

Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press - credo
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/politics/12leak.html

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hugh3
_His administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political
criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights
with the press._

Now there's a sentence which could appear in a lot more articles...

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eli
Probably true, but if you're implying that the left is happy with Obama even
though he has not quite lived up to their expectations then I think you're
mistaken.

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sigzero
No, in fact I have seen a lot more articles to the opposite. I do think that
wikileaks is the wrong way to do it.

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tptacek
What's so hard to understand about this? Regardless of your intentions,
classified information is classified information. Belief that a program is
inefficient, no matter how well founded, probably does not outweigh that fact.
The system simply doesn't work if everyone in it gets to exercise their own
judgement about when to honor it.

Sometimes, people are going to have to step outside the system. Many of those
people are legitimate whistleblowers, and many of those people are patriots
who are serving the good of the nation. That they're stepping outside the law
and risking sanction increases the heroism of their actions. But that doesn't
mean that the system itself should change.

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samd
It's more important to be just than consistent.

Edit: Are there many cases of misguided whistleblowers that caused significant
unintended harm while doing what they thought was right? It seems that in most
cases the whistleblower feels strongly that something unethical is happening
before they come out. I think that shows there is a strong enough deterrent
against whistleblowing to prevent it being done casually. The administration
does not need to punish this man for doing what was obviously the right thing
to do.

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tptacek
This article discusses policy. All manner of principles are at play in policy.
Fairness is an important principle. So is security. So is liberty. Many of
these principles are in tension. It is unlikely that any formal policy will
resolve those tensions in all cases.

Meanwhile, you have a system in which many tens of thousands of people are
necessarily exposed to sensitive, confidential, or classified information.
Some of it impacts national security. Some of it impacts the economy. Some of
it jeopardizes the fairness of government proceedings. Some of it conceals
government malpractice.

We can't manage that system that presumes to honor people's personal judgement
about what is or isn't worth classifying.

And not for nothing, but "these programs are a waste of money" doesn't sound
like a valid reason to break the faith on classified material involving
intelligence operations.

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samd
Was he merely concerned with financial waste or is that how he sold the
problem to his superiors?

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Towle_
"I think this administration, like every other administration, is driven to
distraction by leaking,” Mr. Aftergood [the head of the FAS project on
government secrecy] said. “And Congress wants a few scalps, too. _On a
bipartisan basis, they want these prosecutions to proceed_." (my brackets and
italics)

 _Always beware bipartisan efforts_ when your nation's two parties distinguish
between each other on the basis of identity politics, rather than ideological
differences. The only efforts both parties could jointly support are either
political platitudes or mutual self-preservation.

Bring back the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans!

