11 ms·

Wikijerks

26 points by DanielBMarkham 16y ago

jbooth 16y ago
"They are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force. " .... really? I'm going to try to think of something to say about this that doesn't fall afoul of Godwin's law. It might be a while.
- gamble 16y ago
  The Wikileaks hysteria is proof that an entire country can suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.
  - die_sekte 16y ago
    Patriotism/Nationalism is a disease.
- martythemaniak 16y ago
  I've started calling them Internet Brownshirts, Godwin's law be dammed.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Y'know, I think danielbmarkham is wrong to call for the use of lethal force against wikileaks, but I think that his point deserves a counterargument, not just some outraged huffing and puffing. So Daniel, here's why I think you're wrong. Firstly, you're justifying this on the basis that what Wikileaks is doing is analogous to war against the US. But it's really only analogous to it, it's not an actual war. Nobody has been killed in this "war" yet, and I really don't see a reason to start. Secondly, it would set a bad precedent. By all means we can assassinate Osama bin Laden, but if you scale that back to Julian Assange then who else can we justify assassinating? There's all sorts of individuals making weakly-analogous and ineffectual "war" upon the US Government from various extremal points on the political spectrum. Thirdly, it's unnecessary. Even in an actual war, we prefer to capture rather than to kill unarmed men where possible. If Assange has broken US law then there's a perfectly reasonable set of procedures we can go through in order to put him on trial. Fourthly, it would just be a public relations disaster for the US, in ways that I don't feel the need to explain. In conclusion, Daniel, I know you were being hyperbolic with the kill-Assange thing, but I think you'll agree that under careful consideration of the options that it's probably not the best option.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    It's in no way analogous to war against the US. It's a publicity campaign against some people who are pulling some levers in the US. As has been said a million other places, there's way more embarrassing stuff about other gov'ts than there is stuff about the US in these cables. But all you see the news media talking about is "whether Assange is unamerican". Cui bono?
    - hugh3 16y ago
      I really haven't seen anyone talking about whether Assange is un-American. Since he's an Australian, it's not much of a question to ask.
      - jbooth 16y ago
        Excuse me, anti-American. But then, you knew what I meant, right? Glad to see that my typo was the most important part of the post.
pshapiro 16y ago
The problem is that he's not making the distinction between good secrets and bad secrets. If you do something bad and covert it up, it's a bad secret because it results in bad things and the politicians involved do not want to be associated with the result. Such a thing musn't be a secret. It's wrong to cover up a bad thing because it's hiding something that could hurt you and others in the future. If the government's job should be to keep the society's justice then it's absolutely necessary not to hide bad things otherwise they're lying. So it's not the government's place to hide bad secrets. Good things don't need to be lauded (humility) and they don't need to be covered up either. Since it's not going to result in a bad thing and hurt the society then it doesn't have to revealed unless you would like to use the good thing. For example, if private stuff in his life is actually private and not hurting anyone else, then he should be allowed to keep the secret if he decides to because it's his own life. If there is this principle to tell good and bad in people's activities then it solves his question.
- earle 16y ago
  and who is the judge to differentiate good and bad secrets?
  - pshapiro 16y ago
    It's the principle. A good thing makes a good result, bad thing makes a bad result. A good thing is something that has enough truth inside it to transmit 'what is' accurately. Bad things have too much falsehood to see the things correctly. imo you should judge things in the world for yourself after you've seen & confirmed what it is like. Edit: @hugh3 hope that makes more sense
    - hugh3 16y ago
      A good thing makes a good result, bad thing makes a bad result. That half of what you said is circular, A good thing is something that has truth inside it. Bad things have falsehoods in them. and that half doesn't make much sense.
invisible 16y ago
The difference between government getting to choose whatever they want to be secretive and an individual getting to do so online is that government controls others whereas an individual does not. Being able to keep it a secret that innocent people were killed because of a poor war campaign is reason enough to not trust the government ALL of the time. Are there secrets that are important? Yes. But nowadays, EVERYTHING is confidential and the only information we get is the stuff that's too big for them to hide (or they want us to see).
- hugh3 16y ago
  Being able to keep it a secret that innocent people were killed because of a poor war campaign I don't think it was ever a secret that innocent people get killed in wars.
  - invisible 16y ago
    It was a secret because if anyone asked for proof previous to Wikileaks releasing pertinent information (in regard to Iraq), the answer was "No, I don't have anything to prove it..." Speculation doesn't make something any less secret and is often inaccurate.
necolas 16y ago
How can you have a discussion with people who not only believe that it is unacceptable to expose government deception and corruption, but who go on to advocate the use of lethal force against citizens of western democracies. Rarely has an event exposed so clearly the hypocrisies and conflict at the heart of our western democracies.
- jbooth 16y ago
  Yeah, that really disturbed me. Mr. Markham seems like a pretty reasonable guy, a mainline Republican, possibly even a moderate. And he's basically advocating fascism, here. If it happened in Germany, it can happen here. Germany had Liebniz, Kant, Mozart, Einstein, the Reformation.. no reason to think that we're so much better. ( I really tried to avoid Godwin's law here, but I couldn't. The news debate has rapidly turned from "what is our government doing" to "just how unamerican is this guy, anyways". It's a bad trend. )
  - hugh3 16y ago
    And he's basically advocating fascism, and implying that killing 100,000 arabs is no big deal compared to embarrassing the people who did it. This is so disconnected from what danielbmarkham is actually arguing that I've flagged this entire thread as unproductively political.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      He's calling for this guy to be killed. He said, lethal force. Because he's a quote "enemy". And the reasoning is that the guy dared to tattle on the government killing people. Identity politics and advocacy for unlimited extrajudicial police power to prosecute said enemies. If that's not fascism, I don't know what is.
  - die_sekte 16y ago
    That's the interesting thing about facism: nearly everybody is in favor of it as long as it furthers their causes. Democracy really doesn't work any better than other forms of government, it just tends to keep the lunatics at bay, and even that doesn't always work (see Bush Jr., Hitler, ...).
die_sekte 16y ago
You just called for the murder of an innocent. What exactly is wrong with you? Obligatory snark: Oh, look! An abused kissing the ass of his abuser!
phillijw 16y ago
My secrets typically don't affect a nation of people. I was not elected/appointed by anyone. I don't have a duty to tell you the color of my toothbrush or how I like my eggs. I never promised to uphold the constitution. The government is operating on my behalf and therefore I feel entitled to know how they are operating.
michaelchisari 16y ago
How could you negotiate a treaty without secrets? Handle personnel issues like addiction treatment? Have battlefield commanders report on enemy positions and their current tactical weaknesses? Well, I guess we're going to find out, aren't we?
cantalibre 16y ago
Oh, yeah, Hacker News. Where we get to read posts from users calling for murder.
- niels_olson 16y ago
  I support your cynical comment, because I think we need to point this is in fact a major values-of-the-community issue. "Major" you ask? Yes, the value proposition of murder is always a major issue. It should always be reaffirmed as one of the brightest lines a society can draw.
- gloob 16y ago
  As a Canadian, I'm glad to know that everyone involved in the ongoing Wikileaks debate has managed to remain calm, mature, and level-headed. Here's to you, humanity!
RockyMcNuts 16y ago
Clearly, Julian Assange doesn't much care for US policy and is using information to fight against it. Now, if he were using violence to kill Americans, like say a Somali pirate, and no less violent alternative was available and effective, then lethal force would be justified. However, if we don't want him to discuss our secrets, the solution is pretty simple: keep them secret. Where the writer's argument falls apart is that 1) Assange doesn't owe the US Government any duty to keep its secrets, unlike a US citizen 2) it's not a commensurate response; embarrassing us is not the same as killing us; there are simple solutions to prevent what he's doing and 3) it would be ineffective because it would make the US look far worse than it already does.
- jbooth 16y ago
  Not to mention, most of the stuff got leaked reflects a lot more poorly on other governments than the US. But that's besides the point. He's a hippie! Look at his hippie manifestos! Don't read the leaks or anything, we'll just have a debate on cross-fire about whether he's anti-american.
Mithrandir 16y ago
> Larry Sanger -- one of the founders of wikileaks... Just FYI, for those who don't know, Sanger confounded Wikipedia and not Wikileaks. Two separate organizations; not related. I have alerted the author about this.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Just to clarify one thing: I am not supporting an assassination attempt on wikileaks. What I said was that I support use of state force up to and including lethal force. What the appropriate level of force is, I leave that up to people smarter than me. I just have decided that I support whatever decision is made legally. You guys can continue the bickering now.
- subsection1h 16y ago
  > What the appropriate level of force is, I leave that up to people smarter than me. Why leave it up to people who are smarter than you? Aren't decisions concerning the level of force that is used against human beings a matter of ethics rather than intelligence? > I just have decided that I support whatever decision is made legally. So if X is legal, then X is good?
ibejoeb 16y ago
> WL is fine with dumping United States State Department secrets, but if they had dumped all your financial and personal records, that would be bad? I have yet to make up my mind on the whole situation, so I'm open to that thought experiment, but I still have one major unresolved issue for which I have not heard a satisfactory argument: Why is it okay for the New York Times to publish this information, but it's not okay for WikiLeaks to do it? Are we not distinguishing between the leaking and the publishing anymore?
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  "Why is it okay for the New York Times to publish this information, but it's not okay for WikiLeaks to do it? Are we not distinguishing between the leaking and the publishing anymore?" Because the NYT is an agency dedicated to telling stories -- some of which happen to be political and/or secret in nature. Wikileaks is dedicated to attacking the structure of the government by mass releases of documents covering all sorts of things. When you have a leaker which wants some injustice fixed and a publisher who publishes to tell that story, you are then able to make some informed judgment on what was best for society, ie, there is a rational conversation. See the Pentagon Papers. But when you leak 200K documents -- who has the ability to review or digest all of that? I doubt anybody could make a statement on what the impact is or whether the leak was worth it or not. They'll be debating the impact of these leaks 50 years from now. It takes away the conversation between the voters and the government. Which is the entire point, of course. If the purpose is to destroy the relationship between voters and the government, then you are no longer a publisher, ie, you are no longer relating a thematic story with some sort of political or secret overtones. Your right of free speech -- the ability to relate stories, demonstrate, protest, and persuade me of a certain cause is not applicable any more. You can't have any sort of reasonable conversation about how to fix things using 200K documents to do so. This would be like calling myself a musician if I played every note on the keyboard on a thousand instruments at once. I would be something -- noisemaker or something, but not a musician. There is no theme or point except chaos and anarchy. Beats the hell out of me what wikileaks is, but its not a publisher. Information sprinkler? I'd go with "cyber terrorist", but nobody was purposely killed to effect political change, just massive amounts of information leaked, so the word "terrorism" doesn't work. It's a very strange semantic place we've ended up.
alex_c 16y ago
Daniel, I respect your opinions, and I certainly respect the strength of your conviction about WikiLeaks. Most people seem to be taking a white-or-black stance on this, but I'm stuck somewhere in the gray. Regarding the leaked cables (at least the ones leaked so far), I'm finding it hard to believe that the leak has caused permanent or significant damage of any kind. Diplomats will have to work overtime to smooth some ruffled feathers, but I haven't seen evidence of a shift for the worse in international relations. If the worst outcome of these leaks is "even greater clamping down of information and ... a new age of the security state", then there is something fundamentally wrong, that goes beyond WikiLeaks. It seems irrational to argue that such changes would never happen IF ONLY WikiLeaks wasn't around. The closest analogy in terms of effect on American policy and society would be 9/11. 9/11 was a barbaric, indefensible act, but the US has vastly over-reacted in the following decade, with no signs of slowing down. How much of the blame for the over-reaction belongs to Al Qaeda, and how much points to a systemic problem with how the US government deals with crises and the tradeoff between security and personal rights? Now, WikiLeaks hasn't flown any planes into buildings. They haven't killed anyone. They've made state secrets public, which is a serious matter - but, pragmatically, they've embarrassed and caused more work for a number of diplomats, and not much else. That doesn't necessarily make them praise-worthy, but does it really warrant violent or even lethal opposition? Look, the reality is none of us have any real clue about what WikiLeaks means. All we know is that technology means the rules are changing. I only really see two possible trends for the future - more openness, or more control. I'm not convinced that what WikiLeaks is doing is right, but given the choice of how I would prefer the world to look like in 20 years, I'd pick more openness over more control. Your preference seems to be for more control, since you seem to feel that an assassination of Julian Assange by the US government would be justified. Edit: saw your comment about assassination. You can disregard that part of my comment, although since Julian Assange is not a US citizen (and neither am I, for that matter), our ideas for what "lethal force" implies in this context are probably different. Edit2: Have you read "The World is Flat"? It may seem tangential, but I think it has everything to do with people's perception and expectations of WikiLeaks, and the changes implied by this episode.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  alex, I respect your right to disagree. Heck, I don't claim to have all of the answers. Here's the thing: WL is taking it on itself to make those decisions for all of us. Put differently: the government is broken and is making too many things secret. WL has decided that because it is broken, they get to decide what sort of massive response is warranted. All I'm saying is wait a minute, the entire purpose of my voting is so I can make decisions. If you'd like to point out specific things that are secret that need fixing, I'm with you. Please continue. But if you're saying that you have become the arbiter of what causes harm or not, you are taking on yourself something that you have no right to do, whether you're alex or some WL guy. You're making the same mistake only in reverse. Does that make sense?
bambax 16y ago
> So if you speak to an American consular official, you deserve that conversation to be made public? But if you comment online about file-sharing, you deserve to remain anonymous? The difference between my secrets and the secrets of the government is that the government works for me. The government governs in the name of the people. I am the people. Government employees are my employees. If my employees keep their actions secret from me, conspire with diplomats from other countries against me and try to push me into waging wars based on false information, then I should be able to find this out and make it public. > [Wikileaks] are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force. You have the right to "support" anything you want, but the US constitution (in theory!) prevents the government from killing individuals without due process (which includes charging them with crimes based on pre-existing laws, and trying them in an open court). If you don't approve of the US constitution, then what are you fighting for...?
- tzs 16y ago
  By your argument, any dealing a citizen has with the government should be fully in the public record, for all other citizens to see. Does that mean you think you should be able to see my income tax return? As far as your employee analogy goes, employees sometimes do need to keep secrets from their employer. For instance, if I tell my lawyer something I expect it to only be shared with other lawyers who are actually working on my case and need to know it. Just because my lawyer is an employee of a firm does not mean that the owners of the firm have any right to secrets I've shared with my lawyer. The notion that government employees are your employees is simply wrong. You are more like a stockholder, not an employer. Companies are not required to tell their stockholders every detail of the operations of the business, for good reason.
etherael 16y ago
Deep Breath <warandpeace> This doesn't really wash. It's not inconsistent to believe that the entire episode as it stands is a good example of a less bad system than if all this information was kept forever under wraps. Let's examine a few of the cases point by point as to why the leaks are a terrible thing; Point) Secrets are essential to the functioning of a government, without any secrets nothing could get done. Counterpoint) Wikileaks are not trying to reveal all secrets, if you look at their released documents there are many redacted segments where sensitive names are handed out, for example this one http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09TELAVIV1098&hl=xxxx http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09TELAVIV1098&h... . This does not entirely excuse the process in one fell swoop, as there are other instances where they have exposed information with a questionable upside and an apparently heavy downside, but it does indicate that they are at least trying for a harm minimisation process. It is clearly not their purpose to cause as much "battle damage" as possible. Further, although some secrets may be necessary to the functioning of governments, this is not a license that they ought to be able to employ secrets to cover up their messy failures that the public needs to know about if they want to be able to punish a surfeit of these or reward an absence of these. Hiding them leads at worst to an assumption that much more is wrong than actually is, and at best to an assumption that everything is rosy when the world is falling apart behind the scenes. Point) They should stand up and take what's coming to them like real men, without this they're just being cowardly. Counterpoint) How does this logic work for North Korea or other edge cases? And if this logic does not work for North Korea or other edge cases, where people would like to have exposure of injustice without opening themselves up for spiteful retribution or the execution of their entire family for not swallowing wholesale evil nonsense, where do you draw the line? If a torrent of information showing government malfeasance is leaked along with a trickle of examples of the actual valid employment of secrecy as a defensive measure, isn't this proof in itself that the ability to maintain secrecy is being abused? It's actually a sliding scale in the leaking model dependent upon the content of the secrets being leaked, the leak process itself is one that somewhat accounts for this. You have a potential authoritarian conspiracy, members to this potential authoritarian conspiracy, and then the personal ethical and moral considerations of these members. When the degree to which a person feels compelled to disclose the nature of these secrets outweighs the degree to which they feel that it is more beneficial to keep these secrets, leaks happen. This is a hedge against deploying secrets to cover the failings and underhandedness of a given authoritarian conspiracy. Without this hedge, administrators of said authoritarian conspiracy have all the motivation in the world to mark their failings secret and none not to. If you were to have had access to this trove of secrets beforehand and you had found that the only instances where secrets were actually employed is when it was clearly being used as a shield to protect lives and property, would you feel compelled to leak it? It looks like in instances where secrecy was validly employed in this method, even wikileaks has attempted to maintain that secrecy. That they haven't been perfectly capable of doing so is certainly partially their fault, but the blame cannot be shifted from the original situation in which secrets were primarily used as a cloak for failure. Point) Ok so if things are really that bad then we should just declare armageddon, armed uprising, down with the tyrants! let the blood run free and fire flood the cities! Rargh, pass me my axe and the skull of the nearest infant that I may swill mead from it! Counterpoint) Why in the event that you deem the current situation to be bad would you want to replace it with rank chaos and barbarism? This just sets an artificial lower limit for the pain of change. If no tactical movement could be made in opposition to the established powers until the alternative was outright armageddon, all this does is guarantee that eventually you will have outright armageddon. The sensible thing to do is obviously to act with foresight and care and attempt to minimise harm as much as possible, weigh your movements against the potential negative consequences of them and proceed on this basis. If the only way to improve is to destroy everything in the established order, not only do we guarantee that eventually everything will be destroyed, but we also limit the current less bad circumstance to a natural plateau. This is not a good thing. </warandpeace>
naner 16y ago
Even more surprising is that everyone of these [Wikileaks supporters] I know are ardent freaks about keeping their own lives private. Privacy of the individual is not the same as privacy of a government[1], we must take into consideration the balance of power. If you look at things with respect to power it makes sense that the most private individuals want powerful organizations to be more transparent as they have disproportionate power over individuals. The author didn't clearly explain why he hates Wikileaks but presumably it is because of what was leaked: diplomatic cables as opposed to something that uncovered massive criminal conspiracy. We haven't seen anything to suggest that these leaks are dangerous to the US. Defense secretary Robert Gates basically said they were embarrassing and awkward but won't have much of an effect on foreign policy[2]. For earlier leaks on the US military shootings he said there was no apparent fallout[3]. [Wikileaks] are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force. This is an overreaction. The information was not that valuable or that hostile to the US. Most of it was a confirmation of stuff we already knew. And even if it was serious, I don't want my government going around assassinating people for leaking documents to the media. I don't know how that can justify lethal force. Maybe if it was strategic military routes or something that is obviously not newsworthy. 1: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/privacy_and_pow.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/privacy_and_po... 2: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/11/quotable-secretary-gates-on-wi/ http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/11/quotable-secretary-... 3: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer_archive?month=10&year=2010&base_name=gates_no_wikileaks_deaths http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer_archive?month...
hugh3 16y ago
I think all that can be said about Wikileaks has already been said. This thread has degenerated into name-calling (several commenters accusing other commenters of being fascists). Why is that?
grandalf 16y ago
Daniel, Thanks for the thoughtful post. The logical stretch I think you commit is that you view consent or dissent as largely black and white. I'd argue that it is our civic duty to dissent about all things we disapprove of, both at the ballot box and in our day to day lives. That entails that we break any laws we disagree with, etc. Of course, the limit to this is the willingness we each have to risk the consequences (if any) of breaking laws. I don't think we are somehow bound to support or obey all laws just because we haven't yet gotten to the point of renouncing our citizenship or packing up and leaving. In a majoritarian system like ours, the minority is constantly unhappy. Since we are nearly constantly in the run-up to an election, we must publicize our dissent in order to participate in the democratic process. Again, civil disobedience puts the individual at risk, so I agree with your point that a person must accept the consequences of his/her actions, but I strongly disagree with the idea that we should accept the majoritarian conclusion of the moment and feel bad about speaking out against bad laws and bad policies. On the issue of secrecy, I don't hold the belief you describe. Sure, some secrecy is inevitable (and probably helpful). But the US today has way too much. We learned that the military was keeping things secret that bore no relevance to the battle but only to the perception of the battle by the American public. That's not secrecy, that's propaganda by omission. I think in order to claim that the Wikileaks people are jerks, you have to explain why you think it was appropriate for the US Government to reply that "we don't negotiate" when offered the ability to redact whatever it thought might prevent any harmful consequences of the leaked info. In my view, this response is just as grating as when George W Bush crossed his arms and proclaimed "We don't negotiate with Terrorists" as he attempted to escalate things with Iran.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Grandalf, I see lots of shades of gray. I think they're all covered under option 2. As far as how the U.S. should have responded, I don't think they had much of a choice: the State Department couldn't tell whether one doc should be secret or not even on a good day. Even with an order from the president it would have been physically impossible for them to go through those docs. Not to mention the precedent it would set -- very bad thing there. Yes, the U.S. has too much secrecy. Let's vote to fix it. Or let's leak selected stories to fix it. But let's not come up with plans to massively overwhelm the government with tons of formerly secret documents. Not only is it not productive, it is taking up a position of control over other people's lives that we are not entitled to, and it is deciding that the entire thing is so broken as to be worthy of attack. That's not a very good way to get your point across, no matter how right or wrong you are.
brudgers 16y ago
>"How could wikileaks have done so much harm to civility?" I wonder what Mr. Markham considers the proper etiquette for blasting people apart with DU. I would suggest that when one's 14 year old son would assent to a government butchering and eating babies in the name of National Security, it might be time to reconsider one's career as a moralist.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I went back and tried to recap this discussion -- which I thought was excellent, by the way, into a new blog entry. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1979866 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1979866
DjDarkman 16y ago
Dear clueless author, how do you know if the government is working in your interest, if nearly everything it does is secret? Do you know how much it takes for the government to access your personal email address? Do you think that the government is always right? Do you think that the people there don't have personal interests? As time passes the government demands to know more and more about you and let's you know less about it, don't you think at some point this becomes a problem?

"They are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force. " .... really? I'm going to try to think of something to say about this that doesn't fall afoul of Godwin's law. It might be a while.

gamble 16y ago
The Wikileaks hysteria is proof that an entire country can suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.
- die_sekte 16y ago
  Patriotism/Nationalism is a disease.
martythemaniak 16y ago
I've started calling them Internet Brownshirts, Godwin's law be dammed.
hugh3 16y ago
Y'know, I think danielbmarkham is wrong to call for the use of lethal force against wikileaks, but I think that his point deserves a counterargument, not just some outraged huffing and puffing. So Daniel, here's why I think you're wrong. Firstly, you're justifying this on the basis that what Wikileaks is doing is analogous to war against the US. But it's really only analogous to it, it's not an actual war. Nobody has been killed in this "war" yet, and I really don't see a reason to start. Secondly, it would set a bad precedent. By all means we can assassinate Osama bin Laden, but if you scale that back to Julian Assange then who else can we justify assassinating? There's all sorts of individuals making weakly-analogous and ineffectual "war" upon the US Government from various extremal points on the political spectrum. Thirdly, it's unnecessary. Even in an actual war, we prefer to capture rather than to kill unarmed men where possible. If Assange has broken US law then there's a perfectly reasonable set of procedures we can go through in order to put him on trial. Fourthly, it would just be a public relations disaster for the US, in ways that I don't feel the need to explain. In conclusion, Daniel, I know you were being hyperbolic with the kill-Assange thing, but I think you'll agree that under careful consideration of the options that it's probably not the best option.
- jbooth 16y ago
  It's in no way analogous to war against the US. It's a publicity campaign against some people who are pulling some levers in the US. As has been said a million other places, there's way more embarrassing stuff about other gov'ts than there is stuff about the US in these cables. But all you see the news media talking about is "whether Assange is unamerican". Cui bono?
  - hugh3 16y ago
    I really haven't seen anyone talking about whether Assange is un-American. Since he's an Australian, it's not much of a question to ask.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Excuse me, anti-American. But then, you knew what I meant, right? Glad to see that my typo was the most important part of the post.

pshapiro 16y ago

The problem is that he's not making the distinction between good secrets and bad secrets. If you do something bad and covert it up, it's a bad secret because it results in bad things and the politicians involved do not want to be associated with the result. Such a thing musn't be a secret. It's wrong to cover up a bad thing because it's hiding something that could hurt you and others in the future. If the government's job should be to keep the society's justice then it's absolutely necessary not to hide bad things otherwise they're lying. So it's not the government's place to hide bad secrets. Good things don't need to be lauded (humility) and they don't need to be covered up either. Since it's not going to result in a bad thing and hurt the society then it doesn't have to revealed unless you would like to use the good thing. For example, if private stuff in his life is actually private and not hurting anyone else, then he should be allowed to keep the secret if he decides to because it's his own life. If there is this principle to tell good and bad in people's activities then it solves his question.

earle 16y ago
and who is the judge to differentiate good and bad secrets?
- pshapiro 16y ago
  It's the principle. A good thing makes a good result, bad thing makes a bad result. A good thing is something that has enough truth inside it to transmit 'what is' accurately. Bad things have too much falsehood to see the things correctly. imo you should judge things in the world for yourself after you've seen & confirmed what it is like. Edit: @hugh3 hope that makes more sense
  - hugh3 16y ago
    A good thing makes a good result, bad thing makes a bad result. That half of what you said is circular, A good thing is something that has truth inside it. Bad things have falsehoods in them. and that half doesn't make much sense.

invisible 16y ago

The difference between government getting to choose whatever they want to be secretive and an individual getting to do so online is that government controls others whereas an individual does not. Being able to keep it a secret that innocent people were killed because of a poor war campaign is reason enough to not trust the government ALL of the time. Are there secrets that are important? Yes. But nowadays, EVERYTHING is confidential and the only information we get is the stuff that's too big for them to hide (or they want us to see).

hugh3 16y ago
Being able to keep it a secret that innocent people were killed because of a poor war campaign I don't think it was ever a secret that innocent people get killed in wars.
- invisible 16y ago
  It was a secret because if anyone asked for proof previous to Wikileaks releasing pertinent information (in regard to Iraq), the answer was "No, I don't have anything to prove it..." Speculation doesn't make something any less secret and is often inaccurate.

necolas 16y ago

How can you have a discussion with people who not only believe that it is unacceptable to expose government deception and corruption, but who go on to advocate the use of lethal force against citizens of western democracies. Rarely has an event exposed so clearly the hypocrisies and conflict at the heart of our western democracies.

jbooth 16y ago
Yeah, that really disturbed me. Mr. Markham seems like a pretty reasonable guy, a mainline Republican, possibly even a moderate. And he's basically advocating fascism, here. If it happened in Germany, it can happen here. Germany had Liebniz, Kant, Mozart, Einstein, the Reformation.. no reason to think that we're so much better. ( I really tried to avoid Godwin's law here, but I couldn't. The news debate has rapidly turned from "what is our government doing" to "just how unamerican is this guy, anyways". It's a bad trend. )
- hugh3 16y ago
  And he's basically advocating fascism, and implying that killing 100,000 arabs is no big deal compared to embarrassing the people who did it. This is so disconnected from what danielbmarkham is actually arguing that I've flagged this entire thread as unproductively political.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    He's calling for this guy to be killed. He said, lethal force. Because he's a quote "enemy". And the reasoning is that the guy dared to tattle on the government killing people. Identity politics and advocacy for unlimited extrajudicial police power to prosecute said enemies. If that's not fascism, I don't know what is.
- die_sekte 16y ago
  That's the interesting thing about facism: nearly everybody is in favor of it as long as it furthers their causes. Democracy really doesn't work any better than other forms of government, it just tends to keep the lunatics at bay, and even that doesn't always work (see Bush Jr., Hitler, ...).

die_sekte 16y ago

You just called for the murder of an innocent. What exactly is wrong with you? Obligatory snark: Oh, look! An abused kissing the ass of his abuser!

phillijw 16y ago

My secrets typically don't affect a nation of people. I was not elected/appointed by anyone. I don't have a duty to tell you the color of my toothbrush or how I like my eggs. I never promised to uphold the constitution. The government is operating on my behalf and therefore I feel entitled to know how they are operating.

michaelchisari 16y ago

How could you negotiate a treaty without secrets? Handle personnel issues like addiction treatment? Have battlefield commanders report on enemy positions and their current tactical weaknesses? Well, I guess we're going to find out, aren't we?

cantalibre 16y ago

Oh, yeah, Hacker News. Where we get to read posts from users calling for murder.

niels_olson 16y ago
I support your cynical comment, because I think we need to point this is in fact a major values-of-the-community issue. "Major" you ask? Yes, the value proposition of murder is always a major issue. It should always be reaffirmed as one of the brightest lines a society can draw.
gloob 16y ago
As a Canadian, I'm glad to know that everyone involved in the ongoing Wikileaks debate has managed to remain calm, mature, and level-headed. Here's to you, humanity!

RockyMcNuts 16y ago

Clearly, Julian Assange doesn't much care for US policy and is using information to fight against it. Now, if he were using violence to kill Americans, like say a Somali pirate, and no less violent alternative was available and effective, then lethal force would be justified. However, if we don't want him to discuss our secrets, the solution is pretty simple: keep them secret. Where the writer's argument falls apart is that 1) Assange doesn't owe the US Government any duty to keep its secrets, unlike a US citizen 2) it's not a commensurate response; embarrassing us is not the same as killing us; there are simple solutions to prevent what he's doing and 3) it would be ineffective because it would make the US look far worse than it already does.

jbooth 16y ago
Not to mention, most of the stuff got leaked reflects a lot more poorly on other governments than the US. But that's besides the point. He's a hippie! Look at his hippie manifestos! Don't read the leaks or anything, we'll just have a debate on cross-fire about whether he's anti-american.

Mithrandir 16y ago

> Larry Sanger -- one of the founders of wikileaks... Just FYI, for those who don't know, Sanger confounded Wikipedia and not Wikileaks. Two separate organizations; not related. I have alerted the author about this.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Just to clarify one thing: I am not supporting an assassination attempt on wikileaks. What I said was that I support use of state force up to and including lethal force. What the appropriate level of force is, I leave that up to people smarter than me. I just have decided that I support whatever decision is made legally. You guys can continue the bickering now.

subsection1h 16y ago
> What the appropriate level of force is, I leave that up to people smarter than me. Why leave it up to people who are smarter than you? Aren't decisions concerning the level of force that is used against human beings a matter of ethics rather than intelligence? > I just have decided that I support whatever decision is made legally. So if X is legal, then X is good?

ibejoeb 16y ago

> WL is fine with dumping United States State Department secrets, but if they had dumped all your financial and personal records, that would be bad? I have yet to make up my mind on the whole situation, so I'm open to that thought experiment, but I still have one major unresolved issue for which I have not heard a satisfactory argument: Why is it okay for the New York Times to publish this information, but it's not okay for WikiLeaks to do it? Are we not distinguishing between the leaking and the publishing anymore?

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
"Why is it okay for the New York Times to publish this information, but it's not okay for WikiLeaks to do it? Are we not distinguishing between the leaking and the publishing anymore?" Because the NYT is an agency dedicated to telling stories -- some of which happen to be political and/or secret in nature. Wikileaks is dedicated to attacking the structure of the government by mass releases of documents covering all sorts of things. When you have a leaker which wants some injustice fixed and a publisher who publishes to tell that story, you are then able to make some informed judgment on what was best for society, ie, there is a rational conversation. See the Pentagon Papers. But when you leak 200K documents -- who has the ability to review or digest all of that? I doubt anybody could make a statement on what the impact is or whether the leak was worth it or not. They'll be debating the impact of these leaks 50 years from now. It takes away the conversation between the voters and the government. Which is the entire point, of course. If the purpose is to destroy the relationship between voters and the government, then you are no longer a publisher, ie, you are no longer relating a thematic story with some sort of political or secret overtones. Your right of free speech -- the ability to relate stories, demonstrate, protest, and persuade me of a certain cause is not applicable any more. You can't have any sort of reasonable conversation about how to fix things using 200K documents to do so. This would be like calling myself a musician if I played every note on the keyboard on a thousand instruments at once. I would be something -- noisemaker or something, but not a musician. There is no theme or point except chaos and anarchy. Beats the hell out of me what wikileaks is, but its not a publisher. Information sprinkler? I'd go with "cyber terrorist", but nobody was purposely killed to effect political change, just massive amounts of information leaked, so the word "terrorism" doesn't work. It's a very strange semantic place we've ended up.

alex_c 16y ago

Daniel, I respect your opinions, and I certainly respect the strength of your conviction about WikiLeaks. Most people seem to be taking a white-or-black stance on this, but I'm stuck somewhere in the gray. Regarding the leaked cables (at least the ones leaked so far), I'm finding it hard to believe that the leak has caused permanent or significant damage of any kind. Diplomats will have to work overtime to smooth some ruffled feathers, but I haven't seen evidence of a shift for the worse in international relations. If the worst outcome of these leaks is "even greater clamping down of information and ... a new age of the security state", then there is something fundamentally wrong, that goes beyond WikiLeaks. It seems irrational to argue that such changes would never happen IF ONLY WikiLeaks wasn't around. The closest analogy in terms of effect on American policy and society would be 9/11. 9/11 was a barbaric, indefensible act, but the US has vastly over-reacted in the following decade, with no signs of slowing down. How much of the blame for the over-reaction belongs to Al Qaeda, and how much points to a systemic problem with how the US government deals with crises and the tradeoff between security and personal rights? Now, WikiLeaks hasn't flown any planes into buildings. They haven't killed anyone. They've made state secrets public, which is a serious matter - but, pragmatically, they've embarrassed and caused more work for a number of diplomats, and not much else. That doesn't necessarily make them praise-worthy, but does it really warrant violent or even lethal opposition? Look, the reality is none of us have any real clue about what WikiLeaks means. All we know is that technology means the rules are changing. I only really see two possible trends for the future - more openness, or more control. I'm not convinced that what WikiLeaks is doing is right, but given the choice of how I would prefer the world to look like in 20 years, I'd pick more openness over more control. Your preference seems to be for more control, since you seem to feel that an assassination of Julian Assange by the US government would be justified. Edit: saw your comment about assassination. You can disregard that part of my comment, although since Julian Assange is not a US citizen (and neither am I, for that matter), our ideas for what "lethal force" implies in this context are probably different. Edit2: Have you read "The World is Flat"? It may seem tangential, but I think it has everything to do with people's perception and expectations of WikiLeaks, and the changes implied by this episode.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
alex, I respect your right to disagree. Heck, I don't claim to have all of the answers. Here's the thing: WL is taking it on itself to make those decisions for all of us. Put differently: the government is broken and is making too many things secret. WL has decided that because it is broken, they get to decide what sort of massive response is warranted. All I'm saying is wait a minute, the entire purpose of my voting is so I can make decisions. If you'd like to point out specific things that are secret that need fixing, I'm with you. Please continue. But if you're saying that you have become the arbiter of what causes harm or not, you are taking on yourself something that you have no right to do, whether you're alex or some WL guy. You're making the same mistake only in reverse. Does that make sense?

bambax 16y ago

> So if you speak to an American consular official, you deserve that conversation to be made public? But if you comment online about file-sharing, you deserve to remain anonymous? The difference between my secrets and the secrets of the government is that the government works for me. The government governs in the name of the people. I am the people. Government employees are my employees. If my employees keep their actions secret from me, conspire with diplomats from other countries against me and try to push me into waging wars based on false information, then I should be able to find this out and make it public. > [Wikileaks] are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force. You have the right to "support" anything you want, but the US constitution (in theory!) prevents the government from killing individuals without due process (which includes charging them with crimes based on pre-existing laws, and trying them in an open court). If you don't approve of the US constitution, then what are you fighting for...?

tzs 16y ago
By your argument, any dealing a citizen has with the government should be fully in the public record, for all other citizens to see. Does that mean you think you should be able to see my income tax return? As far as your employee analogy goes, employees sometimes do need to keep secrets from their employer. For instance, if I tell my lawyer something I expect it to only be shared with other lawyers who are actually working on my case and need to know it. Just because my lawyer is an employee of a firm does not mean that the owners of the firm have any right to secrets I've shared with my lawyer. The notion that government employees are your employees is simply wrong. You are more like a stockholder, not an employer. Companies are not required to tell their stockholders every detail of the operations of the business, for good reason.

etherael 16y ago

Deep Breath <warandpeace> This doesn't really wash. It's not inconsistent to believe that the entire episode as it stands is a good example of a less bad system than if all this information was kept forever under wraps. Let's examine a few of the cases point by point as to why the leaks are a terrible thing; Point) Secrets are essential to the functioning of a government, without any secrets nothing could get done. Counterpoint) Wikileaks are not trying to reveal all secrets, if you look at their released documents there are many redacted segments where sensitive names are handed out, for example this one http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09TELAVIV1098&hl=xxxx http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09TELAVIV1098&h... . This does not entirely excuse the process in one fell swoop, as there are other instances where they have exposed information with a questionable upside and an apparently heavy downside, but it does indicate that they are at least trying for a harm minimisation process. It is clearly not their purpose to cause as much "battle damage" as possible. Further, although some secrets may be necessary to the functioning of governments, this is not a license that they ought to be able to employ secrets to cover up their messy failures that the public needs to know about if they want to be able to punish a surfeit of these or reward an absence of these. Hiding them leads at worst to an assumption that much more is wrong than actually is, and at best to an assumption that everything is rosy when the world is falling apart behind the scenes. Point) They should stand up and take what's coming to them like real men, without this they're just being cowardly. Counterpoint) How does this logic work for North Korea or other edge cases? And if this logic does not work for North Korea or other edge cases, where people would like to have exposure of injustice without opening themselves up for spiteful retribution or the execution of their entire family for not swallowing wholesale evil nonsense, where do you draw the line? If a torrent of information showing government malfeasance is leaked along with a trickle of examples of the actual valid employment of secrecy as a defensive measure, isn't this proof in itself that the ability to maintain secrecy is being abused? It's actually a sliding scale in the leaking model dependent upon the content of the secrets being leaked, the leak process itself is one that somewhat accounts for this. You have a potential authoritarian conspiracy, members to this potential authoritarian conspiracy, and then the personal ethical and moral considerations of these members. When the degree to which a person feels compelled to disclose the nature of these secrets outweighs the degree to which they feel that it is more beneficial to keep these secrets, leaks happen. This is a hedge against deploying secrets to cover the failings and underhandedness of a given authoritarian conspiracy. Without this hedge, administrators of said authoritarian conspiracy have all the motivation in the world to mark their failings secret and none not to. If you were to have had access to this trove of secrets beforehand and you had found that the only instances where secrets were actually employed is when it was clearly being used as a shield to protect lives and property, would you feel compelled to leak it? It looks like in instances where secrecy was validly employed in this method, even wikileaks has attempted to maintain that secrecy. That they haven't been perfectly capable of doing so is certainly partially their fault, but the blame cannot be shifted from the original situation in which secrets were primarily used as a cloak for failure. Point) Ok so if things are really that bad then we should just declare armageddon, armed uprising, down with the tyrants! let the blood run free and fire flood the cities! Rargh, pass me my axe and the skull of the nearest infant that I may swill mead from it! Counterpoint) Why in the event that you deem the current situation to be bad would you want to replace it with rank chaos and barbarism? This just sets an artificial lower limit for the pain of change. If no tactical movement could be made in opposition to the established powers until the alternative was outright armageddon, all this does is guarantee that eventually you will have outright armageddon. The sensible thing to do is obviously to act with foresight and care and attempt to minimise harm as much as possible, weigh your movements against the potential negative consequences of them and proceed on this basis. If the only way to improve is to destroy everything in the established order, not only do we guarantee that eventually everything will be destroyed, but we also limit the current less bad circumstance to a natural plateau. This is not a good thing. </warandpeace>

naner 16y ago

Even more surprising is that everyone of these [Wikileaks supporters] I know are ardent freaks about keeping their own lives private. Privacy of the individual is not the same as privacy of a government[1], we must take into consideration the balance of power. If you look at things with respect to power it makes sense that the most private individuals want powerful organizations to be more transparent as they have disproportionate power over individuals. The author didn't clearly explain why he hates Wikileaks but presumably it is because of what was leaked: diplomatic cables as opposed to something that uncovered massive criminal conspiracy. We haven't seen anything to suggest that these leaks are dangerous to the US. Defense secretary Robert Gates basically said they were embarrassing and awkward but won't have much of an effect on foreign policy[2]. For earlier leaks on the US military shootings he said there was no apparent fallout[3]. [Wikileaks] are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force. This is an overreaction. The information was not that valuable or that hostile to the US. Most of it was a confirmation of stuff we already knew. And even if it was serious, I don't want my government going around assassinating people for leaking documents to the media. I don't know how that can justify lethal force. Maybe if it was strategic military routes or something that is obviously not newsworthy. 1: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/privacy_and_pow.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/privacy_and_po... 2: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/11/quotable-secretary-gates-on-wi/ http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/11/quotable-secretary-... 3: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer_archive?month=10&year=2010&base_name=gates_no_wikileaks_deaths http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer_archive?month...

hugh3 16y ago

I think all that can be said about Wikileaks has already been said. This thread has degenerated into name-calling (several commenters accusing other commenters of being fascists). Why is that?

grandalf 16y ago

Daniel, Thanks for the thoughtful post. The logical stretch I think you commit is that you view consent or dissent as largely black and white. I'd argue that it is our civic duty to dissent about all things we disapprove of, both at the ballot box and in our day to day lives. That entails that we break any laws we disagree with, etc. Of course, the limit to this is the willingness we each have to risk the consequences (if any) of breaking laws. I don't think we are somehow bound to support or obey all laws just because we haven't yet gotten to the point of renouncing our citizenship or packing up and leaving. In a majoritarian system like ours, the minority is constantly unhappy. Since we are nearly constantly in the run-up to an election, we must publicize our dissent in order to participate in the democratic process. Again, civil disobedience puts the individual at risk, so I agree with your point that a person must accept the consequences of his/her actions, but I strongly disagree with the idea that we should accept the majoritarian conclusion of the moment and feel bad about speaking out against bad laws and bad policies. On the issue of secrecy, I don't hold the belief you describe. Sure, some secrecy is inevitable (and probably helpful). But the US today has way too much. We learned that the military was keeping things secret that bore no relevance to the battle but only to the perception of the battle by the American public. That's not secrecy, that's propaganda by omission. I think in order to claim that the Wikileaks people are jerks, you have to explain why you think it was appropriate for the US Government to reply that "we don't negotiate" when offered the ability to redact whatever it thought might prevent any harmful consequences of the leaked info. In my view, this response is just as grating as when George W Bush crossed his arms and proclaimed "We don't negotiate with Terrorists" as he attempted to escalate things with Iran.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Grandalf, I see lots of shades of gray. I think they're all covered under option 2. As far as how the U.S. should have responded, I don't think they had much of a choice: the State Department couldn't tell whether one doc should be secret or not even on a good day. Even with an order from the president it would have been physically impossible for them to go through those docs. Not to mention the precedent it would set -- very bad thing there. Yes, the U.S. has too much secrecy. Let's vote to fix it. Or let's leak selected stories to fix it. But let's not come up with plans to massively overwhelm the government with tons of formerly secret documents. Not only is it not productive, it is taking up a position of control over other people's lives that we are not entitled to, and it is deciding that the entire thing is so broken as to be worthy of attack. That's not a very good way to get your point across, no matter how right or wrong you are.

brudgers 16y ago

>"How could wikileaks have done so much harm to civility?" I wonder what Mr. Markham considers the proper etiquette for blasting people apart with DU. I would suggest that when one's 14 year old son would assent to a government butchering and eating babies in the name of National Security, it might be time to reconsider one's career as a moralist.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

I went back and tried to recap this discussion -- which I thought was excellent, by the way, into a new blog entry. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1979866 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1979866

DjDarkman 16y ago

Dear clueless author, how do you know if the government is working in your interest, if nearly everything it does is secret? Do you know how much it takes for the government to access your personal email address? Do you think that the government is always right? Do you think that the people there don't have personal interests? As time passes the government demands to know more and more about you and let's you know less about it, don't you think at some point this becomes a problem?