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Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

Chelsea Manning risked even more, was rewarded far less, and successfully liberated far more of the data belonging to the public. Very little of what she revealed passes any sort of common sense test about what is rightly held secret by a public entity, but rather showed that the government keeps secret anything that is politically dangerous for the narrative it tries to maintain.

I see nothing but good intentions. Forward-thinking? Maybe you're right there, at least in terms of her own well-being. Perhaps she was counting on us for more than we're willing to do in terms of rescuing her from a life of torture at the hands of the state.

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Chelsea Manning took vast numbers of documents she never read and then sent them to a stranger on the Internet who happened to have branding congenial to her politics.

I think the handling of the Snowden leak was also irresponsible and, from the vantage point of doing the most public good with the disclosure, has for the most part been a fiasco (notice how much more we learn about the contents of these documents after attacks and incidents become public?). But Snowden's leak handling was surgical compared to the shitshow surrounding the Manning leak.

For my part (and I know you already know this from our many past discussions on the matter), I simply don't think there's anything sacred about government secrets in the first place, so I have no qualms with someone liberating them.

When they reveal evidence of war crimes (or even just everyday corruption and slop), then I think the disclosure is all the more to be celebrated.

Yes, and; while Snowden gives conference talks from exile, she's facing charges and indefinite solitary confinement as punishment for a suicide attempt.

Naive and misguided, perhaps, but you really can't argue she didn't risk (and lose) far more while basically trying to do the right thing.

People who bomb abortion clinics also believe they're doing the right thing. We need to be careful about judging actions solely by motivations.

If we lived in the same moral universe as them, they would be doing the right thing. The thought does give me pause, from time to time.

But the point is not to redeem Manning's actions in a utilitarian sense. The facts are that she saw something (war) she found unconscionable, she wanted to do something about it, and she sacrificed about as much as she possibly could without dying-- maybe more, now that she's one of the least free people on the planet. It's not that hard to comprehend a moral philosophy where she does actually deserve points for effort.

If you're asking me to just look at utility, it's very hard for me to get around the fact that the book is still being written. I can see the argument that indiscriminate leaking causes damage, and damage to well-functioning systems is bad, but I can also see the argument that the historical record is full of state secrets kept for banal or evil reasons and the proper functioning of the current intelligence apparatus may be doing more harm in a human sense than could possibly be justified, if we just knew it were happening.

The irony is that ultimately, I just have to trust that there are enough people with good hearts working in the system that if something unconscionable is going on, it won't stay secret for long. So in these circumstances I'm actually much more worried about not judging by intentions enough, lest the well-intentioned decide to stay home.

This is only straightforward if you believe there's no information someone like Manning can get their hands on that would be harmful if made public.

I'm not sure I follow. I'm granting the possibility that the outcome of her leak was ultimately negative, but that's not related to her intentions, nor to whether or not her intentions are morally or practically relevant.

Edit, I guess I'm thinking of the opposing question: Is there information that someone in Manning's position could get which, if it exists, any system which created it or kept it secret should not be allowed to exist, let alone have the authority of law?

Intentions matter, then. But maybe we're talking past each other?

> People who bomb abortion clinics also believe they're doing the right thing. We need to be careful about judging actions solely by motivations.

The second sentence may not be true, but is unrelated to the first, which illustrates more that we need to be careful about judging actions solely by accord with the alignment to the actors' view of "the right thing" than anything else.

Regarding selective disclosure, at least Snowden and Greenwald made an attempt to keep people from getting killed. There's a big difference between leaking methods and leaking the identities of assets.

IIRC Wikileaks asked for assistance redacting the leak and did not receive any.

"and successfully liberated far more of the data belonging to the public."

This is completely false.

The information Manning released absolutely did not belong in the public domain. Period.

Governments, like any other private entity are allowed to keep confidential information.

Much of what manning released was private conversations between state department officials and their counterparts in the Middle East. The damage could have been much worse.

It's really sad to see so manny people think that 'individual privacy is paramount' but then can't grasp that other actors, including state actors, don't have reasonable rights to privacy.

It's beyond naive.

I'm actually reasonably certain that the New York Times vs United State indicated that newspapers are completely within their rights to publish this information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_S...

And there's a slight difference; government employees (including the military) are paid by the taxpayer, and government operations (such as military strikes) are also tax-funded, and a degree of transparency is supposed to come with that. If the government was a for-profit entity, you might have a point, but at least right now, it (officially) is public, and the above case and FOIA are there because of it.

I understand that there are cases where the government cannot release stuff to the public, and I'm not disputing that Manning overstepped her bounds, but I don't think it's naive to expect some degree of transparency from public, (not private) entities.

> Governments, like any other private entity

The entire essence of the concept of a Republic (vs. e.g., a Monarchy) is that government is literally a public matter (Latin: res publica) not a private entity or someone's private property.

So, I disagree with your conclusion even when restricted to the realm of reasonable classification - I don't think that everyday communications from state actors, acting on the public behalf, are reasonably considered classified, and neither does the FOIA.

But, for my part, I will go even further. I think that:

> Governments, like any other private entity are allowed to keep confidential information.

Is just wrong. I don't think that, in this day and age, it's a good idea for governments to keep anything secret. At all. And I'm pretty absolutist about that. And I think that's a reasonable information-age policy. And I think that governments will begin to adopt it or look silly for refusing to do so.

> It's really sad to see so manny people think that 'individual privacy is paramount' but then can't grasp that other actors, including state actors, don't have reasonable rights to privacy.

This is exactly my belief. I cannot grasp - or rather have grasped and cast away in disgust - the idea that "state actors [have] reasonable rights to privacy." They don't.

> Governments, like any other private entity

is the government really a "private entity"... and if it can be described as such, is it "like others"?

> It's really sad to see so manny people think that 'individual privacy is paramount' but then can't grasp that other actors, including state actors, don't have reasonable rights to privacy.

(assuming you mean "do have") in what way does the state have "reasonable rights to privacy"? who determines what's "reasonable"? doesn't state privacy hamstring the citizenry's oversight and regulation of their own government?

If the government is able to keep secrets from us, then we cannot give informed consent on whether their governance is appropriate or not for our nation's citizenry.

Uninformed consent is hardly consent at all, and our elected class ought often be reminded that it is we that they answer to, and not the other way around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed

"If the government is able to keep secrets from us, then we cannot give informed consent on whether their governance is appropriate or not for our nation's citizenry."

This is completely false - and there is not a single state in all of the history of the world wherein this was the case.

Oversight - yes.

All public information - no.

If you have ever worked with a team of more than 5 people, you'd realize that your statement cannot hold true. Do you really think that every email, every correspondence, every bit of government data should be public?

Should Barack Obama have to do everything on a 'live cam' so that every citizen can see his every move and word?

Should the Nuclear Launch codes be 'public information' ???

Of course not!

Government agencies have absolutely no obligation to release any information unless it falls under the auspices of 'freedom of information' (which is a good bit of data) - and then various levels of clearance.

We have other people in government: elected officials, oversight committees, and judiciary, NSA, FBA - to keep an eye on one another.

The information released by Manning was 100% within the bounds of information that the government can keep private.

Private conversations between state officials and diplomats are definitely not something that should be published.

In 40-50 years or so, the US eventually releases pretty much everything, you can read what the US Diplomat to Libya said to Gaddafi if you want then. But not in real time.

Yeah, I'm not suggesting that every scrap of paper needs to get released if it isn't practicable, but secret, billion-dollar plus programs should simply not exist, ever; this includes (in my opinion) NSA surveillance, the Manhattan Project, et al.

> Should Barack Obama have to do everything on a 'live cam' so that every citizen can see his every move and word?

This doesn't sound unreasonable to me. I'll be surprised if a state doesn't try this in the next 50 years.

> Should the Nuclear Launch codes be 'public information' ???

I think it's a safe bet that many of us don't believe that the government is right to have nuclear weapons in the first place.

Governments aren't (supposed to be) private entities.

"Governments aren't (supposed to be) private entities."

Governments are not 'private entities' but they certainly can have 'private information'.

It's really quite difficult to debate this with you guys.

If you can't imagine that diplomats can't have private conversations with their counter parts, that bureaucrats can't have private conversations with employees - then I have nothing to say to you.

Once you accept that there is a lot of information that should not be publicly available, both 'secret' and 'mundane' (HR records etc..) - then you accept the government can keep private information - and then it becomes a matter of how that is regulated: oversight by congress, committee, judiciary - and access to information wherein it's appropriate.

And once you accept that - you accept that Manning's release was totally immoral and unlawful. There is nothing in his cable releases that should have been released - though you could debate the release of the video of reporters dying in friendly fire.

> If you can't imagine that diplomats can't have private conversations with their counter parts, that bureaucrats can't have private conversations with employees - then I have nothing to say to you.

Just to be clear: I think many people here believe that "diplomats" and "bureaucrats" are subject to deprecation. You are holding on to the notion that the government is going to keep existing (and bungling society, economy, and environment) alongside the internet, but it's perfectly reasonable to surmise that this is not so.

Government has been a necessary evil for a stage of human evolution that is now coming to a close. And it will wither with a whimper, not a bang.

So, per your directive, it may just be that you have nothing to say to us.

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