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WikiLeaks: Heroes or Villains?

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Sir William:
VILLAINS.  I would agree w/you, Sir Edward, unless or until it is found that some of the information leaked directly led to the loss of life- I would find that unconscionable, no matter how 'noble' the cause.  The term 'collateral damage' is used to mitigate human sentiment regarding lives lost during a campaign...you can call it what you like- but see how far you get when using that term amongst the bereaved who would tell you that there's really no such thing.

Sir Brian:
I certainly will acknowledge the immense inner turmoil someone would go through in such a case of discovering your government is involved with heinous crimes against humanity. However the American government is not the regime of Stalin, Hitler, Castro or Kim Jong where the government has scant hope of being changed except through a coup or fortuitous death. Typically though, those truly despicable crimes perpetrated by a previous government can be rooted out and dealt with and steps taken to ensure it will be less likely to happen again. Our government is no different than many other free and democratic governments in that it has its moments of great compassion and nobility as well as moments of treachery and brutality the scales are balanced by the majority voice of the people.

As for that article I emphatically reject what any of those individuals have to say on the matter based upon the fact that they are all just as guilty of espionage as Private First Class Bradley Manning. All of them had been entrusted with state secrets and they revealed those secrets thereby breaking the law for their respective countries as well as the laws of the countries affected by the dissemination of that information.
The thing is even though some were intelligence advisors they were still only cogs in the wheel of the entire intelligence picture ~ i.e. the left hand so to speak being critical of the right hand’s methods.

Whistleblowers against corporations that are “cooking the books” or endangering the environment is commendable because although a corporation can have some far reaching influence they are still just a privately owned business and not some rogue nation with a supply of thermal nuclear devices or other WMD which is kind of the root of this whole misguided conception of those that support WikiLeaks and their ilk in that they naively consider state secrets to be of the same biased concern as corporate secrets.

As to the earlier allusion to what a person should do if they find himself/herself immersed with a wicked and utterly controlling government that is engaged with all sorts of nefarious acts including genocide, well I would hope they would find the courage, resolve and resourcefulness to take whatever actions they could, like Oskar Schindler.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler

Sir James A:

--- Quote from: Sir Brian on 2010-12-13, 17:43:55 ---Our government is no different than many other free and democratic governments in that it has its moments of great compassion and nobility as well as moments of treachery and brutality
--- End quote ---

Well said, Sir Brian. I am in favor of whistleblowing against corrupt corporations/privately owned firms, but there are some things in government of a nation that are not to be questioned or known by citizens.

Do we REALLY need to know every thwarted terrorist attempt? If they published all of them, I bet we'd see daily news of it. And it would very likely cause severe racial tensions. Some things are kept "under the rug" because it keeps things under control. Granted, there are absolutely some things we need to know, and I'm willing to bet that we don't know all we should. But I think we have it better than most countries do.

"Torture" is a hot-button topic, and I don't feel it should be discussed if we are doing it. There's the possibility to discover future attacks and prevent deaths by acquiring information in ways that aren't civil; do we give known terrorists who hate our country and it's citizens their civil liberties at the expense of the safety of the people? If we don't/aren't doing it, it doesn't mean that they won't torture captured soldiers of ours.

Does the death toll truly matter for a country we're at war with? It didn't historically, should it now? It's war ... casualties are an expected result, and they are little more than a random statistic for 99.9% of the country (though to the 0.1% related to them, they are, of course, everything). Who are we to judge every shot fired, or attack made? We have a chain of command in the military for that purpose; questionable actions are judged by superiors. When did we become the superiors?

Generally speaking, nobody sits over my shoulder and says "I don't think you should have put a line break in the code there" ... and if it's someone who isn't a knowledgeable software developer too, I'd politely tell them I know what I'm doing and what I do is based on my training and knowledge acquired from doing my job well for the last 17 years. If they have a valid reason to make that judgement call, I expect it to be backed up with a valid fact or proof, otherwise, they're talking out of their tail.

My biggest discrepancy is with the posting of personal information; names, addresses, etc. If the information posted is generic and not specific to a person, it should still be acquired by legal means; FOIA, etc. After a certain amount of time, classified documents become declassified and are legally available.

Our judgements on a single decision made on a single subject (including reading leaked government documents) are going to be with tunnel vision; chances are we don't know 99% of the circumstantial and contextual events and information which influence the decision. It's a bit like a random stranger asking you "Red or blue?". We'll probably have an opinion, but we won't know if they're asking what color is their car, their socks, their underwear, what their kid's favorite color is, what color the ocean is, what color fire is ... it needs some context.

(Edit to address Sir Edward's question - In my opinion, it depends on the subject matter of the information. If it's abuse of anyone we're not at declared war with (implicitly like the mexican drug cartels, or explicitly like terrorists), it should be known; if it's corruption of ANY type, especially abuse or misuse of authority/power, it should be known - and should be dealt with)

If I'm wandering too far off course, let me know. I tend to ramble on about these things since I have family history in the military and government. :)

Also, the plot thickens even more....

"a new website that is rivaling with Wikileaks is expected to unveil itself on Monday, 12/13/2010. The name of the new website is Openleaks.Org, and is created and maintained by former Wikileaks members. CNN reports that these former Wikileaks members are unhappy with Julian Assange and the way he ran Wikileaks. They say he "weakened the organization."

(http://www.suite101.com/content/facebook-and-twitter-respond-to-wikileaks-hacker-group-a320061)

Sir William:
Excellent points, Sir James...especially about the racism, it is bad enough as it is...although I must say it is a different feeling when you're not the number one race being profiled.

SirNathanQ:
I'm going to go w/ SirJames on this one, it's frikkin war. Whaddya expect? Isn't eliminating threats to American lives the the POINT!?!
I think people these days have gotten too "soft". Theyre giving more rights to burglars than homeowners in court, we have to let the guy running around on the streets with a gun shoot at us first, and we seem not to be able to prioritize innocent American (or any other innocents for that matter) over the COMFORT of terrorists!
If you ask me, citizens don't need to know every government secret. Remember how many cities were lost throughout history from some disillusioned citizen opening the gates or surrendering a tower? And this almost always leads to the wanton killing of everyone in the settlement! Truly no good can come out of treasonous actions like that.
One might argue that my example has no relevance to the modern world, but what if everything was open to everyone and his brother? With troop locations and missions exposed, how long do you think it will take for the casualties to start piling in? With exact designs of the dollar, how long do you think it will take to flood the economy in counterfeits? With databases open, how long will it take for identity theft to become rampant (as in more than it is already)? Truly, if there are things that we personally don't want the world knowing, our government can be entitled to some privacy too.     

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