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You have to be very careful here about the argument that you're making. If you're effectively saying that any individual has free reign to do whatever they des

You have to be very careful here about the argument that you're making. If you're effectively saying that any individual has free reign to do whatever they desire with trade secrets, sensitive diplomatic information, and whatnot because of a moral injury they may feel the system is giving them, then you've effectively destroyed any form of organized human activity that involves trust or secrets. Here's why: people get morally offended at all kinds of bullshit. It's totally dependent on the individual as to what pushes their buttons. So yes, good people in bad systems do really bad things. Lots of Nazis were working boring jobs as part of the system that exterminated millions of people. But as a society we generally do not hold these people accountable for such actions. After WWII most of those folks kept right on working boring jobs, this time rebuilding the country instead of operating concentration camps. Whether or not those people are supposed to feel guilt or revulsion at their own actions is a moral question -- a question between each of them and their own standard of what the universe expects of them. Confusing personal decisions with public ones is a good way to muddle your thinking.

mattmanser 13y ago
He's not even making the argument you're suggesting, he's simply trying to explain why the media has such a hard time explaining the motivation behind the whistleblowers and why they end up circumventing chain of command.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  No, he doesn't explain that. There's just some hand waving about "the bureaucracy" and "the system". I think it does a disservice to the many real whistleblowers who believe (often correctly) that by working within the system, or at least by working outside it without breaking the law, they can effect meaningful change. He makes no attempt to explain just what "evil" Manning was fighting by passing along essentially random classified diplomatic traffic, or why Snowden might have felt morally justified in leaking secrets about U.S. spying on strategic competitors. This was not the Pentagon Papers.
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  "You have to be very careful..." Not the author of the piece. People in general, i.e. the HN community
Nursie 13y ago
>> Lots of Nazis were working boring jobs as part of the system that exterminated millions of people. But as a society we generally do not hold these people accountable for such actions. So what? Perhaps if they had held themselves more accountable when they were enabling the regime then some of the horrific acts committed by the Nazis could have been stopped! Sure, as a society we don't hold them criminally responsible, but we hold them morally responsible to some extent. And we absolutely should. Just being one cog in a giant evil machine is not a good thing, the existence of millions of such cogs enables incredible evils to occur. There is no absolute here. You can't say as an absolute "if it offends your morality then whistleblow" and neither can you say "always trust the chain of command". Neither leads to a good outcome. But people damn well need to take a look at all the small things they do and evaluate if they contribute to something they cannot morally defend. And where it's massive abuses of the people by the government, hell yes, blow that whistle hard.
kijin 13y ago
> If you're effectively saying that any individual has free reign to do whatever they desire with trade secrets, sensitive diplomatic information, and whatnot because of a moral injury they may feel the system is giving them, then you've effectively destroyed any form of organized human activity that involves trust or secrets. That's a straw man argument. There are lots of innocuous things that could destroy our civilization if everyone chose to do it all the time. If everyone had their A/C turned up to MAX on a hot summer day, the entire continent will suffer a blackout and all industry will grind to a halt. If everyone exercised their right to travel on public roads at the same time, there will be a massive traffic jam everywhere. What saves the day is the mundane fact that not everyone exercises all of their rights all the time. Just like the bandwidth of your internet connection, rights are routinely oversold with the expectation that not everyone will use them at the same time. Otherwise everyone will have ridiculously low bandwidth caps. Most people who support Snowden believe that some people sometimes have a right, or even a duty, to divulge secrets. Organized human activity as we know it will, of course, grind to a halt if everyone in fact divulged everyone else's secrets all the time. But the mundane fact of the matter is that most people will keep secrets. Common sense, not strict laws against divulging secrets, keeps human civilization alive.
jbooth 13y ago
As a society we very specifically said in Nuremberg that "just following orders" is not an excuse.
Zigurd 13y ago
You are assuming that, in a post Cold War world, there is a large and useful set of such "organized activity" that depends on secrecy, without giving one concrete example. Instead what we have is a proliferation of secrecy that leads to systemic and individual corruption. Let's go probe the boundaries of transparency. What, exactly, will stop working well? If anything, it is likely to be a tiny and perhaps negligible fraction of what is now secret. That is, we may find the cost of radical transparency, especially in government, is much lower than the cost of a metastatic security state.
jchrisa 13y ago
Assange's manifesto specifically endorses revealing all secrets. I owe this deeper thought before endorsing it myself, but I have to admit the idea is appealing.

mattmanser 13y ago

He's not even making the argument you're suggesting, he's simply trying to explain why the media has such a hard time explaining the motivation behind the whistleblowers and why they end up circumventing chain of command.

twoodfin 13y ago
No, he doesn't explain that. There's just some hand waving about "the bureaucracy" and "the system". I think it does a disservice to the many real whistleblowers who believe (often correctly) that by working within the system, or at least by working outside it without breaking the law, they can effect meaningful change. He makes no attempt to explain just what "evil" Manning was fighting by passing along essentially random classified diplomatic traffic, or why Snowden might have felt morally justified in leaking secrets about U.S. spying on strategic competitors. This was not the Pentagon Papers.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
"You have to be very careful..." Not the author of the piece. People in general, i.e. the HN community

Nursie 13y ago

>> Lots of Nazis were working boring jobs as part of the system that exterminated millions of people. But as a society we generally do not hold these people accountable for such actions. So what? Perhaps if they had held themselves more accountable when they were enabling the regime then some of the horrific acts committed by the Nazis could have been stopped! Sure, as a society we don't hold them criminally responsible, but we hold them morally responsible to some extent. And we absolutely should. Just being one cog in a giant evil machine is not a good thing, the existence of millions of such cogs enables incredible evils to occur. There is no absolute here. You can't say as an absolute "if it offends your morality then whistleblow" and neither can you say "always trust the chain of command". Neither leads to a good outcome. But people damn well need to take a look at all the small things they do and evaluate if they contribute to something they cannot morally defend. And where it's massive abuses of the people by the government, hell yes, blow that whistle hard.

kijin 13y ago

> If you're effectively saying that any individual has free reign to do whatever they desire with trade secrets, sensitive diplomatic information, and whatnot because of a moral injury they may feel the system is giving them, then you've effectively destroyed any form of organized human activity that involves trust or secrets. That's a straw man argument. There are lots of innocuous things that could destroy our civilization if everyone chose to do it all the time. If everyone had their A/C turned up to MAX on a hot summer day, the entire continent will suffer a blackout and all industry will grind to a halt. If everyone exercised their right to travel on public roads at the same time, there will be a massive traffic jam everywhere. What saves the day is the mundane fact that not everyone exercises all of their rights all the time. Just like the bandwidth of your internet connection, rights are routinely oversold with the expectation that not everyone will use them at the same time. Otherwise everyone will have ridiculously low bandwidth caps. Most people who support Snowden believe that some people sometimes have a right, or even a duty, to divulge secrets. Organized human activity as we know it will, of course, grind to a halt if everyone in fact divulged everyone else's secrets all the time. But the mundane fact of the matter is that most people will keep secrets. Common sense, not strict laws against divulging secrets, keeps human civilization alive.

jbooth 13y ago

As a society we very specifically said in Nuremberg that "just following orders" is not an excuse.

Zigurd 13y ago

You are assuming that, in a post Cold War world, there is a large and useful set of such "organized activity" that depends on secrecy, without giving one concrete example. Instead what we have is a proliferation of secrecy that leads to systemic and individual corruption. Let's go probe the boundaries of transparency. What, exactly, will stop working well? If anything, it is likely to be a tiny and perhaps negligible fraction of what is now secret. That is, we may find the cost of radical transparency, especially in government, is much lower than the cost of a metastatic security state.

jchrisa 13y ago

Assange's manifesto specifically endorses revealing all secrets. I owe this deeper thought before endorsing it myself, but I have to admit the idea is appealing.