WikiLeaks is at it again-this time, State Department in "contigency" mode.

That's a standard media line as of late. A more poignant observation is that these leaks make one question just how overused and abused the "secret" label is in a supposed government "by the people".

"The main purpose of secrecy is just to make sure that the general population here doesn't know what's going on." -Chomsky

 

This goes beyond politics, if Bradley Manning is convicted of treason, he should be put in front of a firing squad.

 

I can't believe that there are people who aren't supportive of what WikiLeaks is doing. If the government will not be transparent, I think that it is completely just for people to expose what they're hiding. It isn't just the federal government either. Every single government is completely enthralled with distorting free and voluntary trade for the benefit of favored political groups. War, foreign-aid, economic protectionism, central-bank loans; every forceful act, just a part of the state's apparatus for keeping regular people down and the well-connected and wealthy in control.

 

This is almost too perfect...

Top GOP congressman says WikiLeaks should be named terrorist organization

Especially jaw-dropping in light of the FBI's recent thwarting of a terrorist plot that the FBI planned.

"Terrorism" has been so perfectly played by the powers-that-be it's stupefying how so many people have fallen for it.

 

I've of two minds on this. The first is that private communications between our diplomatic offices should stay private. They need to be able to effectively perform their duties. Foreign heads of state need to be able to confide confidentially in us with information they can't go public with.

My other mind on this is that I do not like the road our government has gone down over the last decade. Bush policies that are continued under Obama alarm me, and I fear where we will be three presidents from now with ever expanding executive powers and ever shrinking civil liberties. Maybe it IS time to refresh the tree of liberty figuratively by scaring the government.

How far removed are we from "consent of the governed?" Has Lincoln's dream died?

I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting super cynical. I know going into the past presidential election that I didn't agree with Obama on a lot of things, but I had high hopes. I looked at McCain and Obama and saw two men that I believed to be of high character. Two men I considered to be patriots in their own right. Lovers of country. Even if one was stupid on the economy (self admitted) and one was far too liberal socially I believed that both were the type of men who would preserve and protect the Constitution, particularly since one was a Constitutional lawyer.

Instead, my heart broke this Thanksgiving when people at my dinner table compared boarding an airplane to being arrested and said they didn't care when or where the government wanted to search them or their possessions because "they had nothing to hide." Maybe it is time for the people to wake up and once again become the side that wields the power in the marriage of citizens and government.

 

Ask yourself... If the government was abusing or misusing this secrecy agreement between itself and its people, how would you ever know?

Assuming you feel that you can not trust any of the political parties to honor the agreement, then the agreement is worthless anyway. It hinges on trust.

Rest assured that nothing will change except the manner in which these things are recorded and access to them. The people involved will not change, the politics will not really change, the government won't become more transparent, etc. The only thing that will change is the difficulty of attaining this information.

If you are now certain that the government is doing whatever the documents say, then screw foreign interests. You need to make things right in your own house.

There's a house. The house is owned by all the people in it. In this house, there's an elected leader, a snitch, and a whole bunch of people that are clueless. If it turns out that the elected person is having private meetings that should not be private... Do you now worry about the snitch, the leader or the neighbors?

That's putting it very simplistically, but the main idea is.. in your frantic search for someone to blame, don't lose sight of the source of the problem.

Having a snitch in the house is embarrassing, but the embarrassment is dwarfed by the fact that there is something worth snitching about.

If I can make it even simpler, it's like your parents finding heroine in your closet when you're a teen... Your first reaction is "WHY DID YOU OPEN MY CLOSET??" or "THAT'S NOT MY HEROINE" but who the f are you kidding? You f**ked up.

 

Except that diplomatic discussions often require secrecy. If you are in delicate negotiations regarding anything do you want all your comments posted privately? What these leaks do though is make diplomats more reluctantly to speak frankly and openly even behind the scenes and foreign leaders less likely to deal with US diplomats when they cannot trust that things said in confidence might not be leaked.

 

Do you believe that everything anyone does in the official capacity of the US government should be out in the open?

 

Maybe if the government cared about my 4th Amendment rights I'd be more concerned about their right to secrecy. Maybe.

 

Yeah, the media's making the point that the scandal is the leaks happening rather than any content in the leaks.

It's either deliberate or very lazy.

 

100% deliberate. Absolutely no question about it.

 

I don't deny that. And yet...

My point remains. EDIT: And your assertion above is far too generic. There is plenty of criminal activity alluded to in the leaks.

 

Keep in mind Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus, shelled draft protesters and his Admin. was no stranger to secrecy in the conduct of the Civil War.

Anyway I agree with you though that we need to find a balance in regard to transparency and the necessary discretion required to conduct diplomacy and war. I certainly think we need accountability and am principle am not against what Wikileaks is doing but in practice I can't support them. From what I saw of the release of the Afghan and Iraq material it appears to me that Wikileaks is sloppy and putting people at risk when they release names and locations of Afghans who have cooperated with the NATO. I think this current batch is meant more to embarrass the US rather than expose some shady conspiracy for the benefit of democracy.

 

I haven't seen alll of the wikileaks so I can't say for certain that there isn't something very criminal in them but at the moment I am not seeing anything truly criminal. There are allusions yes but not something that I would say is truly damning. So far the worst thing I have seen from this current batch is a discussion between the president of Yemen and the State Dept. that a US Cruise missile had killed several civilians. I agree that is very bad but that isn't something whose possibility hadn't been reported on through other sources.

 

If you are talking about the TSA that has already been debated in other threads. Also I think you are confusing things here. The State Dept. doesn't enforce your 4th Amendment rights and while yes I agree that the government should protect your rights I'm not going to hold that against them in regard to what the State or other parts of government are doing.

 

I have seen plenty of news pieces discussing the content of the leaks. Also at the moment I haven't seen anything in the content of the leaks indicating a major scandal.

As noted though I have yet to see all of the leaked material.

 

Greenwald makes some very good points...

Much more at the link.

 

Just to clarify, yes I was obviously talking about the TSA and yes I realize it's not the responsibility of the DOS to protect those rights. The comment was meant to be "snotty" and is more aimed at expressing my overall displeasure with the way the government as a whole is behaving rather than holding DOS particularly responsible.

 

We're straddling a very precarious line between the need to know and the need to maintain secrecy.

In order to maintain some level of trust and openness, governments and government officials must have some expectation that confidential agreements, discussions, and backroom bargaining remain secret or nothing could ever get done.

It's a slippery slope. While I do not agree with the rationale behind the wikileaks releases, it will force us to address these issues.

If you were a businessman negotiating an important deal, would you want your negotiations made public?

 

You mean...like Dubai and the other Arab countries?