Pentagon warns disclosure platform against publishing further Afghanistan papers
WikiLeaks was warned by the U.S. Department of Defense against publishing further documents about the war in Afghanistan. The whistleblowing platform had published over 76,000 pages of classified war records from Afghanistan in late July.
According to the US news channel CNN on Thursday, Geoff Morell, Pentagon spokesman, spoke of a mistake that had already put too many lives at risk. Following the publication of around 76,000 pages of secret war records from Afghanistan, the Pentagon has launched an investigation to find out who leaked the documents to the whistleblowing platform.
Now the only responsible course of action for WikiLeaks is to remove all stolen documents from their website and delete all secret material from their computers. Publishing more secret documents would be irresponsible.
The head of the website, Julian Assange, announced via a video link on Thursday that they would soon be publishing around 15,000 more documents. WikiLeaks is about halfway through these documents, he said. Assange did not give a date for publication.
The group "Reporters Without Borders" accused Assange of "incredibly irresponsible behavior" in an open letter. WikiLeaks had repeatedly played a useful role in the past, for example by exposing civil rights violations by the former Bush administration in the war on terror. But revealing the identity of hundreds of people who worked with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous.
The human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, called on WikiLeaks to do more to remove names from the documents. According to the Wall Street Journal, they have already experienced the negative, sometimes deadly consequences for those Afghans who have been known to collaborate and sympathize with international forces, according to a letter to the platform's operators.
Now the only responsible course of action for WikiLeaks is to remove all stolen documents from their website and delete all secret material from their computers. Publishing more secret documents would be irresponsible.
The head of the website, Julian Assange, announced via a video link on Thursday that they would soon be publishing around 15,000 more documents. WikiLeaks is about halfway through these documents, he said. Assange did not give a date for publication.
The group "Reporters Without Borders" accused Assange of "incredibly irresponsible behavior" in an open letter. WikiLeaks had repeatedly played a useful role in the past, for example by exposing civil rights violations by the former Bush administration in the war on terror. But revealing the identity of hundreds of people who worked with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous.
The human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, called on WikiLeaks to do more to remove names from the documents. According to the Wall Street Journal, they have already experienced the negative, sometimes deadly consequences for those Afghans who have been known to collaborate and sympathize with international forces, according to a letter to the platform's operators.
