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I don't think it's contradictory to both support Wikileaks in principle and also condone stiff penalties for leakers in principle: Such penalties are legitimat

I don't think it's contradictory to both support Wikileaks in principle and also condone stiff penalties for leakers in principle: Such penalties are legitimate insofar as the state is legitimate, and even most libertarians grant it some legitimacy. Surely if a leak is worth leaking then it's worth suffering the penalty for leaking it if caught. Thousands of people are dying in Afghanistan and so the people who risked their careers, lives, etc. to get this information out are heroes. The value of Wikileaks comes from the sensitivity of the information... If there were no penalty for disclosing it, then it wouldn't really be secret. The existence of Wikileaks diminishes the ability of any organization to conduct secret operations, and so we can expect secrecy to be used less often and more judiciously by everyone.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I agree. I think there is a difference between passionate advocate of a cause that requires some public leaks -- and being able to accept the consequences, and being an armchair, couch-potato anarchist. Last night my youngest son and I watched "Tora Tora Tora!", the story of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Back then, the United States had cracked the Japanese embassy codes. We were literally reading all their messages before they were. This information -- that we had cracked the codes and what the traffic contained -- was limited to only 12 people in the entire government. After the president left one of the reports in a waste-basket, he was taken off the list. Revealing even one of these messages would have been cause for long-term imprisonment. For a member of the military, sworn to protect the constitution, to release hundreds of thousands? I can't imagine any worse intelligence catastrophe. And that includes losing the A-bomb secrets. The activist (or foreign intelligence service) has a cause and is will to suffer the consequences for using the information. The anarchist has only chaos as a cause. The activist selects what to leak, selects how to leak it, and sometimes dies for the revelation -- a fair penalty since leaking information can easily cause the deaths of others. The anarchist simply wants openness and lack of secrecy -- their enemy is reality itself, the fact that secrecy is necessary in some cases. A much more dangerous situation.
- grandalf 16y ago
  Well put. I think there is an inherent tension between the state and the governed, which is amplified when there is secret information involved. A military officer sworn to obey the chain of command is not a perfect vessel for secrets, which is why there are all sorts of levels of trust/clearance, etc. Why? Because most humans can be counted upon to exercise their individual moral judgment on matters of grave importance. The grouping of minor leakers into the category of armchair anarchists diminishes the role of independent moral discretion that may have motivated their actions. Even if it's poorly formed/articulated, I think the leakers have a sense of the moral consequences of their compliance with secrecy rules, which explains why they risk punishment to bring forth the leak. Though derived from a chaotic and political mess, state actions (war plans, etc.) must be treated by the state as essentially sacred (and to go against it must be considered a "high crime"). Once in a while a person has the opportunity to see state actions through his/her individual moral lens and also feels empowered to act upon that feeling. As misguided as that feeling often is, I think that its presence is a major force in the prevention of tyranny.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

I agree. I think there is a difference between passionate advocate of a cause that requires some public leaks -- and being able to accept the consequences, and being an armchair, couch-potato anarchist. Last night my youngest son and I watched "Tora Tora Tora!", the story of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Back then, the United States had cracked the Japanese embassy codes. We were literally reading all their messages before they were. This information -- that we had cracked the codes and what the traffic contained -- was limited to only 12 people in the entire government. After the president left one of the reports in a waste-basket, he was taken off the list. Revealing even one of these messages would have been cause for long-term imprisonment. For a member of the military, sworn to protect the constitution, to release hundreds of thousands? I can't imagine any worse intelligence catastrophe. And that includes losing the A-bomb secrets. The activist (or foreign intelligence service) has a cause and is will to suffer the consequences for using the information. The anarchist has only chaos as a cause. The activist selects what to leak, selects how to leak it, and sometimes dies for the revelation -- a fair penalty since leaking information can easily cause the deaths of others. The anarchist simply wants openness and lack of secrecy -- their enemy is reality itself, the fact that secrecy is necessary in some cases. A much more dangerous situation.

grandalf 16y ago
Well put. I think there is an inherent tension between the state and the governed, which is amplified when there is secret information involved. A military officer sworn to obey the chain of command is not a perfect vessel for secrets, which is why there are all sorts of levels of trust/clearance, etc. Why? Because most humans can be counted upon to exercise their individual moral judgment on matters of grave importance. The grouping of minor leakers into the category of armchair anarchists diminishes the role of independent moral discretion that may have motivated their actions. Even if it's poorly formed/articulated, I think the leakers have a sense of the moral consequences of their compliance with secrecy rules, which explains why they risk punishment to bring forth the leak. Though derived from a chaotic and political mess, state actions (war plans, etc.) must be treated by the state as essentially sacred (and to go against it must be considered a "high crime"). Once in a while a person has the opportunity to see state actions through his/her individual moral lens and also feels empowered to act upon that feeling. As misguided as that feeling often is, I think that its presence is a major force in the prevention of tyranny.