

One day, we'll all hate WikiLeaks - _djo_
http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2010-11-29-one-day-well-all-hate-wikileaks

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jacquesm
> information terrorist

right

> In the case of the war logs, we got a picture of a military operating in
> difficult circumstances in the most effective and humane way possible.

I think your bias is showing.

> So let's ponder the implications for the rest of us. When your company's
> secrets – profit margins, production methods, distribution deals, and
> marketing plans – are no longer confidential, how will you compete?

You mean like when TC posted the Twitter files ?

> When your personal medical or financial records can be disclosed at any
> time, will you still enjoy the notion of “free speech”?

Free Speech is not a privacy issue, and medical and financial records being
public will not limit your ability to speak out.

> Whether as private individuals or public officials, WikiLeaks will come back
> to haunt even those who applaud it today.

Time will tell. I think it is much too early to make that call.

> It will plunge us into a new dark age of Shakespearean whispers and plots.

The only thing that would have stopped this stuff from being juicy and
interesting would have been impeccable behavior, so there are multiple
solutions to this.

It speaks volumes that you would immediately assume that like any organization
that can not stand 'the light of day' that diplomacy would move underground.
And if it does that will tell us two things _and_ nothing will change so in
that case if it does not harm it does not hurt either.

~~~
lhnn
>Free Speech is not a privacy issue, and medical and financial records being
public will not limit your ability to speak out.

If one cannot communicate private information without worrying about its
release to the public, one may be pressured internally NOT to speak as one
would wish.

~~~
gloob
Then it is whoever is causing the internal pressure that is harming freedom of
speech.

~~~
scott_s
Sometimes it's self-censorship. If people don't trust that their own
communication will remain confidential, they may censor themselves.

------
chaostheory
We need government transparency one way or another. Democratic republics work
better that way. Totalitarian governments work better with less. If our
governments refuse to provide it, what choice do we have?

Ironically our governments are asking for the power to snoop in our personal
communications and records without a warrant or a valid reason. This is a
taste of their own medicine.

~~~
krschultz
Do we really need government to be this transparent? It makes sense to me that
war and diplomacy are not things that 100% need to be in the public eye.

Are some things unnecessarily secret? Of course. I'd love to see papers
exposing the motivation behind the Iraq war or about who knew what when about
torture or what is going on at Gitmo.

Do we really need to know a lot of this mundane stuff?

I think if you gave me a choice between a country in which a lot of things are
classified but the populace actually read and understood what the competiting
parties platforms were, and one in which classified documents are leaked all
the time but no one even reads the public documents to begin with, I'd prefer
to live in the former. Unforunately currently the US is the latter.

~~~
chaostheory
"Do we really need to know a lot of this mundane stuff?"

I guess this is opinion but I didn't think that the released information was
_mundane_.

"and one in which classified documents are leaked all the time but no one even
reads the public documents to begin with, I'd prefer to live in the former.
Unforunately currently the US is the latter."

Actually imo the US is a country where "a lot of things are classified, but
where most of the populace is too disinterested to read public documents or
stay current on news." However, that doesn't mean that there isn't any value
for educated, interested parties in having access to public documents.

Wikileaks is a recent phenomenom and not an age old one.

~~~
krschultz
You made the assertion that "democratic republics work better [with a lot of
classified documents getting leaked]"

I don't think you can just state that without justification. Anything juicy
enough to be a revelation will probably also cause diplomatic problems for our
country. Is that helping us? I think almost everyone in this country agrees we
wouldn't want to see Iran or North Korea with nukes, we just disagree on what
should be done about it. Diplomacy on those issues could well be more
difficult now because of this leak. Why is that a good thing? What benefit has
outweighed that cost? That now _you_ know what our state department's
negotiating plan is?

I get why certain things should be leaked when it is necessary, but this seems
to me to be one guy with sour grapes dumping reams of data for no clear reason
and some tidbits of it being interesting.

And what happens after X millions of pages are leaked when the one super
important thing (ala the Nixon papers of today) are leaked and nobody cares?
Has that made it a better place?

~~~
chaostheory
What's the alternative? Being completely in the dark about everything? I admit
that it's far from perfect, but the government is not transparent enough given
their size and strength nor are main stream media outlets doing their job well
enough.

Maybe if the government was less pervasive and more hands off (i.e. taxes and
so on) I would be less interested in their day to day affairs.

------
ajays
FTA: "[Whistle-blowing] can be ethically questionable but ultimately moral..."
and "Someone I spoke to . . . called Julian Assange . . . an “information
terrorist”. I thought the terms were overwrought, but the more I think about
it, the more I agree."

I stopped reading right there.

~~~
jacquesm
That's such an old device that I'm actually surprised the author would resort
to it, it basically says 'I made this up, and I agree with myself, you who are
skeptical now should agree with me too'.

------
DjDarkman
I really love how the press mutated the word "terrorist", it used to mean
people who cause terror, but now it simply refers to people who don't agree
with the media or the government.

~~~
Retric
I think the term always implied people who don't agree with your viewpoint.
People in the rarely call their own military "terrorists" even though they are
more than willing to cause both terror and massive death.

PS: I would much rather the term not simply mutate into yet another name for
evil / bad people, but good luck fighting that fight.

~~~
waterhouse
I learned this categorization from somewhere: If we like them, then they're
freedom fighters; if we don't like them, then they're terrorists; and if we
haven't decided yet, then they are guerillas.

------
trustfundbaby
I think that when it comes to classified information like this, it is
important to have an aim when releasing the information (The Nixon leaks
showed Nixon's abuse of power, for example)

Thats were Wikileaks went astray in my mind.

What does this show us except how the metaphorical sausage of National
Security and diplomacy is made?

What has the exposition of this information done, except make it harder for
the American government to do its job?

Releasing classified information, just for the hell of it, strikes me as a bit
silly. There's a reason that information is classified ... and if you disagree
with the reasons, then the information you release should clearly show why the
information should be public knowledge (covering up civilian casualties in the
Iraq/Afghan wars for example).

Little if any of the information I've seen has passed that test. I love
wikileaks, but they screwed up on this one.

------
DjDarkman
Well this is a really long propaganda. We need to know why is the US attacking
random Arabian nations. And the press should really stop using the word
"terrorist", because I feel that it has lost it's true meaning.

~~~
loewenskind
If you ever watched a Reagan speech you'd probably agree that "terrorist" has
been a pretty meaningless word for some time. The man literally called on
group "terrorists" and the other "freedom fighters" even though they were both
doing the same things (well, he was paying one group so I suppose that might
adjust his perspective).

~~~
jbooth
Well, at least that was properly political.

Now, it's become "someone who makes us in the media look bad for doing such a
terrible job of investigative reporting the last 25 years".

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alex_c
> She adds: “The US position on freedom of information and the press should
> not be questioned"

Heh. I know she (likely) didn't mean it the way I'm reading it, but that's
amusing phrasing given the context.

------
mfukar
> After all, despite the massive volume of documents released, there has been
> surprisingly little material for scandal.

I feel really sad reading this. The impression I've gotten from the media
(mostly newspapers, little TV coverage) about this leak is that any and all
"issues", "scandals", whatever you want to call them are downplayed, dismissed
or worse, not even mentioned. I have the uneasy feeling that had this come to
light when Bush was president, the outrage would be massive; now, however, few
seem to care and I don't see any willingness to make people care either.

As a sidenote to, quoting: "When your personal medical or financial records
can be disclosed at any time, will you still enjoy the notion of “free
speech”?" : The Greek government, with consent from EU, is planning to make
any and all citizens' financial records public. The legal basis for this
enterprise exists since 1992, and it's only awaiting approval from the DPA
(Hellenic Data Protection Authority). I assure you that barring the initial
exclamation-filled newspaper headlines, nobody's said a word about this.

So, Mr. Vegter, the people are far too misinformed and manipulated by biased
executives to care about their privacy anymore, let alone "free speech".
Congratulations.

------
lhnz
So many loaded words and there is no evidence with which to agree with.
However, I like the use of affective language and I like the way he expects
you to agree with maybes and then suddenly swings you into believing in
absolutes. It just might work on most people...

