Is Wikileaks everything it says it hates?

[TraneWreck]

You seem to focus on one word. You are aware that there were several more words in my post and my use of the word "deadly" in no way indicated that the only type of danger was that of life and limb.

So, like the Pentagon says, no lives have been terminated as a result of the leaks, but there's some other kind of danger our super-secret spy force is facing from countries other than the ones we're occupying.

Ok, any evidence for any of this?

Clancy novels don't count.

Me too.

I think you need to read this article about the relative uselessness of espionage:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/05/10/100510crat_atlarge_gladwell

At the height of World War II with the most evil and conniving enemy in the history of the world as our adversary, our cloak and dagger stuff was pretty elaborate. It was also basically useless.

If anything remotely resembling that is going on now, it's purely for the entertainment of the operatives.

"But what would we do without the spies that located the WMD's in Iraq, and stopped the 9-11 attacks, and made sure the US avoided the embarrassment of spending millions of dollars negotiating with an impostor in Afghanistan?"

In many cases intelligence leaks are not mentioned since we don't want them to know that we know that they know.

Any examples?

No, they shouldn't. But I have a problem with people thinking that everything should be out in the open. A government must be able to do some things in secret or the only time we could act would be after a Pearl Harbor/911 event. Events which would be all the more common if the enemy knew we had no way to know if they were coming.

We can make a line between tactical information and more general policy. Obviously there will be some issues that fall in a grey area, but that's true of every issue, law, and ethic in the world. I would be fine with a civilian and military review board appointed by elected leaders to examine information and decide whether it needed to be confidential or not. RIght now there's exactly zero oversight.

Let some judges and civilians get their eyes on this info and the problem wouldn't be so great. RIght now our insane secrecy fetish is causing huge problems. See War, Iraq.

 

[Travis]

I'm not concerned about a forgery. My concern is about perception. It is my opinion that every country is dirty and what the USA does is no different.

So all one has to do to make the USA seem like the worst country on the planet is choose to let people know about it's skeletons in the closet while failing to reveal everyone else's.

Maybe part of the problem is that you see this as a way to stop something you dislike (see recent wars) whereas I was always in favor of those wars.*



*In fact I was screaming for an invasion of Iraq back in 1999. It greatly disappointed me that the Clinton Admin didn't do it especially as I generally approved of the way Clinton did things.

 

[fuelair]

Actually, that is one of their goals. By revealing secret communications between officials, they hope to cause officials to act as if their conversations may be made public at any point, thus improving things.

A businessman may want to give a bribe to a Senator, and the Senator may be willing to accept that bribe, but if the Senator believes his conversations can be made public at any time, he will not accept the bribe. Rather than exposing corruption, the goal is to prevent corruption from happening in the first place.

Politicians, officials and corporations act differently in public than they do in private, and Wikileaks is trying to make their actions more in line with their public personas.

Cute, but poor example in the middle - the businessman and the politician merely need to be smart enough to never communicate electronically unless they have pre-worked out a code of a very short and therefore unbreakable nature and to use such purely to arrange meetings at randomly selected locations not normal to either of them.

 

[gumboot]

Politicians, officials and corporations act differently in public than they do in private, and Wikileaks is trying to make their actions more in line with their public personas.

Problem being that while that's great for stopping corruption and illegal things that are harmful to society, neither Wikileaks nor yourself it appears has ever considered that at the opposite end there's also times where we want our officials to act differently in private because it is of benefit to us all.

And the real problem here is that while the corruption and illegal activity will just get more sophisticated and continue (making it harder for those agencies whose job it actually is to prosecute such behaviour to catch it), it's the good secret behaviour that we do want that is more likely to stop.

Ultimately the most likely result of what Wikileaks is trying to do is that corruption will become more difficult to stop and governments won't be able to do certain legitimate and desirable tasks as well as they could. Net result is a less effective government which means we all lose.

 

[TraneWreck]

I'm not concerned about a forgery. My concern is about perception. It is my opinion that every country is dirty and what the USA does is no different.

So all one has to do to make the USA seem like the worst country on the planet is choose to let people know about it's skeletons in the closet while failing to reveal everyone else's.

Maybe part of the problem is that you see this as a way to stop something you dislike (see recent wars) whereas I was always in favor of those wars.*



*In fact I was screaming for an invasion of Iraq back in 1999. It greatly disappointed me that the Clinton Admin didn't do it especially as I generally approved of the way Clinton did things.

My support or opposition to a specific war is irrelevant to my judgment on this matter. I don't care what the war is, no matter how just or unjust, the government should not lie to the people about what's happening.

You support the war. Presumably nothing contained in the Leaks has changed your opinion. When, for example, Wikileaks revealed that Bush Administration officials repeatedly, and knowingly, lied about what was happening in Iraq from 2004-2007, you still think the invasion was worthwhile:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-...s-rumsfeld-and-casey-lied-about-the-iraq-war/

You will make arguments about why it was necessary...etc.

Why, then, do you want them to lie to us about that? If you think the war is supportable on the merits, you should want those merits in the open. Let all the facts be heard, then we make our decision. Democracy requires an educated public (which explains a lot). This is why the press is essential.

I would argue that these latest cables (in addition to revealing that Obama was lying about our raids in Yemen) conclusively prove that there is absolutely ZERO chance of a stable government being formed in Afghanistan as long as Karzai is in charge. He is stupid, insane, and corrupt. The cables reveal him working directly against American interest, accusing us of undermining his authority and plotting to have him ousted, and committing crimes to cover for his drug dealing brother.

We're going to be there for 4 more years propping up this idiot.

You're arguing that it would be better to keep these things secret? Just let the government tell us sweet little lies so we can sleep at night? That seems like a cowardly way to support a war. Again, argue for it on its merits...it's actual merits.

 

[Beady]

When Wikileaks gets an army, we can start worrying.

Start worrying. They seem to have one.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

"By this logic, isn't Wikileaks itself conspiratorial and inefficient?"

Good god, learn to use the quote feature, man.

So, you care more about Wikileaks meeting this definition than your own government?

If you didn't notice, the main topic of this thread Wikileaks and how it acts as an organization.

Okay, fine, let's all condemn Wikileaks. Now is it okay to talk about the US Government?

I'm sure there are plenty of threads here that talk about the U.S. government.

Your comment is from the same playbook Glenn beck uses... for example, exposing Van Jones as a conspiratorial, race-burdened nutjob, when Glenn Beck himself is the same thing with a MUCH larger forum. But to some people, Van Jones is somehow worse. So, they give the doughboy a pass.

Way to miss the point. Julian Assange used a very clear false dichotomy, claiming that an organization can only have one set of three characteristics. By the logic he uses, his own organization is the less flattering of them. Whether the U.S. government should be more open or not (or Wikileaks for that matter) is a fine debate, but it's a debate that is full of nuance and shades of gray.

 

[Aepervius]

Has there only been US documents released? I assumed any "secret" documents (regardless of country) passed to Wikileaks would be leaked?

Wikileak accept *ALL* sort of document from every country, but the biggest and latest is the US one. Also, due to its nature and where it started, all such stuff will stand to be US centric. Look at slashdot.org for example. readership all over the world, but definitively US centric, despite being a news for geek web site.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I'm not concerned about a forgery. My concern is about perception. It is my opinion that every country is dirty and what the USA does is no different.

So all one has to do to make the USA seem like the worst country on the planet is choose to let people know about it's skeletons in the closet while failing to reveal everyone else's.

How has it escaped you this long that Wikileaks leaks what it has been given, and is not an investigative organisation?

 

[Travis]

You support the war. Presumably nothing contained in the Leaks has changed your opinion. When, for example, Wikileaks revealed that Bush Administration officials repeatedly, and knowingly, lied about what was happening in Iraq from 2004-2007, you still think the invasion was worthwhile:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-...s-rumsfeld-and-casey-lied-about-the-iraq-war/

You will make arguments about why it was necessary...etc.

I've never argued it was necessary. I have argued that exterminating a vile government such as Saddam's was worthwhile. I was never concerned about the safety of the US from WMD's or any of that garbage.

Why, then, do you want them to lie to us about that? If you think the war is supportable on the merits, you should want those merits in the open. Let all the facts be heard, then we make our decision. Democracy requires an educated public (which explains a lot). This is why the press is essential.

As the lead up to the war in Iraq showed having facts on hand wasn't enough. Despite the terrible nature of Iraq being known for a decade I was one of a minority that wanted open war with the country prior to 9/11.

I think it is sad that it took the contrived threat of nebulous weapons to finally get the US to act and invade something it should have done for purely ethical reasons many years before. How terrible it was that I had to watch a President I despised finally doing what I thought needed to be done.

I would argue that these latest cables (in addition to revealing that Obama was lying about our raids in Yemen) conclusively prove that there is absolutely ZERO chance of a stable government being formed in Afghanistan as long as Karzai is in charge. He is stupid, insane, and corrupt. The cables reveal him working directly against American interest, accusing us of undermining his authority and plotting to have him ousted, and committing crimes to cover for his drug dealing brother.

We're going to be there for 4 more years propping up this idiot.

You're arguing that it would be better to keep these things secret? Just let the government tell us sweet little lies so we can sleep at night? That seems like a cowardly way to support a war. Again, argue for it on its merits...it's actual merits.

Well, what's changed here? The government still knows that Karzai is a duplicitous madman but we still have to prop him up lest the Taliban win. What really was gained by making this information public?