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> That's what people who blow up abortion clinics think. That seems a bit hyperbolic. Blowing up an abortion clinic is a clear, obvious, and directly destructi
by lucisferre 13y ago
> That's what people who blow up abortion clinics think.
That seems a bit hyperbolic. Blowing up an abortion clinic is a clear, obvious, and directly destructive and violent act. Leaking information may not always be done altruistically, but political motivations or not it's definitely more complex than that.
And while I can see your point, I think you have focused on, relatively speaking, the mundane issues of leaking information rather than the quite significant revelations that have resulted. These things which point to very serious and concerning issues. Not that I want to say the ends always justify the means, but regardless of the means you're going to have to deal with and acknowledge the ends. I can think of nothing less productive in the wake of these revelations than to attempt redirect the focus conversation back to the morality of the leaking itself or the intentions of the leakers. The conversation about what to do about what we now know seems to be magnitudes more important.
- tptacek 13y agoI don't know what to think about the Snowden case, which is why I didn't really engage with it my comments. It's clear that there are immediately practical revelations that have followed from the documents he's leaked. If it were just documents like the one that revealed Verizon had coughed up its whole call database to NSA under the "business records" provision of the PATRIOT act, I'd have no trouble calling him a hero. It is harder for me to be sympathetic towards Manning. The best-known "revelations" (at least, about misconduct) from those dumps were already known in detail before the disclosure; Reuters published an article that did a scene by scene recap of the video now known as "Collateral Murder", for instance.