
In defense of wikileaks - jacquesm
http://jacquesmattheij.com/In+defense+of+wikileaks
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gruseom
I've come full circle on Assange as well. After being shocked and disappointed
when he first came out with the propagandistic bias and spy-vs.-spy schtick, I
realized that nevertheless, the guy is devoting his life and considerable
intelligence to the cause of transparency and whistle-blowing. In an age where
even so-called liberal governments continue to inflate the national "security"
state and propagate fear and secrecy, we need this badly. Assange et. al. have
moved the needle perceptibly in the direction of a freer society; that is no
small achievement, and in return for it I've decided to cut him a ream of
slack.

Besides which, even if he is a media hog, he's a media hog with a brain who
speaks superb English and has no interest in dumbing or toning anything down.
Who else can you say _that_ of? Listening to him on flaccid NPR the other day
was a blast of fresh air.

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stonemetal
_That includes the old dogmatic 'access on need to know basis only' and items
like that. You really have to wonder how a single individual gained access to
90,000 documents, he couldn't possibly have a 'need to know' the contents of
all of those, in fact he couldn't have read that many documents even if he
wanted to._

Yep field commanders don't need to know what is going on, guys back home doing
intelligence analysis don't need to know what is going on in the field,
Generals in charge of the situation don't need to know what is going on. Yep,
no need to know there. And no one person isn't expected to sit down and read
all 90K documents but they need to be available just in case some one who read
the high level report needed more detail. They could go back to the original
field reports that went in to the high level report. While wikileaks isn't the
only responsible party their hands are not clean in this situation, innocent
people are going to be hurt because they don't care.

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jacquesm
An informant is not an innocent but a participant.

~~~
stonemetal
An informant's wife, cousin, neighbor, any one who is hurt to get back at the
informant besides the informant is an innocent.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, and the informant carries full responsibility for putting his family
members in danger.

