"The Public has a right to know"

[Asguard]

I'm torn.

I'll be honest, I'm having trouble caring about Wikileaks latest release.

On one hand, I am fully aware that all governments--even the best of them--need to be able to keep secrets. To think otherwise is naïve. On the other hand, I also believe in--what you say--full disclosure and transparency. I don't really have a solid definition as to where one begins and the other ends, but on this particular issue, I'm really having trouble caring. Our allies and quasi-allies all know our warts, it will come as no surprise to fellow diplomats that their American counterparts trash-talk and share embarrassing tidbits of info.

~String

Possibly but it might come differently from those countries voters. For instance, say one of the cables said Howard was an insufferable toerag and it came from bush who was bleating about the "special relationship between Australia and the US", if that came out while they were both still in power there would have been a lot more pressure put on our government when they bleat about the Australia\US alience
There might well be even now

 

[superstring01]

Possibly but it might come differently from those countries voters. For instance, say one of the cables said Howard was an insufferable toerag and it came from bush who was bleating about the "special relationship between Australia and the US", if that came out while they were both still in power there would have been a lot more pressure put on our government when they bleat about the Australia\US alience
There might well be even now

I seriously doubt there is any such information, or any information analogous to what you said, regarding our close allies. Any such gaffe would be a non issue anyway, since the treaties that bind the two are difficult to circumvent.

~String

 

[spidergoat]

Is anyone? I agree that this seems to entirely amount to the publication of what have long been "open secrets."

Some people are still incredulous:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2655402&postcount=1

 

[Asguard]

Treatise are only effective for as long as there is a government who surports them. If the greens got enough power (for example) they could force the libs or labor to back away from the treatise. That's just an example of corse

 

[superstring01]

Treatise are only effective for as long as there is a government who surports them. If the greens got enough power (for example) they could force the libs or labor to back away from the treatise. That's just an example of corse

How are the Greens doing these days?

~String

 

[Asguard]

Up to 20% primary vote at last election, hold balance of power with 4 independentance in the house and hold 9 Senate seats meaning from July 1 they hold balance of power outright in the Senate. Concidering the complete disfunction of the oposition at the moment no legislation will pass from July 1 without the Greens aproval

 

[quadraphonics]

Some people are still incredulous:

WikiLeaks seems to be more useful as a Rorschach test than anything else. Every time they come out, there's a surge of "how dare that rogue endanger Democracy!" outrage directed at Assange from the far right, a corresponding surge of "this proves the USA rapes and eats babies, just like I always said!" from the fringe left, and a big shrug from the 99% of people in the middle who can't see where they demonstrate anything interesting beyond the fact that there's a ton of secret documents out there that don't seem to be protected very well.

At this point, I propose employing the reaction to wikileaks dumps as a test - anyone who gets worked up about them is very likely a fringe nut worked from a fixed agenda, and exploiting them as a pretext to bloviate.

 

[keith1]

Two different things there SAM, so you wouldn't mind that your son would be killed if he had his "cover" blown just to keep others in line?

Cheney and Bush blew Valarie Plame's cover, killing an unknown number of contacts, but that's different.

 

[keith1]

Secrecy gives incompetent nincompoops in authority the wiggle room to screw up miserably, knowing that they can deny everything about their ineptness, as they walk away from the shambles blameless. Human history is built on such. And humanity is not in that great of shape...

Transparency demands careful intelligent thought to the road forward.

 

[Tiassa]

Something about saving face

Is anyone? I agree that this seems to entirely amount to the publication of what have long been "open secrets."

Fair enough. Perhaps I should have said, "indignantly outraged" instead of shocked.

It's like a few weeks back, I was listening to a discussion of the second big WikiLeaks release, and the anti-WikiLeaks argument had two prongs. One was indignantly outraged by the damage the information could cause, and the other felt WikiLeaks wasn't providing any new information and thus was just playing for attention. It was almost like if one didn't convince you, then the other should: WikiLeaks is bad!

I think part of the outrage is just cover for the fact that it was that easy to bring these documents to light. But if you're the Obama administration, that's a hard point to make; the release comes on their watch, and whatever history of information security leads us to this moment is one they're going to have to reconcile. It's probably just easier to complain that Assange and WikiLeaks don't have the right to embarrass the hell out of our government.

 

[S.A.M.]

I think part of the outrage is just cover for the fact that it was that easy to bring these documents to light.

This is the law of unexpected consequences. Its much easier to send data into the stratosphere than it is to carry out a library full of hard copy documents. The problem with working in secret is human nature: there is always someone who will disagree with the status quo, who will think that the secrecy permits abuse, who will be angered by something he has heard or read. There may even be something as basic as simple personal dissent or dislike - most motives are closer to home than to ideology. All it takes is a flashdrive, a CD, something as inane as a memory card in a phone and there is tons of data at your disposal.

I'm only surprised it doesn't happen more often.

 

[quadraphonics]

I think part of the outrage is just cover for the fact that it was that easy to bring these documents to light. But if you're the Obama administration, that's a hard point to make; the release comes on their watch, and whatever history of information security leads us to this moment is one they're going to have to reconcile.

Yeah, and I'm noting that pretty much any of the criticisms about divulging sensitive information are strengthened by replacing "wikileaks" with "the Exeucitve branch." After all, whatever damage was done was due to the documents leaking into the public sphere to begin with, rather than the particulars of which component of the public sphere publicized them. Assange is not some federal insider - absent leaks from inside the government, he has nothing to publish.

 

[iceaura]

WikiLeaks seems to be more useful as a Rorschach test than anything else. Every time they come out, there's a surge of "how dare that rogue endanger Democracy!" outrage directed at Assange from the far right, a corresponding surge of "this proves the USA rapes and eats babies, just like I always said!" from the fringe left

There is no one on the left, fringe or not, that is claiming the USA rapes and eats babies.

There are hundreds of people in the mainstream of US media and political discussion who have been declaring their outrage at Assange's endangerment of "Democracy", which they identify with US foreign policy endeavors.

Your "correspondence" there is half imaginary.

A comparison of the actual assertions from the "fringe" Left - which is actually on the fringe - and whatever you want to call the Right that has taken central power and mainstream media control in the US, would raise the uncomfortable issue of realistic correspondence with events and situations.

Because the world as revealed in these series of leaks does in fact correspond much more closely to some views of that Rorschach prompt than to others, and indeed just as the "fringe left" has always said.

Which is why these leaks make a poor, very messy and confused basis for a theoretical discussion of what the Public has a right to know in general.

This is a crime scene involving - instrumentally - an unwarranted and deliberately deceptive keeping of secrets by the perpetrators; not only is a lot of this stuff supposed to have been public info in the first place, hidden behind claims of privilege that only apply to some other of it, but when great crimes have been committed the public's right to know the circumstances expands into areas normally not within its permitted scope.

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

Say your son was in the CIA or KGB and their "cover" was blown by these leaks and their lives were in peril, would that be a good thing for them?

You mean when the Bush administration's US state department blew the cover of Valerie Plame Wilson while she was still on the ground because her husband had the audacity to say weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was completely false?

Hypocrites.