahmadinejad is Hitler incarnate, and Muammar Gaddafi cannot leave home without his voluptuous Ukrainian nurse.

The reality is that these documents are probably more likely to damage US diplomatic relations with their allies as the cables from reports to date suggest that they deal with the nuances of diplomacy on a personal level and involve a lot of frank assessments of the characters and personalities of a lot of important world leaders. The embarrassment factor is going to be high. Although, there are other risks here as well. The cables allegedly reveal how the US has been spying on the UN and the UN leadership. Yet, truth be told, most people expect that all countries are spying on each other and therefore countries, including the US, spying on the UN is not outside the realm of possibility.

The biggest problem with the release of these cables is that the dirty laundry in many cases has come outside to be laundered. Some of the more interesting cables apparently refer to corrupt politicians in a number of countries. Revelations of corruption might be confirmation of what is already suspected of a few of the politicians identified. Then again, it might include some new names of politicians who were thought to be clean.

I tend to lean towards publication of these cables.

The NSW Police Force

It seems that having a criminal conviction is no bar to getting into the NSW Police Force. A Freedom of Information request has uncovered that 133 current serving officers have criminal convictions. This makes up less than 1% of the total number of officers serving in the Force of some 15,200 officers.

Nevertheless, some of these convictions are for fraud, negligent driving, and assault. The majority are for drink driving offences in both the medium and high ranges. Other offences included unauthorized access to police computer systems.

None of the officers with criminal convictions have served any jail time.

I guess this is what they mean when they say "everyone deserves a second chance". I suppose police officers should be no different from anyone else.

Wikileaks -- Real Anonymous Whistleblowing

There is a lot of talk about online or cyber-activism but what does that really mean. I should have written about this particular site earlier. Wikileaks is an online activist site plus plus. It is more like a forum for online dissidents. These dissidents are anonymous but are responsible for putting into the public sphere confidential and secret documents.

This ability will ultimately outstrip the need for a freedom of information legislation as people can upload documents almost completely anonymously. I guess though, one should never under-estimate "big brother" and the reach that they have. It might not all be black helicopters and secret troops but it is kind of surprising that the Australian founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, is still able to claim that not one of the leak sources have been uncovered.

There are now some 1.2 million documents on the site and not one has been censored or removed since being uploaded. This suggests that the documents have withstood all critical evaluation. The site had been focused primarily on corporate deals and government. However, there has been a recent shift in focus to the upload of documents that focus on the more shady sides of religion, cult, and celebrity.

This has seen documents uploaded about Wesley Snipe's tax problems, including his tax returns and bill. Other documents about Church of Scientology and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Wikileaks claims to have been responsible for swinging the Kenyan election by releasing document that showed that the then Kenyan leader, Daniel Arap Moi, siphoned off billions of dollars in government money. Other claims that Wikileaks make are that it was the first site to make available the US Rules for Engagement in Iraq and also the Operations Manual for Guantanamo Bay detention facility. This Operations Manual highlighted how the US was going to hide certain detainees from the International Red Cross.

In a mark of credibility, Wikileaks has been referenced 662 times on nytimes.com, 207 times on guardian.co.uk, and 86 times on washingtonpost.com.

Assange, grew up in Australia but moved to East Africa two years ago and has worked as a security consultant, professional hacker, activist and researcher during that time.

So, if any of my readers have documents in their possession that might be considered to blow the lid on some kind of issue, then consider uploading them to Wikileaks. You might not get any credit for exposing the deceit of others but it might just make the world a better place.

Career Criminals In The Making

Here are some statistics that make you wonder about the parenting skills of some Australians. To be fair it might not be the parents per se, it might just be the case that these youngsters are beyond the control of parents who may feel like they have tried everything and still not managed to bring their children into some kind of respectable line.

NSW police are apprehending, on average, more than 50 children per week for sexual and other assaults, theft, armed robbery, drug dealing, and murder. What is even more scary in these statistics is that during the period from 1 January 2005 to 30 September 2007 some 7,724 offences were recorded by children under the age of 10. This is one of those moments where you close your eyes and go, "what?"

The statistics were obtained by News Ltd under a Freedom of Information request and show one murder by a 10-year-old, 1,109 assaults and 141 sexual assaults, including 31 by 8-year olds. At 8 years old I cannot even recall if I was thinking about girls let alone wanting to be involved in a sexual assault. I cannot even remembering wanting to assault anyone at that age. I mean the closest I might have come to an assault conviction could have been a punch up or two in high school. But most of the violence I was involved in was good wholesome fun on the rugby field and this was generally referred to as a crunching tackle.

Yet, the craziness continues as the statistics also highlight that there were 584 driving offences, of which 113 were by 8-year olds.

The question is what to do about this worsening juvenile crime wave as for those that are aged of 10 might get a Children's Court date which for first time offenders generally results in a slap on the wrist (this is the case for second and third time offenders as well depending on the offence).

However, for those under the age of 10 the current practice is to call in the parents, lecture the child on the evil of their ways and where this type of conduct will lead them and then release them back into the custody of their parents. Sometimes the Department of Community Services (DoCS) might become involved. Yet, DoCS are woefully under-funded and under-staffed as some of their more recent and public failings highlight.

Former Children's Court magistrate Barbara Holborow said, "I don't know whether it's because so many parents are working by necessity, loss of parents' rights, poor discipline at home or whatever, but something is wrong," ya think? no kidding!

Freedom of Information

The long and somewhat tortuous history of the Bill on the Freedom of Public Information (FOI Bill) has come to an end with the passage of the bill through the House of Representatives (DPR) and for some this might be a case of “better late than never” considering that it has been some nine years since the issue was first touted. The Bill has both supporters and critics with respect to the content of the provisions.

The basic premise for the FOI Bill is that the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia in Article 28F states that every person has the right to communicate and obtain information for the purposes of personal growth and the growth or the community. This right would be characterized as including the right to find, obtain, own, and store information in whatever mediums are at the relevant individual’s disposal. The bill also describes this right as a human right and particularly so in democratic countries.

Interestingly, the General Introduction to the Elucidations to the bill state unequivocally that a more open and transparent form of governance in which the broader community can play a supervisory role is the option that is being strived for. This is intended to force the government into adopting best practice standards and implementing principles of good governance.

The bill has four main features that it addresses, namely: the rights of people to obtain information; the obligation on public bodies to provide that information and satisfies requests for information in a manner which is fast, timely, and cost effective; what exceptions there are to this freedom of information; and the obligation on information providers to have and maintain information systems that are suitable for the purposes intended.

Those that support the bill point out that the passage of the bill evidences a commitment by the DPR and the government to be open and transparent in terms of how it governs Indonesia. Once again, the Elucidation is explicit that the bill is a strategic part of the drive to eradicate corruption, collusion, and nepotism (Korupsi, Kolusi, dan Nepotisme / KKN) and the simultaneous promotion of good governance principles.

In contrast critics see the bill as an open cheque that with the enactment of implementing regulations has the potential to do more harm than good through the criminalization of certain activities such as journalism. However, it must be noted that even though the bill will be enacted on either Presidential signature or after 30 days, the provisions of the bill do not come into force until two years after the enactment date. The rationale for this provision is to provide enough time for the government to draft and enact implementing regulations, technical guidelines, socialization of the new law and its provisions, and to put in place all the necessary infrastructure and equipment.

Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that in the very ‘real’ sense there will not be any immediate change to how information is obtained or provided so it remains a case of ‘business as usual’.

Foundations and Objectives
The primary foundations and objectives of the bill are to ensure that there is public access to information. In this sense the bill utilizes sweeping and grand statements to suggest that all public information is to be characterized as open and accessible to the users of public information. However, later provisions restrict this access for certain types of information and places restrictions on how information can be used once it has been obtained.

The restrictions to certain information is generally where the information that is being sort is considered to be secret, improper, or likely to impact on public order in a negative way. The test for how significant the restrictions are to be is premised on an assessment of the pros and cons of granting access to the information, specifically whether there is a greater good being protected by not releasing information under a FOI request.

The bill also stipulates that once a FOI request has been received then the information providers are to respond in a manner that is fast, timely, and cost effective. However, even in countries with a long history of freedom of information legislation the delivery of requested information is not always timely. Recent example from the United States highlighted that some FOI requests were still pending some eight or nine years after originally being lodged.

So, where extensive vetting procedures are put in place to determine FOI requests then the idea of timely is going to be subjective to the information requested.

The Rights & Obligations of Applicants
Every person has a right to obtain information in accordance with the prevailing laws and regulations including this bill. The right allows the information obtained to and disseminated. However, it must be noted that the application process is not as simple as asking for the information. The applicant is required to state their reason(s) for wanting the requested information.

Where the FOI request is obstructed or hindered in being determined then the applicant has the right to resort to legal recourses in order to have the request finalized.

The obligations of the applicant are to ensure that the information is used in a manner consistent with the original request and the prevailing laws and regulations.

What Information & Whose Information is to be Available
Generally, the information that is to be available is information relating to the activities of public bodies, their activities and performance, their financial records, and any other information that is stipulated in legislation to be made available.

The information providers are also to record the number of FOI requests that they receive, the time taken to fulfill the request, the number of requests granted and rejected, and the reasons for the rejection of any FOI request.

On whose information is to be publicly available through a FOI request the bill makes specific reference to the information of State and Regional Owned Enterprises (BUMN and BUMD), political parties, and non-government organizations.

Exceptions
The bill includes an extensive list of information that is not subject to FOI. These exceptions, among others, include: information what if it were provided would obstruct a law enforcement operation. This covers issues of investigation and examination of criminal matters, identities of informants and witnesses, and criminal intelligence.

Other information subject to restrictions include information that if released would negatively impact on intellectual property rights, security and defense of the nation, the national economy, foreign affairs, personal confidential information (health, wealth, and education), and any other information that is classified as being exempt in legislation.

Information Commission
The bill establishes an Information Commission whose basic duties and functions are to receive, examine, and decide information disputes through mediation or adjudication, determine public policy relating to information services, and to confirm implementing and technical guidelines.

The Information Commission will have both a Central and a number of Regional offices.

The authorities, the responsibilities, and the mechanisms for appointing and dismissing members of the Information Commission are all regulated.

The Central Information Commission if to be established within one year of the enactment of the bill and Regional Information Commissions are to be established within two years.

Court-Based Settlement
Where parties seek review of an Information Commission decision the application for appeal of the Commission’s decision must be submitted to either the State Administrative Court or the District Court within 14 days of the Commission handing-down its decision. The Court will then either overturn the Commission’s decision or affirm it.

The parties may seek cassation of the lower courts decision. A cassation application must be submitted within 14 days of the lower court’s decision to the Supreme Court.

Criminal Sanctions
The deliberate misuse or abuse of information in breach of the law is liable to a maximum of one year imprisonment and a fine of IDR 5 million. This ranges to a term of three years imprisonment and a fine of IDR 20 million for anyone that deliberately accesses information without permission information that is part of the exception category.

Bottom Line

The bill provides potentially greater access to public information. However, it must be noted that this access comes with specific responsibilities upon those that access this information. The bill also is one of the most restrictive pieces of freedom of information legislation in the world when one considers the severity of the applicable sanctions that apply for any breach of the provisions.