Comment by joyeuse6701 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joyeuse6701 | Hacker News Reader

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It's a 'do the ends justify the means' issue. I'm kind of shocked that the above the fold comments here no one seems to take into account that France is engaged in conflict. As a result, if you have an easy to access well written article, which is exactly what wikis espouse to be that has detailed relevant as deemed by the french gov't military information, It is their decision to determine what was once public to be classified information. As much as I am for supporting rights of individuals and keeping systems in balance, I'm not so much for the establishment of principle to prove a point and set a precedent (which is not how the french law system works by the way) so much as I am for the utilitarian exercising of power when lives are on the line. How selfish must one be to cling to a few pages on principle when others could die for it.

"The precedent they are setting is something like "if you are involved in a website where someone else does something we consider problematic, you could be in trouble. If we feel like it".

The other way goes that: 'If I have time sensitive information due to the changing landscape of warfare, I could get soldiers and civilians killed if I feel like it'

I sadly would trust the gov't on this decision than an individual.

Well, I'm not really advancing an opinion as to whether the article is a problem or not. But looked at it, it is a fairly mundane description of a radio station right in the heart of France. I struggle to see how any interpretation of the content could be a direct threat to soldier or civilian lives... so your rhetoric there doesn't sit comfortably.

I for one think that the following, "ends justifies the means", approach is not acceptable; "Trust us, we're the government and though it looks innocuous it is threatening lives right now. So we will take any measures to remove it". If it is that much of a risk I feel they should be able to convince someone of that fact without divulging the exact problem.

Through all of this the intelligence agency have apparently failed to communicate this sort of urgency, in private, to either a trained lawyer or the sysop in question. Indeed, the legal team quite clearly suggest they made no effort to convince them of such an urgency.

In either case, had they done so, then both would have been able to explain how to quietly remove the article without this sort of Streisand effect...

All of which still does not excuse the fact that they threatened a private citizen with terrorism charges.

> I sadly would trust the gov't on this decision than an individual.

I feel that what is often forgotten about govt. is that they are made up of individuals. What you are actually arguing here is that of the several individuals involved, some of them presumably have more information (i.e. secret govt. information) than the others.

> Well, I'm not really advancing an opinion as to whether the article is a problem or not. But looked at it, it is a fairly mundane description of a radio station right in the heart of France. I struggle to see how any interpretation of the content could be a direct threat to soldier or civilian lives... so your rhetoric there doesn't sit comfortably.

Yeah, and I'm not really condoning the French govt actions, nor do I really want to defend them, but there was one thing I wondered reading about this incident. The intelligence agency obviously didn't want to tell the Wikimedia Foundation which part(s) of the WP article were sensitive, because doing so would also divulge sensitive information, namely hints of what could have been so sensitive about this article in the first place. This obviously put them in a tight spot as well.

I still don't think it's OK how they handled these matters, but having no idea what it is/was they actually wanted to hide, I can't really say what they should have done instead, either. It's probably really complicated. Having a "secret wikimedia council" who can be trusted with sensitive info, would also need to have power to delete content from WP without having to explain why, and that sounds like a really really bad idea as well.

Well apparently it was a military installation, not just a radio station, and even if it was in the heart of France that doesn't negate the risk as we know targets, civilian and military have been hit on a nation's home soil before. As others have said yeah, the problem of explaining why some of the information is sensitive is a catch-22. After all, I wouldn't be surprised if a media outlet decided to publish that information as well 'This is the sensitive information that required us to remove the content'. The precedent for that has already been set a la wikileaks. And yes, the gov't is made up of individuals and this particular gov't happens to be a republic so I agree, my assumption is that those in the intelligence community within the elected gov't have more knowledge than either the foundation or the sysop as to whether this information is benign or not. I'll stick with that assumption, of course who knows, it could all be a conspiracy =).

Yes, a military radio station. They are far from uncommon, and certainly have super secret things happening in them. But their existence and location? Not really a first class secret, nor one exclusively revealed by Wikipedia. :)

As you can see, the French Gov't took great pains to disguise this one. Were it not for some traitorous Wikipedia editor, then casual passers-by may have never suspected that it was anything other than a dairy farm, (perhaps owned by an eccentric architect). The terrorists are probably already en-route. Any minute now, we can expect free peoples of the world to fall under the iron hands of our enemies. Despite the heroic efforts of the DCRI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_radio_station_of_Pier...

> Well apparently it was a military installation

So are Nellis and Groom Lake. So are the three air force bases in the central US that house Minuteman III ICBMs, and the two naval bases where the Trident-equipped Ohio-class submarines are based. So are the Pentagon and the White House.

All are covered on Wikipedia in far more detail than this radio station.

I disagree simply because I feel the obligation for a completely transparent government outweighs the need to wage war. How selfish must one be to insist we wage these conflicts where the deaths of many are a certainty.

The problem with pacifism is that it gives you no defense against those who aren't pacifists.

No one is invading France.

Nor is France especially pacifistic. I suspect these two facts are somehow related.

Therefore, we should preemptively invade Mali/Iraq/etc? Do we have to strike first, and violently manage other countries just to maintain our defenses?

I am not arguing for pacifism. I put the 'need to wage war' into the original moral calculus as a valid consideration, not to dismiss it.

Deliberately making yourself ineffective at waging war because you don't want to wage war is equivalent to pacifism. There's no value to going out of your way to start wars, but you need the ability to end them decisively.

The problem with transparency is that there are those who would exploit it. We could all have our passwords publicly available (that would be an interesting experiment), but I'll guess that you wouldn't be willing to post yours here. So I could understand the french gov't not willing to divulge this information at the moment either.

If history has been any lesson, conflict will come, regardless of whether you want it or not.

History also teaches that secrecy is a tool of the powerful state forces to oppress and kill the weak civilians.

History also teaches that secrecy is a tool of those who would like to rebel against powerful state forces that wish to find and kill them.

>>We could all have our passwords publicly available (that would be an interesting experiment), but I'll guess that you wouldn't be willing to post yours here.

Come off it. Hyperbole much? Why don't you take it even a bit further and in the name of transparency have everybody walk around nude so that you know, we can see that you are not carrying any weapons.

You know the comment you replied to did not talk about transparency to this extreme.

It did talk of "obligation for a completely transparent government" (emphasis mine).

Maximally might have been a better word choice, or just dropping the adjective. Absolutism never survives scrutiny⸮

I don't know anything about the secrets involved but it is generally the case with these things that once the horse has left the barn, closing the barn door isn't very effective.

Steps taken after the fact have a lot more to do a desire on the part of the people who failed to keep secrets secure to be seen as doing something, to punish, or to escape embarrassment.

Compare the article about a radio station in France with the Wikipedia article about Bagram Airfield, which is the most important coalition facility in an active war zone:

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

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