lunes, noviembre 29, 2010

[Actualizado] WIKILEAKS Y LA REBELIÓN DE LOS PESCADOS: unas reflexiones de Jorge Ferrer con las que coincido. La verdad es que de momento el Cablegate está siendo más ruido que nueces: no hay nada que no se supiera ya, aunque es verdad que el hecho de verlo plasmado en escritos le da un carácter algo más relevante. Y lo más significativo de todo es el agujero de seguridad en sí mismo, aunque mucha gente parece olvidar que los canales diplomáticos no son los servicios de inteligencia. Dicho de otro modo, esto no es todo lo que EEUU sabe u opina sobre el mundo; eso está --esperemos-- a mejor recaudo.

En cualquier caso, me interesa más que las revelaciones en sí, las implicaciones que todo este tema pueda tener; he recopilado para mi blog en inglés una serie de enlaces que copio aquí porque os pueden interesar:

How 250,000 US Embassy Cables Were Leaked: "From a fake Lady Gaga CD to a thumb drive that is a pocket-sized bombshell – the biggest intelligence leak in history." (Guardian)

Why We're Publishing Them: "The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match." (NY Times)

To Publish Leaks Or Not to Publish? "News organizations are confronting that question as aggressive tactics like those of WikiLeaks become more common in an age of fast-moving information." (WSJ)

Wikileaks' First Victim -- Transparency: "The first and most lasting casualty of this massive avalanche of documents classified “confidential,” “secret” and “noforn” (not for foreign governments to see) is going to be precisely the “transparency” that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he advocates. . . . The problem the State Department faces now is not just the difficulty of having frank conversations with allies or secret negotiations with enemies who think—who know—it leaks like a sieve. It will also be harder to have frank exchanges within the United States government itself. To avoid this kind of massive leak in the future, documents will get higher classification and less distribution, and a lot of the most important stuff may not be committed to the keyboard at all." (Chris Dickey @ Newsweek)

It's Started -- Pentagon Tightens Info Controls: "The Pentagon on Sunday announced new approaches for how it would safeguard information in the wake of the leak of documents from WikiLeaks, amid allegations that the Obama administration went too far in improving information-sharing across the government." (Politico)

Leaks Could Deal Blow to Global Trust: "What will be damaging in the Wikileaks, then, will be revelations about views on the part of senior political figures about individuals or nations who may be able to retaliate, or when the cultivation of personal trust is essential in progressing whatever interests may be in play. This will apply particularly in relation to states which have an elevated sense of national honour and, more generally, to the Muslim world. Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan spring immediately to mind." (British diplomat Hilary Synott @ The Independent)

Wikileaks' Target -- American Power: "The first victims of the leaked cables released Sunday was anyone who shared secrets with American diplomats, especially Arab leaders who saw their private security deals - and their insistence that those deals be kept from their people - published online with undiplomatic bluntness. But the main effect of the many details of American diplomacy revealed in the thousands of documents obtained and released by WikiLeaks was to deepen the damage to their intended targets: U.S. foreign policy, prestige, and power." (Politico)

Better Sharing of Data = Danger: " The release of a huge tranche of U.S. diplomatic cables has laid bare the primary risk associated with the U.S. government's attempt to encourage better information-sharing: Someone is bound to leak. The U.S. intelligence community came under heavy criticism after Sept. 11, 2001, for having failed to share data that could have prevented the attacks that day. In response, officials from across the government sought to make it easier for various agencies to share sensitive information - effectively giving more analysts wider access to government secrets. But on Sunday, the Web site WikiLeaks, which had previously released sensitive U.S. documents about the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, once again proved that there's a downside to better information-sharing." (WaPo)

The Guardian Gave the Cables to the NY Times: "New York Times editors said Sunday that although the paper's reporters had been digging through WikiLeaks trove of 250,000 State Department cables for "several weeks," the online whistleblower wasn't the source of the documents. But if WikiLeaks—which allegedly obtained the cables from a 22-year-old army private—wasn't the Times source, than who was? Apparently, The Guardian—one of the five newspapers that had an advanced look at the cables—supplied a copy of the cables to The Times." (Michael Calderone)

The Fallout from WikiLeaks' Latest Exposure: "Julian Assange's may not have endangered lives directly by leaking thousands of pages of purloined diplomatic correspondence, but he's certainly made conducting American diplomacy more difficult." (Tunku Varadarajan @ Daily Beast)

U.S. Officials Overstating the Danger From the Leaks? "Unlike the release earlier this year of intelligence documents about the war in Afghanistan, when WikiLeaks posted on its website unredacted documents that included the names of Afghan informants, WikiLeaks agreed this time not to release more than 250,000 documents because they hadn't been vetted by the U.S. government." (McClatchy)

Reactions Around the World compiled by The Lede @ NY Times.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Lo dicho: de momento, las revelaciones en los cables de la diplomacia de EEUU son todo cosas que sólo sorprenden a quienes no sigan la actualidad. Hace años que se saben todas y cada una de esas cosas.