Outsourced Commentary on Wikileaks

by Jacob Davies

I’ve been meaning to write something about the Wikileaks leak of diplomatic cables, but Tom Levenson at Balloon Juice pretty much sums up what I wanted to say:

What I do know is that this leak is a reminder of what it means to live in a national security state. Not in the sense that these particular documents impinge on my civil liberties or yours. Rather, it’s the combination of sheer volume—that quarter-of-a-million cables number—and the banality of so much of what’s come to light so far.

…Once you set out down a road where each unknowable fact needs its hedge of other secrets to preserve the original wall of ignorance and so on…you end up in a position where it becomes impossible for the governed to give informed consent to their governors.

There is the obvious problem, of course: bits of knowledge that disappear into the nothingness of the security apparatus, not because of any danger they pose, but because they impinge on the autonomy of the state. Things that if we knew them we’d react badly to, the sweetheart deals or the unobservered f**k ups that it’s just easier (for some) if hoi polloi don’t know.

But those are probably the easy misdeeds to correct: if the catastrophes are obvious enough, then there are threads to pull if we had more McClatchy’s and no Foxes on the job. The deeper issue is that of the paternalistic state, one in which secrets are kept simply because everything runs so much more smoothly if we don’t know precisely what is being done, to and for whom.

Diplomacy is one of the few areas where a high level of secrecy is justified by practical concerns – the specifics of military technology are another – but that fact doesn’t do away with the concern for the needs of an informed citizenry in a democracy. How can citizens choose who to vote for if the actions of their representatives are secret? If the justifications for their actions are secret?

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free”, as some guy once said in a moderately different context. Without truth, as best it can be approximated in this confusing world, none of us can hope to make informed decisions. There are enough obstacles to learning the truth without the government spending so much of its time creating more. And one real message from this release is that much of what is secret would be harmless if public; of course, because of previous press leaks – many of them likely condoned by the government – much of what was revealed was already public.

It’s not clear to me that a truly democratic state can also be a perpetual national security state consumed with secrecy. During wartime? That’s one thing. But the US is not at war and has not faced any serious threat of war in decades.

226 thoughts on “Outsourced Commentary on Wikileaks”

  1. Via Steve Benen at WM, I found this to be probably the strongest argument for why this latest document dump was a bad thing.
    I supported (and still support) the Afghanistan doc dump, and was leaning towards supporting this one as well, but the argument Anne puts forth is very persuasive.

  2. If I were to be pointed about this observation, I would ask why you and the other ObWier front pagers haven’t released all your behind the screen discussion along with your observations about various people on the list.
    When the sole motivation is to embarrass, it should really indicate that one has gone too far, and I think this does that. The real message is not that much of what is secret is harmless, it is that nothing is secret, not your wry observations to a colleague, not your rant after dealing with some idiot and oh, wouldn’t you like to work for us, even though nothing you do will be secret? Failure to give the context, such as the person writing it, the situation they are in, and a billion other things, changes these observations from expressions of opinion to some sort of expression of considered policy of the US government.
    It will be very interesting if Assange does have the communications of a major bank and will drop them on Wikileaks and it is interesting to wonder why he didn’t release that first.

  3. These articles and interviews are required reading.
    http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-wikileaks-business-media-assange_lander.html?boxes=Homepagemostpopular
    I wasn’t aware of Wikileaks’ history before the recent dump of State Department stuff.
    I can’t wait for the dump of documents from a major bank next year.
    Wikileaks and like-minded enterprises should go after leaks from health insurance companies, hospitals (why don’t they wash their hands?) the entire financial industry, the Koch Brothers empire, and any and all corporations who operate under the new Citizens United regime and the organizations who funnel that money to political parties. I want every cocktail napkin with scribbling on it from Chinese government officials, Pakistani government officials, and Dick Armey’s Freedomworks.
    I want Grover Norquist’s kinky favorites list alongside Osama Bin Laden’s kidney dialysis records, just to name two fascist vermin who need to be destroyed. Of course, they’ll be two of the prominent fascist vermin in the world as well who will cooperate to murder Assange. Maybe we’ll see their cell phone records and maybe even transcripts of their communications with each other planning the murder.
    In fact, I want the documents from planning meetings and communications Stephen Forbes has had over the years to destroy the Democratic Party.
    EVERY Organization on the face of the Earth should have a leaker. EVERYONE should leak. If organizations of any kind, private and public, don’t like it, they can fire EVERYONE, or just become ultra-secretive fascist regimes unto themselves, spying on and punishing their own employees.
    There’s a rich, varied consortium of entities that want Assange murdered or otherwise neutralized, most vocal among them the Republican Party and their , though as usual, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party will be along soon. But Wikileaks has no national home and can’t be prosecuted effectively. It will have hundreds of copycat enterprises.
    Wikileaks is a big funhouse of trouble.

  4. I found this to be probably the strongest argument for why this latest document dump was a bad thing.
    I didn’t find Applebaum’s overwrought claims to be terribly persuasive. She ignores the fact that people adapt very quickly and that basic human behavior like gossiping is difficult to staunch. I mean, really, the notion that no one is ever going to have a candid conversation with a State Dept official is just silly. Silly ideas like that appeal to professional contrarians at Slate but there’s no reason for us to take them seriously.

  5. If I were to be pointed about this observation, I would ask why you and the other ObWier front pagers haven’t released all your behind the screen discussion along with your observations about various people on the list.
    The United States government started a war for no reason that ended up killing a million people. The United States government has a long history of working to covertly overthrow legitimately elected democratic governments. Do you believe that Jacob Davies and Eric Martin and friends have done anything even remotely like that? I really don’t think the idea that different groups of people should be afforded different degrees of privacy based on their past behavior is a shocking moral principle…do you?
    When the sole motivation is to embarrass
    How do you know that’s the case?

  6. How do you know that’s the case?
    Because, as Churchill once said about a speech in Parliament ‘this pudding has no theme’.
    I agree that Anne Applebaum’s piece is overwrought (her writing usually is), but I didn’t expect you to give the ‘well, people will get used to it’ line. People can and do get used to a lot of things, that doesn’t mean it is the best way to do something or that it justifies doing it.
    Jacob seems to be making the case that he has a right to know what every US diplomat says because he is an American citizen. I’m in the process of giving up that right now, but I would prefer to think that everyone has a certain right to keep their observations among their peers unless circumstances dictate otherwise. You obviously don’t so we’ll just have to disagree on that.

  7. I would prefer to think that everyone has a certain right to keep their observations among their peers unless circumstances dictate otherwise.
    I really don’t understand this line of thinking. Diplomats are paid to produce cables. Such writing is part of their job; the cables are their work product. And they’re not particularly private: the cables are made available to several million people through government computer networks.
    So I really don’t get how one could see a privacy issue here. Now, there might be other problems, but the privacy of diplomatic staff doesn’t seem like one.

  8. Secrecy and privacy are two different things. Both are entitled to protection to varying degrees in different contexts. The indiscriminate leak of government communications probably violates legitimate interests in both.
    It’s unfortunate that people’s concerns about government abuses haven’t been adequately investigated in the courts (Bush crimes, etc.). In the private sphere, that’s where a disinterested third party (a judge) can look at documents and make a determination about whether they should be made public. People need a certain amount of confidentiality to conduct any kind of relationship. Secrecy should extend to real national security concerns.
    I’m concerned about wikileaks because embarrassing diplomats and public officials (both foreign and domestic) doesn’t further the cause of diplomacy – something that’s way preferable to war.
    I look forward to the release of corporate information, but not because I’m entitled to it. These corporations though should be in court, and these documents discovered in a legal proceeding.

  9. A privacy issue puts too much of a point on it. What if you worked in company where every work related email you sent to your colleagues and contacts were on public view? It’s not that someone has a claim to keep them private (they are, after all, work product, so if the management wants to put them all on display, who is to complain?) However, it is problematic to the workings of group communication. If we want diplomacy to work, we can’t subject them to a regime that we wouldn’t subject any other similar group to and expect them to get the results we want.
    Going back to Assange’s motivation, he’s been quoted that the cables are directed at exposing a “lying, corrupt and murderous leadership from Bahrain to Brazil.” That seems, especially given the content of the cables, more like an urge to embarrass rather than any sort of directed attempt at dealing with a specific situation.

  10. What lj said, all of it.
    And I would go further and classify Assange a terrorist spy. Obama has a list as I recall. His source for this leak seems to have committed treason.
    But I will settle for what lj said.

  11. What if you worked in company where every work related email you sent to your colleagues and contacts were on public view?
    It wouldn’t trouble me overmuch. I mean, I already assume that every work-related email I’ve ever written can be reviewed by my employers at any time.
    However, it is problematic to the workings of group communication. If we want diplomacy to work, we can’t subject them to a regime that we wouldn’t subject any other similar group to and expect them to get the results we want.
    I’m confused…what is the precise issue here? Before Wikileaks, diplomats lived in a world where the communications were scrutinized by at least a few people and were made available to millions of people. After this Wikileaks dump, what exactly has changed?
    Going back to Assange’s motivation, he’s been quoted that the cables are directed at exposing a “lying, corrupt and murderous leadership from Bahrain to Brazil.” That seems, especially given the content of the cables, more like an urge to embarrass rather than any sort of directed attempt at dealing with a specific situation.
    Is it possible that your perspective is a little bit too focused on the US? I mean, the cables pretty clearly demonstrate that a bunch of non-US governments are at the very least lying. And while people may have believed those governments were lying before, providing evidence seems to be a real improvement on the status quo.
    His source for this leak seems to have committed treason.
    Why should Assange be punished then? Assange did not commit treason.

  12. lj: I would ask why you and the other ObWier front pagers haven’t released all your behind the screen discussion along with your observations about various people on the list
    Well, a few points:
    1. There isn’t much discussion behind the scenes here, and what there is is pretty boring. For my part I wouldn’t care if it happened in public, but I’m not the only one on the discussions (plus, did I mention, it’s boring). I don’t really talk about people behind the scenes. If I have a problem with someone, I say so here.
    2. The expectation of privacy in a personal 4 or 5 way email conversation and the expectation of privacy in a diplomatic memo available to perhaps hundreds of thousands of government employees are very different.
    3. In the exceedingly unlikely event that there was anything relevant discussed in my private conversations, their contents could in fact become public through subpoenas. The same is decidedly not true of diplomatic communications, no matter how useful that would be.
    4. I write everything, and I mean everything, with the expectation that it might become public at some point. If I couldn’t live with the consequences of that happening, I don’t write it down. Though the released cables were mostly boring, there were a few things in them that should never have been written down, or at least never written down and not classified top secret instead of sitting on SIPRNet. For instance, the orders for diplomats to spy on foreign officials.
    One of the reasons I post & comment almost exclusively under my own name is to make sure I remember that everything I write could potentially be tied back to me. Pseudonymity or anonymity are sometimes good choices, and for some people they’re essential, but using them extensively can get you into a lot of trouble when the truth comes out. Easier for me just to know that it was under my name in the first place. (The other reason is to make sure I try to post only things I can be comfortable with for the rest of my life, rather than something I can quietly disown without consequence.)

    I don’t expect diplomats to act as if every communication is going to become public. I expect them to understand the context in which their remarks will be published and understand that on a network that hundreds of thousands of people have access to, there is some chance of leaks. That is true of private email, true of corporate email, it’s true of things you write on the wall in the bathroom.

  13. Well Turb I think we punish spies who turn citizens to their purposes in obtaining classified information. It pretty much defines spying.

  14. Now this is just silly. Keeping diplomatic cables confidential doesn’t have anything to do with a “national security state”; it’s a basic ingredient of a functioning diplomatic apparatus.

  15. Well Turb I think we punish spies who turn citizens to their purposes in obtaining classified information. It pretty much defines spying.
    By that logic, a large number of award winning journalists should be executed by the government. Do you really believe that we should imprison or execute James Risen?
    In any event, James Risen has not been imprisoned or executed. I believe that’s because the Bush DOJ thought it was legally impossible. Do you agree? Or do you think they refused to prosecute him out of the goodness of their hearts and deep-seated belief in the necessity of a free-press?

  16. Marty: I would go further and classify Assange a terrorist spy
    Oh please. He’s an Australian who published some mildly embarrassing information passed to him by a US citizen. The US citizen passing it is probably punishable under espionage or military law; Assange is no more or less entitled to publish it than the New York Times, who – by the way – did so.
    lj: Jacob seems to be making the case that he has a right to know what every US diplomat says because he is an American citizen.
    Couple of things:
    1. I’m not an American citizen – I’m a UK citizen, a US Permanent Resident, I am married to a US citizen and the father of a dual US/UK citizen, and I will naturalize in about a year when eligible – but I would claim no right to read US diplomatic cables in any case.
    2. I’m saying it’s problematic to have a democracy in which significant information about the actions of one’s government are held from citizens. Period. Regardless of the need for secrecy, it is hard for Americans to make decisions about who to elect if significant information is unavailable to them. Some things clearly should be secret anyway, but does it really do the US any good for a select group of people to know that the king of Saudi Arabia doesn’t like Iran but doesn’t want to say so in public? If something is truly important, we should keep it more secret than publishing it to SIPRNet. If it’s not, why are we even writing it down?
    (Yes, I recognize the use of “we” can be confusing given I just stated I’m not a citizen. Sorry.)

  17. The Interpol warrant is for accusations of sexual assault in Sweden, not for espionage, treason, state secrets or any other damn thing related to his journalistic activities.
    He is not an American. He does not owe the US a duty of protection to its state secrets. Incidentally, in my opinion, neither do ordinary US citizens except in very, very extreme cases like the detailed designs for nuclear weapons.

  18. Some things clearly should be secret anyway, but does it really do the US any good for a select group of people to know that the king of Saudi Arabia doesn’t like Iran but doesn’t want to say so in public?

    It does the US some distinct harm if the king of Saudi Arabia refuses to talk to US officials because anything he says is going to end up on the Internet.

  19. Incidentally, in my opinion, neither do ordinary US citizens except in very, very extreme cases like the detailed designs for nuclear weapons.

    Out of curiosity, Jacob, how do you justify carving out the latter exception? Compared to a blanket disruption of the diplomatic efforts of the US government, in terms of harm to the republic it seems only a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one.

  20. It does the US some distinct harm if the king of Saudi Arabia refuses to talk to US officials because anything he says is going to end up on the Internet.
    The King of SA will continue speaking with the US government, even if doing so requires his complete abasement. SA depends on the US for its defense and relies heavily on American subsidies.
    I think this whole episode has demonstrated a lot of naivete. I mean, historically, the US has been pretty awful when it comes to counterintelligence. Such insignificant American entities as the CIA and the Manhattan Project were compromised from the very beginning. Given how widely available the cables were within the US government and given how bad the US is at counterintelligence, it seems likely that a number of other governments already have access to this data. In which case, the only real issue is that the American public has found out. You know, just like the secret bombing of Cambodia that was not secret from anyone except the American public.

  21. First of all, I’m looking at this from a functional point of view and making no claims about trying Assange, etc etc. I’m just pointing out that this sort of thing prevents an organization, especially a large organization, from functioning. And if you have an interest in having a large organization function, you might not think that this is a good idea.
    To address Jacob’s points as a group, one of your predecessors here was outed, so your argument that people should write with the expectation of it becoming public rings a bit hollow. Go here and here for some background. As for the behind the screen stuff being minimal and boring, that is as much an argument for keeping it private, because it becomes far to easy to pull out a misrepresentative quote and manufacture an outrage (cf Tucker Carlson and the Journolist) As for SIPRNet, don’t we want a resource where people with a certain level of access can look at some unfiltered thoughts by people on the scene, or do we want to send people off with simply a link to the CIA Yearbook?
    And apologies for the assumption on your citizenship, I remember you noting it previously. But if it is difficult for Americans to make decisions about who to elect, isn’t the task even more difficult in the England, where the State Secrets act results in things like the Spycatcher case?

  22. I’m just pointing out that this sort of thing prevents an organization, especially a large organization, from functioning.
    How? What is the precise mechanism?
    Do you believe that no one will speak with American diplomats now? Do you believe that American diplomats who knew that their cables were previously accessible to millions of people will write very differently knowing that their cables might be accessible to a few billion people? Or what? Please specify a causal mechanism.

  23. The King of SA will continue speaking with the US government, even if doing so requires his complete abasement. SA depends on the US for its defense and relies heavily on American subsidies.

    And how about government officials from China, which does not, ahem, rely heavily on American subsidies?
    “Refuse to speak” is, by the way, shorthand for “refuse to speak as frankly as he otherwise would”.
    I don’t think anyone’s arguing against the fact that a leak can be a good thing—when it serves to inform the public about a specific scandalous action of a government. But indiscriminate leaking like this latest Wikileaks dump represents nothing of the sort.

  24. Do you believe that no one will speak with American diplomats now?

    Well, I might be willing to tell them what the weather is like outside my window…

  25. Turb, if you believe that a large organization will suffer no significant damage because the management puts up everyone’s total work product on public view with the capacity to be searched by keyword within a relatively short time period of being sent, that’s your business. I just don’t think that is the case. As far as specifying a causal mechanism, when a complex computer program doesn’t work, do you always believe that there is one and only one cause? That seems a bit reductionist to me.

  26. The rationale for keeping the (thermo-) nuclear weapons secrets is:
    1) They are actually secret. As in, only a very, very small group of people know them and only on a need-to-know basis. This is not true for the design of the Fat Man/Trinity device, which is mostly public now. There’s no reason to suppress information that’s already public, as much of this diplomatic information was.
    2) They are truly dangerous, in that possessing them might enable a nuclear weapons state that has only been able to build hundred-kiloton-range weapons to build multi-megaton bombs. The difference is very significant – compare the green, purple, and orange circles here.
    3) There is nothing useful for the public to learn from knowing them. We know that it is possible to build a 50Mt bomb (or very probably, a bomb of almost any size whatsoever). We don’t need to know how to understand the consequences of that.

  27. And how about government officials from China, which does not, ahem, rely heavily on American subsidies?
    China and the US are heavily interdependent. China needs the US. The US needs China. The US and China are not going to stop talking to each other. That’s just nutty. Look, the fundamental problem with all diplomats is that you never can tell how much you can trust what they’re saying. That suggests that any damage from these cables is minimal: there’s no reason to believe they represent the truth, so there’s no great loss to their publicity.
    I don’t think anyone’s arguing against the fact that a leak can be a good thing—when it serves to inform the public about a specific scandalous action of a government. But indiscriminate leaking like this latest Wikileaks dump represents nothing of the sort.
    I must ask, isn’t it possible that you are too heavily focused on the US? Because this dump does represent a scandal for a number of governments, just not the US government. I think citizens of Saudi Arabia are entitled to know that their government is lying to them. I think that’s important. Don’t you?
    Turb, if you believe that a large organization will suffer no significant damage because the management puts up everyone’s total work product on public view with the capacity to be searched by keyword within a relatively short time period of being sent, that’s your business.
    Um, I know no significant damage will result because the situation you’re describing is the status quo before Wikileaks. Back in the day, diplomats published their work product to computer networks where any one of millions of people could read their work and search for it using key words. And that was fine. That didn’t destroy group dynamics in the diplomatic corps at all, did it?
    LJ, I listed two possible causal mechanisms. Do you reject both of them?

  28. We know that it is possible to build a 50Mt bomb… We don’t need to know how to understand the consequences of that.

    Quite so, but once again all this is a matter only of degree. The latest Wikileaks dump does not give the public any new information that it needs to learn. We already knew that the Arabs don’t like Iran, that North Korea is becoming a pain in China’s butt, and so forth. Revealing the *specifics* of what the King of Saudi Arabia or the Chinese vice foreign minister said serves only to undermine the channel through which they said it. It provides no more useful public knowledge than would a detailed engineering schematic for a nuclear weapon.

  29. Do you think that there is no difference between an internal network of thousands of people (millions? Really?) and the internet? If that’s the case, I’m not sure if there will be anything gained from discussing causal mechanisms. Furthermore, if you think that more opacity in our relationship with China, I invite you to trade places with someone living in the suburbs of Seoul right now.

  30. The latest Wikileaks dump does not give the public any new information that it needs to learn.
    This might be true if you’re talking about the American public. But the world contains people who are not American. And those people have interests that must be considered in any cost-benefit analysis. Don’t Arabs deserve to learn that their leaders have been lying to them? This is a very simple question that I’ve asked before which no one seems willing to answer.
    We already knew that the Arabs don’t like Iran
    This is a very deceptive way of framing the issue. In the past, “we” heard unsubstantiated claims that Arab nations disliked Iran. We did not know that they were actively advocating for an American attack against Iran. What’s more, we had no evidence that they were. Now we know and have evidence.
    (millions? Really?)
    From the Guardian:

    This means that a diplomatic dispatch marked Sipdis is automatically downloaded on to its embassy’s classified website. From there it can be accessed not only by anyone in the state department, but also by anyone in the US military who has a computer connected to Siprnet. Millions of US soldiers and officials have “secret” security clearance. The US general accounting office identified 3,067,000 people cleared to “secret” and above in a 1993 study. Since then, the size of the security establishment has grown appreciably.

    So yeah, millions.
    Do you think that there is no difference between an internal network of thousands of people (millions? Really?) and the internet?
    I don’t see how it would make a difference and you seem unwilling to say. I can see how having one’s writing scrutinized by their peers might make a difference, but that’s already the case. And these are observational reports, not fiction or creative work. I just don’t understand how Wikileaks changes anything. And if you can’t even speculate as to a causal mechanism, then, with respect, I don’t think you understand how either. Magical thinking isn’t enough.

  31. Turbulence: In the past, “we” heard unsubstantiated claims that Arab nations disliked Iran. We did not know that they were actively advocating for an American attack against Iran. What’s more, we had no evidence that they were. Now we know and have evidence.
    Which is actually exactly the kind of important information that citizens of a democracy might like to know when electing their representatives, when those representatives have expressed opinions about attacking Iran one way or another.
    What exactly it means that the king of Saudi Arabia is willing to lie to his own citizenry about his desire to attack Iran while pressuring us in private – and what it means that certain US politicians have advocated for that same policy without disclosing that they likely know the degree of secret support for it among authoritarian Gulf states – is a more complicated question.
    And that’s kind of the point of the article linked above. We (in either the US or UK) are not subjects of a monarch. We’re citizens of a democracy. We should not create a large privileged class who know certain secret – but not very secret – things that the rest of us don’t.
    As for the UK, the Spycatcher thing was ridiculous. I’ve read the book, it’s an amusing look into the paranoid mindset required to operate a spy agency and something of a warning against creating dangerous secrets. It’s not dangerous. The UK takes the state secret idea much too far, although lately it hasn’t meant all that much given the Internet etc.

  32. From there it can be accessed not only by anyone in the state department, but also by anyone in the US military who has a computer connected to Siprnet.

    Given the Grauniad’s tenuous connection with truth, justice, and proper spelling, I wouldn’t put too much weight to that.
    Outside of Siprnet, you have to establish both clearance level AND need to know in order to access classified data. I haven’t had the need to do anything with Siprnet, but it’d be odd if the rules were different there.
    So: I’m not calling bullsh!t so much as looking highly askance at this claim.

  33. My dad worked with classified information and yeah, what Slarti said. There’s no way it was millions of people. Millions ‘potentially’ had access, just like the entire world ‘potentially’ has access to your personal records, but you wouldn’t be happy if the public courthouse put up all your records on the internet, would you?

  34. And yes, the Spycatcher thing was ridiculous but it was ridiculous because the data set was constrained and pointed to a specific set of actions. A data dump, like this, does nothing to underline any problems with secrecy and so seems less like a good thing.

  35. Millions ‘potentially’ had access, just like the entire world ‘potentially’ has access to your personal records, but you wouldn’t be happy if the public courthouse put up all your records on the internet, would you?
    WTF? If millions of people potentially had access, then…we agree. I mean, almost all the reports are boring and irrelevant to just about everyone so most reports were never scrutinized by more than a few people. That’s still true today.
    A data dump, like this, does nothing to underline any problems with secrecy and so seems less like a good thing.
    I keep asking this question and you insist on not answering. The data dump reveals that the national leadership of several Arab countries are liars. I think their citizens have a right to know that. Do you? Yes or no? Why is this question so hard for you to answer?

  36. ” I think their citizens have a right to know that. Do you? Yes or no? Why is this question so hard for you to answer?”
    Because their right to know is irrelevant. Their right to know doesn’t excuse the broad theft and release of these documents, it is superfluous to this discussion.
    .

  37. Marty, the question was directed at people who believe that Wikileaks is justified in publicizing leaks to reveal government malfeasance. Or, as cyd put it:

    I don’t think anyone’s arguing against the fact that a leak can be a good thing—when it serves to inform the public about a specific scandalous action of a government. But indiscriminate leaking like this latest Wikileaks dump represents nothing of the sort.

    By the way Marty, I’m curious if you have any response to my comment.

  38. I have to say, what marty says. For someone who has written so fervently about the problems of US exceptionalism and ‘knowing what is best’, you seem to think that deciding what should be revealed is alright when you decide. If you think that the US should be going out of its way to prove which leaders are liars, don’t you think that’s going to cause some problems?
    I don’t know what the long term outcome would be of proving that Arab leaders lied (which you elide to ‘are liars’), but bad outcomes are just as likely as good, wouldn’t you say? But I do think that US-Turkey relationships will take the biggest hit they ever have, and at this point in time, it’s not really a good thing. I also think that US-China relationships might be problematic at a time when making sure that there is a certain amount of trust is kind of essential. Balancing that off against some unspoken promise of good things in Arab countries seems rather silly.

  39. I have to say, what marty says.
    So, you think that James Risen and many of our best journalists should be imprisoned or executed? I mean, Marty drives a very fine car, but he also takes you to places you may not want to go. Or maybe you do.
    For someone who has written so fervently about the problems of US exceptionalism and ‘knowing what is best’, you seem to think that deciding what should be revealed is alright when you decide.
    No, I’m just skeptical of reactionary arguments made in service of the state, especially when there’s no plausible causation mechanism.
    If you think that the US should be going out of its way to prove which leaders are liars, don’t you think that’s going to cause some problems?
    Eh? Why do you think I believe that?
    We were talking about the ethics of Wikileaks’ actions, not the ethics of the US unilaterally publishing all secret data.
    Balancing that off against some unspoken promise of good things in Arab countries seems rather silly.
    Do those good things include reducing the probability of a shooting war with Iran, a war that might destabilize the global economy?

  40. Marty wrote:
    I would go further and classify Assange a terrorist spy
    Come on, now. That’s completely disproportionate.
    What strikes me, though, is how this ties in with the Fox News discussion. Yesterday I went to foxnews.com to compare its headlines to those at nytimes.com, cnn.com, etc., and the big banner at Fox asked if Assange is a terrorist. AFAICT, this meme was introduced by Republican Rep. Peter King, and spread through the right-wing media: Drudge, FoxNews, National Review, Santorum, Palin, etc.
    Now, if I understood you in the other thread, Marty, you say you’re a conservative who *isn’t* strongly influenced by Fox. Where did you get this meme, then?

  41. So, if Assange is murdered or neutralized, does this mean we don’t get the big bank dump?
    Doctor, your very incomplete list of Republican Rep. Peter King, Drudge, FoxNews, National Review, Santorum, Palin .. you know… the original wikileakers who lied, transmitted lies, continue to lie and worked tirelessly to destroy the State Department’s mission of diplomacy under the anti-American Bush Administration and subverted this country’s diplomatic establishment in the service of Rumsfeld’s lying sh*t-f*ck murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, are now, what, a little sensitive about damage to the State Department?
    Screw them.
    They hate the State Department.
    Assange is just finishing the job the filth Republican Party started — the destruction of the American government.
    But I want the bank-dump and more. I expect Goldman Sachs will pay Peter King personally to find Assange and put a bullet in his head.
    And he will. He’s nothing but a hired gun, the whore.
    By the way, I think Marty’s thoughts are his own and just coinkadink with the poisonous media atmosphere.

  42. What Turb said.
    Bush lied us into a war and committed war crimes and Obama decided that wasn’t worth investigating, but apparently the standards are different for wikileaks. Any dictator would understand and agree with the logic there. There is no accountability for high-ranking war criminals in the US and until there is, organizations like wikileaks are about as close as we’re going to come to those fabled checks and balances we are supposed to have in our system.
    If I lived in a country where the rule of law applied to everyone, I might take a stricter line on what wikileaks should or should not do. But I don’t. And I don’t put much stock in “diplomacy” either, not if it means persuading the government of Yemen to lie about our killing of people inside Yemen. Diplomacy is, in this case, just part of the process of killing people.

  43. So, you think that James Risen and many of our best journalists should be imprisoned or executed? I mean, Marty drives a very fine car, but he also takes you to places you may not want to go. Or maybe you do.
    I was going to say something like ‘I don’t believe I’m typing this’, but I thought it was needlessly inflammatory, so I just said ‘I have to say’. Thanks for taking the ball the rest of the way. I realize that you have roots/connections to the Middle East, but do you really think I should laud this because it might help the citizens of another country do something to their leaders? I thought you kinda got the notion of unintended consequences, but now, I’m not so sure. And anyway, trying tie me to Marty’s other comments on the subject when I specifically wrote
    First of all, I’m looking at this from a functional point of view and making no claims about trying Assange, etc etc.
    makes it seem like you’ve got some problem. But who are you going to believe, what I wrote in the thread, or what you want me to have said? In fact, you quote cyd saying
    I don’t think anyone’s arguing against the fact that a leak can be a good thing—when it serves to inform the public about a specific scandalous action of a government. But indiscriminate leaking like this latest Wikileaks dump represents nothing of the sort.
    I bold the last part because you didn’t seem to understand that. I’m not sure how much different my opinion is from that, or from Catsy’s up top. At any rate, something has gotten your back up, so I leave the thread to you and hope whatever burr is under your saddle, it will work its way out.

  44. There once was a time when the US (and btw the then still infant Soviet Union) considered secret diplomacy to be an abomination and a danger to peace. It was considered to have played a significant part in what developed into the First World War. The, admittedly naive, assumption was that abolishing secret diplomacy could prevent this from happening again. The infamous Zimmermann telegram affair would have been far less explosive in my opinion, if a) the participants had not believed that they could deal in secrecy and b) it had not been sprung on an unsuspecting US public.

    If Chain-Eye had prevailed and the US attacked Iran then the talks between the US, the Arab states and Israel would have been a conspiracy to start a war of aggression, which iirc is a hanging offence.

    At the agency I work for the policy is: every internal communication is to be treated as confidential but also conducted in a way that exposure will not cause embarassement, i.e. ‘assume that everyone can read this but don’t spread it yourself’.

    Anyone assuming that confidential info given to the US will stay confidential has not paid attention. Incompetence and malice are strong forces there and short term political gains (even just perceived ones) are rated higher than anything else by too many.

  45. The sad thing is that so many people seem to have no problem at all (“I’ve got nothing to hide”) with the state (and increasingly corporations) knowing almost everything about us, but when the tables are turned ever so often they all come out alleging bloody murder, spying and treason.

  46. And as for the “functioning diplomatic apparatus”, I urge everyone to read Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars”, which describes US policy and diplomacy towards Pakistan/Afghanistan from Carter to 9/11. It’s an embarrassing history of failures that will erode anyone’s trust in the powers that be doing the right thing if left unchecked, which seems to be an underlying assumption behind the critics of transparency.

  47. do you really think I should laud this because it might help the citizens of another country do something to their leaders? I thought you kinda got the notion of unintended consequences, but now, I’m not so sure.
    Um…yes? I don’t really see an alternative here. Are we supposed to do everything possible to help middle eastern dictators keep their people powerless and oppressed? I mean, if we were talking about a right-wing dictatorship in latin America like Pinochet’s, surely you wouldn’t suggest that refuse to publish information about Pinochet’s death squads because it might lead to….what, democracy? Justice?
    In any event, you seem to be making this weird mental leap in assuming that releasing any information that makes Arab dictators look bad inevitably causes bloody revolutions. I don’t find that likely — it seems much more likely that such information, released over time, is the prerequisite for gradual social change. But perhaps I’m misreading you: can you explain what you meant by unintended consequences?
    But indiscriminate leaking like this latest Wikileaks dump represents nothing of the sort.
    I bold the last part because you didn’t seem to understand that.
    I understand cyd’s claim and believe it to be wrong. The cables document a great deal of government malfeasance — much of it happens to be non-US government malfeasance though. I don’t subscribe to this apparently common belief that publicizing government malfeasance is only good when the government in question is the US government.
    At any rate, something has gotten your back up, so I leave the thread to you and hope whatever burr is under your saddle, it will work its way out.
    I don’t think speculating on people’s emotionally state is generally helpful. I mean, you don’t see me speculating about how your long immersion in a deeply authoritarian culture seems to have colored your opinions on Wikileaks, do you? 😉

  48. “I don’t think anyone’s arguing against the fact that a leak can be a good thing—when it serves to inform the public about a specific scandalous action of a government. But indiscriminate leaking like this latest Wikileaks dump represents nothing of the sort.”
    I don’t know about Turb, but that’s part of what has my back up, that and a few other comments you’ve made in this thread, lj. I don’t want and don’t expect convenient carefully targeted leaking–I want the equivalent of a carpetbombing campaign where diplomats smooching with corrupt leaders overseas never know whether their lies will go public. I want them constantly wondering if this or that policy, this or that laughing agreement to lie about who is launching the missiles, will go public. And it’s just bizarre to think that we shouldn’t expose a dictator for fear of unintended consequences. Maybe we shouldn’t actively collude with lying Arab dictators–I seem to remember reading now and then that our collusion with them has led to the ordinary Arab wondering about our commitment to democracy and openness.
    And I don’t care to line up with the liars, war criminals, and enablers of war criminals in being appalled by wikileaks and their irresponsibility. Now maybe if I lived in a country where there were serious attempts at uncovering lies and war crimes conducted by my government I could trust that government to be our wise and benevolent overlord and decide for itself what should be classified and what shouldn’t. But I live in America. There is little chance that the hypocrites in power, whether Democrat or Republican, will ever take seriously the notion that they themselves should be held accountable. They need help in coming to that realization. Currently they think that being an American official automatically means they can’t be war criminals, and their idea of accountability is losing an election and becoming a lobbyist or retiring to live in comfort. One reason for this arrogance is that people on the left are so quick to accept this reality and then turn right around and join in the chorus of condemnation for wikileaks just as though the real threat to democratic values comes mainly from cyber anarchists.

  49. Now maybe if I lived in a country where there were serious attempts at uncovering lies and war crimes conducted by my government I could trust that government to be our wise and benevolent overlord and decide for itself what should be classified and what shouldn’t. But I live in America.
    Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

  50. Doc, as CM–in said (thanks), I am quite capable of having a thought on my own and, as I have said before, I don’t watch Fox News except in the occasional airport.
    Turb, I find the comparison between a journalist spending time gathering sources and breaking a specific story and recruiting people to steal a large number of classified government documents pretty weak.
    I will also admit I find Assange, a self described anarchist, pretty unsympathetic and his goals simply to stir the pot for personal gain. Whatever good might be perceived from this is incidental to his self aggrandizement and the potential harm.

  51. Turb, I find the comparison between a journalist spending time gathering sources and breaking a specific story and recruiting people to steal a large number of classified government documents pretty weak.
    Marty, you called for his execution specifically because he convinced an American to turn over classified information. Which is exactly what Risen and other journalists did. Now, did you have an actual legal principle in mind or do you think the state should execute Assange because you don’t like him? If you did have an objective legal principle, would you mind explaining it and specifying why it requires that Assange be executed while Risen walks free? I’d appreciate it.
    Whatever good might be perceived from this is incidental to his self aggrandizement and the potential harm.
    Tis funny you say that, because I think the exact same thing about most high ranking military officers. Somehow, I don’t think you view Gen Petreus that way though.

  52. “Somehow, I don’t think you view Gen Petreus that way though.”
    But you are wrong, I find the warrior king offensive in his belief he should be followed blindly with little to no civilian oversight.

  53. “”Somehow, I don’t think you view Gen Petreus that way though.”
    But you are wrong, I find the warrior king offensive in his belief he should be followed blindly with little to no civilian oversight.”
    Rereading this, I need to add that I despise the sychophantic worship of every word he says by seemingly everyone in government from McCain to Obama, not to mention the DoD leadership and the Joint Chiefs.
    But then I don’t think we should be in Afghanistan either, what do I know.

  54. What if you worked in company where every work related email you sent to your colleagues and contacts were on public view?
    In fact I, and I suspect many others who comment on this blog, do. I teach at a public university in a state with very broad sunshine laws. It’s actually very, very easy for the public to gain access to any e-mails I send on my work account.
    Now maybe if I lived in a country where there were serious attempts at uncovering lies and war crimes conducted by my government I could trust that government to be our wise and benevolent overlord and decide for itself what should be classified and what shouldn’t. But I live in America.
    A thousand times this.

  55. I don’t think speculating on people’s emotionally state is generally helpful. I mean, you don’t see me speculating about how your long immersion in a deeply authoritarian culture seems to have colored your opinions on Wikileaks, do you? 😉
    Actually, that would be a fair point in many ways. But if you want to suggest I want Risen assassinated because I live in japan, you may want to check the steps to get from from one point to the other. But seriously, if there is something that really gets on your nerves about this beyond what we have discussed, I would be more than interested in knowing about it rather than make the assumption that you are just being a jerk. You’ve basically come after me with a flamethrower, when cyd, Catsy, and sapient have voiced similar opinions to me. This is not encouraging you or Donald to declare open season on them, but I’m at a loss to understand why a statement like
    I’m concerned about wikileaks because embarrassing diplomats and public officials (both foreign and domestic) doesn’t further the cause of diplomacy – something that’s way preferable to war.
    can become your thing about not supporting Arab people because it is refusing to reveal that their leaders are liars (I can’t even guess how to get the grammar right to explain that), or as DJ says, ‘lining up with war criminals’.
    As far as the Silber link goes, it sounds to me like ‘let’s turn over the whole damn applecart’. I certainly cop to feeling that from time to time, but somehow, given that there is a Democratic administration that is actually trying to use diplomacy, I don’t think it would turn out as he (or you) thinks it would. As a counterbalance, this column by Robert Farley offers this:
    In the context of any discussion about negotiations, the release of the cables brings up some relevant issues of diplomatic secrecy. As Pei suggests, not thinking about a North Korean collapse would be the height of irresponsibility for policymakers in the United States, South Korea, Japan, and China. Since the final status of North Korea affects the interests of all four powers, policy coordination will be necessary. However, none of the states involved can publicly discuss contingency plans for a North Korean collapse. Evidence that South Korea and the United States were actively colluding in planning for the aftermath of such a contingency would probably quash any hopes for the Six-Party Talks. Open Japanese participation in such talks could inflame opinion in both Koreas and in Japan. Perhaps most important, evidence that China had broached the topic of a North Korean collapse with the United States and South Korea might serve to make Pyongyang even more paranoid and reckless.

  56. To diverge from hating on Assange for a minute, I’d like to address this point in Jacob’s original post:
    It’s not clear to me that a truly democratic state can also be a perpetual national security state consumed with secrecy.
    And also to touch on this, from Marty:
    I find the warrior king offensive in his belief he should be followed blindly with little to no civilian oversight.
    As a point of interest, the so-called “black” – i.e., classified – portion of the DoD budget is now north of $50B a year.
    That makes the US *classified* military expenditure comparable to total military expenditures of the UK, China, or France.
    And that is just the DoD money, there is “black” money throughout the budget.
    That’s a lot of money.
    How many members of Congress are read in to these programs?

  57. In fact I, and I suspect many others who comment on this blog, do.
    No, you don’t. Unless your school offers up your private email to anyone who has an internet connection, with your mails searchable for keywords. And furthermore, I don’t think that someone could demand access anonymously, so you would at least know who knew what and what they had asked for.

  58. No, you don’t. Unless your school offers up your private email to anyone who has an internet connection, with your mails searchable for keywords. And furthermore, I don’t think that someone could demand access anonymously, so you would at least know who knew what and what they had asked for.
    I didn’t claim that my e-mails are in the same state as those in the Wikileaks dumps.
    But the question I was responding to was what I would think about working in a company in which every work related e-mail I sent or received was viewable by the public. And, in fact, that is the case in my job, even if, in the case of my job, someone needs to formally ask to see these e-mails through a series of bureaucratic procedures.

  59. “somehow, given that there is a Democratic administration that is actually trying to use diplomacy,”
    I don’t assume their intentions are good. Diplomacy is just another tool, and as we knew without wikileaks, it’s often used to further the cause of war and/or other Bad Things. In this case it seems Arab leaders are secretly urging us to start yet another disastrous war, this time with Iran. I’m glad they’ve been exposed. Yemen has been lying on our behalf regarding who is launching air strikes in their country. Wikileaks exposed that. Good.

  60. I wrote ‘on public view’. I suppose you could read that as ‘the public could view it’, but in the next sentence, I said
    if the management wants to put them all on display
    That is not the same as making a request to see them. If you want to argue that this is a good management technique, go ahead. I really don’t see how it would be.

  61. People, please try and keep the flames to a minimum. Not that you haven’t already shown restraint, just that it seems to me that we have an incipient flamefest going on here, and this is much too important of an issue to have it devolve into a shouting match to be won by the angriest & loudest.
    My own personal opinion in this matter is that the most damage done by this leak is to our credibility in the matter of keeping confidential discussions properly protected. If the statesmen (statespeople?) of other nations cannot trust us to protect things they say to or around us, they will stop having those discussions with or near us. Or they’ll not entrust us with information they might otherwise entrust us with.
    But I have had a really limited exposure to what’s actually in the documents, so there is likely a lot more to this than I think. Which is mostly why I’ve stayed out of it.

  62. If you want to argue that this is a good management technique, go ahead. I really don’t see how it would be.
    It’s an interesting question whether my University, if it wanted to, could data-dump all of its employees’ e-mail a la Wikileaks.
    Would that be a good management technique? I think not. But that’s really a different question.
    Your original question was what it would be like to work in a job where that might happen. And I honestly cannot say that it couldn’t happen here…nor can I count on it not happening (though I should say that I see absolutely no sign that my current administration would do this).
    The point is that I actually do assume that I can count on virtually no confidentiality or privacy in anything I write or receive in any work related e-mail. And yet I manage to do my job.

  63. LJ, my apologies for suggesting you completely agreed with Marty regarding executing journalists; I read but totally failed to process your comment about not wanting to do so. My mistake and my apologies to you.
    You’ve basically come after me with a flamethrower, when cyd, Catsy, and sapient have voiced similar opinions to me.
    Catsy made one comment, which I responded to. That’s it. There’s nothing else I can say to Catsy because he’s not here. Cyd made a few comments and I think I’ve responded to them all. sapient has also made only one comment but I find it way too sad to respond to.
    You gotten more attention because (1) you’ve posted a lot more than the others — in fact, more than the rest of them put together. I can’t respond to comments that are not made. (2) I expect better from you — the quality of argumentation you’ve displayed in this thread is not at all what I’ve come to expect of you. Obviously, you don’t owe me anything, but you asked why, so….(3) You’re refusing to identify causal mechanisms and your argument consistently focus on weird strawman positions that no one is actually advocating. Cyd at least suggested a mechanism, albeit one that I thought was wrong.
    Finally, your comments seemed to have flirted with what I consider anti-Arab sentiment. For example, your repeated insistence that no public good was served because the only government malfeasance exposed was that of Arab governments plus there’s your bizarre notion that the US has an obligation to protect Arab dictators no matter what. Frankly, I don’t usually see anyone here saying vile stuff like that, so I do find it a little shocking.

  64. So the syllogism is:
    1.) War bad
    2.) Diplomacy good
    3.) Diplomacy requires secrecy and as long as the threshold to war is not crossed, we should just trust them to do the right thing.

  65. Diplomacy is just another tool, and as we knew without wikileaks, it’s often used to further the cause of war and/or other Bad Things. In this case it seems Arab leaders are secretly urging us to start yet another disastrous war, this time with Iran. I’m glad they’ve been exposed. Yemen has been lying on our behalf regarding who is launching air strikes in their country. Wikileaks exposed that. Good.
    I find this compelling. The issue isn’t really about whether or not exposing diplomatic cables will further or harm diplomacy in general, I don’t think. It’s a question of what sort of diplomacy it will further or harm. If diplomats and governments are less willing to make potentially embarassing deals, that are potentially embarassing because they are immoral, that’s a good thing, IMO.
    To engage in a bit of diplomacy of my own, I’d like to suggest that most (maybe all) of us can agree that there are competing interests in tension here. And I think we can agree for the most part on what those competing interests are, even if we disagree on which of them are more compelling that the others. It’s a matter of relative subtlety which side you come down on as a commenter on this blog when considered against what other, um, let’s say more reactionary people elsewhere are saying. (So Kumbaya, em-effers.)

  66. This, as a small exercise:
    http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/11/willful-self-destruction
    I normally would agree with much of lj’s reaction expressed here (particularly his concern about damaging a Democratic Administration’s diplomatic endeavors), but my slant (expressed much better by Donald Johnson, though with different accents) is that my country is in the grip of a nihilistic rabble in the guise of what used to be called the Republican Party who want no governance (domestically they resemble the murderous Confederate Constitution dressed up as a shallow, crappy reality show and their overseas stance is perpetual war and the perpetual direction of tax dollars to the national security state) and seek only to destroy their enemies and the institutions of their enemies, who are legion, in their eyes.
    Just as their sadistic, hateful, extreme rhetoric should be met and countered with even more sadistic, hateful, extreme rhetoric, rather than sit-downs for “compromise”, so their nihilism should be met and countered with a darker, deeper, more vicious and ultimately more damaging nihilism.
    They want enemies? Good, I’m your man. Do you like Alan Simpson’s maniacal cackle? Well, get a load of my world-ending cackle, baby, if cackling over others’ misfortunes is your deal.
    Do they want to burn down the house to achieve whatever their ultimate endgame happens to be? Good, here’s some gasoline and let me help you strike the match. I don’t even care that my guy occupies the master bedroom in the house. Now, we’re all our in the street and I don’t care anymore. Is this what you wanted? Now, let’s fight, you effing jagoffs.
    Just so, Assange’s efforts are in many respects deeply nihilistic. While the Republican Party lights fires in the basement while blocking the egress, Assange is throwing lit torches onto the roof.
    Note: I don’t let the Obama Administration off the hook on various issues, but their response to the most dangerous organization on the face of the Earth — the Republican Party — is pathetic.
    Note also: Thanks for the opportunity to rant. I think I’ll get out of my bathrobe now cause I think I smell smoke and may have to slide down the nihilistpole.. I’m just powerless prole #101,017,938.
    Note #3: Marty and I both want out of Afghanistan. The public has spoken.
    Note #4: I admire Richard Lugar in many ways.

  67. Note #4: I admire Richard Lugar in many ways.
    really?
    cause he just signed a letter stating that he, along with the rest of the Senate GOP, intends to hold the Senate hostage “until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers”.
    some might say the first part of that quote is at odds with the second part. but those people aren’t Dick Lugar, or his fellow lunatics.

  68. I suspect if Assange dumped emails and cell phone conversations of global warming scientists, or records of the Defense Department’s inner deliberations regarding the security implications of a warming planet, that Dick Armey, Karl Rove, and Erick Erickson would hook him up with a pimp costume and a micro-video-audio recording device, and sic him on the head of the National Academy of Sciences.

  69. “The issue isn’t really about whether or not exposing diplomatic cables will further or harm diplomacy in general, I don’t think. It’s a question of what sort of diplomacy it will further or harm. If diplomats and governments are less willing to make potentially embarassing deals, that are potentially embarassing because they are immoral, that’s a good thing, IMO.”
    What about Japan, South Korea and China talking about what to do about the eventual collapse of North Korea as lj talked about above? They obviously can’t do that publicly without risking serious problems that are likely to end up with lots of dead people, but not being able to talk about it privately is likely to cause lots of extra dead people when NK collapses. This isn’t just stopping the ‘immoral’ diplomacy.

  70. Cleek: “really?
    Well, that’s not one of the “many ways”
    But I prefer part-time lunatics, like myself, to the full-time variety now nipping at Lugar’s heels from within his lunatic Party.
    There still seems to be a way of doing business with the guy,
    That said, if the Republicans shut down the government over taxes, they’d better never open it again.

  71. some might say the first part of that quote is at odds with the second part
    Maybe what they have if mind is for all Senators to direct all of their fund-raising activities to retiring the federal deficit.
    Maybe even write some personal checks.
    I’d support their doing that.
    Yeah, Lugar’s a pretty good guy, but only in context.
    Just so, Assange’s efforts are in many respects deeply nihilistic.
    D’accord.
    Anarchistic hijinks are all well and good, but it ain’t just “the man” that he’s sticking it to.
    Kumbaya, em-effers
    I so want that on a T-shirt and/or a bumper sticker.
    Maybe a tattoo, on my knuckles.

  72. What about Japan, South Korea and China talking about what to do about the eventual collapse of North Korea as lj talked about above? They obviously can’t do that publicly without risking serious problems that are likely to end up with lots of dead people, but not being able to talk about it privately is likely to cause lots of extra dead people when NK collapses. This isn’t just stopping the ‘immoral’ diplomacy.
    What makes you think that NK wasn’t fully aware of the contents of all these conversations before Wikileaks came along? Are we to believe that the US is just totally awesome at counterintelligence now, despite its long history of counterintelligence failure? Should we just assume that there’s no faction in the Chinese/Japanese/SK governments that might be funneling really basic information like ‘we’re all talking about what happens post-Kim’ to NK?
    You know, the American government has been predicting the imminent collapse of NK for several decades now. That’s a long history of wrongness. Frankly, I’m not sure lots of planning by people who have consistently been wrong for decades is really helpful. I mean, if we know so little about the internal state of NK that we can’t even determine whether NK is about to collapse, what makes you think we know enough to successfully plan out, in advance, a NK collapse?
    One thing that Iraq helped crystallize is that Americans are absolutely convinced they have a lot more control over the world than they actually do. Perhaps that same bias is at work here as well.
    Finally, the US government can always say “this is a one-off; screw ups happen and this one won’t happen again” — and that’s a pretty credible argument. Right now, Wikileaks has one and only one DOD leaker, and he’s behind bars facing a long prison term. Its unlikely they’ll be able to find someone who can steal lots of diplomatic cables in the short term (and hey! NK will no doubt collapse any day now!). Can someone explain to me why the Chinese government would simply assume that leaked diplomatic cables are just going to be the new normal?

  73. This isn’t just stopping the ‘immoral’ diplomacy.
    Like I said, there are competing interests in tension here. I get that, Sebastian, and contingency planning for NK is something that might be more difficult (as opposed to being stopped), and that’s nothing to ignore. But I think things that are really necessary will get done somehow.
    In a perfect world, I’d like to see international malfeasance (let’s assume for now that we agree on what falls under that category) exposed, while leaving governments to act in good faith without undue, premature and potentially damaging scrutiny. But what we’re talking about now is Wikileaks dump versus no Wikileaks dump. Is it a net good thing or a net bad thing? I certainly wouldn’t suggest that it’s a perfect thing.

  74. There are some things wikileaks shouldn’t print. They’ve been accused of printing the names of innocent people in Afghanistan and/or Iraq, putting them in danger and if that’s true (which I don’t know), they shouldn’t have done it. If they obtain private medical records that shouldn’t be printed. Ditto for any classified quick and easy ways for constructing nuclear weapons in your garage. If they listen in on, say, US/Chinese/South Korean/Japanese discussions on what to do about North Korea–well, in that case maybe it depends on what is said. There is a case for secrecy here. But maybe we should have some inkling of what our wonderful government planners have in store for the Korean peninsula, given how effectively they’ve planned for Iraq and Afghanistan.
    So there are extreme scenarios where one would (with huge misgivings) sympathize with the US government’s desire for secrecy, but on the whole I think it’s the same issue we have with a free press in general or would have, if the press were less servile. I almost forgot what sort of press we have. Wikileaks is a reminder of what the press should be doing.

  75. Donald Johnson, the lines that you personally draw about what should be kept from the public supports my earlier point. We all agree that some stuff shouldn’t be disclosed – we just may disagree about what that stuff is. That’s why the document dumping is a bad idea – no one who represents our collective interests (not to mention your particular interests or mine) is really scrutinizing the information for what legitimately is harmful.
    We vote for an executive who, to a certain degree, carries with him the trust of the people (until impeachment or the next election). Foreign policy historically has been accomplished in part by using diplomats who establish trust relationships with other countries’ diplomats where candor is essential. I think it’s ridiculously unrealistic and unworkable for every communication between these people to be made a matter of public record. Without confidentiality, no possibility exists for people to put their cards on the table when their cards often include knowledge of embarrassing and inconvenient facts.

  76. That’s why the document dumping is a bad idea – no one who represents our collective interests (not to mention your particular interests or mine) is really scrutinizing the information for what legitimately is harmful.
    That’s why the document dumping is an imperfect idea. But it’s better than not doing it because no one who represents our collective interests (not to mention your particular interests or mine) is really scrutinizing claims of secrecy for what legitimately is harmful.

  77. And I think people need to stop talking as though Wikileaks has somehow changed the universe to make any and all secrecy impossible.

  78. What makes you think that NK wasn’t fully aware of the contents of all these conversations before Wikileaks came along?
    It’s not that NK isn’t aware, it is that any of the countries stepping ahead of the others could lead NK to either use that to prevent any kind of consensus. Japan needs to think about what a post NK world looks like and it needs to synch with China, SK and the US. It can’t do it publicly. The same goes for the other three countries. Why is that so hard to understand? It is not a question of awareness of positions, it is a question of whether a nation can be seen publicly advocating a particular course.
    And hairshirt, I don’t think it is a question of wikileaks dump versus no dump. I thought we were discussing the wisdom of what was done and the way it was done. The noun ‘dump’ suggests that there was no care in choosing what was put out so the question is a dump versus a leak on a specific subject. A leak implies some knowledge about the context and therefore some idea of what is important and why.
    They are the cables of the State Department. If you could get the cables of, say, the rest of the security council, I’d be a lot more sanguine about this. And if Assange dumps a major bank’s internal communications, I’d be absolutely delighted. But I’m trying to see what evil has been prevented though this release. I’m not seeing anything being prevented, I’m just seeing the State Department further reduced in power and influence. Don’t we want diplomacy to be the first line of defense?
    As for anti Arab feeling, I just don’t see how State department cables about US impressions of Arab leaders is going to make any difference in supporting domestic change in those countries. Right to know doesn’t really enter into it, I just don’t see how what we know about the cables will make any difference with Arab nations. I don’t think that they will have us reexamine the military aid they receive, I don’t think we will re-evaluate our relationships, though we should. If you postulate this dump as a good thing, then you have to explain what good things will come out of it. I think it is just going to leave us at the status quo.

  79. Donald Johnson: I want them constantly wondering if this or that policy, this or that laughing agreement to lie about who is launching the missiles, will go public.

    Apparently that’s what Wikileaks wants as well.
    lj, this reflects the fundamental disagreement I have with your position. You’re presenting a baby-and-bathwater argument, with malfeasance as the bathwater and privacy as the baby. But ultimately the implication is that the ability of large powerful organizations to conceal their internal deliberations should remain just as as cheap, easy and reliable as it is now, rather than being made more expensive, difficult, and unreliable.

    Sebastian: This isn’t just stopping the ‘immoral’ diplomacy.

    Granted. And this is exactly why lj’s argument strikes me as somewhat tangential to what Wikileaks is trying to accomplish, leading to the disagreement above. In a baby-vs-bathwater argument the question at hand is how to make an empirical distinction between baby and bathwater. Whereas Wikileaks’ goal (I believe this has been stated explicitly, at least by Assange, who I think can be assumed to speak for Wikileaks for purposes of this comment) is to make institutional secrecy more expensive, difficult, and unreliable in general, thereby forcing the USG (and other powerful organizations) to adopt a more transparent posture in general.
    Wikileaks is not in the business of enforcing which is baby and what is bathwater and we, as observers, are not in a position to enforce that distinction either. They’re in the business of forcing institutions to reduce their reflexive reliance on secrecy. They want institutions to stop treating everything which happens to be in the tub as though it were baby rather than bathwater, by making sure that something gets thrown out now and then.

  80. And hairshirt, I don’t think it is a question of wikileaks dump versus no dump. I thought we were discussing the wisdom of what was done and the way it was done.
    If we’re not talking about the same thing, perhaps we don’t actually disagree. Like I said, I wouldn’t suggest that the Wikileaks dumps was perfect, just that it was better than actual alternatives, which, as far as I can tell, amounted to just about nothing in terms of exposing government lies.
    From DJ’s link:

    The real-world alternative to the current iteration of WikiLeaks is not The Perfect Wikileaks that makes perfect judgments about what should and should not be disclosed, but rather, the ongoing, essentially unchallenged hegemony of the permanent National Security State, for which secrecy is the first article of faith and prime weapon.

  81. I’d be more upset about Wikileaks if, on some level, it weren’t an isomorphic response to the idiocy of a time when government email sifting and cellphone listening was a routine feature. Anyone who is up in arms about this and who is not also up in arms about its evil twin on the state side (with private entities doing most of the sifting and data collection) needs to think long and hard about power balances and democracy.

  82. As for anti Arab feeling, I just don’t see how State department cables about US impressions of Arab leaders is going to make any difference in supporting domestic change in those countries.
    Impressions? We’re not talking about impressions. We’re talking about the head of state/government clearly asking the US to launch a war. That’s not something subtle that can be easily misinterpreted.
    I just don’t see how what we know about the cables will make any difference with Arab nations.
    LJ, if Wikileaks publicized a classified government document proving that, say, the President lied to the public when he claimed he wanted to avoid a war with Iran, would you find that acceptable? What Wikileaks has done is publicize data showing that a bunch of Arab governments, who have all been telling their citizens that they do NOT want war with Iran have secretly been advocating for war with Iran. That proves that those governments lied to their citizens. I think having proof that your government lied to you is, you know, important. I think that such knowledge can be prerequisite for meaningful political change.
    To put it another way, I can understand someone who believes that “there is no benefit to publicizing secret evidence of government malfeasance” no matter which government we’re talking about. I think that person is wrong, but I understand them. And I also understand someone who says there is a benefit, again, for any value of government. But once you say “there is a benefit when we’re talking about the US government, but not for various Arab governments” then I think you’re demonstrating anti-Arab sentiment.

  83. I’m all for the US, SK and China talking about how to deal with a reunified Korea.
    I think it’s a staggeringly bad idea to put that kind of diplomatically sensitive material on SIPRNet as if it was ordinary secret-but-not-sensitive information available to hundreds of thousands of people.
    And it’s scary/negligent that the administrators of SIPRNet were unable to detect or prevent the downloading of 250,000 cables (along with a lot of other material) on dozens of unconnected subjects. That’s not hard to do using ordinary commercial-grade auditing and access controls that are common in private industry. You flag/block anyone who tries to download more than 1,000 documents in a week. It’s not particularly hard.
    To be fair, the DoD is probably not used to treating users with secret clearance as potentially the source of attacks. At a commercial website you have to deal with that kind of thing every day; just keeping it running requires a lot of tools for blocking, rate limiting, and flagging.
    And, the ability of the DoD to hire the very best computer administrators is impaired by their salary budgets (which Obama just made worse) and of course by the two aggressive wars in progress which would tend to discourage a lot of smart & patriotic people from working for them.

  84. Also, I recommend reading Hartmut’s comment if you missed it earlier, particularly this:

    There once was a time when the US (and btw the then still infant Soviet Union) considered secret diplomacy to be an abomination and a danger to peace. It was considered to have played a significant part in what developed into the First World War.
    If Chain-Eye had prevailed and the US attacked Iran then the talks between the US, the Arab states and Israel would have been a conspiracy to start a war of aggression, which iirc is a hanging offence.

    And novakant’s link to Arthur Silber too (I like Silber although that may be because he makes me look concise): http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-hate-authority-well-except-for-my.html
    His point is that judging the release of information in terms of whether it is useful to causes you consider important is missing the point. The release of information in as broad a form as possible allows you, as an individual, to know as much as is possible about what is going on in the world and to make your own decisions about that.
    The alternative is to abdicate all that kind of deciding to other people, who will make those decisions according to their own interests and prejudices, and leave you in ignorance. To me it’s pretty clear that that hasn’t worked out so great recently.

  85. The release of information in as broad a form as possible allows you, as an individual, to know as much as is possible about what is going on in the world and to make your own decisions about that.
    Related to this, each an every act of secrecy comitted by the government represents a conscious decision that it is more important that “the enemy” not know something than the American public konw it. And that’s the generous interpretation of acts of government secrecy, “It’s more important that we deny this information to our enemies than allow our own citizens to know it and thus make better choices for themselves.”
    The outright contempt for the American public’s right to know what the U.S. government is up to by those in the national security apparatus (and elsewhere) is breathtaking.

  86. “Related to this, each an every act of secrecy comitted by the government represents a conscious decision that it is more important that “the enemy” not know something than the American public konw it.”
    BS. The government protects “types” or “kinds” of data and communications by procedure so they don’t have to sit down with every email and decide if this one is or isn’t “dangerous”.
    With hundreds of thousands of documents I find that a better way than hiring a bunch more people to peruse them every day for their potential danger.

  87. “The outright contempt for the American public’s right to know what the U.S. government is up to by those in the national security apparatus (and elsewhere) is breathtaking.”
    What? The public has no right to know anything when it elects a Congress that passes laws protecting certain information from public knowledge. If we don’t like those laws, we need to elect other people.
    It’s annoying when people make up various fundamental rights to support whatever viewpoint they may have at any particular time.

  88. Oh fnck it.
    [Edited slightly because I am confident that Ugh didn’t mean to fnck with the posting rules – Ed.]

  89. “There once was a time when the US (and btw the then still infant Soviet Union) considered secret diplomacy to be an abomination and a danger to peace.”
    Nations, like individuals, can be naive. This is hardly news.
    Ask yourself: Why do we have diplomats stationed in other countries? Essentially, they are there to give us information on what is going on (or soon to go on), and to help us coordinate with those other governments.
    How do they get information (beyond what anybody could pull off the Internet without leaving home)? They talk to people. Some of those people may be indifferent to their words being published to the world; others will care deeply (especially if such publication would harm them, whether physically, economically, politically, or in any other manner). So what you are saying, if you want all diplomacy conducted totally publicly, is you don’t care about anything that second group (no matter how large) might have to say. I suppose ignorance is bliss — it better be, if that is what we are aiming for.
    How do we coordinate with other governments? We discuss what is happening in the world, and talk about what we might want to do in response. We also discuss what we are currently planning to do, so that the others do not get startled into an unfortunate response when we do — since they know it is coming, they are less likely to panic. Of course, we can just charge forth without telling them; who cares if it accidentally touches off a major war? Not, apparently, the people who want all diplomacy conducted with total transparency.
    Those who note that other countries will still talk to us regardless are, of course, correct. Whether they will talk frankly is a different question. Functionally, someone who will talk to us only to say what they already say publicly is just as useless as someone who won’t talk to us at all.
    Just as a footnote, I agree that secrecy can be used to bad effect. But viewed overall, which is worse. IMHO, being able to communicate in confidence with diplomats abroad is far better than not being able to.

  90. So what you are saying, if you want all diplomacy conducted totally publicly, is you don’t care about anything that second group (no matter how large) might have to say.
    Who has said that s/he wants all diplomacy conducted totally publicly?

  91. I mean, are all the people critical of the Wikileaks dump in favor of governments being able to act in total secrecy about everything, or what? (I don’t think so, btw.)

  92. “Who has said that s/he wants all diplomacy conducted totally publicly?”
    hsh, In this case I see no middle ground that many are trying to carve out. Either there is an expectation of confidentiality or there isn’t. Either diplomacy can be pursued with that expectation or it can’t.
    If Wikileaks act is imperfect but, as a whole acceptable, then it can’t.
    Thats the problem with it. It is pretty much all or nothing.

  93. hairshirthedonist, I’m in favor of Freedom of Information laws, and I’d like to see more transparency in government generally. I’m opposed to the State Secrets privilege. But I don’t really think that the State Department needs to disclose diplomatic communications as a general matter. Certainly there should be some scrutiny as to how long they should remain classified, or under what circumstances they should be released.
    Other governments share information with our diplomats in the belief that our diplomats can keep a secret. It’s a good thing for our diplomats, who represent our interest, can gather information in confidence so that they will have the tools to make better foreign policy. Obviously, it’s up to citizens to elect people to use that information to make wise policy.

  94. In this case I see no middle ground that many are trying to carve out. Either there is an expectation of confidentiality or there isn’t. Either diplomacy can be pursued with that expectation or it can’t.
    Sigh. In a previous comment, I asked:

    Finally, the US government can always say “this is a one-off; screw ups happen and this one won’t happen again” — and that’s a pretty credible argument. Right now, Wikileaks has one and only one DOD leaker, and he’s behind bars facing a long prison term. Its unlikely they’ll be able to find someone who can steal lots of diplomatic cables in the short term (and hey! NK will no doubt collapse any day now!). Can someone explain to me why the Chinese government would simply assume that leaked diplomatic cables are just going to be the new normal?

    Unless you have a good answer, your assumption that no one can ever assume any diplomatic confidentiality in the future is wrong. Since that assumption underlies your whole excluded-middle argument, I think you need to justify the assumption before we even consider your excluded middle argument above.

  95. “But the US is not at war and has not faced any serious threat of war in decades.”
    I tried but, there are a couple of hundred thousand soldiers who have been (or currently are) in Iraq and Afghanistan who would beg to differ.

  96. Either there is an expectation of confidentiality or there isn’t.
    Look, any attempt to keep something secret has some possibility of failure. It’s not so much confidentiality as successful secrecy. I could promise to keep our correspondance confidential, but it doesn’t mean someone couldn’t break into my office or hack my computer. There’s no guarantee. All the information that was leaked was written (in the general sense). It was also put onto a network that, as has been noted, some PFC had access to. Which brings me to this quote from a previous comment (bolding mine):
    Whereas Wikileaks’ goal (I believe this has been stated explicitly, at least by Assange, who I think can be assumed to speak for Wikileaks for purposes of this comment) is to make institutional secrecy more expensive, difficult, and unreliable in general, thereby forcing the USG (and other powerful organizations) to adopt a more transparent posture in general.

  97. “I think you need to justify the assumption before we even consider your excluded middle argument above.”
    A broad acceptance of this, its happened twice mind you, as being imperfect but ok would lend itself to the Chinese wondering if it will happen again.
    So let me ask a clarifying question, when saying this isn’t a bad thing because it exposes the bad with everything else are you saying it would be ok if it happened again?
    If it is viewed as an imperfect but acceptable activity then they would have every reason to believe it would happen again.
    Again, assuming one time or two isn’t the end of the world, what is your view if they did a new dump of US classified data every six months?

  98. In short, let’s force governments to pick their secrets more selectively, rather than allowing them to make things secret on the most minimally plausible of bases. Make it hard so they’ll only do it when it’s really worth it.

  99. It’s a good thing for our diplomats, who represent our interest, can gather information in confidence so that they will have the tools to make better foreign policy

    Exactly right, if not exactly grammatically coherent. For example, consider the leaked cable with the following summary:

    1. (SBU) Summary: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
    has long gone to great pains to highlight the distinction
    between Americans and Canadians in its programming, generally
    at our expense. However, the level of anti-American melodrama
    has been given a huge boost in the current television season
    as a number of programs offer Canadian viewers their fill of
    nefarious American officials carrying out equally nefarious
    deeds in Canada while Canadian officials either oppose them
    or fall trying. CIA rendition flights, schemes to steal
    Canada’s water, “the Guantanamo-Syria express,” F-16’s flying
    in for bombing runs in Quebec to eliminate escaped
    terrorists: in response to the onslaught, one media
    commentator concluded, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that
    “apparently, our immigration department’s real enemies aren’t
    terrorists or smugglers — they’re Americans.” While this
    situation hardly constitutes a public diplomacy crisis per
    se, the degree of comfort with which Canadian broadcast
    entities, including those financed by Canadian tax dollars,
    twist current events to feed long-standing negative images of
    the U.S. — and the extent to which the Canadian public seems
    willing to indulge in the feast – is noteworthy as an
    indication of the kind of insidious negative popular
    stereotyping we are increasingly up against in Canada. End
    Summary.

    This is followed by an interminable show-by-show summary of Canadian television shows, beginning with one headlined “”THE BORDER” -CANADA’S ANSWER TO 24, W/O THAT SUTHERLAND GUY”.
    Now, if this diplomat knew this information would be leaked, would he have felt free to undertake an honest and unbiased evaluation of the portrayal of Americans on Canadian television, an evaluation necessary for the development of our foreign policy?
    Does anyone fail to see how badly this threatens our national security? Is war with Canada even avoidable at this point?
    Doesn’t the leak of this memo shows why those calling for terrorist attacks against Wikileaks are fully justified in arguing for illegal assassinations?
    This is the type of information that the government must protect. Obama has utterly failed to keep this under wraps, and now we are doomed.
    Doomed.

  100. “Whereas Wikileaks’ goal (I believe this has been stated explicitly, at least by Assange, who I think can be assumed to speak for Wikileaks for purposes of this comment) is to make institutional secrecy more expensive, difficult, and unreliable in general, thereby forcing the USG (and other powerful organizations) to adopt a more transparent posture in general.”
    I don’t really care what he wants. He is a spy and should be treated like one.
    He can’t make it practical for the USG not to have secrets, and I have expressed my views of him clearly above.

  101. I don’t really care what he wants. He is a spy and should be treated like one.
    What if I want that too? Meaning more (as opposed to total) transparency? Or someone else? We’re talking about the idea, not the man.

  102. He is a spy and should be treated like one.
    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
    “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
    “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”
    I think in a sense Mr. Dumpty’s last statement is correct here, if the United States ends up charging Assange under the Espionage Act and ultimately obtains his conviction after all appeals have been exhausted, then we will have indeed seen who is to be master.

  103. So let me ask a clarifying question, when saying this isn’t a bad thing because it exposes the bad with everything else are you saying it would be ok if it happened again?
    It would depend. How much bad realtive to everything else, and what constitutes the everything else? If there weren’t so much secrecy and so much mayhem being committed in secret, maybe another dump wouldn’t be okay (whatever that means). Actions can be justified (legally, morally, practically, etc.)under some circumstances, but not others, right?

  104. A broad acceptance of this, its happened twice mind you, as being imperfect but ok would lend itself to the Chinese wondering if it will happen again.
    What was the first time?
    So let me ask a clarifying question, when saying this isn’t a bad thing because it exposes the bad with everything else are you saying it would be ok if it happened again?
    I’m saying that until it happens more than once, we have no rational basis to just assume that confidential diplomatic communication is GONE forever and ever.
    You seem to assume that the US government is literally powerless to stop leaks: that it cannot protect secret data with primitive auditing software for example. I don’t accept that assumption. In truth, the US government has many options and it will undoubtedly start employing some of them now.
    If it is viewed as an imperfect but acceptable activity then they would have every reason to believe it would happen again.
    But it is clearly not acceptable: Manning is going to go to prison for many many years. That’s how our society signals that some behaviors are unacceptable: we imprison people for long periods of time. Surely you know this, so why do you need me to explain it to you?
    Again, assuming one time or two isn’t the end of the world, what is your view if they did a new dump of US classified data every six months?
    That it doesn’t matter because the US government is so #@%@!%@ stupid that we’re all going to die very soon. I mean, I expect that Wikileaks will produce data dumps for quite a while, but I don’t think they’re going to be continually getting new stashes of diplomatic cables.
    Look, what Wikileaks did with Manning is, in one narrow respect, sort of like what Al Queda did with 9/11: it was a spectacular one-shot operation. The minute you play that card though, the defenders can easily defend against it, so you only get to play it once.

  105. “Right?”
    But by that logic the Chinese would not, and should not, accept your one off explanation. There simply is not a middle ground.

  106. “Donald Johnson, the lines that you personally draw about what should be kept from the public supports my earlier point. We all agree that some stuff shouldn’t be disclosed – we just may disagree about what that stuff is.”
    That’s the main point. And I don’t trust the government to make that decision–I really don’t and nobody should.
    “That’s why the document dumping is a bad idea – no one who represents our collective interests (not to mention your particular interests or mine) is really scrutinizing the information for what legitimately is harmful.”
    Again, this cuts both ways. I don’t know what the hell my government is doing in my name and probably wouldn’t like a lot of it if I did.
    “We vote for an executive who, to a certain degree, carries with him the trust of the people (until impeachment or the next election).”
    You totally lost me here. There’s no accountability. Bush wasn’t impeached and he won’t be prosecuted. Checks and balances in our system don’t work. We need groups like wikileaks, because nobody else is doing a damn thing to make the government accountable.
    Gotta go.

  107. There simply is not a middle ground.
    There is and always has been nothing but middle ground. It has always been that any given secret could have somehow gotten out, even before Wikileaks. It is also still possible, despite Wikileaks, to keep a great many things secret.

  108. If I tell you something “in confidence”, can you infer that I’m not lying to you? If I whisper a secret in your ear, can you be sure I’m not keeping something else secret from you? If I talk to you about someone else behind his back, can you be sure I’m not talking to HIM behind YOUR back?
    If you’re a diplomat, American or otherwise, you’re a naive fool to assume that the answer to such questions is “yes”. Confidentiality is no proof of sincerity.
    Maybe our diplomats will get to hear fewer things, after this Wikileak dump. But I don’t take it for granted that they will hear fewer true things.
    –TP

  109. “Wikileaks is not in the business of enforcing which is baby and what is bathwater and we, as observers, are not in a position to enforce that distinction either.”
    And they are just as callous as the Pentagon about who they hurt on the way. The fact that Wikileaks dumps information, even about people secretly helping the US in Afghanistan, essentially condemning them to death, doesn’t strike me as a wise balance between secretive and non-secretive. And the fact that Wikileaks doesn’t even try to strike that balance makes it difficult for me to think their project is laudable. If they were trying to strike the balance I could see their point. Since they do not, it seems just like one set of callous SOBs thumbing their nose at another.

  110. Here’s what Theodore Roosevelt had to say about Wikileaks:

    Behind the ostensible Government sits enthroned an invisible Government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day….

    Here’s what the Department of Defense had to say about Sebastian’s claims:

    “The initial assessment in no way discounts the risk to national security,” Gates wrote. “However, the review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by the disclosure.” The defense secretary said that the published documents do contain names of some cooperating Afghans, who could face reprisal by Taliban. But a senior NATO official in Kabul told CNN that there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak.

  111. And yet, Duff Clarity, note Theodore Roosevelt’s secret diplomacy with Japan. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/books/19book.html
    Duff Clarity is correct that there’s a lot of silly stuff disclosed by wikileaks. It appears to be a “sensitive but unclassified” document written by some unnamed state department official given some task (of course, we don’t know the context), perhaps to analyze whether the CBC has a bias in its reporting about the United States. Are we shocked at the report? Do we want to fire the official who made the report for being silly or over the top? What’s the point? Is anyone really surprised by this? If anything, it’s an argument in favor of the federal pay freeze, no? Or maybe reducing state department staff? Of course, most of the advocates for wikileaks are also outraged by the federal pay freeze, and would oppose cutting government. (For the record, I do not oppose the freeze, but do opppose cutting government.)
    Donald Johnson has “gotta go” so this comment may be lost on him, but obviously he doesn’t trust the government, and thinks he has no effect on it. So what the hell does he care about what wikileaks reveals? How does wikileaks make anybody accountable, when our system of government itself is a failure? What does wikileaks exactly do for him? Nobody is going to be prosecuted as a result of wikileaks. Is there anything that wikileaks reveals that he thinks is going to change anything that troubles him?
    Tony P. says “If I tell you something “in confidence”, can you infer that I’m not lying to you?” No (duh) but if someone posts a load of stuff on the Internet, can you trust that it’s all authentic? Or can you know the context in which it was created? Or do you trust that all of what seems to be said in random documents is true?
    People who are loathe to trust the people they’ve elected, or public servants who are working for policies that are promoted by people who we’ve elected – these same skeptics are happy to welcome the efforts of people who take stolen (embezzled) data and disclose it without scrutiny. It seems crazy to me.

  112. “But a senior NATO official in Kabul told CNN that there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak.”
    The leak you are quoting about was yesterday, right?

  113. It seems crazy to me.
    Why on earth should anyone trust the US government – have you been living under a rock for the past 10 years? I don’t trust politicians in general, but trusting the US government is particularly naive.
    And btw, there is a rather limited choice of people and parties to elect in the US, and many who do vote don’t do so because they trust those people, but because they regard them as the lesser evil.

  114. I had to go for a few hours–I couldn’t finish my previous remark and in the meantime have forgotten what I was going to say.
    “but obviously he doesn’t trust the government, and thinks he has no effect on it. So what the hell does he care about what wikileaks reveals?”
    followed later by–
    “People who are loathe to trust the people they’ve elected, or public servants who are working for policies that are promoted by people who we’ve elected ”
    I can’t fathom how anyone could believe this. You make this sound like it’s some sort of personal foible on my part, but I can’t understand how anyone could look at American history or anyone’s history and say something like this. I could go on a pretty long rant about the history of America and the human rights violations we’ve either committed ourselves or supported secondhand and nobody was held accountable. It would be boring and obvious, and yet somehow the obviousness doesn’t seem to have sunk in. There is no accountability on such issues, not for high-ranking people and that’s probably why we keep having things like Abu Ghraib happen. I know what a patriotic believer in the civil religion of America and democracy is supposed to say–“trust the people we elected” and so forth, but good Lord. When I vote I either vote for a marginal protest candidate (which I can afford to do in my state) or I vote for the lesser of two evils. By the time someone gets to the top of a national party ticket they’ve long since ascended way above the point where they have to give a damn about the Amnesty International vote. (I just saw that novakant said almost the same thing as I was revising this.)
    In the current political climate there is essentially no chance that the government will police itself. It’s usually like this in most places in most times–just because a country is a democracy doesn’t mean that the voting population is going to get all worked up because a bunch of foreigners were mistreated. That’s almost never going to be at the top of any country’s political agenda. The Democrats clearly aren’t going to waste any political capital going after Bush’s war crimes–apart from other issues which matter more to voters, a lot of them probably worry that if you start that precedent, it’s likely to come back and bite the Democrats. Also, if there had been an investigation most of the press and the pundit class would have lined up with what Obama actually did say, which is that we need to move forward. (Which for some reason isn’t a line of reasoning that our rulers use when lesser beings are guilty of lawbreaking.) That’s also why Israel really had little to fear from the Goldstone report–what chance is there that US government officials would support war crimes investigations into the actions of a close Western ally? Maybe some judge or prosecutor in some European country might cause some embarrassment, but all Western governments understand the rules here–war crimes trials are for bad people on the other side, not people like us.
    So what I want from wikileaks is a change in the public mood and maybe they can push us a little bit in that direction. You’re not going to get this from the government and you’re not going to get this from most of the mainstream press. If you change the public mood maybe, just maybe, a war crime overseas will become as intolerable for most American voters as, say, overt racial discrimination is supposed to be now.
    Glenn Greenwald had a link to a piece in the Economist which made my point better–any institutional check on the power of a government to do rotten things overseas is probably going to be subject to regulatory capture by the very people it is supposed to oversee. That’s why you need wikileaks and groups like them.
    As for concerns about wikileaks, I’d prefer that they ally themselves with some human rights organization like Amnesty International, so they’d be very careful about hurting innocents with any document dumps. Possibly they are getting better about this (Glenn seems to say so). But hearing government officials pontificate about this is laughable.

  115. Are we shocked at the report?
    Yeah, I am. My tax dollars paid for that?
    For some nefarious spy to watch Canadian television and report back that Americans are depicted on Canadian television as nefarious spies?
    Those tax dollars could have paid for schools, could have helped homeless people train for jobs, could have paid for medicine for sick people that couldn’t afford medicine, and I’m paying the CIA equivalent of Roger f*cking Ebert to watch Canadian television and figure out that, well, they’re depicting us accurately, something must be done!
    Yeah, I’m shocked. And more than a little pissed off.
    And…this has to be kept secret? This is super-secret confidential material? Reviews of Canadian TV shows?
    WTF.

  116. “Why on earth should anyone trust the US government – have you been living under a rock for the past 10 years? I don’t trust politicians in general, but trusting the US government is particularly naive.”
    So what’s your plan, novakant? And how does wikileaks help you to achieve it?

  117. No (duh) but if someone posts a load of stuff on the Internet, can you trust that it’s all authentic?
    No (duh) but if the people quoted do not deny the authenticity of the “load of stuff”, I have at least a small reason to believe it.
    I feel even more confident in the authenticity of the “load of stuff” when those railing against the leak PROCLAIM that it’s authentic stuff and that’s why the leak is damaging.
    –TP

  118. Digby has a post on wikileaks and sordid US behavior involving the deaths of Spanish journalists in Iraq.
    link
    It’s about what I expected from the people I voted for. I certainly didn’t vote for Obama expecting anything else on human rights–I was hoping for better things on the domestic economic front.

  119. I attempted an earlier comment, so I hope that it doesn’t also appear, but…
    Donald Johnson, I share your despair about the country’s apparent inability or unwillingness to hold the criminals responsible for Iraq, and the crimes of Abu Ghraib, and other objectionable actions, accountable. I just don’t think that the wikileaks disclosure does anything at all to further that cause.
    Instead, it reveals the mundane silliness of the kind that Duff Clarity objects to that sometimes occurs in bureaucracies – it becomes a “Holy crap – my government is engaged in absurdity.” But anyone who’s had anything to do with any large organization, including government, takes it for granted that a certain amount of absurdity becomes part of the institution. It’s impossible to be so “lean and mean” that every analyst provides brilliant commentary.
    In other words, people who are inclined to hate government bureaucracy will certainly get plenty of ammunition from the random revelations of stupid stuff. The bigger picture is more difficult to assess, because among the voluminous volume of stuff that’s released, the unsurprising, regular, worthwhile, every day, boring work that is done by the state department staff goes unremarked. And although it’s not revelatory, a large percentage of the work that’s done might be useful or important. Or, even if it’s just monitoring what’s happening in diplomacy day to day, it’s an accumulation of knowledge and relationships.
    I have had friends and family who have worked for various the U.S. government, including the state department. Not all of the employees there are tasked with bringing about world peace. So what if some Canadian analyst is charged with looking at Canadian broadcasting and making an assessment of what the Canadian media thinks of the U.S. I see nothing wrong with that, even if the particular memo (maybe written by an entry level analyst – who knows who wrote it) seems ridiculous. These papers aren’t U.S. foreign policy bulletins – they’re work product of individual bureaucrats, some of whom might be inexperienced or even poor performers. It’s impossible to know when a random document is read out of context.
    I just noticed Tony P’s comment. I don’t know who he’s talking about has “PROCLAIM”ed that the entire load of documents is authentic. What I’ve read is that there was a refusal to confirm their authenticity. Certainly some of them seem to be, but it’s impossible for anyone to confirm the authenticity of 91,000 documents in a week.

  120. “I just don’t think that the wikileaks disclosure does anything at all to further that cause.”
    It is adding to our detailed knowledge about the hypocrisy of our government. If it doesn’t further the cause it will be in large part because our society (or the pundit and political and journalistic class) orchestrates outrage over “nihilists” like Assange while calmly “moving on” with respect to US government crimes and deceptions.

  121. Wikileaks’ goal (I believe this has been stated explicitly, at least by Assange, who I think can be assumed to speak for Wikileaks for purposes of this comment) is to make institutional secrecy more expensive, difficult, and unreliable in general, thereby forcing the USG (and other powerful organizations) to adopt a more transparent posture in general.
    Then Assange is a dumbass, because people rarely respond positively to embarrassment and threats.
    If the State Dept takes any action in response to all of this, it will be to increase, rather than loosen, the secrecy of its communications.
    I’m all in favor of increased transparency in government, and IMO a lot of US foreign policy is half-@ssed.
    All of that said, there is a lot of value in people in a diplomatic context being able to speak candidly, and having their words published for the world to see just does not further that end.
    It’s not the end of the world, life will go on, Assange is neither a spy nor a terrorist. I just don’t see this as being a particularly constructive action on Wikileaks’ part.
    Indiscriminate classification and secrecy is stupid and counter-productive. Indiscriminate disclosure, likewise.

  122. “Then Assange is a dumbass, because people rarely respond positively to embarrassment and threats.”
    So exposing vicious hypocrisy is counterproductive. It’s bad to reveal that Arab dictators secretly urged the US to bomb Iran and it’s bad to reveal that a Yemen government official joked about their willingness to lie on our behalf as we launched air strikes inside Yemen and it’s bad to show that the Obama Administration pressured the Spanish government not to allow its justice system to investigate Bush’s war crimes. People rarely respond positively to embarrassment and threats. You’ve given an argument not against indiscriminate disclosure, but any disclosure that embarrasses or threatens people. Assange’s philosophy is precisely that of investigative journalism in general–a good journalist should always start with a presumption of bad faith when the government keeps secrets and only assume good motives when proven.
    “there is a lot of value in people in a diplomatic context being able to speak candidly, and having their words published for the world to see just does not further that end.”
    If they weren’t candid in private we wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn how contemptible their actions are when their words were leaked. The fact that it doesn’t further their ends is a plus.
    I’m wondering how much positive good is actually done in the world via secret negotiations that couldn’t better be accomplished by open discussion. Secrecy might occasionally be justifiable but the presumption should be against it.
    Obama ran on a platform of open government. He lied. Nobody who actually gets into power seems to want open government–that’s just a line for the rubes. I suppose everyone understands this and that’s why there is so much outrage at Assange.
    Assange, btw, could be a vicious hypocrite for all I know–if, for instance, he really is a rapist I hope he rots in prison. I also hope wikileaks continues.

  123. I don’t know who he’s talking about has “PROCLAIM”ed that the entire load of documents is authentic.
    Sapient, please: are you seriously suggesting that the various patriots calling for the head of Assange are doing so on grounds that he made stuff up?!?
    BTW, if I was writing all this as a spy novel along the lines of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, Assange would secretly be an American agent planting disinformation in the guise of a leak, and the hysterical denunciations of him would be encouraged in an effort to get certain foreigners to fall for the disinformation. That certain Americans would be getting riled up over the whole thing is a feature in this scenario, not a bug.
    Incidentally: it is customary, in spy novels at least, to bury your nugget of disinformation in a heap of “chickenfeed” — real but trivial information that seems to damage or embarrass yourself. That’s how you make a “leak” seem real to the adversary you’re trying to fool. It makes the “leak” seem real to everybody else too, of course, but that can’t be helped.
    I know it’s ridiculous to even suggest that the Wiki “leak” could possibly be a government disinformation ploy. But it’s no more ridiculous than the idea that sapient seems to be defending — namely that some of the “documents” could be forgeries but the US government doesn’t know they’re forgeries.
    –TP

  124. I’m going to say that there’s a tremendous amount of bad argumentation going on, mostly in the area of false equivalency. Wikileaks’ state department release is not equivalent to destroying confidentiality in diplomacy. The specific case about North Korea is concerning in one sense (what are those crazy NKers gonna do with that?) but on the other hand I’m actually kind of reassured to discover that China and South Korea are willing to discuss it with Japan. That’s a big change from say thirty years ago, and a good one. And actually, given the very strong information control the NK government has inside NK, I suspect the real answer is “not much.”
    However, there’s a big difference between that and some of the other stuff that’s in there. You guys are experiencing a very big blind spot, which has been pointed out by Turbulence and Daniel Johnson; your analyses are completely driven by US centric interests and domestic concerns.
    I’m a Canadian. I think it’s very useful for me to know that the US diplomatic corps consider the elites of my country to suffer from an “inferiority complex” and carry a “chip on their shoulder.” I think it’s extremely useful to know that the person in charge of CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) apparently has utter contempt for my views (and the views of a very large majority of Canadians) on things like civil rights, privacy rights, children’s rights, and the right of the citizenry to determine the broad policies of government.
    That’s extremely useful for us as Canadians to know.

  125. You know, there’s another thing to consider in what Assange and his colleagues are attempting to do here. One of the big criticisms of the blogs is that they’re parasitic on the press, because you’re dependent on them for information. Well, there’s a gigantic amount of information available to you on wikileaks, and that information is going to be growing all the time.
    Apparently they have had so much data given to them that they are having to work their way through it. I saw a TED talk that Assange gave a while back. He said that they’d put a lot of effort into improving their data handling infrastructure, and that many more leaks were going to be forthcoming, and not just from governments.
    Your dependence on the press for information is over. Journalism has suddenly found itself in an era of amateurs again. No wonder the professionals are steaming mad.

  126. “The specific case about North Korea is concerning in one sense (what are those crazy NKers gonna do with that?) but on the other hand I’m actually kind of reassured to discover that China and South Korea are willing to discuss it with Japan. That’s a big change from say thirty years ago, and a good one.”
    I don’t understand why you think that your reassurance is worth the problems it could cause in NK’s reaction. Is that reassurance to your psyche worth the death of even one person in a crazy North Korean overreaction?
    The fact that Assange doesn’t seem to give the slightest bit about that is a problem for me. I firmly believe governments over-classify information and that they need lots of oversight. I also firmly believe that leaking the names and addresses of Afghan informants or risking disaster over North Korea shows a callousness that matches the forces he wants to fight. Leaking regarding misconduct is one thing. You can gain public disapproval of bad actions that way. Leaking just because seems likely to backfire because by exposing secrets that should actually be secrets you are turning the public against you. He has a cause I want to be sympathetic to, but he is making it very hard.

  127. What donald and octopunch said. And sapient, you might want to read donald’s link or this one. That’s not diplomacy, but bullying by a hegemon and if you’re really interested in holding the US accountable for Iraq etc. you should be happy that this has come to light.

  128. I got the impression (from the media that are not sympathetic to Assanga&Co) that Wikileaks took some care to redact stuff that could get people killed (like names and addresses).

    As far as ‘no secret diplomacy’ goes, I think the intention was not to have all talks take place where everyone can hear them but that
    a) the fact of talks should be public
    b) the topics discussed should be public
    c) results or lack thereof should be public
    That means
    a) no conspiratorial meetings
    b) no secret deals, esp. not attached to public ones (like the secret protocol to the Hitler-Stalin Pact)

    The infant Soviet Union did a ‘wikileak’ by publishing huge amounts of internal documents of the former tsarist regime* . That’s still a major source for historians.
    *iirc the German government followed suit but did so in a very selective way. It hid some German malfeasance but exposed a lot of embarassing stuff about the other powers in order to fend off the (ridiculous) claims of a exclusive guilt of Germany concerning WW1.

  129. Tony P, no, I don’t think what you posit is ridiculous at all. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that someone was behind the document dump who had a specific purpose in mind, either to spread disinformation, or to create a certain hysteria. For example, the seemingly universal hope that somebody bombs Iran’s nuclear program seems to be a plus for the John Boltons of the world. That’s only one of the many reasons why the information isn’t trustworthy, even if it is mostly or all authentic.
    polyorchnid octopunch, thanks, but I think my US centric interest is perfectly appropriate when the leaks consisted of alleged US diplomatic documents – they’re my documents in that I am a citizen and they belong to my government.
    And by the way, as someone who’s been an editor, there’s a big difference between data dumping and publishing. The press has used data processing techniques to cherry pick “the good bits” out of tens of thousands of documents, most of which might show the boring work of constructive diplomacy.
    novakant, I’m not at all surprised that the US pressured Spain not to prosecute Bush administration people. It’s a typical (if in this case distasteful) job of diplomats to protect American citizens from foreign prosecution when there’s an argument for it. Obviously, I wish there was a prosecution here. But, as with most of these “revelations,” we knew what the policy was – if anyone’s surprised about the details they haven’t been paying attention. In other words, Hartmut’s wishlist of what should be public is substantially already available. Were you surprised that the US state department would be dissuading foreign prosecutors from bringing charges against US citizens?

  130. Or how about the US colluding with the UK Foreign Office in circumventing the ban on cluster bombs.

    I am normally a bit leery about linking to Teh Grauniad, but that article looks pretty solid.

  131. This does seem boil-downable to a cost-benefit calculation, and it’s funny to see the same pundits who are fetishistically fond of the “ticking time-bomb” justification of torture erupting in tantrums about how improper this all was. Not to say that the content of this specific leak justified the leak, but the question should not be confined to whether this specific one was justifiable. The argument here seems to be going back and forth with the antileak arguers emphasizing the terrible terrible costs of leaking, with little attention paid to the potential benefits. And the (ob? con? in?)verse. but how can you make a serious cost benefit argument without a net benefit calculation? Also, if you argue that this leak was not worth it, you imply that another leak might be. But shouldn’t we be more concerned with the process than with the results? As for proleakers, if we encourage this sort of leak, even if this leak is beneficial, the next one might not be. Wikileaks is unaccountable to us and we have no power over them to prevent harmful leaks. Similarly, even if the government is right, and some of the stuff revealed hurts our interests, if we’re more concerned about a CBA then why aren’t we wondering the this is net beneficial?
    I am in a rush but I guess I am just wondering if we want to be principled or utilitarian about this, or is our sole principle utility?

  132. Sebastien: the death of even one person? Are you serious? The United States is responsible for the deaths of around a million people in Iraq over the last decade (and don’t give me that Iraq body count bs; I’m quite happy to take Lancet’s word for how many have died) and you’re trying to feed me crap about the possibility of one death due to the NK stuff?
    Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining. Given the US’s behaviour over the last ten years, any idea that you guys can lecture anyone about the morality of this is laughable on its face and actually a tragedy when you start to look at the details. It’s pretty clear that you don’t really give a damn about people’s deaths, unless they support your argument.
    Why on earth would you think I give a tinker’s damn about your US centric view of the whole thing? Why should Assange? he’s not an American. To be frank, your assertion that my perspective doesn’t matter because I’m not an American is both insulting and perfectly illustrates why most of the rest of the west has come to view your country in such contempt over the last decade; you perfectly illustrate the antediluvian arrogance of current-day American politics.
    Plus I’ve got one final clue stick for you; those documents aren’t yours any more than their mine; your US citizenship only matters in any real sense to the degree that you’re an authoritarian follower; in any real sense you cannot claim ownership of those documents. The most you can do is complain about how much of your money was used to produce them. If you believe otherwise, well, I’ve got a great bridge between Windsor and Detroit to sell you.

  133. So exposing vicious hypocrisy is counterproductive.
    Yes, it’s very possible for the exposure of vicious hypocrisy to be counterproductive.
    I’m wondering how much positive good is actually done in the world via secret negotiations that couldn’t better be accomplished by open discussion.
    That’s a very good question.
    Obama ran on a platform of open government. He lied.
    Lied, or failed. Or both. Hard to say which. But yeah, not such an open government.
    Nobody who actually gets into power seems to want open government
    Right you are.
    That’s not diplomacy, but bullying by a hegemon
    Maybe this will come as a big surprise to everyone, but US foreign policy for at least the last generation or two can be summarized as follows:
    “bullying by a hegemon”.
    For a non-trivial amount of that time, and for a non-trivial number of the actors, the *explicit goal* of foreign policy has been to establish and maintain total, full-spectrum political, economic, and military dominance of the entire freaking world. Full stop.
    Of course we tried to get Spain to drop their criminal investigation of Bush era war crimes.
    Of course Yemen lied about who was bombing their own citizens.
    Of course some Arab nations would like us to attack Iran.
    And of course, the US engages in vicious hypocrisy in its foreign policy.
    The US is a nation nominally predicated on the natural and inalienable equality of all people, on popular sovereignty, and on the rule of law, and it is simultaneously engaged in a program of total global dominance in every available form.
    Vicious hypocrisy is baked in.
    All of that is true, *and* Assange is a reckless and irresponsible actor.
    Has he read all of the docs he dumped? Has anyone? How does he know what is valuable to expose, and what is dangerous? What qualifies him to decide what is worth the risk of exposure, and what is not?
    It’s not just nations that are prone to hubris, hypocrisy, and bad behavior.

  134. Given the US’s behaviour over the last ten years, any idea that you guys can lecture anyone about the morality of this is laughable on its face and actually a tragedy when you start to look at the details.

    It should go without saying that Sebastian is not the US government, and so is not appropriately grouped in with that set of “you guys”.

  135. Slartibartfast: he’s certainly arguing the US government’s position on this. So yeah, I think that’s a fair statement to make.

  136. I had no idea that Sebastian was taking the US government’s side. I think that Sebastian might have a nice chuckle over the implied notion that he’s supportive of some large subset of what the government does.
    hilzoy, just as an example, was once a front-pager here, and she makes her living lecturing on ethics. What if she and the US government were in accord on something; would that make her opinion wrong, automatically?
    I say not. This is one of the many, many, many reasons why it’s most effective to argue the point, and not make some guilt-by-association attempt.

  137. US foreign policy for at least the last generation or two can be summarized as follows: “bullying by a hegemon”.
    the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt could tell us some good stories about how the country of Panama was created, i’m sure. and he’d have some interesting things to say about what the Spanish-American war meant to the US’s place in the world.
    we’ve been a bully for at least a century.

  138. Re: russell at 8:51
    While many of the commenters here may be aware, at least generally, of the sins of the US government, some, probably many, people are not. Too many people in this country trust their government too much is some areas, while, at the same time, not enough in others, I think. Excessive trust seems focused on foreign affairs, and I think that’s dangerous. Opening people’s eyes about how our government really operates, or simply verifying those things people might suspect, or even putting the clarification of specifics on known generalities is a good thing.
    Maybe Assange is irresponsible. But maybe the leak is a net good, regardless. And maybe not. I don’t claim to know. We might know after some time has passed, or we might never, really. I tend to think it’s a net good.
    I’m also interested to know what people think about Julian’s question:
    I am in a rush but I guess I am just wondering if we want to be principled or utilitarian about this, or is our sole principle utility?

  139. After reading my comment, it seems I’m being a bit US-centric myself. It’s good for people in other countries to know what their governments and ours are up to as well, and us theirs.
    Regarding Julian’s question, I’m not sure where I’d draw the line between utility and principle. I tend to think principle is utility with a longer and broader view in mind. I’d view the strong possibility of leaks in general as a sort of systemic input into the dynamics of international relations. Assuming this is a new or amplified as a result of Wikileads, the question is how nations deal with the new system dynamics. Even if there’s a net negative effect in this first instance, once adjustments are made in behaviors, how does it play out and what different effects will the next event have based on those adjustments? I’m not suggesting that there’s necessarily an answer that is or will ever be known, but that’s my thought process.

  140. “Has he read all of the docs he dumped? Has anyone? How does he know what is valuable to expose, and what is dangerous? What qualifies him to decide what is worth the risk of exposure, and what is not?”
    Who gets to decide what is valuable and what is dangerous? The government? God help us. Or are we supposed to trust our wonderful responsible press corps, the same press that generally acts like governmental stenographers. (Is anyone besides me continually irked by the way the NYT Week in Review reads like it was written by someone who empathizes with US government officials as they try to rule the world?)
    There’s no answer to the question of who watches the watchers, but clearly, beyond question, you can’t trust the government to do it and you usually can’t trust most of the mainstream press either.
    Ugh’s Greenwald link mentions quite a few things that wikileaks has revealed so far. I can’t see any downside to what they’ve done that compares to the benefits of releasing this material. And I completely agree with the Jay Rosen quote. Wikileaks is what an adversarial press really looks like, which is why the press hates them so much.
    I also don’t see a significant difference between Assange and Ellsberg (and neither does Ellsberg). IIRC, the Pentagon Papers began as Robert McNamara’s study of how the US got into Vietnam. You could say it was an attempt at serious self-examination by the government, something that got leaked. So the reward for serious self-examination was that the government was exposed to the world, and furthermore, other countries could have concluded that you just couldn’t trust the US government to be discreet if they can’t even keep their own dirty secrets under wraps. So maybe Richard Nixon and Eric Holder are right–we’ve got to crack down on these wildly irresponsible self-appointed messianic figures and trust our elected officials and their appointees to do the right thing in secret.
    I have come to love Big Brother.

  141. “Sebastien: the death of even one person? Are you serious? The United States is responsible for the deaths of around a million people in Iraq over the last decade (and don’t give me that Iraq body count bs; I’m quite happy to take Lancet’s word for how many have died) and you’re trying to feed me crap about the possibility of one death due to the NK stuff?”
    The problem is that the two prongs of your argument don’t appear to be rationally related to each other. First, the people who are doing the dying and will be doing the dying are the *South Koreans*. Right? Your self-righteous rant about the evils of the United States seems weirdly displaced in that context. I realize that you’re Canadian, and not much interested in either party, but it still might be worth noticing that the recklessness of the disclosure hits a party other than the one you think did the wrong.
    Second, Assange could have designed the document dump to be about Iraq, or Iraq and Iran, or the Middle East and not released the cables about North Korea or other areas where he would run huge risks with innocent 3rd parties.
    Third, Assange could have designed the document dump to focus on malfeasance. This would have been more narrowly tailored to punish/restrict/deal with your complaints about American actions without putting the lives of 3rd parties in danger.
    If he had acted in that way, I would have been much more supportive. I’m very much open to the idea that targeted leaks about American malfeasance could help clean certain things up. I’m not particularly convinced that a reckless and reflexive dump of all information does the same thing. It causes problems like for example allowing distraction from the malfeasance by focusing on the recklessness.
    Assange seems completely callous to the idea that people who aren’t even his target are going to be hurt by some of these leaks. If you want to argue that the US has earned the pain they get out of this fine, but since he could have tailored it to get that pain without as much 3rd party danger, he still seems very reckless and callous about the 3rd world people he put directly in the line of fire.

  142. Sebastian, I trust you and have no trouble believing your point re: Assange’s callousness (though I have not read enough to judge for myself). However, here is why some liberals are calling hypocrisy.
    [Bush] seems completely callous to the idea that people who aren’t even his target are going to be hurt by some of these [wars]. If you want to argue that [Saddam] has earned the pain [he] get[s] out of this fine, but since [Bush] could have tailored it to get that pain without as much 3rd party danger, [Bush] still seems very reckless and callous about the 3rd world people he put directly in the line of fire.
    Since the cost in life and money (that other form of life) is quantifiable and depressingly high for the iraq and afghan wars, and since wikileaks has so far killed no one and cost nothing that I am aware of (though I appreciate it may take time to incur these costs), Glennzilla et al are indignant at the indignation.
    I don’t care as much about the hypocrisy because it’s all very meta; the actual issue of leaking and its merits are much more important. Unfortunately I am at work and was recently berated for too much surfing, so I will need to think of something to say about that later once I am bold again!

  143. The Korean issue Sebastian raises might be an example where Assange is wrong–I don’t know enough to judge that.
    But Sebastian seems to be conceding it is legitimate for a private organization to obtain classified documents and leak them, making its own judgments on what it can leak and what it can’t. Of course they should try not to hurt innocent people. I agree with that. It’s what the press is supposed to do, but they seem too deeply embedded with our government to remember they are supposed to be adversarial.

  144. here is why some liberals are calling hypocrisy

    Sebastian could be an utter hypocrite in this regard for all I care. For nontrivial issues, Sebastian’s argument has merit (or doesn’t) regardless of what he says or does in other situations.

  145. Julian, the funny thing about your argument is I’m pretty darn sure you don’t buy it in the Saddam/Bush/Iraq case. So why are you bringing it forward in Assange’s defense?

  146. Assange seems completely callous to the idea that people who aren’t even his target are going to be hurt by some of these leaks.
    In a very well-stated nutshell, this is my objection to what Assange is doing, in this case and in others.

  147. Slarti, I agree with you, which is why at 10:58 am I said:
    I don’t care as much about the hypocrisy because it’s all very meta; the actual issue of leaking and its merits are much more important.
    I was explaining my opinion of the cause of liberal indignation at conservative indignation.
    Sebastian, I did not present it as a defense of Assange. I meant that Assange is similar but not congruent (in the triangle-y sense) to Bush, based on my analogy. The difference, as I pointed out, is scale, and so far there have been no deaths from this leak, while in Iraq there have been hundreds of thousands of deaths. What I am asking is whether we care about the result or the process?
    Basically, I mean that Bush broke the rules and Assange broke the rules. Which rules and how broken are debatable, but they did. The question is how much rule breaking we tolerate? Is it based on results? Do we have rules about which rules you can break? I want to know people’s opinions on this, because I think we are arguing in circles when we fixate on the specific harm and good of these decisions. That’s because our predictions of what will do good or won’t are so frequently wrong. The best we can do is refine the process.

  148. Here’s something relevant to the argument that people were (callously) put at risk by Wikileaks.
    http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=61411
    WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2010 – Despite WikiLeaks’ attempt to redact the names of Iraqi informants from its recent leak of classified military reports, some of those people are still in danger, a Pentagon spokesman said today.
    On Oct. 22, WikiLeaks released more than 400,000 sensitive documents chronicling military operations during the Iraq war from 2004 to 2009.
    “We had identified 300 or so people whose names were [mentioned in the documents] that possibly would be put at risk if their names were published,” Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan said.
    Of that group, he added, the names were removed but “in a few dozen cases there’s still information that could identify those people.”
    Such remaining information includes job titles, he said.
    The U.S. Central Command has the names of those potentially at risk and “is deciding whether they’re going to make notifications or not,” Lapan said.
    (…)

    It appears, even from the critical standpoint of the Defense Department, that there was an effort to protect people from harm by redacting their names. Perhaps this was an imperfect effort, but it doesn’t sound “completely callous.”

  149. Assange seems completely callous to the idea that people who aren’t even his target are going to be hurt by some of these leaks.
    Let’s keep two things in mind:
    (1) During past Wikileaks releases, there were many complaints about how Wikileaks was endangering people, cause people to get killed etc. But none of these claims have been substantiated. Even the DOD has had to walk them back because there is just no evidence to support them.
    We can’t ignore this: historically, many claims about Wikileaks’ “harm” have been overblown and poorly supported. Therefore, we should treat new claims with some skepticism. And that leads us to…
    (2) There is still no basis for believing that any Koreans are going to be harmed by Wikileaks’ release at all. Such claims rely on the assumption that the Chinese government will conclude that it cannot ever have confidential diplomatic communication with the US. There is simply no reason to accept this assumption.

  150. Russell, I understand that you object to the fact that Assange risked harming those who were not his targets. My question is: would you refrain from objecting if he had harmed them less or reduced the risk of harm? What if the benefit of harming them were greater than it currently is, and the harm were constant?
    If this is about utility, then we’re in “torture the guy who knows where the bomb is” territory, even if you object to this iteration of lawbreaking (although I am not sure Assange broke the law, and if so if it was U.S. or int’l law). If your objection is instead against leaking itself, that is a different debate.

  151. Assange seems completely callous to the idea that people who aren’t even his target are going to be hurt by some of these leaks.
    I agree that Assange is callous in a narrow sense; but so what?
    I mean, this sort of callousness is something we casually accept from soldiers and police officers (for example). Every American soldier is “callous” in the same way: since the military does occasionally do horrific things, joining it necessarily requires a certain indifference to the inevitable victims. But we don’t judge them to be bad people. So what makes Assange different? Is it because the (at the moment highly theoretical) “harm” he does is not in service of an authoritarian state organization? I mean, if Assange did his thing while working for the Swedish intelligence service, would we still care about his callousness?

  152. Sebastian, the problem with your “argument” is that Wikileaks did redact names and other identity information from the documents.
    Frankly, you’re just parroting talking points.

  153. “I mean, this sort of callousness is something we casually accept from soldiers and police officers (for example). Every American soldier is “callous” in the same way: since the military does occasionally do horrific things, joining it necessarily requires a certain indifference to the inevitable victims. But we don’t judge them to be bad people.”
    I don’t see why I have to judge or not judge Assange as a ‘bad person’. Who cares? His acts are callous to the harm against people who are not his target. I don’t have the slightest problem criticizing his act in the presumably sincere pursuit of whatever his unclear mission is with respect to the US government. I don’t have the slightest problem criticizing the acts of a military torturer even in the presumably sincere pursuit of the defense of his country. You’re doing the same thing Julian seemed to be in his earlier comment (though he seems to have somewhat clarified it since)–putting forth an argument in defense of Assange that you would certainly not accept in defense of a military torturer, or a grunt who thought it was ok to kill everyone in a neighborhood to get at an informant.
    “Such claims rely on the assumption that the Chinese government will conclude that it cannot ever have confidential diplomatic communication with the US. There is simply no reason to accept this assumption.”
    First, you’re putting huge weight on ‘ever’. How about ‘often’? Second, what about the problem of the North Korean reaction to knowing that Japan, South Korea, the US and China are all actively planning *together* about what to do when the NK state collapses? You can’t imagine that being a problem? Lj seems to be able to, and I certainly can. This is exactly what I mean about callous. Assange threw a bomb into an already incredibly touchy situation, with incredibly high stakes, and with apparent disregard for the complexity of the problem. He did it either to get at one of the parties (the US) or out of some ideologically pure belief about information needing to be free. The people most likely to pay the cost of this disregard are not Assange’s target (in this case they are the North Koreans or Afghan people who probably were trying to make their country a better place and probably other people that we don’t even know about in other countries affected by the leaks). So either they are counted as acceptable losses, or he didn’t even bother worrying about them.
    I think it is great to try to hold the US accountable for its misdeeds. I don’t think it is great to have lots of other people pay for it *especially when you could take steps to avoid it*.
    He could have released the cables re: the Afghanistan/Iraq situation alone. He could have released things that documented American misdeeds. He could have been discerning about sensitive diplomatic situations like North Korea. He didn’t and he wasn’t and he doesn’t seem interested in doing so.
    “If this is about utility, then we’re in “torture the guy who knows where the bomb is” territory, even if you object to this iteration of lawbreaking”
    Turbulence and Donald Johnson: you going to let this pass as a pro-Assange argument?

  154. Must-reading re: Assange’s rational for ‘radical transparency’:

    Because we all basically know that the US state — like all states — is basically doing a lot of basically shady things basically all the time, simply revealing the specific ways they are doing these shady things will not be, in and of itself, a necessarily good thing. In some cases, it may be a bad thing, and in many cases, the provisional good it may do will be limited in scope. The question for an ethical human being — and Assange always emphasizes his ethics — has to be the question of what exposing secrets will actually accomplish, what good it will do, what better state of affairs it will bring about. And whether you buy his argument or not, Assange has a clearly articulated vision for how Wikileaks’ activities will “carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity,” a strategy for how exposing secrets will ultimately impede the production of future secrets. The point of Wikileaks — as Assange argues — is simply to make Wikileaks unnecessary.

    As they say, read the whole damn thing. Rosen, Weaver & Shirky (who calls it “the best thing about [Wikileaks] ever written”) are citing this as the definitive analysis of the overarching ‘why’ behind Wikileaks.

  155. My question is: would you refrain from objecting if he had harmed them less or reduced the risk of harm? What if the benefit of harming them were greater than it currently is, and the harm were constant?
    I guess my point here is that Assange is not in a position to assess any of the above, nor to mitigate any harm that his actions do cause.
    I don’t think Assange is a terrorist, or a spy, or likely even a criminal. I don’t know if he’s even a particularly bad guy.
    I don’t think he should go to jail, I don’t think Wikileaks should be shut down. I think the reaction to this leak, and (probably) to a lesser degree the Afghanistan leaks are overblown. I think the transparent attempts to discredit and/or threaten Assange are idiotic.
    I just don’t particularly see him as a particularly responsible guy.
    Sure, as far as we know, nobody has been shot in the head and left for dead in the street because of what’s been put out on Wikileaks. But that’s not the only kind of damage that can flow from these kinds of indiscriminate disclosures.
    Assange may, in fact, not be indifferent to the difficulties he creates when he dumps this stuff in public. For all I know, it keeps him up each and every night.
    What I do know is that he is not in a position to realistically evaluate the impact his actions will have, and he absolutely does not have the resources to do anything to mitigate that impact.
    Maybe we’re at the point where our foreign policy and diplomatic relations are so irreparably FUBAR that the best thing to do is hang any and all dirty laundry out to dry and let the chips fall where they may.
    I hope that’s not true, because that would be one hell of a crappy place to be.
    But even if it is or isn’t true, I don’t see Assange as being the guy to know that, or to understand how to make it better.
    He’s not commenting on foreign policy, he’s not making a principled argument about state secrecy.
    He’s now an active, purposeful participant in the whole mess.
    I’m not he’s in a position to be that guy.
    The dude’s a loose cannon. He’s Some Guy With A Website. And he’s f***ing, in a very direct way, with international diplomatic relations.
    I don’t see that as a good thing.

  156. No one would even know who Assange is without people (person?) having funneled data to him. I don’t think he’s even violated any laws.
    He’s not my favorite person on the planet right now, but I think there are probably others who would have done same as him, given the chance. It’s really the guy who swiped the data who should be getting the lion’s share of vilification, no?

  157. It’s really the guy who swiped the data who should be getting the lion’s share of vilification, no?
    He and whoever the people were who decided to put such supposedly sensitive information where it could, apparently, easily be obtained en masse.

  158. He and whoever the people were who decided to put such supposedly sensitive information where it could, apparently, easily be obtained en masse.

    Assange is an Australian national. I don’t believe his activities are constrained by US law.
    Maybe there’s some international law that applies, here, that I’m unaware of.

  159. Huh? I’m talking about the Department of State. Some PFC was able to get gobs of info and hand it off to whomever.

  160. russell: Maybe we’re at the point where our foreign policy and diplomatic relations are so irreparably FUBAR that the best thing to do is hang any and all dirty laundry out to dry and let the chips fall where they may.
    With respect, I think that point was passed in early 2003, when the US falsified evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as a pretext for a war of aggression.
    History is not going to judge that very kindly. In fact it’s going to be called a war crime. So things have gone pretty badly wrong already and I for one would like to figure out how to prevent it from getting any wrong-er since I happen to live in and be a citizen of, respectively, the two countries responsible for the whole thing.
    And if the loyal opposition in those countries won’t do anything to shed any light on what the hell is going on, it falls to the rest of us to try to find out. And if that means some potentially dangerous information gets out in the open, that is an acceptable price to pay for the not at all potential danger of more wars, in which hundreds of thousands of actual people will actually die.
    As noted above, nobody appears to have actually been harmed by the previous releases related to Afghanistan and Iraq, contra dire warnings from the DoD. Even if they had, people die every day as a result of things the US/UK/NATO does.
    Let me put it simply: we still do not know why we invaded Iraq in 2003. Anything that may shed some light on how our governments actually work would be welcome for the citizens of these democracies, who are the ones who actually die for and pay for the wars that result.
    We don’t know why we invaded a country and overthrew its government on utterly false pretexts that pretty much everyone in both the US & UK governments knew were false. We don’t do that on a regular basis, so the superficial arguments about wanting to “look tough” don’t explain it away. (Obviously they helped get a lot of people on the bandwagon though.)
    I’d like to know why. I’d like to know why war with Iran has such a constituency in Washington. That the king of Saudi Arabia – a country notorious for bribery and corruption – is eagerly pushing it in private while US politicians and officials push it in public is information that I think is quite important for the citizens of the US to know.

  161. Ah, I see the problem.
    By “vilification”, I was really meaning “consequences”. I have no idea why I chose that word, and it’s completely understandable if you’re wondering if I’ve gone even more off my nut than usual.

  162. Sebastian: I think it is great to try to hold the US accountable for its misdeeds. I don’t think it is great to have lots of other people pay for it *especially when you could take steps to avoid it*.
    Sebastian, Novakant said this shortly before you posted:
    Sebastian, the problem with your “argument” is that Wikileaks did redact names and other identity information from the documents.
    Can you respond to his claim?
    Then you quote me:
    “If this is about utility, then we’re in “torture the guy who knows where the bomb is” territory, even if you object to this iteration of lawbreaking”
    Sebastian: Turbulence and Donald Johnson: you going to let this pass as a pro-Assange argument?
    But that is not a pro-Assange argument. I said “If.” My point was that “if” Russell objected based on the harm from the leak, then he was implicitly stating that the harm, and not the leak, was the problem.
    I haven’t posted a pro- or anti- Assange argument. I have been asking people to clarify the grounds on which they object to the leak.

  163. I judge myself more harshly than Assange–all this talk about his being an egomaniac and so forth is just the usual collection of insults that are thrown at any radical who manages to grab the microphone for a moment and make his or her case. He’s got to be a nut, or those of us who live in this society and accept as a given that there is no accountability for the powerful are at best confused and at worst smug, complacent and complicit. Assange, for all his faults (leaving aside whether he’s a rapist, which is inexcusable if true) is trying to do something about this sick society. I sit at the computer and type angry letters to the NYT or politicians or rant away in a blog comment section. Assange’s life choice seems far more admirable to me.

  164. “Let me put it simply: we still do not know why we invaded Iraq in 2003. Anything that may shed some light on how our governments actually work would be welcome for the citizens of these democracies, who are the ones who actually die for and pay for the wars that result.”
    What do you mean, we don’t know why? There are many reasons why and all of them were bad. But the fact that we were able to do it is because enough of the stupid electorate voted Republican or Nader in year 2000 so that the 5 right wing members of the Supreme Court were able to call the election in his favor. Thereafter, it doesn’t matter what secret negotiations or diplomacy occurred. Bush had the power to start the war, and did it with a sloppy authorization from Congress. There is nothing in Wikileaks or any other document that we need to know since there are very public rationales from PNAC, Cheney’s oil company friends’ interests, Halliburton’s interests, and many others. Who needs to uncover secret diplomatic discussions to understand all that?
    And knowing, as we know now, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the stated casus belli, there is every reason for citizens to demand a full inquiry into everything leading up to that war. Unfortunately, the citizens have moved on.

  165. I don’t think that ‘if’ argument about torture will get you very far here, but we will see. I’m noting my objection to it and moving on.
    As for redaction: In past leaks they redacted some information, though it is still very possible to get exact names of people working in Afghanistan even from that dump. I feel strangely reluctant to additionally show you this, on the off off off chance that one of the names I easily found hasn’t been noticed already. But if you look in the documents yourself you can construct easy searches to get Afghan people who helped the United States. If you have any computer search skills at all, I encourage you to look for yourself.
    This dump was even less redacted (in one of the interviews he said he didn’t have time…) and the question doesn’t pertain to the touchy diplomatic issues (like NK) anyway.

  166. Maybe this is one thing that bothers me. I am open to the idea that sometimes you see things so horrible that you have to leak them rather than be complicit in hiding them. The first big dump, some months ago, had some of that. I can understand Manning and Wikileaks working together to expose potential war crimes, or even expose how the war is going in a different direction from how it is generally portrayed in the media.
    I don’t get that out of this dump. There is no dramatic moral imperative to leak so that we can find out that some functionary in Canada thinks Canadians have a chip on their shoulder. There is no moral imperative to risk the NK reaction to the fact that Japan and South Korea and China are partially putting aside their enormous history to figure out what to do when NK collapses.
    I felt like I could understand the previous mega-leak, even if I thought it wasn’t done ideally. This one, I don’t understand. It seems there is very little upside, very little moral necessity, and a big potential downside (or a lot of big potential downsides).

  167. But if you look in the documents yourself you can construct easy searches to get Afghan people who helped the United States. If you have any computer search skills at all, I encourage you to look for yourself.
    Comments like this seem bizarrely disconnected from the reality of war in Afghanistan. In the areas of Afghanistan where people might be in danger for helping the US, the Taliban have already infiltrated damn near everything. They already know a great deal more about the US and people helping the US than the US knows about the Taliban and people helping the Taliban. The notion that the Taliban might need to go on the internet and read some english language documents to learn facts that they already know in far more detail is just…daft. I mean, this is the whole basis of the Taliban’s strategic advantage to the US: far superior local knowledge and intelligence.
    So yes, I’m sure you can find the name of, say, a local police chief who worked with the US on raiding some Taliban compounds. But given that several of his police officers are likely on the Taliban payroll, I’m pretty sure that Wikileaks is irrelevant to the chief’s well being.

  168. “I don’t think that ‘if’ argument about torture will get you very far here, but we will see. I’m noting my objection to it and moving on.”
    In court, I think an attorney has to state the grounds for his objection before it’s noted. Can you do me the courtesy of stating objection?
    My impression (which is uncertain, since you have spoken so vaguely) is that you think I am arguing for torture. If that is what you think, you have badly misunderstood me. I have not stated a pro- or anti-torture argument. Neither have I stated a pro- or anti-Assange argument. I have repeatedly said that I am asking the posters here which of two possible (as I see it) grounds they are using to either decry or support Wikileaks.
    The reason I brought up torture was to compare the arguments used in its support by other people [i.e. Not Me] to the arguments used against or for wikileaks on this blog.
    My point was that russell and several others seemed to be arguing that Wikileaks would be bad or good based on how much harm/good the leak dump caused.
    This is, in my view, like saying that torture is bad or good based on whether the victim has or does not have information.
    I very specifically did not state how I felt about torture. For the record, I am against torture on legal / principled grounds.

  169. Sapient, from the link donald posted above:
    In Spain, the WikiLeaks disclosures have dominated the news for three days now. The reporting has been led by the level-headed El País, with its nationwide competitor, Público, lagging only a bit behind. Attention has focused on three separate matters, each pending in the Spanish national security court, the Audiencia Nacional: the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the mistaken shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank; an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; and a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003.
    These cables reveal a large-scale, closely coordinated effort by the State Department to obstruct these criminal investigations…
    Without the leaks, this scandal wouldn’t have been front page news. Since Obama has shown no interest whatsoever in transparency and is in certain respects even worse than Bush, it is little wonder that some people have decided to take matters in their own hands and I believe that, under the circumstances, it is a good thing.

  170. “Unfortunately, the citizens have moved on.”
    They were told to move on by Obama, who compared any investigation into Bush’s crimes as a possible “witch hunt”, and this is the prevailing view of the political class in this country.
    “Who needs to uncover secret diplomatic discussions to understand all that?”
    Again with the secret diplomatic discussions. I never realized liberals made such a fetish of this until yesterday. Sebastian may have a legitimate point wrt Korea, but when I hear the phrase “secret diplomatic discussion” I tend to think something bad is probably going on, and according to some of the wikileaks documents, such suspicions are often correct. Which is what one would expect. The North Korea case is special because that regime seems weirdly irrational (unless I’m getting too much mainstream spin in my reading) and so I can understand why one might want to be circumspect in discussing how to respond to them. In most cases, though, “secret diplomacy” probably means “lets conspire to tell lies to the Arab public and live down to their low expectations of us” or “let’s agree in private that the Honduran coup was illegal, but not say so” or things of that nature.
    What’s weird about this thread is that we’re spending all this time talking about what a bad thing wikileaks is, and not about the bad things wikileaks has revealed. There are some, you know, some mentioned in this thread and others you can find discussed elsewhere at other blogs. It’s not all gossip and titillation about Ghaddafi’s mistress (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
    As for nihilism, it is starting to have its appeal–part of the far left is certifiably nuts (a topic for some other thread), but to my mind so are mainstream liberals (on different subjects) and I won’t even get started on the conservatives. Assange is a dreamy-eyed idealist if he thinks he can whip some sense into this country by revealing that our government is lying. He doesn’t know America.

  171. russell: What I do know is that he is not in a position to realistically evaluate the impact his actions will have, and he absolutely does not have the resources to do anything to mitigate that impact.
    I submit that there is no such person or group of persons anywhere in the world in such a position and with the resources to mitigate the impact. None.
    What does Assange do with his cables then?

  172. This is, in my view, like saying that torture is bad or good based on whether the victim has or does not have information.
    Not really. The very act of torture is harmful, morally and physically, in and of itself. Government-sanctioned torture discredits the sanctioning government morally to other governments and citizens around the world. There is nothing inherently immoral about releasing information, at least not in the same sense. You are necessarily harming someone when you torture. Releasing information – not so much; it can be completely harmless or not, depending on the circumstances.

  173. @Jacob Davies: it already has been judged as a war crime, not that you’ll ever hear that on TV in the US. Certainly most of the people I know here (I can think of two people I’ve discussed this with over the last year who disagreed with me) thought the invasion of Iraq was a war crime. Jean Chretien sure had a lot of faults, but everybody I know thanks $DEITY that he kept us away from THAT tar baby.
    Sebastien: given that the excessive secrecy about what the folks on the ground were saying to the US government in the leadup to the Iraq war enabled your government to lie the American people into that war, I’m not sure how that’s a distinction with a difference.
    Further back in the thread: I don’t think the NK government isn’t going to do any such thing as shell Seoul, because if they in fact launched a serious war against SK and started shelling Seoul, the response by SK and the US would be both prompt and devastating, and Kim Jong-Il knows this. He may be a complete sociopath, but I suspect he likes things the way they are just fine, and launching an all-out assault on SK would put an end to that for good.
    Once you have wikileaks doing anything much more than checking for the possibility of lethal reprisal, they’re engaging in the selective editing that is so problematic and that people would castigate them for (whose crisis merits attention… whose crisis gets left untouched?)
    Wikileaks’ goal (imho) is to permit the crowdsourcing of journalism. This is the flipside of the destruction of the monopolization of the means of distribution for journalism… wikileaks destroys the monopolization of the means of production. This might not be so necessary were it not for the abject failure of the professional journalists to do their jobs. At this point they even openly boast about being stenographers, and have been since the start of the first Gulf War at least (anyone else remember Dan Rather proudly announcing that they were in no way going to do anything that might damage the war effort on the eve of the land invasion on the nightly news?)
    And as an aside, and completely OT: I for one welcome our new arsenic-based overlords!

  174. @Donald Johnson: All that stuff (the titillating factor) is all part of the propaganda push to get the US public to ignore what they’ve got there. Also, you guys here are still fixated on “America!!!!!11!!!1!!”. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that he was very pessimistic about the likelihood that the US citizenry would take what they should out of this; your fellow citizens are very well anaesthetised, I’d say. The citizens of other countries, now… that might be a little different.

  175. “In court, I think an attorney has to state the grounds for his objection before it’s noted. Can you do me the courtesy of stating objection?”
    This isn’t a court, and treating it like one is tedious. But, normally, in this forum, justifications based on the ticking time bomb scenario or similar justifications get slammed rather hard as being unrealistic hypotheticals that don’t add much to the discussion. See for example here, here, here and lots of posts here
    You just aren’t going to get far with it in this forum, and I’m kind of surprised you haven’t gotten jumped on already.
    “I have not stated a pro- or anti-torture argument. Neither have I stated a pro- or anti-Assange argument. I have repeatedly said that I am asking the posters here which of two possible (as I see it) grounds they are using to either decry or support Wikileaks.”
    I speak only for myself, but this pose is getting irritating. Asking for clarification can be useful for the conversation if you’re having one. You aren’t Socrates, make your argument.
    If you believe *as you imply* that Wikileaks is analytically similar to ticking bomb torture, lets discuss it.
    I don’t think anyone here *other than you* has made that comparison, and I’m not sure that anyone here thinks it is a valid one. And of those who do think it is a valid one, it is likely to be a slam dunk AGAINST Wikileaks considering how little utility the ticking time bomb scenario is considered to have around here (which in my opinion is the correct judgment about its utility).

  176. I agree that there are cases in which a leak can cause no harm, and no cases in which torture causes no harm, but it seems to me to be beside the point in the case of a leak that you know will cause harm but you think will cause sufficient good to justify the harm. In such a case, you (or Julian Assange, or whomever) are doing a cost benefit analysis. Glenn Greenwald does not dispute that the latest Wikileaks dump may cause harm, he’s arguing that the harm is outweighed by the utility of the leak. Your point stands that there are some leaks which, by causing no harm (except possibly to the perpetrators thereby implicated), are necessarily and categorically unlike torture. However, I think that many leaks entail at least some harm, and that means we’re in ends-justify-the-means territory, which is the same place torture defenders stand.

  177. Sebastian, I suspect that no one has jumped on me because no one besides you thinks I am arguing in favor of the ticking time bomb argument. I am not in favor if a ticking time bomb argument. I am unfavorably comparing one of the Wikileaks “defenses” to the ticking time bomb argument. I am frustrated because I am trying hard to write clearly, and I know you might be exasperated with me, but if you seriously think I argued that the ticking time bomb scenario is a) valid and b) supports Wikileaks, I would deeply appreciate it if you’d show me what I said that resembles those statements. I have repeatedly stated the opposite of both those premises.

  178. Donald wrote above:
    “lets conspire to tell lies to the Arab public and live down to their low expectations of us” or “let’s agree in private that the Honduran coup was illegal, but not say so” or things of that nature.”
    Yeah, I wonder if this is outrage fatigue or something, but I guess spying on the UN, squashing torture investigations or protecting governments from their own populations are just how things are done and everybody knows it’s happening, when we get (more)details about it’s…gossip? Not newsworthy? Hmmm..
    Here’s another typical example, an
    AP article which mainly deals with the rape allegations, but it also contains this:
    The latest batch of leaked documents included a frank assessment from the American envoy to Stockholm about Sweden’s historic policy of nonalignment — a policy which the U.S. ambassador, Michael Woods, seemed to suggest was for public consumption only.
    Sweden’s military and intelligence cooperation with the United States “give the lie to the official policy” of non-participation in military alliances, Woods said. He added in a separate cable that Sweden’s Defense Minister Sten Tolgfors fondly remembers his time as a high school student in America and “loves the U.S.”
    Woods cautioned American officials not to trumpet Sweden-U.S. cooperation in the fight against terrorism too openly.
    “The extent of this cooperation is not widely known within the Swedish government,” he said. “Public mention of the cooperation would open up the government to domestic criticism.”

  179. No, in your initial comments you deliberately and obtusely don’t state whether or not you think they are valid and you deliberately and obtusely don’t state whether or not you think they support Wikileaks. You even explicitly said that was what you were doing in your later comments.
    In any case, I honestly don’t see the slightest resemblance between the torture argument and the Wikileaks argument, in defense of Wikileaks or otherwise. If you want to flesh out the analogy so we can talk about it, I’d be thrilled to. Otherwise, I can’t.

  180. However, I think that many leaks entail at least some harm, and that means we’re in ends-justify-the-means territory, which is the same place torture defenders stand.
    Julian, there is no act or non-act that doesn’t have the potential for negative consequences. Now, you might be able to say that you must act based on that which you can know or have some reasonable level of certainty about, lest you be paralyzed by uncertainty. So, if you know or suspect a given leak (or whatever) will cause harm to someone, you are morally left with deciding if that harm is worth whatever benefit there is to gain, as you said – it’s a cost-benefit analysis, relative to the costs and benefits of not proceeding.
    The problem I have with the torture comparison is that it focuses on those who would attempt to justify torture. There are those who would not justify torture under any circumstances because torture is so inherently abhorent. It simply can’t be right in absolute moral terms. There’s no such thing as a cost-benefit analysis, because the cost is infinite. It is not some morally neutral act, like passing on information.
    The morality of passing on information lies solely in its consequences. It’s like urinating. It’s okay to urinate in a toilet, but wrong to urinate in someone’s face, at least outside of certain obscure circles.
    I think this discussion has shifted from: “Is the Wikileaks dump a net good or net bad?” to “Do the good parts justify the bad parts, regardless of how they net out?” In which case, the response is “Does failing to leak the information cause harm, and can that harm be justified?” I think the best you can do is minimize the harm of releasing the information, at least below the level of harm that would be caused by a failure to release the information, but as much as can reasonably be expected given the limitations of foreknowledge.

  181. Sebastian, I would suggest that Julian is arguing in good faith and that, if you find his argument tedious or frustrating, that you just don’t participate. It’s just a suggestion. Your tone seems to be getting too harsh (IMO, of course – feel free to ignore this).

  182. “The morality of passing on information lies solely in its consequences.”
    Bah. This is the crux of the whole argument. Barring negative secondary consequences it is ok to steal and dessiminate classified information. Wrong. The act itself is wrong.

  183. My point was that russell and several others seemed to be arguing that Wikileaks would be bad or good based on how much harm/good the leak dump caused.
    To be clear: I’m not saying Wikileaks is bad, or good.
    I’m saying Assange is a freaking loose cannon. And that’s pretty much all I’m saying.
    Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on your point of view about lots of things extraneous to Wikileaks.
    I’m basically in agreement with Jacob, and Donald Johnson, and mostly with Turbulence, on the issue of the quality of American foreign policy.
    We want to rule the world. In fact, we sort of insist on ruling the world. That’s a crappy agenda. Full stop.
    I’m just not convinced that Assange’s project of “open governance through vandalism” is going to bring about the result he claims to be looking for.
    Assange is, himself, something of a fanatical idealogue. The visionary thing is laudable on its own merits, however I get very nervous when people like that get their hands on the levers.
    What, exactly, would *not* be fair game for disclosure in Assange’s world?
    Particulars about weapons capabilities?
    Travel plans for important players?
    Details of upcoming troop movements?
    He’s not just a guy calling for open governance anymore. He’s a player. He’s *forcing* a particular, uncontrolled and indiscriminate type of “open governance” on everyone in the world, ready or not, to whatever opportunistic degree he can.
    And unlike many if not most of the other players involved, he’s really not accountable to anyone.
    I get to vote for or against Obama in two years. I have exactly zero influence over what Assange says or does.
    So I’m extremely wary of the guy. My two cents.

  184. @slartibartfast: wake up and smell the coffee. The US likes to claim the mantle of the most perfect democracy ever… which makes all of you guilty by association, whether you want to be or not.
    As for the goodness or badness of the leaking… well, that really depends on whether you think you’re in or out of the power elite. I’d like to suggest that most if not all of the people here are out, and if they identify with them they are deluding themselves. I’d like to refer you to the words of a truly great American, George Carlin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

  185. Barring negative secondary consequences it is ok to steal and dessiminate classified information. Wrong. The act itself is wrong.
    Marty, do you think it was wrong for Allied spies to steal and disseminate classified Nazi secrets?
    Doesn’t the “classified” part carry imply any burden on the body classifying the information? I mean, what if you were abducted in the middle of the night by the FBI and someone in the executive branch decided to classify any information regarding your status or whereabouts or the circumstances of your abduction? Would that be okay? Would finding that information out be stealing, and would passing it on to your family be wrong?
    The crux of this whole thing is really about authority, isn’t it? You wouldn’t object to the US government deciding it was okay to disseminate the same information Wikileaks, did, at least not for reasons other than the potential harm it might cause, would you? Oh, but it’s THEIR information, right? Even though it concerns a lot of people other than them, that is. You trust that authority all you like. russell, too, it would seem.

  186. Marty: Barring negative secondary consequences it is ok to steal and dessiminate classified information. Wrong. The act itself is wrong.
    What does “barring negative secondary consequences” mean?
    Is it “wrong” for an American to copy and distribute documents classified by the Russian government?
    Is it “wrong” for an Israeli to copy and distribute documents classified by the Iranian government?
    What sort of “wrong” is this, exactly? The sort that applies only when it’s the US doing the classifying?

  187. hsh,
    I admit, and have deleted a few comments that raised the question, that I think it is bad because it is US information.
    That being said, there is a reason that everyone spies secretly, it is against the law everywhere. If Iran catches a US spy, an actual one, I would have no expectation that they would not try and execute him unless there was a leverage point (swap etc.) they could use that saved him.
    He would be a spy and would be treated accordingly. Would I want my government to spy where possible? Yes. Consequences versus risk. Human intelligence is always best. However, I recognize Iran’s right to deter us or try their best to spy on us.
    When we catch them, I expect us to use foreign spies to obtain whatever leverage we can, up to long prison sentences if nothing else.

  188. russell, in what sense do you need to trust him? He is reliant on sources who provide him with information on their own judgment. For instance, I think it’s highly unlikely that anyone knowing the design secrets for thermonuclear weapons is going to pass them along to him.
    Some info here on how Wikileaks worked with the newspapers to redact names from the latest release: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/28/104404/officials-may-be-overstating-the.html
    It wasn’t a totally indiscriminate dump the way the Afghan documents were.

  189. It’s okay. You’re right that I contradicted myself. I’m sorry, I got a bit flustered. I was trying to not take a position earlier because the analogy between torture and wikileaks is accurate or inaccurate regardless of my approval or disapproval of torture, and I wanted to keep it simple. I did not intend to be coy or provocative by not disclosing that I abhor torture. I thought it was superfluous, sort of like having to wear a flag pin or constantly praise the troops.
    I don’t know how much clearer I can make my analogy. It may not be good, in which case you’re free to criticize it as hsh and russell both have, but your assertion that I need to “flesh it out” does not help me in the slightest to determine what, exactly, you’re unclear about. Russell and HSH both understood my point well enough to dispute it. I would much rather you do the same than have me endlessly reiterate my analogy with no inkling as to which portion of it is insensible to you.
    So:
    I think that Wikileaks and Torture are alike in that both are illegal(this needs some qualification because Assange has not been indicted yet, but I am treating leaking of classified info in general as illegal), and both are typically, in my experience defended with an “ends-justifies-the-means” argument. This is in the same camp as “let’s plant drugs on this guy because, even though we didn’t find any, we know he’s out here dealing.” The idea is that we circumvent the law to achieve the outcome we want but do not trust our due process to produce.
    I asked Russell if he was taking issue with the end results of the Wikileaks dump, because my point was that merely protesting the results left open the possibility that a different leak would be fine.
    russell said:
    “To be clear: I’m not saying Wikileaks is bad, or good.
    I’m saying Assange is a freaking loose cannon. And that’s pretty much all I’m saying.”
    Which means russell falls, according to my interpretation, into the camp of “process.” russell doesn’t care if this specific leak is bad or good. In russell’s, and my, view (forgive me for taking your name in vain, but you’re the closest thing to a saint around here)Wikileaks is flawed not because it failed to do enough good this time around but because it is outside of our democratic process. Wikileaks / Assange has no accountability to the people whose lives their leaks affect, it/he is constrained by nothing more than personal judgment.
    HSH pointed out the distinction that torture, unlike a leak, is always harmful. I had not mentioned that, and it’s a weakness in my analogy. However, I think that there is still a similarity between leaking which is harmful or risks harm (as even Glenn Greenwald concedes this latest dump may) and torture, because both are methods the lie outside the approved process, and both appeal to ends-justify-the-means logic rather than principle.

  190. in what sense do you need to trust him?
    Well, frex, I wonder how he is going to do any due diligence with the Russian documents he claims that he has. Redacting documents in a foreign language is something I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing, even if it were in a language that I had a good feel for but wasn’t a native speaker. Of course, if he is claiming he has them, but doesn’t, that raises issues of trust as well.

  191. Redacting documents in a foreign language is something I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing
    There’s more to Wikileaks besides Assange. He’s not going to be the one redacting Russian language documents.
    Of course, if he is claiming he has them, but doesn’t, that raises issues of trust as well.
    I’m sorry, but have there been any cases where Wikileaks announced a set of documents but then refused to provide them? I mean, you seem to be imputing bad faith here and I’m trying to understand: is there any basis for that?

  192. As I noted in my first comment, he said that he was going to publish the bank communication and I wondered why he hadn’t done that before doing this. I’m not imputing bad faith, and there are lots of reasons not to trust someone other than bad faith. I tend to feel that he regards any large group that uses privileged communication as being a conspiracy, but beside that, he seems to have moved to a place where he doesn’t really feel constrained by any concerns that are offered by others. Of course, this isn’t to say that this happens in a vacuum and given the pressures that have been brought to bear, he is probably encouraged to think this way.
    This latest dump seems to be the third part of the materials apparently obtained by Manning. Ironically, Wikileaks adopts the same government speak about refusing to confirm or deny who obtained the documents, which seems to put us back to square one in game theory concerning what sources to trust. Also, when the methodology went from small sets of documents to sets numbering in the tens of thousands, the difference in number has become a difference in kind. Russell mentioned at one point that Assange doesn’t really know what he’s opened up, but you believe that he has everything firmly under control.
    And I believe it is only with this document set (but not the original video that may have been the initial part of what Manning may have given wikileaks) that wikileaks has announced what they were doing, whereas previously, they were just placed on the site.
    Furthermore, the group of people analyzing these documents is no more than a handful, which sort of denies the logic of crowd outsourcing.

  193. lj: Wikileaks adopts the same government speak about refusing to confirm or deny who obtained the documents
    Protecting sources is standard in investigative journalism. Or do you think Woodward and Bernstein should have thrown Mark Felt to the wolves?

  194. russell, in what sense do you need to trust him?
    That’s a funny question.
    Need / not need, I’m not sure how that comes into it. I *don’t* trust him.
    He has a huge agenda, and he’s not accountable to anybody or anything other than his personal sense of mission.
    I don’t trust people like that. To me, Assange is the flip side of the guy who will destroy the village in order to save it.
    Wikileaks / Assange has no accountability to the people whose lives their leaks affect, it/he is constrained by nothing more than personal judgment.
    That’s about the size of it, IMVHO. That, plus I’m not seeing “personal judgement” as Assange’s strong point.
    there are lots of reasons not to trust someone other than bad faith.
    Precisely.
    I have no idea of Assange is a good guy or a bad guy. I’m not sure it matters either way.
    Dumping a quarter million diplomatic cables in one go sort of takes it past a question of good intentions.
    you’re the closest thing to a saint around here
    I want to show this to my wife, she will get a very good laugh out of it. 🙂

  195. I *don’t* trust him. He has a huge agenda, and he’s not accountable to anybody or anything other than his personal sense of mission.
    Well, I could say the same about the US government – and they’ve got guns …

  196. Protecting sources is standard in investigative journalism. Or do you think Woodward and Bernstein should have thrown Mark Felt to the wolves?
    Jacob, did you take any time to look at the links about the outing of Publius? You might want to understand what happened with that before you crank up with the ‘are you still beating your wife’ questions.
    At any rate, I’m not sure if I would call Wikileaks a ‘publication’ and Assange a ‘journalist’, so your analogy is not really clarifying. And the question is not throwing anyone to the wolves, it is whether you trust them. Did you still trust Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair?

  197. These leaks tell us more about the Leftist media that have reported them with such fascination and shock. They’re all ’surprised’ that Arab countries are worried about Iran? Well that’s probably because normally, instead of reporting the reality of foreign affairs, they recycle isolationist, Leftist propaganda: http://bit.ly/fyPjVo

  198. To you guys (lj, russell, julian) who are suggesting that there’s a process to be followed and what do you do about the fact that wikileaks is not able to be controlled… what do you have to say about the situation where that process is broken and has been suborned by the people in charge of that process?
    I mean, it’s not like you can really call this a hypothetical question, given recent history.

  199. At any rate, I’m not sure if I would call Wikileaks a ‘publication’ and Assange a ‘journalist’ …
    That’s some awfully restrictive definitions there, lj.
    Making information available to the general public is “publication”. Passing it secretly to the KGB, say, would be espionage. Keeping it entirely to yourself would be … pointless.
    And I have to say, without meaning to offend you in particular, that I despise the vagueness of the word “journalist”. I prefer the plainer “reporter” to designate someone who reports information.
    Incidentally, it may have been Bob Woodward that I first heard use “reporting a story” to mean gathering information rather than disseminating it. That annoys me too. Guess I’m really cranky this morning.
    –TP

  200. which makes all of you guilty by association, whether you want to be or not

    We’re determined to explore the entire set of named logical fallacies today, aren’t we?

  201. Well, Tony, I didn’t bring up the notion of journalist, Jacob did. And he said ‘investigative journalist’. What precisely has Assange and Wikileaks ‘investigated’? I’m not offended, but I just don’t see posting volumes of text on a webpage as publishing.
    And poly, I hope that my long comment on Doc Science’s newest post may go towards addressing your question, but to give you the nickel version, Assange’s goal is not to fix any process, but to blow the process up so that it is no longer possible. If the process you refer to is the process of diplomacy, what precisely do you propose will take its place?

  202. Well, I could say the same about the US government
    There are definitely folks in the US (and pretty much any other) government about whom I would say the same.
    So what? How does that make the Wikileaks dump a good thing?
    Does it actually *change the behavior of the people and institutions that folks object to in any constructive way*?
    If you think things are at a point where “blow it up and worry about the damage later” is a useful approach, you probably think Assange is on the right track.
    If you don’t, not.
    In this case, I don’t.

  203. “I just don’t see posting volumes of text on a webpage as publishing.”
    Thank you. It’s like thowing a file cabinet into the street.

  204. I think that Wikileaks and Torture are alike in that both are illegal(this needs some qualification because Assange has not been indicted yet, but I am treating leaking of classified info in general as illegal), and both are typically, in my experience defended with an “ends-justifies-the-means” argument. This is in the same camp as “let’s plant drugs on this guy because, even though we didn’t find any, we know he’s out here dealing.” The idea is that we circumvent the law to achieve the outcome we want but do not trust our due process to produce.
    State-sanctioned torture and cops’ planting drugs on people involve the authorities abusing their authority. There is a positive feedback loop where power takes power, leading to corruption and a breakdown in the very rule of law. It’s not the same as someone outside of power simply breaking the law, which does not render the law itself invalid and without meaning.
    If Assange did break the law, I wouldn’t really have a problem with his being prosecuted for it, at least not from a legal standpoint. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t still think that what he did was a net good for the citizens of the world and democracy in general.

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