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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

It would be hard to prove with the existing leaks, but there are certainly forms of information that could be considered very valuable to and likely to incite known terrorist groups, no? I'm thinking things like detailed floor plans for embassies, personal info about members of the special forces, confirmations of extralegal executions and details of the people who carried them out, etc.

So far it seems no-one who has leaked information has had the clearance to get to the truly painful stuff, but the psychological screening to get to those levels is specifically designed to keep potential Snowdens and Mannings out.

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What you discuss sounds like the sort of information Stratfor sell to the highest bidder.

Snowden and greenwald had damaging information, but chose not to release it. I think instead of dealing with hypotheticals, which can be twisted to frame absolutely anyone for 'potentially aiding the enemy' when the enemy is a fluid and vague terrorist label, and aid is exposing gov wrongdoing by releasing information, we should deal in specifics.

If snowden's revelations are damaging enough to endanger lives, the onus is on the prosecution to demonstrate that in front of an impartial judge. If they can't, or hide behind state secrets, their actions are not fully accountable to the public.

Is US support for the mujahideen, contra and Syrian terrorists more damaging than snowden's revelations and more likely to lead to terror attacks worldwide? I'd argue yes.

Is this war on whistleblowers and principled leakers more damaging to our democracy than any revelations which have yet come out? I'd argue yes.

Flight schedules should be secret. Also, dates of sporting events should be secret. Actually, keeping current time secret would help a lot.

Seriously, the fact that information can be used by terrorists doesn't imply that it should be secret.

I agree with you that that information must surely exist. And if it was true that in recent times people who stole and leaked that information for the terrorists to profit got away with it lightly, then I would agree that stricter laws were in order.

But in this case, he's referring to Miranda's case. Miranda was in _possession_ of the leaked documents, he did not steal them himself. Besides that he is clearly (in service of) a journalist.

Are we to prosecute journalists for possessing secret information no one knows of, that they haven't even leaked yet? Aren't the Snowdens and Mannings already punished enough to deter any selfish leaker?

Why are you conflating information that is useful to terrorists with information that might get people so angry that they commit terrorist acts?

If I were to think about information valuable to terrorist, I'd consider things like reports about weak points of national power grid, etc. - big vulnerabilities that have been discovered, but didn't get fixed yet.

> So far it seems no-one who has leaked information has had the clearance to get to the truly painful stuff, but the psychological screening to get to those levels is specifically designed to keep potential Snowdens and Mannings out.

This implies that the reason nobody has leaked such things is because it's too high in the security clearance hierarchy and therefore nobody of good conscious has been near it. The reality is much more likely to be a result of compartmentalization rather than "making it high enough security clearance" such that few can reach it - as if getting higher security clearance grants you access to more and more information. Even at the highest levels of clearance, you can only see what it is deemed necessary for you to see.

Sorry, which known terrorist groups? If you say Al Qaeda, you're forgetting that there's still not a single attack in the west which has, in a court of law, been shown to be their doing.

"The Terrorists" are "The Reds" are "The Jews". It's not "us and them" because there is no "us" and "them". There's just "us".

It almost seems as though you're asserting that facts can only be established by court trials, which is a farcical notion. Sorry, but just because there was never a trial doesn't mean Al Qaeda wasn't behind the 9/11 attacks.

Really? So you'd argue that we should sentence people, and pass judgment on groups, without any legal basis?

Without a trial, there is NO VERDICT. The entire point of the judiciary is to adjudicate - and without their judgment, in legal standing (which is what, y'know, laws, such as those being proposed, are based upon), there is no fact, nor precedent.

There's no doubt in my mind that Mickey Mouse and the Legion of Doom carried out the 9/11 attacks. I mean, who needs a trial or a legal process to reach a conclusion about a legal matter?

>So you'd argue that we should sentence people, and pass judgment on groups, without any legal basis?

Of course not. We should obviously have a trial before passing sentence on any individual, but it's ridiculous to suggest that legal judgements are the only valid way to establish facts about a particular situation. There were no trials relating to 9/11 because anyone who could have been sentenced is either dead or in another country. So suggesting that a trial be used as the burden of proof in this case is preposterous.

In a way, you're both right.

You are correct in saying that particular example (9/11) cannot be be tried in court. Sometimes the perpetrators are obvious and sometimes it's impossible to follow established court proceedings to legally appoint the blame.

But the former poster is also correct that we shouldn't go around passing judgements without taking matters to court and giving all parties a fair opportunity to prove their case.

This is the problem that the government face, they do occasionally need special powers to combat unusual circumstances. The problem is knowing where to toe the line. In my opinion, they've hop, skipped and jumped over that line.

You seem to be forgetting the bevy of gentlemen "awaiting trial" at Guantanamo, ostensibly for 9/11, among other things.

I do not see what other proof there is, and basing LAWS on "well, it was probably these guys" does not strike me as a wise course of action.

> Really? So you'd argue that we should sentence people, and pass judgment on groups, without any legal basis?

We pass judgement on others all the time without any trials. Note the discussion currently going on about us intervening in Syria. Also a trial really isn't the be all end all for rendering judgement. The 9/11 Commission Report wasn't factual enough?

> Note the discussion currently going on about us intervening in Syria.

There is no discussion to be had. International law is perfectly clear as to what actions should be taken.

The Chemical weapons angle just blows my mind. The US use the argument that Israel can have, and use, if they fancy it, nuclear weapons, because they have not signed the NPT. They then go on to say that Syria can't use chemical weapons, because they haven't signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction.

In a nutshell, the only legal actions available are the deployment of UN peacekeepers, or none. If you ignore the Rule of Law selectively, you have no law.

The 9/11 commission report wasn't factual, no, and is widely acknowledged as such. It's also not a binding legal decision based on evidence and facts, nor was there any trial by peers. Just summary justice in absentia, and indefinite detention without trial. I'm not just talking the THF crowd. It's a thousand pages of back-patting and rah-rah. I mean, if you want to understand just how good the gov't is at assessing its own actions, disasters, or anything else, really, look at Feynman's involvement in the Challenger investigation.

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