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Comment by agd | Hacker News Reader

You're using biased language. Rephrasing your point to: "Targeted stealing can be justified. Indiscriminate stealing can not be." or perhaps "Targeted leaking can be justified. Indiscriminate leaking can not be".

I think you are missing a point though. Who is best placed to judge what to release? The leaker, or experienced journalists? What if you know there are more abuses but don't have time to individually search through the documents before leaking? Should you only take the ones you have already read, and lose out on revealing other abuses? It's a difficult choice.

From my outside point of view, the government (and often media) errs too much on the side of secrecy so I'm glad to see a whistleblower who is more aggressive with the amount of information they leak.

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> You're using biased language. Rephrasing your point to: "Targeted stealing....

and the word "stealing" is also biased language. Leakers don't "steal" anything, they copy information. The original proprietor still has the original information.

I was summarizing the article, that's why I chose that language because it reflected my interpretation of what the author was saying.

But I think a more balanced approach is necessary. The leaker should have at least some knowledge of what they are providing to journalists. This was somewhat addressed in the article because the author seemed to feel that Snowden was opening himself up to attack precisely because he was so indiscriminate. He put a target on his back from not just the US government but also foreign governments who want the information he has.

It doesn't work the other way. If you take only a few documents they simply lie their way through those few leaks and continue on. You need the bulk of the Snowden leaks, and the ability to continually show the government to be lying, to even start the conversation.

As for what's justified, there's no justification for not reporting crimes. There's no difficulty bar where you get to relax even though nothing has changed. You have a legal obligation to report illegal acts and orders even if it's uncomfortable. If the government wants to deter leakers it should start listening to their initial complaints, before these loyal Americans feel the need to go public.

> a more balanced approach is necessary.

Right, when crimes are revealed more of the administration need to go to jail. Hell, it's the military and some should probably be hung for their crimes. As long as the whistleblower is the only one suffering we can be sure the system is failing.

One could argue taxation is "Target Stealing", in that context I would agree it is justified.

I think I could see a few other cases of selective stealing making sense. Stealing the weapon(s) of a person intent on maliciously using it, such as the hundreds of pounds of ammonium nitrate from someone likely to build a bomb.

It seems you just want nice clean black and white rules, and reality does not seem so kind. Let each decide when leaking or stealing is right based on the risks they themselves assume. Let's try to build systems that encourage everyone to make good decisions here so actual secrets (say blueprints of nuclear weapons) aren't leaked and private property is generally not stolen.

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