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Do we really need government to be this transparent? It makes sense to me that war and diplomacy are not things that 100% need to be in the public eye. Are som

Do we really need government to be this transparent? It makes sense to me that war and diplomacy are not things that 100% need to be in the public eye. Are some things unnecessarily secret? Of course. I'd love to see papers exposing the motivation behind the Iraq war or about who knew what when about torture or what is going on at Gitmo. Do we really need to know a lot of this mundane stuff? I think if you gave me a choice between a country in which a lot of things are classified but the populace actually read and understood what the competiting parties platforms were, and one in which classified documents are leaked all the time but no one even reads the public documents to begin with, I'd prefer to live in the former. Unforunately currently the US is the latter.

chaostheory 16y ago
"Do we really need to know a lot of this mundane stuff?" I guess this is opinion but I didn't think that the released information was mundane. "and one in which classified documents are leaked all the time but no one even reads the public documents to begin with, I'd prefer to live in the former. Unforunately currently the US is the latter." Actually imo the US is a country where "a lot of things are classified, but where most of the populace is too disinterested to read public documents or stay current on news." However, that doesn't mean that there isn't any value for educated, interested parties in having access to public documents. Wikileaks is a recent phenomenom and not an age old one.
- krschultz 16y ago
  You made the assertion that "democratic republics work better [with a lot of classified documents getting leaked]" I don't think you can just state that without justification. Anything juicy enough to be a revelation will probably also cause diplomatic problems for our country. Is that helping us? I think almost everyone in this country agrees we wouldn't want to see Iran or North Korea with nukes, we just disagree on what should be done about it. Diplomacy on those issues could well be more difficult now because of this leak. Why is that a good thing? What benefit has outweighed that cost? That now you know what our state department's negotiating plan is? I get why certain things should be leaked when it is necessary, but this seems to me to be one guy with sour grapes dumping reams of data for no clear reason and some tidbits of it being interesting. And what happens after X millions of pages are leaked when the one super important thing (ala the Nixon papers of today) are leaked and nobody cares? Has that made it a better place?
  - chaostheory 16y ago
    What's the alternative? Being completely in the dark about everything? I admit that it's far from perfect, but the government is not transparent enough given their size and strength nor are main stream media outlets doing their job well enough. Maybe if the government was less pervasive and more hands off (i.e. taxes and so on) I would be less interested in their day to day affairs.
OpieCunningham 16y ago
I see this argument often now: Wikileaks is dangerous because our government needs to have some secrets. It's an absolutist argument. Wikileaks is not releasing all secrets because they don't have all secrets nor are they likely to ever acquire all secrets. So this discussion is not "either Wikileaks is good because nothing should be secret or it's bad because some secrets are necessary". A rational view of this discussion breaks down into two primary paths: 1- Is enough being done by Wikileaks (and partners and government) to minimize threats to individuals named in the leaked documents? Any rational review of the evidence to date determines that it does appear that enough is being done in this regard even without the government agreeing to involve itself (no evidence that any individuals have been harmed by the leaked documents and apparent active attempts by Wikileaks to seek guidance and pursue internal review in order to redact specific information). 2- What are the implications of the actual information that is being released? Ultimately, this is the key discussion topic. The rest (save #1) is just noise that some are using to intentionally minimize the relevance of this discussion topic. In regards to your two choices, the first doesn't exist, never has and there's no indication that it ever will and the second, overstated first because the amount of information released pales in comparison to the amount of classified information in toto, is by all measures preferable to the only realistic alternative: minimal classified information leaked and minimal public engagement, providing ample cover for government misdeeds. Therefore, it is fortunate.

chaostheory 16y ago

"Do we really need to know a lot of this mundane stuff?" I guess this is opinion but I didn't think that the released information was mundane. "and one in which classified documents are leaked all the time but no one even reads the public documents to begin with, I'd prefer to live in the former. Unforunately currently the US is the latter." Actually imo the US is a country where "a lot of things are classified, but where most of the populace is too disinterested to read public documents or stay current on news." However, that doesn't mean that there isn't any value for educated, interested parties in having access to public documents. Wikileaks is a recent phenomenom and not an age old one.

krschultz 16y ago
You made the assertion that "democratic republics work better [with a lot of classified documents getting leaked]" I don't think you can just state that without justification. Anything juicy enough to be a revelation will probably also cause diplomatic problems for our country. Is that helping us? I think almost everyone in this country agrees we wouldn't want to see Iran or North Korea with nukes, we just disagree on what should be done about it. Diplomacy on those issues could well be more difficult now because of this leak. Why is that a good thing? What benefit has outweighed that cost? That now you know what our state department's negotiating plan is? I get why certain things should be leaked when it is necessary, but this seems to me to be one guy with sour grapes dumping reams of data for no clear reason and some tidbits of it being interesting. And what happens after X millions of pages are leaked when the one super important thing (ala the Nixon papers of today) are leaked and nobody cares? Has that made it a better place?
- chaostheory 16y ago
  What's the alternative? Being completely in the dark about everything? I admit that it's far from perfect, but the government is not transparent enough given their size and strength nor are main stream media outlets doing their job well enough. Maybe if the government was less pervasive and more hands off (i.e. taxes and so on) I would be less interested in their day to day affairs.

OpieCunningham 16y ago

I see this argument often now: Wikileaks is dangerous because our government needs to have some secrets. It's an absolutist argument. Wikileaks is not releasing all secrets because they don't have all secrets nor are they likely to ever acquire all secrets. So this discussion is not "either Wikileaks is good because nothing should be secret or it's bad because some secrets are necessary". A rational view of this discussion breaks down into two primary paths: 1- Is enough being done by Wikileaks (and partners and government) to minimize threats to individuals named in the leaked documents? Any rational review of the evidence to date determines that it does appear that enough is being done in this regard even without the government agreeing to involve itself (no evidence that any individuals have been harmed by the leaked documents and apparent active attempts by Wikileaks to seek guidance and pursue internal review in order to redact specific information). 2- What are the implications of the actual information that is being released? Ultimately, this is the key discussion topic. The rest (save #1) is just noise that some are using to intentionally minimize the relevance of this discussion topic. In regards to your two choices, the first doesn't exist, never has and there's no indication that it ever will and the second, overstated first because the amount of information released pales in comparison to the amount of classified information in toto, is by all measures preferable to the only realistic alternative: minimal classified information leaked and minimal public engagement, providing ample cover for government misdeeds. Therefore, it is fortunate.