In a democratic system, the point of whistleblowing and journalism is not to expose secrets that could put lives at risk, but to hold powerful people accountabl

In a democratic system, the point of whistleblowing and journalism is not to expose secrets that could put lives at risk, but to hold powerful people accountable for their actions. The latter people spend a lot of resources conflating the two. They manufacture the illusion that they are necessarily operating for the public interest, and therefore the only reason why their secret operations are secret is to keep people safe. By extension, guys like Assange are clearly criminals for violating that secrecy. In reality, in the cases of Ellsberg, Manning, Snowden (et al.), we learned that our governments were not operating in the public interest. The Vietnam and Iraq invasions were insane and wasteful, enriching the pockets and hegemonic fantasies of a tiny elite at the cost of real American lives (and countless other lives).