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It is to every established power's advantage to make leaking government information seem dangerous and wrong because states in general do bad things and would p

It is to every established power's advantage to make leaking government information seem dangerous and wrong because states in general do bad things and would prefer to not be held accountable for their actions. Yeah, good and bad things get leaked. That's what happens when governments use their secrecy to cover up some pretty dirty stuff that's happened. I feel accountability is more important than safety from some shadow threat that will always exist. Also, those terrorists that are (supposedly) going to use this intelligence to do bad things, they probably wouldn't exist if states weren't busy terrorizing civilians.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
krschultz 16y ago
This is the point you are missing. There is no thinking "state". State governments consist of people. People with morals and ethics (you hope). Sure, those with power are corrupt and do things that most of us wouldn't approve of. But when things go too far, someone with a brain often leaks it. And those leaks have a purpose - to stop whatever that is happening from happening. Wikileaks is really dangerous to those kind of important, targeted leaks. These leaks in my opinion are more damaging to the government than helpful to the people keeping the government in check. I think most people who are shocked, SHOCKED! by the stuff in this leak just haven't been paying close attention, I have yet to see anything that wasn't already speculated about in the media aside for little tiny details (like this list). So this leak isn't all that valuble to the population, but it scares the crap out of the government. And so we're going to get a bunch of laws designed to prevent this from happening again and make it far more dangerous and difficult for people to leak in the future. I always viewed Wikileaks as the escape hatch. If you are working on something you think is objectionable and need to leak and it is impossible to get word out, send your leak to Wikileaks and they'll keep you safe and get it to the media. Now Wikileaks to me is just taking a shotgun approach and really missing the point that leaks, when done well, are extremely powerful for stopping bad things from happening. These leaks will not stop anything from happening because they don't highlight one topic. The focus of the leak is Wikileaks, not on the bad things happening. The focus of Watergate was Nixon, not the Washington Post.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

krschultz 16y ago

This is the point you are missing. There is no thinking "state". State governments consist of people. People with morals and ethics (you hope). Sure, those with power are corrupt and do things that most of us wouldn't approve of. But when things go too far, someone with a brain often leaks it. And those leaks have a purpose - to stop whatever that is happening from happening. Wikileaks is really dangerous to those kind of important, targeted leaks. These leaks in my opinion are more damaging to the government than helpful to the people keeping the government in check. I think most people who are shocked, SHOCKED! by the stuff in this leak just haven't been paying close attention, I have yet to see anything that wasn't already speculated about in the media aside for little tiny details (like this list). So this leak isn't all that valuble to the population, but it scares the crap out of the government. And so we're going to get a bunch of laws designed to prevent this from happening again and make it far more dangerous and difficult for people to leak in the future. I always viewed Wikileaks as the escape hatch. If you are working on something you think is objectionable and need to leak and it is impossible to get word out, send your leak to Wikileaks and they'll keep you safe and get it to the media. Now Wikileaks to me is just taking a shotgun approach and really missing the point that leaks, when done well, are extremely powerful for stopping bad things from happening. These leaks will not stop anything from happening because they don't highlight one topic. The focus of the leak is Wikileaks, not on the bad things happening. The focus of Watergate was Nixon, not the Washington Post.