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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 fo

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?

invisible 16y ago
Voting rarely works and seems almost impossible in reference to confidential information. We vote people in who get the most out of information being confidential when they want it to be confidential. Do you get to write laws that the public gets to vote on directly? No. Who does? The government as a whole. We just pick A or B and then A or B get to choose their vote, which may or may not be the same but often is similar on sensitive subjects (do not offend the main voting demographic as much as possible so I can get re-elected). Two wrongs don't make a right is a moral dilemma, but sometimes two wrongs are good for society. E.g. 911 was bad, but attacking Afghanistan was a good response and an appropriate one.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Yes sometimes two wrongs are better for society, see option #2 in my essay. I fully support that option and hope it's used a lot. But who are you to decide that voting rarely works and take action on that? That's a completely different level than saying in certain cases things are out of whack. I agree that the system is structurally broken, perhaps beyond repair. But attacking the way its put together is an act of war. A weird little act of war by a small group of anarchists, but an act of war nonetheless. There is a difference in kind between the Pentagon Papers and the State Department dump. One is for the better good where the leaker put himself at the mercy of the taxpayers. The other is a foreign agency expecting no reprisals at all and attacking the government in its entirity, not just one particular aspect of it. You'll not get a disagreement from me over how broken things are. I'm just asking each of us to pick one of the options. I don't see any other choices available. If I'm wrong, please explain how I am wrong. Would love to hear it.
  - invisible 16y ago
    The flaw that you keep hitting is that you assume the government is just. You say that if someone exposes something confidential that they are bad because they broke the law. Law is an abstract thing created to better society and strive for justice, but it is anything but just. Often, it is used for personal/corporate benefit as well as political agendas (or even favors). Doing nothing results in no change - this is probably the most illogical argument of all. You also cannot say the government should go after them for releasing information that the government said shouldn't be released without explaining what exactly Wikileaks is harming in doing so. Lastly, you cannot go to war with the government over this because just as voting doesn't work, neither would rioting unless it were national (or say >= 20 states).
    - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
      "he flaw that you keep hitting is that you assume the government is just." The heck if I do. I'm saying that I personally support the system of voting to enact change, that I believe the only arbitrer of whether something was justifiably held secret or not are my fellow voters, and that by denying us the right to participate in that agreed-upon state of affairs, it is a form of attack. It is not denied by keeping too many secrets -- secrets leak and we make choices. But it is, oddly enough, denied by dumping entire boatloads of secrets. A just government has nothing to do with it.
      - CWuestefeld 16y ago
        Daniel, I think this has been a very productive discussion. However, I believe the only arbitrer of whether something was justifiably held secret or not are my fellow voters How can this ever happen if we the voters are never given any view into what is being kept secret? We may as well vote on "should we continue black ops project X-123?". No voter can have any opinion on the question by its very nature. It seems like this is getting us into a Catch-22.
        DanielBMarkham 16y ago
ugh 16y ago
I cannot vote for the US government. I’m no US citizen.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Then you're not paying taxes or operating under U.S. laws. Ok. And your point is? If your point is that the U.S. is the de facto world government and you would like to do something to change it, then vote or otherwise go about your own citizenship duties to elect a government which will leak secrets, make deals, or otherwise act to change U.S. policy. But don't electronically come over here and spread all our state department cables all over the world. I'm sure your government has some sort of rule about attempting to destroy the functioning of a foreign government. If not, they're about to develop one. Sigh. I keep getting back to WL being the jerks that I mostly agree with who are going to screw things up for everybody. And you know the worst part of it? A bunch of folks will lionize them for it. We won't have as many freedoms because of their actions, but it'll be okay because we have heroes who stood up for the little guy. It's depressing, really.
  - ugh 16y ago
    It looks like Wikileaks received all the cables from a US citizen who gave the cables to them of his or her own accord. They didn’t “come over”, they merely published what was given to them. I personally don’t feel like it is my or any foreigners responsibility to keep the secrets of the US government. It’s not as though Wikileaks stole them.
    - ChRoss 16y ago
      So if a robber give you the money they just robbed in other country, means you are free to use them?
      - ugh 16y ago
        Hm, that’s actually a good point. I’m unable to come to a solid conclusion right now. I will just point out that information and property are not the same and that even with property, taking stolen goods is usually a lesser crime, especially if you are otherwise unrelated to the thief. So while there are some similarities it’s not a perfect analogy.
alex_c 16y ago
>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. >Does that make sense? More than you may think. I'm Canadian. The US routinely makes decisions that affect me but that I have no say in. Now, I want to be very careful here, because I don't want to frame this as "the big bad US got some egg on their face, serves them right" - it's very easy to think this is about the US (and, well, in a literal sense it obviously is), but it's really not. What nationality is WikiLeaks? Think about that for a second. To what extent would you support retaliations against an American member of WikiLeaks by, say, the UK or German government? Here's the fundamental difference between how we're looking at it. As a citizen of country X, Y, or Z, you have every right to be pissed if an external party leaks some of your country's secrets to another country. If, however, you think that technology from the last 20 years has set us on an inevitable path to an interconnected world, then that changes things. Your vote as a US citizen affects me, although I have no say in it. My vote as a Canadian citizen affects people in other countries. And we're no longer talking about geopolitical stuff like wars or foreign aid, we're talking about everyday stuff like how my computer works. To what extent should I support your specific government's secrets? Here, a perfect example: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5504/125/ http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5504/125/ Maybe "less secrets" IS the answer, and maybe governments will never arrive at that answer on their own. I don't know. I do know the picture gets a lot more complicated when you look at it on the global level, and not just one country.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Thought experiment: pick a foreign country that most people think is really screwed up. Let's pick Saudi Arabia, but you can pick any country. I hate the way SA does things. I hate the fact that they support terrorist. I hate the fact they oppress their women. I hate the fact that they oppress their people. I hate the fact they bleed us with oil money (continue on ad infinitum, or until you get a good head of steam worked up over how bad country X is) Now. I come across a big pile of documents from Saudi Arabia. All of their secret documents. All of the details of all the bad things they've done. All of the little evils. But also some good things. Some things that might hurt people (or not). And some things that I have no idea the importance of (probably the biggest hunk, really). We're back to the 3 choices again. I can give it all to my own government. I can choose a particular injustice and release documents in support of that (and be willing to accept the consequences) or I can dump them all on the web and effectively declare my own little personal war on Saudi Arabia. Option 3 is incredible because it didn't exist before. Sure, it used to be done -- there was a big dump of secret documents before WWI that partially led to the instability that caused the war -- but not by a single person. In this case I'd pick option 1 and be very happy about it. But I could also support somebody picking option 2. This is a personal decision. Option 3 is a non-starter with me. It is wrong under any circumstances. That help clear it up? You guys are so starry-eyed by the new existence of option 3 that you think it's going to solve all these huge problems. I'm telling you all it's going to do is cause somebody with a really big stick to come over and hit you on the head. And then we all suffer because a few guys thought bittorrent and aes could save the universe.

invisible 16y ago

Voting rarely works and seems almost impossible in reference to confidential information. We vote people in who get the most out of information being confidential when they want it to be confidential. Do you get to write laws that the public gets to vote on directly? No. Who does? The government as a whole. We just pick A or B and then A or B get to choose their vote, which may or may not be the same but often is similar on sensitive subjects (do not offend the main voting demographic as much as possible so I can get re-elected). Two wrongs don't make a right is a moral dilemma, but sometimes two wrongs are good for society. E.g. 911 was bad, but attacking Afghanistan was a good response and an appropriate one.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Yes sometimes two wrongs are better for society, see option #2 in my essay. I fully support that option and hope it's used a lot. But who are you to decide that voting rarely works and take action on that? That's a completely different level than saying in certain cases things are out of whack. I agree that the system is structurally broken, perhaps beyond repair. But attacking the way its put together is an act of war. A weird little act of war by a small group of anarchists, but an act of war nonetheless. There is a difference in kind between the Pentagon Papers and the State Department dump. One is for the better good where the leaker put himself at the mercy of the taxpayers. The other is a foreign agency expecting no reprisals at all and attacking the government in its entirity, not just one particular aspect of it. You'll not get a disagreement from me over how broken things are. I'm just asking each of us to pick one of the options. I don't see any other choices available. If I'm wrong, please explain how I am wrong. Would love to hear it.
- invisible 16y ago
  The flaw that you keep hitting is that you assume the government is just. You say that if someone exposes something confidential that they are bad because they broke the law. Law is an abstract thing created to better society and strive for justice, but it is anything but just. Often, it is used for personal/corporate benefit as well as political agendas (or even favors). Doing nothing results in no change - this is probably the most illogical argument of all. You also cannot say the government should go after them for releasing information that the government said shouldn't be released without explaining what exactly Wikileaks is harming in doing so. Lastly, you cannot go to war with the government over this because just as voting doesn't work, neither would rioting unless it were national (or say >= 20 states).
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    "he flaw that you keep hitting is that you assume the government is just." The heck if I do. I'm saying that I personally support the system of voting to enact change, that I believe the only arbitrer of whether something was justifiably held secret or not are my fellow voters, and that by denying us the right to participate in that agreed-upon state of affairs, it is a form of attack. It is not denied by keeping too many secrets -- secrets leak and we make choices. But it is, oddly enough, denied by dumping entire boatloads of secrets. A just government has nothing to do with it.
    - CWuestefeld 16y ago
      Daniel, I think this has been a very productive discussion. However, I believe the only arbitrer of whether something was justifiably held secret or not are my fellow voters How can this ever happen if we the voters are never given any view into what is being kept secret? We may as well vote on "should we continue black ops project X-123?". No voter can have any opinion on the question by its very nature. It seems like this is getting us into a Catch-22.
      - DanielBMarkham 16y ago

ugh 16y ago

I cannot vote for the US government. I’m no US citizen.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Then you're not paying taxes or operating under U.S. laws. Ok. And your point is? If your point is that the U.S. is the de facto world government and you would like to do something to change it, then vote or otherwise go about your own citizenship duties to elect a government which will leak secrets, make deals, or otherwise act to change U.S. policy. But don't electronically come over here and spread all our state department cables all over the world. I'm sure your government has some sort of rule about attempting to destroy the functioning of a foreign government. If not, they're about to develop one. Sigh. I keep getting back to WL being the jerks that I mostly agree with who are going to screw things up for everybody. And you know the worst part of it? A bunch of folks will lionize them for it. We won't have as many freedoms because of their actions, but it'll be okay because we have heroes who stood up for the little guy. It's depressing, really.
- ugh 16y ago
  It looks like Wikileaks received all the cables from a US citizen who gave the cables to them of his or her own accord. They didn’t “come over”, they merely published what was given to them. I personally don’t feel like it is my or any foreigners responsibility to keep the secrets of the US government. It’s not as though Wikileaks stole them.
  - ChRoss 16y ago
    So if a robber give you the money they just robbed in other country, means you are free to use them?
    - ugh 16y ago
      Hm, that’s actually a good point. I’m unable to come to a solid conclusion right now. I will just point out that information and property are not the same and that even with property, taking stolen goods is usually a lesser crime, especially if you are otherwise unrelated to the thief. So while there are some similarities it’s not a perfect analogy.

alex_c 16y ago

>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. >Does that make sense? More than you may think. I'm Canadian. The US routinely makes decisions that affect me but that I have no say in. Now, I want to be very careful here, because I don't want to frame this as "the big bad US got some egg on their face, serves them right" - it's very easy to think this is about the US (and, well, in a literal sense it obviously is), but it's really not. What nationality is WikiLeaks? Think about that for a second. To what extent would you support retaliations against an American member of WikiLeaks by, say, the UK or German government? Here's the fundamental difference between how we're looking at it. As a citizen of country X, Y, or Z, you have every right to be pissed if an external party leaks some of your country's secrets to another country. If, however, you think that technology from the last 20 years has set us on an inevitable path to an interconnected world, then that changes things. Your vote as a US citizen affects me, although I have no say in it. My vote as a Canadian citizen affects people in other countries. And we're no longer talking about geopolitical stuff like wars or foreign aid, we're talking about everyday stuff like how my computer works. To what extent should I support your specific government's secrets? Here, a perfect example: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5504/125/ http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5504/125/ Maybe "less secrets" IS the answer, and maybe governments will never arrive at that answer on their own. I don't know. I do know the picture gets a lot more complicated when you look at it on the global level, and not just one country.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Thought experiment: pick a foreign country that most people think is really screwed up. Let's pick Saudi Arabia, but you can pick any country. I hate the way SA does things. I hate the fact that they support terrorist. I hate the fact they oppress their women. I hate the fact that they oppress their people. I hate the fact they bleed us with oil money (continue on ad infinitum, or until you get a good head of steam worked up over how bad country X is) Now. I come across a big pile of documents from Saudi Arabia. All of their secret documents. All of the details of all the bad things they've done. All of the little evils. But also some good things. Some things that might hurt people (or not). And some things that I have no idea the importance of (probably the biggest hunk, really). We're back to the 3 choices again. I can give it all to my own government. I can choose a particular injustice and release documents in support of that (and be willing to accept the consequences) or I can dump them all on the web and effectively declare my own little personal war on Saudi Arabia. Option 3 is incredible because it didn't exist before. Sure, it used to be done -- there was a big dump of secret documents before WWI that partially led to the instability that caused the war -- but not by a single person. In this case I'd pick option 1 and be very happy about it. But I could also support somebody picking option 2. This is a personal decision. Option 3 is a non-starter with me. It is wrong under any circumstances. That help clear it up? You guys are so starry-eyed by the new existence of option 3 that you think it's going to solve all these huge problems. I'm telling you all it's going to do is cause somebody with a really big stick to come over and hit you on the head. And then we all suffer because a few guys thought bittorrent and aes could save the universe.