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I feel like they are allowed to keep their secrets provided they don't make something secret just because it might make them look bad or because it's illegal.

Remember, everything they do...they do in our name.

Look I have no problem with taking drastic action against the government for keeping too many secrets.

But this is a bridge too far. This is like using a nuclear bomb to put out a city that is on fire. It's not going to have the effect that its supporters want. Quite the opposite.

Wikileaks was willing to have the government trim the truly dangerous parts. The government decided against that, because they "didn't want to give Wikileaks legitimacy".

Wikileaks is a news service, not a terrorist organization...you can negotiate with them. Expecting them to do say what you want, is not journalism...that's PR.

Egads, man. Listen to yourself.

The government has too many secrets. That's a given. I firmly support making society more open.

But when you come into possession of all the state department cables, you're participating in a theft. Now maybe its a theft for wondrously good reasons we can all agree to, but it's still a theft. You are a thief. Perhaps you are a thief for a good cause, but your role in this matter is not super-hero, its a thief for a good cause.

You can't go back and say that since wikileaks was willing to negotiate with the government they stole from and the government wasn't that somehow this makes a total dump more palatable. That sounds completely crazy in my book. Look at it this way: what's the state department going to do? Go through each doc and censor out things they don't like? Do you have any idea how long it would take the state department to do that, even if they were ordered to? Hell, they can't figure out what's classified or not right now, without a gun to their head. It's not like threatening to release all their communications is going to make the agency more functional.

And let's say through some magic they decided that yes, they would vet the papers and somehow managed to do that. Let's additionally assume that they perfectly and totally vetted them -- no detail is left in there that at any point in the future is going to jeopardize U.S. interests. That's an impossible thing in itself, but let's imagine they do. At this point you have an agency actively participating in disseminating information that it has previously and publicly said was non-distributable. What? Were they lying then? Or are they lying now? The entire purpose of the state department is to engender and promote trust among fellow nations. Even if it's a "correct" result in yours and my book, even if the state department itself wants to do it, you simply can't take the diplomatic branch of the government and completely change the way it works overnight. It would be total chaos.

Nope, the government is stuck not being able to vet those docs, and for about a dozen different good reasons. That doesn't mean that docs shouldn't be released, just that assuming that vetting could happen is too much.

I have immense sympathy for this cause, but continuing to defend Assange like this is going to go nowhere. You can't steal something from a crook and then complain that the crook isn't helping you organize the things you stole. Two wrongs don't make a right. To suggest that somehow wikileaks is off the hook for responsibility simply because they offered the U.S. a chance to vet the docs isn't to look into the matter in much detail. It's just throwing stuff out there in hopes that some of it will stick.

Like I said, I'm 99% with everybody in their complaints about secrecy. So I'll close this thead. No point in making much of it. If you've decided that wikileaks is good, you'll just keep throwing out things and I'll just keep showing you how they don't apply. No need to do that. I have no desire to get into a debate or argument. I just wanted to clarify that this idea that keeps getting peddled that somehow it's better because of the vetting offer just doesn't fly for me at all.

Wikileaks didn't steal anything

Sure they did. You are just going to use semantics to say they didn't. They got passed classified information and they took it. When you take something that doesn't belong to you in that way, it makes you a thief. They have knowingly received stolen materials and they didn't give it back.

You can argue whether or not this release is good or bad, right or wrong, however semantics are somewhat important. Would you say that learning something while reading a book in a bookstore is stealing? How do you propose to return stolen information?

Even if wikileaks physically returned whatever they physically received, but made a copy for their own purposes, is that still stealing? There are laws that apply to information, such as copyright, but this information is not protected by copyright. I read somewhere that there was no classified information in this release, so it also wouldn't be protected by those laws.

For me, the 2 main questions are: 1) is it legal (yes) 2) will it do more good than harm? (unknown)

They got passed classified information and they took it. When you take something that doesn't belong to you in that way, it makes you a thief.

US officials stole classified information from the UN. Chinese officials stole classified information from Google. Let's be honest here: they're all at it.

How do you feel about Watergate ?

I'm not sure that's really a fair comparison. The information leaked about Watergate was about specific illegal activity being conducted by specific people.

It's not really even comparable to the leak of the Pentagon Papers -- those revealed a pattern of multiple presidential administrations deliberately lying to the public about US involvement in southeast Asia.

These last couple of wikileaks releases? They've just been raw, massive data dumps with a comparably terrible SNR.

Exactly. Like I said in the last thread, if you come into the possession of classified documents from a democratically-elected government then it is ethical to publish them if and only if they provide evidence of criminal activity on the part of government officials.

So Watergate? Right on. Random dumps of sensitive information? Not so much.

Of course, the Watergate breakin itself was just intended to do a little "information liberating" too. Heh.

The government of Iraq was democratically elected before it was taken down.

Same with the Guatemala one.

Haider was democratically elected in Austria.

Some of those you could defend, some you could not, which ones you will defend probably depends on your viewpoint.

What your viewpoint is however does not matter in the longer term, democratically elected governments are not immune from perpetrating illegal acts (and the US has a pretty good share of the world market there).

You now get the good with the bad, which I think is preferable to getting just lies and spin.

The government of Iraq was democratically elected before it was taken down

¿lolque?

It was, it may not have been a democratic election by your standards, but then again, the US elections are not democratic by mine.

edit: hacker news, the only site where your candid opinion (an unpopular one, apparently) will get you modded down.

Look here, if you think that the US has democratic elections I would suggest you have a long hard look at Sweden, which has a much less money and dynasty focused system, and which comes a lot closer to being truly democratic. Two parties are just as bad as one, especially when to foreigners those two parties are pretty much indistinguishable except op a few unimportant issues which seem to be added just to polarize the voters.

I'd like to point at my own country but unfortunately they're currently not the best example.

Every site will downmod a candid opinion it doesn't agree with. Reddit downmods my pro-ID and pro-Christian opinions.

Watergate was a leak about just one crime, this is a leak about a multitude of potential crimes and potentially embarrassing information, I think the comparison is a valid one because it exposes the hypocrisy present in many of the arguments against leaks of any sort.

The lack of editorial oversight and the massive volume is a blessing, not a detraction, after all if this sort of information would have been released at the time of the 'red scare' it would have been over and done with much quicker for "I am not a crook" Nixon.

Remember how it all came apart because of one tiny detail, a botched burglary. Now you have to wonder how much this will cause. Looking forward to the next installment, and looking forward to diplomats that, instead of becoming even shadier will live up to a new standard of transparency and openness. After all, they do represent all of us, and I'd like to them to be as accountable as possible. If that means that there might be a chilling effect on their communications then so be it, that's the bad guys as far as I'm concerned.

The number of people arguing that governments need secrets to operate are ignoring the painful fact that for the most part these secrets are just used to hide that which can't stand the light of day, not because those secrets serve a concrete purpose to the betterment of all.

>Watergate was a leak about just one crime, this is a leak about a multitude of potential crimes and potentially embarrassing information, I think the comparison is a valid one because it exposes the hypocrisy present in many of the arguments against leaks of any sort.

I'm not arguing against leaks of any sort -- I brought up the Pentagon Papers specifically because I think their leak was ultimately a positive thing -- I'm arguing against the haphazard dumping of information without any particular rhyme or reason.

>Remember how it all came apart because of one tiny detail, a botched burglary.

Again, that was specific information.

>After all, they do represent all of us, and I'd like to them to be as accountable as possible.

There's more to this than simple accountability. Diplomacy often requires keeping your hand close to your chest. If your diplomats are negotiating the terms of an agreement and are given instructions that "ideally we would like this, but if you can't hardball them to those terms, we will still accept X", those instructions are worthless if they're out in the open.

In fact, one of the cables released by the NYT discusses negotiations with Pakistan to remove potentially weaponizable nuclear material from a nuclear reactor there. Apparently one of the sticking points for the Pakistanis was that if knowledge of the removal was made public, the local populace would be up in arms about American interference with Pakistan's nuclear weapons programs.

Guess what just happened? Is that a net positive?

I think the reason that would happen is because there is a strong push in the Islamic world to own nuclear weapons too, because apparently that's the only way you will be taken serious at the diplomatic table.

That's the whole reason why Kim and his ilk as well as tons of other tin-pot dictators and movie star wanna-bes do the exact same thing.

The US is hypocritical in this sense that they would like to deny those weapons to others while hanging on to their own stockpile.

If US diplomats could work in the light of day on this subject it would be the Pakistanis that would have to bow, the hypocrisy is what drives the need for secrecy.

The countries that are the biggest proponents of non-proliferation all have a nuclear stockpile...

You didn't answer the question, though - is the fact that this leak has likely put the brakes on limiting the further spread of nuclear weapons a net positive? And that's just one example found in the absolute most cursory glance at a brief couple of page summary of part of this leak.

>The countries that are the biggest proponents of non-proliferation all have a nuclear stockpile...

So does that make it morally wrong for them to try to reduce the proliferation of those arms? If not, I don't see why it matters. It's not like they're building up their stockpiles, either. Quite the opposite, in reality.[1]

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/24/barack-obama-nuc...

> is the fact that this leak has likely put the brakes on limiting the further spread of nuclear weapons a net positive?

I think this leak has done no such thing.

It has merely documented a situation, which will continue to exist for some time.

Having the knowledge that the situation exists out there might actually put pressure on the parties involved to do something about it, rather than to let it persist.

Also, I'm not at all afraid of the 'terrorists' acquiring such weapons of mass destruction, I sleep pretty good and I estimate my chances of dying from crossing the street significantly larger than from rogue states or terrorists acquiring a dirty or fissile bomb.

Fear mongering has very little effect on me in general, but I do perceive that the terrorists have gotten value for their money. After all fear runs rampant.

> So does that make it morally wrong for them to try to reduce the proliferation of those arms?

If you want to be credible about non-proliferation I think you should not only commit to reduction of your own stockpile but you should commit to elimination.

The current reduction strategy is just a step back from the overkill situation in the cold war, which is offset in large part by better targeting and by higher yield as well as more reliable systems for simulation and stockpile control.

The threat is just as large as it ever was.

30,000 bombs or 5,000 it makes no difference.

>Having the knowledge that the situation exists out there might actually put pressure on the parties involved to do something about it, rather than to let it persist.

Or a government with a tenuous grasp on power will simply have to forgo any kind of agreement to dispose of the weapons-ready material to avoid internal backlash.

>Also, I'm not at all afraid of the 'terrorists' acquiring such weapons of mass destruction, I sleep pretty good and I estimate my chances of dying from crossing the street significantly larger than from rogue states or terrorists acquiring a dirty or fissile bomb.

You know, there are reasons for seeking nuclear non-proliferation that have nothing to do with terrorism, like the fact that Pakistan borders a bitter enemy which is also a nuclear power.

>If you want to be credible about non-proliferation I think you should not only commit to reduction of your own stockpile but you should commit to elimination.

That's the ultimate goal. It's not going to happen overnight, and treating steps toward that goal as if they don't count is nothing more than childish fantasy.

>30,000 bombs or 5,000 it makes no difference.

Ah, this is why preventing the production of more arms in Pakistan isn't that big a deal. If they've got one bomb, they may as well have them all, I guess.

The only country that has ever used nuclear arms and that currently holds one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons is not engaging in this diplomatic effort to further the interest of those that would like to see nuclear weapons disappear, they do so because they would like to maintain their edge.

One nuclear weapon is indeed almost as bad as all of them, imagine a nuke on Islamabad or New Delhi. In those places a single nuclear weapon could kill millions, and it would take a very large effort to add to the scale of devastation. 10 nuclear weapons on either the Pakistani or the Indian side used against the other could cause hundreds of millions of people to eventually die of the direct or indirect causes of the use of these weapons.

The US is like the parent that tells its children not to smoke because smoking is bad for your health but can not give up smoking themselves.

Pakistan already has all the nuclear weapons it needs, and so does India, and neither of those countries will give them up because of pressure from the US, they will only give them up because they themselves, together will decide that a nuclear stand-off is to nobodies benefit.

>The only country that has ever used nuclear arms and that currently holds one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons is not engaging in this diplomatic effort to further the interest of those that would like to see nuclear weapons disappear, they do so because they would like to maintain their edge.

So every American or Russian or other person from a nuclear power that argues in favor of non-proliferation is simply looking to "maintain their edge?"

>In those places a single nuclear weapon could kill millions, and it would take a very large effort to add to the scale of devastation.

Which is exactly why some of us think it'd be nice to keep even more of them from being built.

>The US is like the parent that tells its children not to smoke because smoking is bad for your health but can not give up smoking themselves.

Real progress is nearly impossible in an all-or-nothing world.

>Pakistan already has all the nuclear weapons it needs, and so does India, and neither of those countries will give them up because of pressure from the US, they will only give them up because they themselves, together will decide that a nuclear stand-off is to nobodies benefit.

Pressure from the US and Russia already helped divert at least one potential nuclear crisis between the two countries.[1] Is your argument seriously that the US should just shrug its shoulders and stand aside? I don't see how there's any other logical conclusion to this line of thought you're going down.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001%E2%80%932002_India%E2%80%9...

EDIT:

Of particular note in that article:

"A Defense Intelligence Agency report in May 2002 estimated that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan could, in a worst-case scenario, lead to 8–12 million deaths initially and millions more later from radiation poisoning."

On a subcontinent of over a billion people, it could be a lot worse. Sounds like a strong argument for keeping it from being able to.

You do realize that it was another security leak that put that knowledge there in the first place?

I'm going on what the NYT reported which is:

>In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”

EDIT:

Unless you mean the casualty estimates? Those were officially released to the press during the crisis.

http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/05/31/kashmi...

I'm not really sure which bit of knowledge you're referring to, to be honest.

I hope the times is a balanced enough source:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/arti...

There is plenty of it in wikipedia as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_of_mass_de...

Okay. I'm not sure what your point is. I've been the one arguing that some state secrets are acceptable and their disclosure can have a net negative impact on the world here.

My point is a simple one: controlling information in an effective way happens at the source.

Blaming wikileaks for the leak is just as stupid as celebrating a defector from a rogue nation state. That's just a change of viewpoint, the mechanism is the same.

If a government is operating clandestinely (and plenty of the material in these cables gives indications of not so clean dealings) then they have themselves to blame, do not create information that can embarrass you in the future, and if you do keep it on a need-to-know basis. If all that comes to light is how the various governments behaved impeccably and had our best interests at heart then there is nothing to fear right ?

Sooner or later all information will spread and will be used against you. Non-proliferation starts with disbanding research and with making all possession of such material illegal, not only when it suits you.

And so on. It's a principled stance, not one that tries to use these things as just another way to gain the upper hand as a nation.

Ask yourself why a person at this level in the government should have access to all this information and proportion blame accordingly. Keep in mind that the main reason people are upset is because the shady nature of their backroom dealings will become public not because 'lives will be in danger', surely more lives were lost by going after non-existent weapons of mass destruction than there ever were lost due to terrorism. If human lives were so important then surely Dr. Kelly would have been listened to, and Hans Blix to boot.

It's all just spun for what it's worth, and plenty of times for more than it's worth because 'our' governments are the good guys, or so we are led to believe.

> If all that comes to light is how the various governments behaved impeccably and had our best interests at heart then there is nothing to fear right ?

You keep making this assertion that the leaks will either expose something that's important for the public to know or that it will be totally benign while leaving no middle ground between the two.

I couldn't imagine going into business negotiations with the opposite party being privy to all the internal metrics in my head and not expect it to seriously disadvantage me. That's not malicious, it's looking out for my own best interests, and I wouldn't expect any different of a nation.

Similarly, there are cables that include information to the effect that Official Jack and Secretary Jane from Country X have a personality conflict that's useful to be aware of when you're dealing with them, but embarrassing for all parties involved if aired publicly. Again, that's not maliciousness, it's just basic courtesy.

>Ask yourself why a person at this level in the government should have access to all this information and proportion blame accordingly.

Sure, it's a problem. There are discussions going in other threads on the topic. I don't see how the fact that it's possible changes whether the release of the information is a good or bad thing from a global perspective, however.

>It's all just spun for what it's worth, and plenty of times for more than it's worth because 'our' governments are the good guys, or so we are led to believe.

My concern, in actuality, is less about the impact on the US itself as it is how the leak could affect other, less stable nations around the world.

If a rogue nuke goes off in Manhattan, you probably won't die (though fallout patterns are no one's friend), but your life will get measurably worse, guaranteed. The damage isn't just physical, it's psychological and economic, and the ripple effects will reach you, and they will be serious.

As far as making non-proliferation more difficult, this official documentation removes plausible deniability for several governments in condemning Iran's move towards nuclear weapons in private while remaining necessarily neutral in public. The effect isn't massive, but it is real, and it does matter.

Chances of a rogue nuke going off in Manhattan are slight compared to New Delhi, Islamabad, Tel-Aviv or many other places. Moscow even...

I disagree with that (which city has been the target of the biggest, most dramatic terror attacks thus far?), but ok, fine, let's go with your list.

What is most likely to be the source of a rogue nuke in any of those cities?

One of the nations where the US is trying to avoid nuclear development or at the very least keep the stockpile under control.

If this happens (and I hope it doesn't) it will likely be because of nuclear material that was lost in former Soviet Republic states and it will likely have very little to do the with the US or with non-proliferation agreements.

If the US kept its secrets under wraps neither India or Pakistan would have the bomb in the first place, keeping things secret now is not going to put that genie back in the bottle.

The US has been spied upon successfully by countless nations to get those secrets including Israel, Pakistan, India (Canada also implicated there), the Russians took care of most of the rest of them, China gave some help to Pakistan and North Korea. France developed its nuclear arsenal independently, the UK had a lot of help from the US.

Non proliferation seems to mean: not to states not friendly to us. But in reality that translates to eventually the knowledge and the material will spread everywhere unless the production of the materials is halted. Which would mean a shut-down of all nuclear facilities, and that's a very difficult bridge to cross, it would cause a much stronger dependence on other fossil fuels.

The irony of all this is that now Iran uses the 'power plant' figleaf to set up it's own nuclear facilities.

At this point you have an agency actively participating in disseminating information that it has previously and publicly said was non-distributable. What? Were they lying then? Or are they lying now?

Neither. They're making the best of a bad situation in which their hand is forced.

You make some good points, and I do have some mixed feelings about the way WikiLeaks is operating, and about Bradley Manning's choice to just vacuum up everything he could lay his hands on rather than confining himself to information that would prove a particular point. Still, in the end, I don't know how I'm going to feel about the material being released until I see what's in it.

By law, information may not be classified merely because it would be embarrassing or to cover illegal activity. Information may only be classified to protect national-security objectives/interests.

I imagine this release is more contentious since it undoubtedly contains sources, methods, and likely personal opinions of the diplomatic corps and the clandestine services operating under the guise of the diplomatic corp.

My guess is that to the average person nothing much of import will be revealed -- but I could be wrong. In either case, I don't think the short-term fallout is important.

What's completely insane (in my view) is that the diplomacy corps of the United States may have just been damaged beyond repair. It could take a generation or more to recover from this, and it could hurt a hell of a lot of people. Even if you hate the United States, that's a lot of collateral damage on the path to openness. There are a lot of very serious things going on in the world, and people have spent their entire lives getting into position to help nations come to agreement over various things. These do sneaky things, sure, but they also prevent wars. Getting rid of them by exposing all of their reports and identities is whacked, not to mention the damage to foreign governments when it comes out who has been secretly helping whom.

The far-reaching impact could truly be mind-boggling in scale. And it wouldn't surprise me at all to see it all being greeted with silence from around the world -- there's really no point in anybody making a spectacle of reacting.

I can't help but feel that this is going to be very destabilizing to a lot of nations. And U.S. secrecy is not going to be affected at all. If anything it will just increase to more insane levels beyond where it already is.

I think there's a lot of value in all our cards being on the table, for everyone. We are playing at just about every table, and this is not a zero-sum game.

I think one of the most important things to recognize here is that we're not the only ones whose cards have been revealed. It sounds like there's verification the Chinese government was behind the attacks against Google, Yahoo and the rest. That's a big deal, and it could hurt China.

I also think that in general, having a clear understanding of US goals makes it easier to come up with creative solutions that benefit all. It does also potentially make it easier to screw the US over - but frankly that's difficult to do, and I'd say given the power the US wields, any direct action against US interests comes with strong likelihood that it's a net negative for both the opposing power and the US. Win-win situations, when you can come up with them, carry far less risk. But you can't come up with win-win situations when people are holding their cards close to their chest.

I feel like they are allowed to keep their secrets provided they don't make something secret just because it might make them look bad or because it's illegal.

But if we let them keep their secrets, how do we learn enough about their motivations to figure out when they are abusing it? Human nature being what it is, if they have the right to make whatever they want secret, they will DEFINITELY use the right to cover up things that make them look bad or are illegal.

Classic case in point, United States v. Reynolds, the case that established the state secrets privilege. When the documents were finally declassified, the only real "secrets" in the report were evidence of serious errors that would have greatly helped the lawsuit against the government.

> It's our monster to tame.

It is my feeling that this monster cannot be tamed, but must be slain, and the most horrible thing that could be constructed from its corpse must also be destroyed.

But everyone has their own opinion, and I'll agree that absolutist argument can poison the waters of common ground.

I also agree that somewhere indeterminable there's a line to be crossed.

But until I find that line I defer to my juvenile glee of seeing the American government submit to their own (ridiculous) privacy policy: If you don't have anything to hide, all your private, personal and professional life are belong to us.