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Comment by gloob | Hacker News Reader

This is the same sort of reasoning used by those who claim that America is responsible for September 11, 2001 because they spent the last 60 years dicking around in the Middle East. The second claim is true, and America bears responsibility for said dicking around. The first part is not - the blame falls on those who hijacked the planes and crashed them into things.

People are not dying because Wikileaks releases stuff. People are dying because other people are shooting them or blowing them up. Responsibility for an action rests with those who carry out that action.

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Not really.

To take politics out of the equation, suppose this was a leak of all the documents from the Witness Protection Program. Now all the information about everyone who has ever informed on anyone within the US criminal underworld is out in the open. If they get shot then yes, the moral responsibility for that shooting lies with the guy with the gun, but that doesn't absolve the person who released the information from any moral liability.

Politics is the whole purpose of the leak. To take it out of the equation is to remove the point of argument.

In order to determine the morality of the hypothetical shooting, you must establish who morally deserves sovereignty over Iraq and Afghanistan. (An inherently political question.) If America deserves sovereignty, you're right, it's like releasing documents from the WPP. If the insurgents have sovereignty however, it's akin to releasing documents detailing a drug smuggling ring.

So in short, you ask us to take politics out of the equation, and quietly assume your own politics as a given value.

"Responsibility for an action rests with those who carry out that action."

And with those who directly influence and, in this case, potentially enable those who carry out the action. Using your logic you can justify a lot of things that are illegal in this world, since you yourself are not directly responsible. You don't have to literally pull the trigger to kill someone. (accomplices go to jail too)

> People are not dying because Wikileaks releases stuff. People are dying because other people are shooting them or blowing them up. Responsibility for an action rests with those who carry out that action.

So essentially, you believe that if I were to compromise a covert operative who is then killed, I have done nothing wrong? What the heck did we convict Aldrich Ames for?

What the heck did we convict Aldrich Ames for?

I assume that you convicted him for breaking the law. Moral liability and legal liability are two orthogonal things.

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