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
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)