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Comment by riffer | Hacker News Reader

What Julian appears to me to be trying to do is to reduce the ability of large bureaucratic militarized organizations to dominate innocent individuals.

Secrets exist for many purposes, but their primary impact on history is to permit groups of people to organize in order to persecute other less organized groups of people. Ultimately, it was the combination of industrialization and secrets that made it possible for nation states to directly the cause the death of 160 million people in the 20th century. In these situations, the ability of individuals to influence the course of events is essentially nil. That's why you and I have not stopped the millions of murders in Darfur, the same as our parents did not stop them in Rwanda 17 years ago, and so on.

In this context, it really is not reasonable to argue that we would all be much safer if nobody was revealing the secrets of those who have too many secrets.

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Sixty to seventy years ago, the following information was kept secret by Western governments:

-How to build an atom bomb

-How to build effective radar systems to detect incoming bombers

-The fact that German and Japanese encryption codes had been compromised

-The US Navy's awareness of Japan's intention to attack Midway Island

-The fact that Patton was actually removed from command, and that his travels around Italy and north Africa were a ruse to misdirect German defenses away from Normandy

Need I go on? If some idealist decided to leak these secrets, a lot more innocent individuals would be dominated by certain nation states. State secrets are no different from any other power of the state--they can be used for good or for ill, and it's careful to ensure they're used for good, but it's foolish and suicidal to try and keep them from being used at all.

Today the following information is kept secret by many governments:

- Accidental civilian deaths in raids.

- Details of people "detained" for questioning.

- Botched up intelligence operations and lack of analysis capabilities.

- How much money is being spent on "intelligence" and why.

Need I go on?

It is true that they can be used for good or for ill, but the problem comes in when you take away accountability from the equation. The question really should be; how can we balance the two?

You don't disagree with me; you agree with me and disagree with the idealist, quasi-anarchist view that state secrets shouldn't exist at all.

Note that all (but perhaps one) of the secrets I listed is now well documented public knowledge. I think this example should be followed.

I don't want to agree or disagree with anything. All I want to agree with is that innocent people have the right to exist without getting shot in the middle of the night.

You know what's the biggest problem over here? It's okay if someone from country ABC kills people living in XYZ. That's collateral damage, but as soon as a few ABC civilians get killed it's war.

It's like somehow everyone in this world have agreed to play a game where they all assume that they're the heroes and the fate of the planet rests on their shoulders. Somehow they've agreed that it's okay to kill other people because they just don't agree with them. Somehow they've agreed that this is just the way things are and this is how they must be.

Why?

I think that it's safe to say that no one can analyze state secrets or anything in this world. It's just a long chain of causality that is propagated forward by implicit agreement.

  All I want to agree with is that innocent people have the
  right to exist without getting shot in the middle of the
  night.

Which is a naive view, because without American intervention in Afghanistan, their citizens ran the risk of being shot in the middle of the night anyway, because they rubbed some Taliban the wrong way.

Things might be better post-invasion - they damn well should be - but surely the point is that the US, British and other armies must be held to a higher standard than the Taliban?

No-one expects them to be perfect, but they do expect avoiding the killing of innocent civilians to be a priority. If there is evidence to suggest it is not, it should be given due attention.

A prefectly free and unhindered press helps to prevent atrocities by making armies accountable for their actions. Wikileaks might be a very crude tool, but it's definitely enhancing press freedom

The problems in Afghanistan are far deeper than the Taliban and we're now embroiled in a civil war that has lasted for decades.

What was once an Afghani problem is now our problem and we're paying for it in various ways.

Good thing we intervened, because now it is no longer possible for an Afghani to be shot in the middle of the night by the Taliban.

It's facile to assume a moral equivalence between one side accidentally killing civilians in situations where it's extremely difficult to isolate the enemy, and the other side hijacking jetliners and flying them into office buildings.

Agreed. But please do note that the Taliban didn't fly any aircraft into buildings. The ones who did were Saudis. The Taliban want to kick the invader out, just like the Vietcong 40 years ago. If you think the war in Afghanistan is motivated by the desire to kill Al Qaeda, you need to read a thing or two on geopolitics.

"The ones who did were Saudis."

Al-Qaeda are about as Saudi as the IRA is British. The people who make that argument, and forget the close ties between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the first place, are the ones who need to read a thing or two on geopolitics.

I am talking about all sides. Not just the USA or the terrorists, but the Iranians, the Pakistanis, the Israelis, the Somalians, the Indians, the Chinese, the Russians...

The world is more complex than these shallow sides. I wish I could tell you what I see in one comment, but I can't. All I can ask you to do is to read history from a neutral perspective and follow the chain of causality down the ages.

I've read enough to know that I don't understand the world, and I never will. I can merely try to help other human beings unconditionally no matter what. This might sound crazy, but provided that a terrorist is willing to take a path of peace and understanding I am willing to give him/her a peaceful home both mentally and physically.

I wish you peace.

No, you don't need to continue your litany without context. I here a lot of bleating about national security, good of the state, and all, but that is used far too often as a blanket justification to cover up anything. Restriction, or manipulation, of information is what gave rise to the powers that your examples had to counter. For example, if all information relevant to the public, was public, then the Afghan/Iraq wars would never have happened.

Foolish and suicidal to prevent state secrets? I would say it should be a mandatory past time and actively encouraged. How can you have a democracy that includes censorship? If knowledge is power, and it certainly is, as a government's legitimacy can be hinged upon the concealment of a truth, or the propagation of a lie, then the systems in place should err on the side of transparency.

Perhaps then a compromise should be made, all governmental information should be made completely available in raw form by the end of a governments term, irrespective of content. Secrets like those you listed, are a grey area, perhaps these special cases can be protected further if they are indeed legitimate cases. However, let there be an open real time record kept of who requested the information to be restricted and for what reasons, but eventually and with in a reasonable time frame, 5-10 years or soon enough to break a career if that is warranted. Abuses of the system can therefore be tracked.

I would go a little further and remove any laws surrounding information (that includes copyright and patent laws), and make it a completely moral issue when it comes to a secrecy. A more open society is a more equal society, and where there are fewer power imbalances you will get fewer abuses of power.

(For sake of clarity, I am not including private information; medical records, etc, unless there is good justification. I can imagine the revelations of schizophrenia for a would be government official, demographically related illnesses (eg all war veterans of X suffer higher rates of cancer), would be desirable.)

"How can you have a democracy that includes censorship?"

If it wasn't for censorship, democracy wouldn't have survived the 20th century. There are concrete, non-hypothetical secrets democratic states did keep during the 20th century which safeguarded their continued existence and the reestablishment of democracy throughout much of the world.

Everything you say can and has been applied to every power of the state--the power to make war, the power to collect taxes, the power to enforce law, you name it. Each of these powers has been abused. Each of these powers--including the power to keep secrets--needs to be restricted and kept in check, but not abolished. That way lies anarchy, a fundamentally untested system when applied conscientiously to a modern society and a violent nightmare when applied haphazardly anywhere we've observed it in settled societies.[1]

"A more open society is a more equal society, and where there are fewer power imbalances you will get fewer abuses of power. For sake of clarity, I am not including private information; medical records, etc, unless there is good justification."

Privacy and secrecy are two names for the same thing.

[1] Whether hunter-gatherer societies were fundamentally anarchic is an interesting but, in this context, irrelevant anthropological question.

> censorship

A state should not have the power to veto any information under the pretence of national security. There is no accountability. What I am really advocating is the abolishment of secret secrets, or any secrets that govern public policy, government decisions/workings/connections/longevity, and that all secrets should be made available to the records of history after they go beyond their limited window of opportunity. Hopefully, in time to counter abuses of power while they are still relevant.

> Privacy and secrecy are two names for the same thing.

By private, in the previous context I am referring to the individual.

> Violent nightmare

Examples would be appreciated. I don't understand what this idea of all information being immediately and universally available and the necessary decent into a dystopian nightmare, is based on.

Well, groups like Wikileaks aren't wanting to apply anarchist ideals haphazardly; but rather in a reasoned way to help achieve a more bottom-up democratic world, which of course requires a better-informed populace. Among other things.

For example, Wikileaks did try to work with the White House to remove names of innocents. (I cited it elsewhere on this thread; you can read how they went about it.)

Each of the state powers you mention can be used for helpful things, but usually aren't. Take for example law enforcement. Any society will need some measure of protection from sociopaths taking over. However, the US goes wild with it, using it to achieve by far the world's hugest incarceration rate!

And war requires the highest bar of justification. Needless to say, the US government doesn't come close to meeting it, illusions aside.

Your argument hinges on the fact that we currently live in a Democracy/Republic, which is highly debatable.

Both Ellsberg and Assange have claimed that they do believe that there are legitimate secrets (e.g., cyphers, nuclear technology, and the like). Your argument is based on the assumption that WL sees all secrets as being born equal, which is utter nonsense. Do you honestly believe that:

- the Afghan war diaries contain secrets of the same magnitude as, say, U.S. radar tech 70 years ago?

- Pakistan does not know that the U.S. knows that elements of the Pakistani intelligence are collaborating with the Taliban? (of course they are, they know the Taliban will most likely win, and they want to ensure tranquility after the U.S. gets tired, declares "victory", and leaves)

- the enemy does not know it's using heat-seeking missiles against U.S. choppers?

- the enemy does not know the attacks on U.S. forces? They were the ones who carried the attacks out!

Think about it. The release of the documents contains very little the enemy does not know about. Therefore, your entire argument is invalidated. Apples and oranges. The secrets you alluded to do compromise national security. The secrets exposed last weekend by WL only compromise the politicians who lied to the world about how the war was going in order to avoid losing popular support.

the release of the documents contains very little the enemy does not know about

They didn't know about this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1560565

The burden of proof lies on the accuser's shoulders. How do you know it's not disinformation? From now on, the Pentagon will blame WikiLeaks for every civilian death. WikiLeaks had no incentive to put innocents at risk, but the Pentagon has all the incentives to discredit WikiLeaks.

Only for civilians whose name and village were in the leak! How much is "coincidence" and how much is "enemy action"?

While it may be true that WikiLeaks had no incentive to put innocents at risk, it's also beside the point. It's entirely reasonable to believe that laziness/stupidity/lack of resources caused them to leak informants names even if that wasn't their intention.

I accept the concept that Wikileaks puts informants at additional risk. I also accept that the government is lying through their teeth about the activities on the ground in Afghanistan.

Is it more important for a the taxpaying population to be informed of what the military is doing in their name? Or is it more important to hide all information that may have any connection to the activities of informants?

I would suggest, that as an informant you make a direct choice to act, which effectively stakes your claim to a large majority of the repercussions. No such choice is offered to the public, and even if it were, a large heterogeneous group of people cannot be saddled with the same responsibility that an individual chooses for them self.

Additionally, any government that hides non national security type information from their population, puts itself at risk by allowing it's informants to be possibly exposed by leaks. If it wanted to provide protection from possibly damaging leaks, thus ensuring the anonymity of it's informants, it would provide a robust channel of accurate information to the public. Such information would greatly reduce the perceived need for leaks, hold the government and military more accountable, better serve the public good, and provide additional protection for informants.

effectively stakes your claim to a large majority of the repercussions

So what are you saying, that if Wikileaks got access to the data of the Witness Protection Programme in the US it should publicize that too? Because all government coverups are bad?

Further - the one with the info is truly responsible for keeping it a secret. Maybe the Pentagon should look internally if they want to see the real leaker. However - it has to be said that the more secrets weigh on the conscience, the more risk they are of compromise. The worse the moral perception of the act, the more risk of a leak.

I was responding to what riffer said, not what I think Assange's opinions are or to this leak in particular.

Another side issue:

"In these situations, the ability of individuals to influence the course of events is essentially nil. That's why you and I have not stopped the millions of murders in Darfur, the same as our parents did not stop them in Rwanda 17 years ago, and so on."

No, the ability of individuals to influence the course of events is exactly why our governments did nothing to stop the murders in Darfur or Rwanda. Humanitarian intervention in a matter of no interest to one's people is the act of a benevolent despot, not a democracy--at least when there's lives on the line. (The closest the US has gotten to "humanitarian intervention" as of late was the nonsense in the Balkans where Clinton was careful to forbid any measures which would have actually endangered American lives, even at the expense of civilian lives on the other side.) Normal people fundamentally don't care about the other. Instead of a few people being upset about millions of African deaths by genocide, everyone would be absolutely livid about thousands of (for example) American deaths by combat in a godforsaken part of the world that doesn't effect us. Normal people don't have the stomach to see their people die for some stranger around the world with whom they have nothing in common.

Afghanistan was revenge against people who killed Americans. Iraq was misplaced revenge for the same motive--and when it became clear to most Americans that they held no emotional or practical interest in Iraq, they turned against the war completely, with all the idealistic arguments about how the war deposed a brutal, murderous despot falling on deaf ears. How do you really think ordinary people would have reacted to Bush invading Sudan, or for that matter Clinton invading Rwanda after all the mess in Somalia?

And without these damn governments helping us, how exactly are you and I going to stop millions of machete-wielding Hutus, eh?

"War is a failure of the imagination."

In an ideal world Wikileaks wouldn't be necessary, but in the world we have it helps ameliorate the damage caused by our cognitive biases.

Also, someone should really make Chris Hedges' book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning into a movie.

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