Wikileaks: Good or bad?

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Originally Posted by Milton Man

Ahh...thanks, I wrongly assumed they were referring to the Wikileaks owner.

Makes more sense now.

Mark

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Espionage ? I remember when we were getting out of Viet Nam. I was for getting out then just as I am for getting out now. People like William F Buckley said that there would be a "bloodbath" if we got out. Ridiculous said those who were for withdrawal. I don't know how many the NVA killed let alone the Khmer Rouge. Certainly anyone who was even remotely suspected to have offered help to the USA.

Now in Afghanistan, where the Taliban used to take people to stadiums where they would perform amputations as punishment, many names have been released through this latest leaking of classified documents. When they cut off peoples hands, feet or heads it becomes more consequential than the mere embarrassment of a diplomat.

Generally speaking, i think that Wikileaks is just another media that reveals some so called classified information -whether harmless or not- to public. Press is another and does that even more.

Now if we were to consider that no any information that might be harmfull to our leaders nor any documents that tell some possible violations on human rights done by military forces should always be kept in secret (and i do not speak about the US or so called our sidebut whole world), how could we ever have heard about Watergate, Srebrenica, My Lai, human right violations of Russian army in Checknya, on those that happen in China. The list is endless: we can go back to Malmedy massacre, Holocaust or Katyn and even further. It was the press that first told about them to the world.
Now i do not think or believe that forces of any ISAF nation, for example, had done any crimes, but if they have, it should be revealed. There are 35 nations other than USA that have forces in Afganistan, including my country.

As far as i know, there are no so called bad secrets revealed although i haven't read or will not read them all. Mostly diplomats talking bullshit behind peoples back. Yet there are information on other countries than US that people are more than willing to get.

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Originally Posted by richmondesi

I don't agree with Ron Paul on that at all.

If I steal his personal financial information, and pass it on for the world to see, would he be ok with that because it's "true"? On a more sinister level, what if someone gave out a complete map accurately giving away the locations of our troops, list their weaknesses, and give out times/circumstances that would be best for an attack? Just because it's true, doesn't mean it's not treason. Does it?

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Not the same comparison. This is truth about the operations of our public officials. Truth as in what Enron was doing financially, not truth as in Ken Lay's SS#. We all know what Ron Paul meant, let's not argue semantics.

As I've said before, Wikileaks does not, can not, and would not provide real time information about troop locations. If someone did have that information that they wanted to expose, they could post it anywhere online (e.g. Facebook or SRP) and help their cause just the same. Wikileaks provides simplicity and anonymity, and if the data is relevant to the public then it gets published. It isn't filterless.

Meh, I thought you were an idealist. Transparency is transparency..and truth is truth.

Your argument is that whistle blowing is good. I agree with you. However, leaking hundreds of thousands of stolen classified information is not the same thing as showing evidence of specific bad deeds.

It's not arguing semantics; it's being consistent. If leaking government documents who people with intimate knowledge of the situation think risk lives is OK, you can't seriously say that leaking stolen records that could ruin one individual's life is not OK... Right?

Did you guys know that Julian Assage worked IT at the pentagon, and was fired?

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Originally Posted by richmondesi

Meh, I thought you were an idealist. Transparency is transparency..and truth is truth.

Your argument is that whistle blowing is good. I agree with you. However, leaking hundreds of thousands of stolen classified information is not the same thing as showing evidence of specific bad deeds.

It's not arguing semantics; it's being consistent. If leaking government documents who people with intimate knowledge of the situation think risk lives is OK, you can't seriously say that leaking stolen records that could ruin one individual's life is not OK... Right?

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No, he had it right. I operate by the "if you wouldn't want others to know about it, don't do it in the first place" rule, and feel that others should do the same. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time, as they say.

Transparency in operations is completely different from asking for private personal information. Unless, of course, you would rather be in the dark to the so called "greatest nation on earth" not being that great after all.

Ok. so stealing is good as long as it shows someone else's bad deeds? Sweet.

Everyone was wrong growing up: two wrongs do make a right. I stand corrected

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Originally Posted by richmondesi

Ok. so stealing is good as long as it shows someone else's bad deeds? Sweet.

Everyone was wrong growing up: two wrongs do make a right. I stand corrected

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So for you, the leaking of information about the wrong doing is worse than the wrong doing itself?

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Originally Posted by richmondesi

Meh, I thought you were an idealist. Transparency is transparency..and truth is truth.

Your argument is that whistle blowing is good. I agree with you. However, leaking hundreds of thousands of stolen classified information is not the same thing as showing evidence of specific bad deeds.

It's not arguing semantics; it's being consistent. If leaking government documents who people with intimate knowledge of the situation think risk lives is OK, you can't seriously say that leaking stolen records that could ruin one individual's life is not OK... Right?

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I stand that releasing information about what a public figure says and does is completely different than an irrelevant (to citizens and voters) and sensitive part of their life. If I say or do something that comes back to haunt me, whose fault is it? The semantics I did not want to argue was that Ron Paul's use of "truth" was an absolute literal meaning to be applied to everything, when he was clearly referring to the truth of what our public officials are doing.

If the documents do not affect the public and can endanger any lives, then it is not published and/or names are redacted. This is how Wikileaks works.

EDIT: Your two wrongs comparison also isn't quite relevant. If stealing is always bad, why do we shield whistleblowers? By that logic, the people who exposed Enron should have been the sole recipients of punishment.

Like Jimmy said, in the real world, being an idealist on everything doesn't work out so well. That's why undercover cops do "bad" stuff sometimes, and that's why the governments work with less than ideal characters sometimes.

You guys keep talking about the whistleblowing aspect of this, but then you argue that this is mostly just embarrassing stuff. So does whistle blowing just mean trying to embarrass and discredit?

No, the revealing of wrong doing isn't worse than the wrong doing. However, that's not really what's going on. So we're arguing hypotheticals and semantics now lol