

Using Wikileaks To Figure Out What The Government 'Redacts' - ttt_
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120127/16312617573/using-wikileaks-to-figure-out-what-government-redacts.shtml

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aw3c2
Stupid link chain "news article" nonsense. Here is the actual source:
[http://www.aclu.org/wikileaks-diplomatic-cables-foia-
documen...](http://www.aclu.org/wikileaks-diplomatic-cables-foia-documents)

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yuvadam
This is not at all a new concept and has been discussed before [1].

[1] - [http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/12/08/the-redactors-
dilemm...](http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/12/08/the-redactors-dilemma/)

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jjcm
Redacting entries in documents that are released publicly is a fairly counter-
productive measure. Either give the document out un-edited, or simply find a
way to not give it at all. If you're redacting entries, you may as well be
going over the documents with a highlighter and circling things with "LOOK
HERE!!" written in the margin.

~~~
Splines
This is a similar situation to Exchange's Message Recall feature. I found it
amusing to create a rule that deleted all message recall requests.

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grandalf
More than any other aspect of its handling of Wikileaks, that the US
Government releases redacted versions (adding the additional info about what
was deemed worthy of redacting) offers a glimpse at the low level of
sophistication of policymakers.

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Helianthus
Eh.

International politics is a mess of formal declarations, informal implication,
private direct negotiation, and informal private channels.

There are rules about when it's polite for a diplomat to move information into
and out of each of these categories. The fact is that a diplomat likely has to
record the actual truth in order to communicate home, store information for
his successor(s), etc.

So the ACLU makes a big fuss over the redacting publicly known information.
It's not that it's not publicly known, it's that _someone official said it._
Admitting that its diplomats know Washington isn't responding to allegations
of CIA plane flyovers is embarrassing or at least more complicated.

Either the government can pretend that its boring diplomatic cables are top
secret, or they can cover the parts of the game they're pretending not to
play.

The absurd thing is that _everyone_ is playing this bullshit game and everyone
knows that everyone is playing it. The rules for when it's acceptable to bluff
are so well defined that lies become just as telling as truth.

