Wikileaks Dangerous Data Dump of Arab Gay & HIV+ Men

WikiLeaks Dangerous Data Dump of Arab Gay & HIV+ Men

If you don’t work for the DNC, perhaps the WikiLeaks dump during the convention didn’t bother you. But If you are a gay man, HIV+ or, simply a compassionate human being, this should frighten you.

The backlash following the reckless Daily Beast article where closeted gay men were outed during the Rio Summer Olympics was immediate and severe. Putting lives at risk for the sake of click-bait journalism got author Nico Hines recalled from Rio. Now WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has taken it global with dangerous implications.

Scott Long, an LGBT rights activist who has worked in the Middle East, said the names of rape victims were off-limits. And he worried that releasing the names of people persecuted for their sexuality only risked magnifying the harm caused by oppressive officials.

“You’re legitimizing their surveillance, not combating it,” Long said.

Wikileaks Dangerous Data Dump of Arab Gay & HIV+ Men
Julian Assange speaks from the balcony of Ecuador’s embassy, where he is taking refuge in London. Photo credit @ Reuters
As CBSNews is reporting:

WikiLeaks’ global crusade to expose government secrets is causing collateral damage to the privacy of hundreds of innocent people, including survivors of sexual abuse, sick children and the mentally ill, The Associated Press has found.

In the past year alone, the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web.

The DailyMail adds:
The number of people affected easily reaches into the hundreds. Paul Dietrich, a transparency activist, said a partial scan of the Saudi cables alone turned up more than 500 passports, identity, academic or employment files.

In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, an extraordinary move given that homosexuality is punishable by death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom.

Wikileaks Dangerous Data Dump of Arab Gay & HIV+ Men
A selection of private medical files published (AP Photo/Raphael Satter)
The Democratic Underground has also weighed in, “Julian Assange really makes me appreciate Edward Snowden, who at least had the decency to filter his information through a journalist. A journalist who could decide what was and was not news that the public needed to know. Assange, on the other hand, is an insane megalomaniac.”

But that’s happening to them. Over there. Why the alarm Chicken Little?
And just for the record, I haven’t been chicken for a long time. As the Alt-Right in America continues to raise their voices & mount insane conspiracy theories as their power diminishes before their eyes, don’t forget whose hate for the Clinton’s has led him to advance their cause.

And for the rest of us, what happens if we got sick across the pond? What if some deranged TSA guard was told to be on the lookout for HIV medications?

It’s not how potentially dangerous in scope this particular data dump is; it’s the idea and total lack of humanity behind it that could give others ideas. Bad ones. And dangerous. And there’s plenty of them out there.

Stay safe. Be aware. And for G-d sakes, make sure those you pull the lever for on Election Day are for someone who has our backs.



 
 

And now, back to our regualrly scheduled pornography.

12 thoughts on “WikiLeaks Dangerous Data Dump of Arab Gay & HIV+ Men”

  1. Respectfully, I find this AP story to be curious in terms of its timing. Not only are all of these “violations” more than a year (and in some cases years) old, some of the blame attributed to Wikileaks is misplaced. For instance, Wikileaks republished a story from 2015 about how the Saudi maintained a list of homosexual “offenders”, there names were included because the Saudi government’s documents containing those names listed them. That means that the Saudi Government knew of these men and therefore there lives were already in jeopardy. That is just one example of the misplaced assignment of blame. I can appreciate why Wikileaks does not curate its data to the extent that some have requested. Their stated reason for doing so is to insue that there is no question of the authenticity of the document should it be used in legal proceedings and or criminal investigations. Redacted information would be challenged on the grounds of admissibility in any Court of law in the United States. I can be compelled to believe that Mr. Assange is a meglomaniac and there is no doubt that he is no fan of Mrs. Clinton (as are a number of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein supporters), but that characterization of him does nothing to diminish the fact that he has been instrumental in speaking truth to power in a way that has more than benefited those of us who are skeptical of the governments shadowy and corrupt dealings. Moreover, I find the continued McCarthyism surrounding his alleged link to the Russian government and their supposed intermeddling in the American electoral process to wreak of Manchurian candidate like conspiracy theories and frankly serves as both a dodge and a smoke screen. When individuals are more concerned with who leaked the information than the information exposed, then respectfully, I think that we have to refocus our attention on the more important variable in the equation – the substance.

  2. I doubt WikiLeaks “global crusade to expose government secrets” includes the secrets of the government of Ecuador. LOL

      1. Micah – hang on, mate. There’s a plethora of reasons to be a foe of Hillary Clinton. Being antigay ain’t one. To say she has no problem with our folk being “thrown off of rooftops and burned alive in cages” is ludicrous and just weakens whatever legitimate gripes you may have. You blokes have no idea how good you have it. We’re still tussling trying to a flipping marriage vote over here. PS: it was a Jordanian pilot who was burned in a cage, not one of us.

        1. Accepting donations from and refusing to condemn the receiving of funds from middle eastern countries which are doing nothing to fight isis and also where it is legal for gays to be executed or otherwise punished by law? Really? Do you see how blind we have gotten that we are supposed to believe that hillary is suddenly doing everything right just because she’s a democrat? All of her actions prove that she is unfit and that she will say anything and do the exact opposite. Either we are refusing to believe her actions [which are very well documented] or most of our community has some sort of stockholm syndrome.

          1. Dude, who said she or Democrats for that matter are doing everything right? I don’t know about the rest of world and what they do with their dealings with anti-gay countries, but as for the Clintons, it’s also well documented they took that money and used it to stop HIV and childhood blindness in Africa. It’s not about refusing to believe her actions; it’s about not cherry-picking the ones that only fit a single narrative. Such as the way one might assume that since “gay conversion” therapy was written into the GOP platform this year, the entire party is as anti-LGBT.

            It sounds like you have had too much Log Cabin Republican flavored Kool-Aid. But it’s a free country. You can choose any flavor you like. In mutual respect, we agree to disagree.

          1. No one is denying Isis kills us, mate. That may be the single thing we all agree on here. I am no solicitor for Trump. I find him dangerous. But no one here is suggesting he personally supports our murder and find it daft you can’t extend that single notion to Mrs. Clinton whilst loathing everything else about her.

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