5 ms·

What's the point of classified information if you don't punish those that leak it? Don't get me wrong, the treatment of Bradley Manning is absurd, and there sh

What's the point of classified information if you don't punish those that leak it? Don't get me wrong, the treatment of Bradley Manning is absurd, and there shouldn't be any sort of prosecution of the journalists involved (which has been happening recently), so it's fair to complain that they are coming down too hard on whistle-blowers. However, you have to expect some sort of investigation into who did the original leaks. We can also have the debate about whether they overly classify things and should be more open in the first place, but that's not the same thing.

kingraoul3 13y ago
We can't have that debate if we aren't informed about what's being kept from us.
- ownagefool 13y ago
  We barely even need to have that debate, we know our Government are using classified information to cover their own asses and for political reasons. Transparency is pretty much the only weapon we have against Government corruption, thus we really should to be doing more to help protect legitimate whistle blowers and to stop documents being classified or redacted without some overseeing from a party without skin in the game.
  - jivatmanx 13y ago
    It's one thing to oppose a system such as PRISM in the legal abstract, quite another thing to hear about the wanton details of a real one, and see the CEO's of Microsoft, Facebook and Google publicly fib under FISA gag orders.
kunai 13y ago
> We can also have the debate ... but that's not the same thing Yes, it is. The whole thing is cohesive. Penetration at the source is the only thing that will halt government secrecy, and condemning those who leak classified information is egregious and a grave disservice to those people. Classified information should only pertain to anything with national security at stake. The in-country data mining obviously did not.
- rhizome 13y ago
  I believe that "national security" reasoning has been expanded to cover the country's reputation. The security being protected is that of a portrayed image.
mtgx 13y ago
So the whistleblower law is just a "pretend-law"? Whistleblowers are needed for a healthy democracy, unless we have a pretend-democracy at this point, too. How do you uncover dirt on the government if every single act of whistleblowing and investigative journalism on the government is being prosecuted? Not only does that create a very chilling effect, but it also takes out everyone who did it, "before they cause too much damage". And doesn't this begin to resemble a little too much with some of those oppressive regimes? The government classifies everything it doesn't want the public to know these days, and then tries to arrest everyone who leaks those documents. I think we need to stop thinking about what's legal and what's illegal, and start thinking about what moral and immoral. Many of these laws are immoral.
- doktrin 13y ago
  > So the whistleblower law is just a "pretend-law"? Not sure why you used the phrase 'pretend-law' in scare quotes, since the post you responded to said no such thing. Either way, there isn't really such a thing as the whistleblower law (IANAL). Aside from the first amendment, the closest thing I could find was the Whistleblower Protection Act [1]. It's a young law by any standard (1989), so you'd be hard pressed to argue that we didn't have a functioning democracy in its absence. Your central point is well received, but you rebutted a partial straw man. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act
  - logn 13y ago
    I found this which explains a variety of protections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_protection_in_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_protection_in_Uni... Additionally it would be interesting if the leakers leaked more to get a softer punishment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_state%27s_evidence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_state%27s_evidence Also, I have to add, I'm a little ashamed of my country today. But I feel vindicated as a programmer that we were right! We knew it all along. Things like this have been reported for years. But no one cared. Finally this is plastered on every major publication and people no longer think it's some conspiracy theory or exaggeration of normal security measures. So now's the real test. What do we do? How do we fix this? Our innate liberties have been trampled and threatened. Have some self-respect and speak your mind at work, people.
jivatmanx 13y ago
The process of classifying material is uncontroversial because in general parlance, we assume that material is specific intelligence of people, place, and times. The extension of that definition to include classified courts with classified rulings used as the legal basis for programs like this... is not the generally accepted one.
- mpyne 13y ago
  I don't know why you'd assume it's specific intel of that. Classified info is literally anything that would be a risk to national security if released in an uncontrolled fashion. The 3 different tiers of U.S. classification are literally just the 3 different levels of damage that would accrue to U.S. national security, nothing more. So in the case of programs like this, if the hypothetical terr'ists know about it, that lets them know services to avoid, or communications methods to avoid, etc., which might enable them to form networks that the NSA would otherwise have been able to unravel before their next terrorist attack. So it's not completely inconceivable that there's a valid reason to apply classification standards. I happen to think that the importance of transparency is such that we need to at least have that public discussion about what types of records NSA would be storing, searching, and examining. But at the same time the NSA has literally been doing this for decades, Congress has had classified hearings for longer, and the Republic has refused to fall. I don't know for sure about classified courts, but neither would that surprise me too much.
  - jivatmanx 13y ago
    There is no Salafi army capable of achieving military victory against the United States. The existential threat is zero. Therefore, I see no reason why our sacred liberties should be secretly sacrificed as "tactics" in an eternal, global war. Better to declare global perpetual war against pools, bathtubs, or uncooked food. It would be cheaper and save more lives. Oh, and, preserve the sacrifice of those who died fighting for our freedom. Or, is a life lost to a one who has claimed jihad worth more than one from uncooked food? It may be that Bush was right, that terrorists wish us to abandon our liberties. So, too do the disciples of Leo Strauss who want to elevate to warriors the ideology of people who are merely sad, pathetic men no different from the killers of random school shootings, and deserve no more.
lifeguard 13y ago
As wikileaks has shown the government tends to classify EVERYTHING.

kingraoul3 13y ago

We can't have that debate if we aren't informed about what's being kept from us.

ownagefool 13y ago
We barely even need to have that debate, we know our Government are using classified information to cover their own asses and for political reasons. Transparency is pretty much the only weapon we have against Government corruption, thus we really should to be doing more to help protect legitimate whistle blowers and to stop documents being classified or redacted without some overseeing from a party without skin in the game.
- jivatmanx 13y ago
  It's one thing to oppose a system such as PRISM in the legal abstract, quite another thing to hear about the wanton details of a real one, and see the CEO's of Microsoft, Facebook and Google publicly fib under FISA gag orders.

kunai 13y ago

> We can also have the debate ... but that's not the same thing Yes, it is. The whole thing is cohesive. Penetration at the source is the only thing that will halt government secrecy, and condemning those who leak classified information is egregious and a grave disservice to those people. Classified information should only pertain to anything with national security at stake. The in-country data mining obviously did not.

rhizome 13y ago
I believe that "national security" reasoning has been expanded to cover the country's reputation. The security being protected is that of a portrayed image.

mtgx 13y ago

So the whistleblower law is just a "pretend-law"? Whistleblowers are needed for a healthy democracy, unless we have a pretend-democracy at this point, too. How do you uncover dirt on the government if every single act of whistleblowing and investigative journalism on the government is being prosecuted? Not only does that create a very chilling effect, but it also takes out everyone who did it, "before they cause too much damage". And doesn't this begin to resemble a little too much with some of those oppressive regimes? The government classifies everything it doesn't want the public to know these days, and then tries to arrest everyone who leaks those documents. I think we need to stop thinking about what's legal and what's illegal, and start thinking about what moral and immoral. Many of these laws are immoral.

doktrin 13y ago
> So the whistleblower law is just a "pretend-law"? Not sure why you used the phrase 'pretend-law' in scare quotes, since the post you responded to said no such thing. Either way, there isn't really such a thing as the whistleblower law (IANAL). Aside from the first amendment, the closest thing I could find was the Whistleblower Protection Act [1]. It's a young law by any standard (1989), so you'd be hard pressed to argue that we didn't have a functioning democracy in its absence. Your central point is well received, but you rebutted a partial straw man. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act
- logn 13y ago
  I found this which explains a variety of protections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_protection_in_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_protection_in_Uni... Additionally it would be interesting if the leakers leaked more to get a softer punishment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_state%27s_evidence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_state%27s_evidence Also, I have to add, I'm a little ashamed of my country today. But I feel vindicated as a programmer that we were right! We knew it all along. Things like this have been reported for years. But no one cared. Finally this is plastered on every major publication and people no longer think it's some conspiracy theory or exaggeration of normal security measures. So now's the real test. What do we do? How do we fix this? Our innate liberties have been trampled and threatened. Have some self-respect and speak your mind at work, people.

jivatmanx 13y ago

The process of classifying material is uncontroversial because in general parlance, we assume that material is specific intelligence of people, place, and times. The extension of that definition to include classified courts with classified rulings used as the legal basis for programs like this... is not the generally accepted one.

mpyne 13y ago
I don't know why you'd assume it's specific intel of that. Classified info is literally anything that would be a risk to national security if released in an uncontrolled fashion. The 3 different tiers of U.S. classification are literally just the 3 different levels of damage that would accrue to U.S. national security, nothing more. So in the case of programs like this, if the hypothetical terr'ists know about it, that lets them know services to avoid, or communications methods to avoid, etc., which might enable them to form networks that the NSA would otherwise have been able to unravel before their next terrorist attack. So it's not completely inconceivable that there's a valid reason to apply classification standards. I happen to think that the importance of transparency is such that we need to at least have that public discussion about what types of records NSA would be storing, searching, and examining. But at the same time the NSA has literally been doing this for decades, Congress has had classified hearings for longer, and the Republic has refused to fall. I don't know for sure about classified courts, but neither would that surprise me too much.
- jivatmanx 13y ago
  There is no Salafi army capable of achieving military victory against the United States. The existential threat is zero. Therefore, I see no reason why our sacred liberties should be secretly sacrificed as "tactics" in an eternal, global war. Better to declare global perpetual war against pools, bathtubs, or uncooked food. It would be cheaper and save more lives. Oh, and, preserve the sacrifice of those who died fighting for our freedom. Or, is a life lost to a one who has claimed jihad worth more than one from uncooked food? It may be that Bush was right, that terrorists wish us to abandon our liberties. So, too do the disciples of Leo Strauss who want to elevate to warriors the ideology of people who are merely sad, pathetic men no different from the killers of random school shootings, and deserve no more.

lifeguard 13y ago

As wikileaks has shown the government tends to classify EVERYTHING.