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>US. Government property is publicly/collectively owned by the citizens of the nation, while private property, while coming with certain collectively agreed responsibilities (tax, licenses, codes etc), is controlled entirely privately by individuals. Invasion of private property as you say is unambiguously morally wrong, but I don't think the same can be said about collectively owned public property

Even if this ridiculous argument is true, Assange was never a US citizen or taxpayer.

The government derives its power from the consent of the governed.

The governed cannot consent if they are uninformed.

Assange is not relevant here; what matters is that the US government was keeping secrets of war crimes from the very people to whom the government is accountable.

There is a strong moral argument to be made that the government has no rights to secrets kept from its citizenry.

> There is a strong moral argument to be made that the government has no rights to secrets kept from its citizenry.

Such arguments don't hold water when the process of classification is determined by a fairly elected representative of that citizenry.

Americans could elect somebody who promised to ditch classification altogether, but they wouldn't, because reality is not so clear.

Mob rule doesn't determine morality or even the best way of doing things. Moreover, this is assuming that we are given access to vote for actual candidates with varying positions instead of weeding out ones that don't toe the line.

Democracy being the least worst option doesn't absolve it from criticism.

Fair elections require informed voters, though. If government commits human rights violations on their behalf without telling them, I don't think that's particularly informed.

Yes, they could still vote to abolish state secrets altogether. But I think knowledge about how secrecy is abused is also very much relevant to an informed vote on such a matter.

How would you elect someone to get that done when every issue is tied to a hundred other issues in the same candidate and basically none of them will have any meaningful progress made during their term?

Specific opinions cannot be expressed by electing a "representative".

> How would you elect someone to get that done when every issue is tied to a hundred other issues in the same candidate and basically none of them will have any meaningful progress made during their term?

Elect an idiot like Trump who leaks secrets to foreign governments at the drop of a hat?

You cannot give consent if you are not informed about that to which you are consenting.

Has any government that adopted that policy survived the inevitable manipulation and exploitation by foreign powers?

Do you honestly think that Americas military secrets prevent its manipulation and exploitation by foreign powers?

If anything, the fact of Americas military-industrial-pharmacuetical complex covering up crimes against humanity (torture program) and real war crimes (every twenty minutes) makes American leaders even more susceptible to corruption and influence by non-democratically elected actors, state or otherwise.

You'd rather the country be run by shady Blackwater types protected by ultimate state secrecy than have to deal with state diplomacy as its always been?

Wikileaks exposed pretty clear cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity where the laws and policies and "ethics" of the situation are very well documented, and are very well understood among the sovereign states which ratified them. These are clear crimes we are talking about.

The American military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex is inconvenienced by these crimes being exposed - not the American people, in whose names these acts are committed, and who bear ultimate responsibility for the actions of their state.

Knowing what is being done in your name by your government representatives is a good thing - you cannot be a responsible citizen otherwise.

Firstly, I never said having secrets prevents all manipulation and exploitation. But if someone is going to war with your country, the last thing you want is for all your infrastructure, movements, and communications to become public knowledge.

Furthermore, the argument I was responding to failed to allow any nuance or qualification to the reasons the government keeps secrets. Certainly there is a big difference between broad policy decisions or matters of chain of responsibility than there is between tactical information and contextual data collection. I understand government secrecy for the latter, but not the former. I certainly am not going to conflate the two, even as I concede that one is necessary and the distinction hard to enforce.

You know, this was really quite the disproportionate reply that in no way answered the poster's question, but I have to say that this line takes the cake.

> You'd rather the country be run by shady Blackwater types protected by ultimate state secrecy than have to deal with state diplomacy as its always been?

Secrecy has always been a part of state diplomacy. What world do you love in that this is not the case?

>Secrecy has always been a part of state diplomacy.

And this is why the world is perpetually at war. Those who have the power to stop the war-mongers (The People) don't have any idea what is really going on - thus diplomacy has been usurped from most democracies around the world, and is thus: broken.

> And this is why the world is perpetually at war.

No, that's because we have an entire industrial complex surrounding making war profitable.

We had state secrets far before then and there were very long periods of peace.

It is only possible to perpetuate America's criminal wars through state secrecy. If the American people knew the truth about these military incursions, they would be utterly outraged. It is secrets that keep the one true power - the American people - from doing something, effective, about the out of control military-industrial complex.

> If the American people knew the truth about these military incursions, they would be utterly outraged

The many, many, many times things have leaked with absolutely no major public reaction would show that to be false.

Just the principle that the laws that dictate what is and isn't government property and who is and isn't entitled to access it are decided by legislators that were chosen by the people of the United States in an election, and not by Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning or any other single individual

If taken at face value (i.e. putting aside other theories) Assange, Manning, WikiLeaks et al aren't attempting to decide or write new laws, but rather commit acts in the public good, as they see it. Such acts are capable of transcending mere legality - by that I don't mean that they shouldn't be punished based on the laws of the political moment, rather the state's response to such acts may lay bare either the intrinsic good or evil of the state, as judged by the citizenry of the time. In this way a nation's course can be adjusted, and legislators with different values may come to power. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Because invasion of public property is currently illegal, it should ethically never be attempted, even when one may feel there is an overwhelming case to, let's say, air dirty laundry in the public interest?

Hold on - you say public good, but who gets to decide what that is? Assange and Manning took it upon themselves to decide that leaking thousands of diplomatic cables - which are kept secret by the laws of the United States because they are sensitive documents that govern our diplomatic relationships with and strategy towards other countries around the world, both friendly and adversarial - was in the public good. But those laws are there for a reason. We live in a world of continuously vying sovereign powers who spy on each other and sometimes even attack each other militarily. Not all of these countries are good countries to live in, not all of them respect human rights, not all of them are democracies, and many in fact are run by corrupt, untrustworthy people. There are good reasons for these laws to exist, but Manning and Assange decided - by themselves - that there aren't.

So - what if your ethics are wrong? What if you haven't done the work to understand why the laws are the way they are? Are you still being conscientious?

Laws are public and the result of a massive concensus-building process that we've built known as representative democracy, by which, if we choose to actually participate, we all have a say in which laws exist and which don't. 'Ethics' on the other hand are personal and subjective and are not written down anywhere and do not govern others' actions and while they might well be right they may just as easily be wrong.

I'm not saying that there are no cases of justified civil disobedience. Certainly civil rights protests and the leaking of the Pentagon Papers come to mind. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the laws are always wrong and the whistleblowers always right. Each case needs to be discussed on its own merits, through public debate. And sometimes that means that it turned out the laws were right, and the whistleblowers were mistaken.

I have my own (unpopular) opinions on Manning, though while a clear Patriot in my mind (acting in the interests of the greater good), they did indeed commit a crime, and that the sheer volume of the leak from Manning was capricious, harmful, and beyond what was needed to serve the greater good - do I think 30 years in jail was a reasonable response? Frankly, no - but I think they needed at least a slap on the wrist or worst case 2-5 years - I think justice (the interested in the greater good) was served by pardoning Manning.

In short, sometimes you need to act in the spirit of, rather than the letter of the law to act in the interest of the greater good - but if you overreach, expect the long arm of the law to catch you and punish you for that overreach.

Her sentence was commuted she was not pardoned, which is an important distinction.

But still, yes I broadly agree with your position.

Civil disobedience comes with consequence and that consequence shows the states true colors IMO.

I'd argue that some consequence was reasonable in this case, as she went far beyond what was needed to achieve clarity for the greater good.

Yep. Agreed.

Egged on by Assange as well it seems.

Even when she said that’s all I have she was encouraged to go digging for more.

chosen by corporations of the united states, often

if the people choose not to participate, yes. that's why it's up to us to participate. effectively.

Which is so easy given that we're all just swimming in spare time, or sitting on generous supplies of rainy day capital to keep us afloat long enough for our message to be heard, and implemented in a manner consistent with our desires as opposed to those organizations who actually have those things that are doing the same?

Easier said than done.

i hear ya but part of the reason we keep losing ground here is because free market radicals have tilted the playing field so far against the working person that the average working loses too much time struggling to compete that they can't actually work to change things. the only way we can get out of this vicious cycle is by tilting the playing field back the other way. and that, unfortunately, is going to require more hard work, not taking shortcuts (a la Manning, and a la Assange who actually seems to have been working recently to worsen this problem). then maybe we'll see real change.

I don't know what planet you live on, but there is plenty of publicly owned property that I have no access to. If you think otherwise, just try randomly walking onto a military base that does not allow visitation. You may argue what you feel is morally right, but any actual adult has realized that morally right does not equate to the law.

These people are actively muddying the waters by making outlandish claims about what constitutes public and private property.

>US. Government property is publicly/collectively owned by the citizens of the nation

How dare you speak for or decide for the public then. Have you requested access from us or our representatives? Or you think, "fuck it, owned by everyone, I have a license to do whatever I want".