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The Forum > Article Comments > The ethics of Wikileaks > Comments

The ethics of Wikileaks : Comments

By James Page, published 28/2/2011

Wikileaks can't ethically dump anything it feels like, as a publisher there are constraints and limits.

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skeptic, your logic is certainly flawed.

Simple set theory:

While the Government can be 'of the people' it does not follow that the people are all 'of the Government'. In fact that would be absurd, and so your first premise that Government=people is absurd. Government is is merely a subset of the people.

The rest isn't really logical either, but I don't have to go into that.
Posted by Bugsy, Monday, 28 February 2011 2:13:13 PM
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Indeed, skeptic, the framers of the U.S. constitution were very careful not to vest power directly to the people. Having seen first hand what 'direct democracy' under the Articles of Confederation had led to (pork-barrelling and the oppression of minorities by self-interested majorities), the Founding Fathers skilfully balanced the principle of 'government of the people, for the people, by the people' with the realities of governing a modern nation.
Posted by Clownfish, Monday, 28 February 2011 3:07:22 PM
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Kenny,

>>What I find most interesting about this whole issue is everyone wants to talks about Wikileaks and not about what it has actually published>>

Well I for one don’t discuss the leaked cables because they contain no surprises. There’s nothing to discuss.

Take, for example, today’s "big revelation" in The Age. The front page headline is:

NO NUCLEAR LIMIT: CHINA

See: http://www.theage.com.au/world/no-nuclear-limit-china-20110227-1ba0l.html

Here are some excerpts:

>>HIGH-RANKING Chinese officials have declared that there can be no limit to the expansion of Beijing's nuclear arsenal,…>

>>…the deputy chief of China's People's Liberation Army General Staff, Ma Xiaotian, told US Defence and State Department officials in June 2008 that the growth of China's nuclear forces was an ''imperative reality'' and there could be "no limit on technical progress''…>

>>Other leaked US cables reveal Japan fears China's nuclear arsenal will grow to equal that of the US, and Tokyo has urged Washington to retain strong nuclear capabilities to deter an "increasingly bold" China from ''doing something stupid".>>

And this is a surprise to who?

In what sense is this a “revelation”?

Amicus

My understanding is that tens of thousands of people had access to the leaked cables. A lowly private was able to download them onto some medium and walk out of the building with them.

With such a low level of security I must assume that any country with an intelligence service worthy of the name must have read all these cables long before they appeared on WikiLeaks. I seriously doubt that Julian Assange scooped the folks in Beijing.

Yes, governments need to keep some things confidential. But they also have the responsibility to set up an adequate level of security. Show me a computer system that may be accessed by tens of thousands of people and I’ll show you one that has no secrets left.
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Monday, 28 February 2011 3:39:51 PM
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Kenny,

I've read some and searched through many of the cables, for snippets of interest. A very interesting database.

But the dull, tedious style and mostly inconsequential content of individual entries reminds me of Thoreaus observation in Walden: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

I pity the people who have to write all that bumf. See it for yourselves at http://wikileaks.ch

For a very funny comment on some of the fallout, watch this US talk show host's talk/interview:

"Anonymous on The Colbert Report"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGZVL24rGY0

4 minutes, thirty seconds of frequent laughs.
Posted by Sir Vivor, Monday, 28 February 2011 3:44:07 PM
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stevenlmeyer, you're right of course - no one in the intelligence community would be surprised by anything in the leaked dippo cables, what irritated many people was the huge fuss made by the media and all the hysteric breathless liberals who thought the US was going to be brought down or undone.

I'm not sure tens of thousands would have had access, and that private would have been vetted before gaining access .. even for high grade security, there is a lot of low level grunt work filing and tidying as well as entry by low grade people .. you don't have highly trained people doing data entry. Somehow he got hold of the ability to copy records .. that's a serious breach obviously

the Americans are pretty hot on security and tend to be very serious, worse on their own so that an example is set to others, not to do it

Do they want to kill or jail Assange, I doubt it .. it's all in his mind, it's his fantasy that he is so important the US "wants to get him" they have the leaker, he'll go to jail forever, he's a traitor who took an oath and broke it .. such is life

Banks are known to be secure and even they use new starts on their staff .. if you follow your processes, this is not meant to happen .. but with the huge population of the USA, it's kind of bound to happen occasionally

Assange will damage the trust of diplomatic traffic, which will slow down diplomacy .. the Americans will fix their problem, while Assange preens in the glow of someone else's work .. you'd think he was the leaker wouldn't you?
Posted by Amicus, Monday, 28 February 2011 4:08:24 PM
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Amicus

This from The Guardian:

>>More than 3 million US government personnel and soldiers, many extremely junior, are cleared to have potential access to this material, even though the cables contain the identities of foreign informants, often sensitive contacts in dictatorial regimes. Some are marked "protect" or "strictly protect".>>

There is no way you can vet three million people. It's a physical impossibility.

BTW the diplomatic cables were linked SIPRNet. SIPRNet is an acronym for Secret (sic!) Internet Protocol Router Network.

BTW I share your dislike of Julian Assange. My defence is of the principal of being allowed to publish freely whatever is available, not of Assange personally.

Sir Vivor,

Thank you and thank you again for that link. LOL LOL LOL
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Monday, 28 February 2011 4:28:58 PM
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