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Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

> but at the same time, the whole concept of classified information breaks down pretty quickly if you start saying it's okay for people to exercise their own judgement and break the rules.

Lawyers, priests, doctors, and psychologies who is all under strict confidentiality sometimes has to break that rule of secrecy when particular crimes is heard or observed. It doesn't matter how classified the conversation is, or the medical records. If they show child abuse, they must break the confidentiality and call the police.

The system has not broken down yet, even if those people has to make their own judgement calls when to break confidentiality. It is enough that they just suspect that a child might be in danger.

Shouldn't army personal who not only suspect, but can prove illegal activities be under the same scrutiny?

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If Manning had just released documents related to specific illegal activities this would be a different conversation. That's not what he did though, in your doctor analogy what he did would be releasing the medical files of all 200 of his patients because he saw evidence of child abuse in one of them.

Ever thought of the guys who were behind the machine gun for God's sake?

If Manning were aware of particular abuses, why didn't he release documents only about those particular abuses? If he wasn't, why did he release anything? This sounds like a case of "I know the evidence is in there somewhere, so let's throw it all out there and see what sticks." When prosecutors do this, we call it a "fishing expedition", and we don't like it at all. Why should we like it _more_ when a vigilante does it?

If I am pissed at my employer and decide to steal and publish all the internal documents I can, and I get lucky and some of them are incriminating, that doesn't excuse what I did. It just means that both I and my employer are criminals, instead of only me.

So you agree that the employer is a criminal, but we're yet to see any action against the remaining criminals.

Yes, I most definitely agree that anyone out joyriding and shooting up civilians is a criminal, and it's outrageous that we haven't seen any action against them. I just don't think that that makes Manning any less of a criminal, which it seems some people are trying to assert. If you are not one of them then I apologize for interpreting your comments that way, but it does seem the most natural interpretation of a very short emotional appeal in response to an argument supporting Manning's sentence.

I agree. however, sometimes that can be a hard judgement call to decide. Say if a nurse find proof that a doctor is sexually assaulting children.

Would it be wrong if the nurse gave all that doctors patient files the press (given that the officials refuses to act)? If not, then what should the expected behavior be?

When it came to trial, how should sentencing be done? 35 years? What would be appropriate sentencing for the nurse if the number of patient files was in the thousands, but only a hundred or so had proof of criminal activity?

Aiui, they are. But, like a lawyer, doctor, or psychologist (a priest is not allowed break the seal of the confessional under any circumstances), there's a way of reporting these crimes. And shockingly, like a lawyer, doctor, or psychologist, it's not by sending all secret data they have access to to the press.

> If they show child abuse, they must break the confidentiality and call the police.

The key point here is that they call the police, not blindly dump thousands of private documents onto the internet.

The people are the police of the government.

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