Um, I Think It's Time for a Thread on WikiLeaks

repellant because i'm pretty much dr. morbius about the u.s. government.

Can you explain what this means? Because Dr. Morbz has a very superficial position wrt Democracy + government. He is essentially waiting for a charismatic figure to lift us out of the bonds of history + alienation. You can't exactly argue policy based on that.

Like, I also feel the appeal of messianic ahistorical redemption and the moment it comes I'll be thrilled, but until that point we should probably live in this world.

i still have no clue what the sides are in this argument

that's because there aren't any

where is my totem

Well, the original argument was whether you should be happy about any release of information (assuming it doesn't do harm to an individual, acc to Smith, not sure if k3v actually agreed with that) because free information is always a net good. I expressed some skepticism of that and said that while I think information can be good, it can also be bad and each leak should be independently evaluated for its value. It was posited that it was always good because it resolves an imbalance in power between citizens and government, and can help curtail corruption. I don't disagree with either of those things, but I still don't feel like it's a net good because I don't think that imbalance is completely bad. As usual, I think to the extent that any particular action does a good thing in the world it's good, and if it does negative stuff in the world it's negative. Also, we strayed into US power because it seems like some people on the thread are actually very cynical about any expression of US power, in which case revealing any document is probably a net good since it may undermine the State's power and ability to influence. If you are in favor of US State power to some extent (even if you want it mediated) you might be more considerate to the particular information being leaked. That's kinda where we're up to right now. (Oh, and also, k3v believes I'm ILX's token conservative. Of course, this is like I'm a token conservative like Chomsky is a conservative because he doesn't believe in boycotting Israeli universities -- it's definitely more ideological house-cleaning than actually believing I'm a conservative.)

ppl only say that free information is always good because ppl are nosy gossips

maybe not a mind blowing point here but wrt the ramifications of possibly life-threatening (eg identifying) intel reaching the public: the military has internal standards for determining, and safeguarding, the degree to which intel is "sensitive". which, to me, means that if STATE SECRETS are headed to the Internet, they probably weren't that secret in the first place.

WL is obv a worthwhile endeavor, to me, and handwringing about whether or not it's gonna tip off Hitler to DDay is top shelf concerntrolling, and far too dismissive of the massive intelligence apparatus that has been bein sneaky for oh like 70 years.

(sorry iphoning this one in)

suddenly i have 'spartan' in my head

Scott: Why would I want to know? I ain't a planner, I ain't a thinker. I never wanted to be. You got to set your motherfucker to receive. Listen to me. They don't go through the door, we don't ask why. That's not a cost, it's benefit. Because we get to travel light. They tell me where to go. Tell me what to do when I get there.

I think there's some legitimate concern that some of the information that was leaked is actually life-threatening intel. I think WikiLeaks is being a good person not releasing everything he has and sitting on some of the very life-threatening information. xp

wtf? i meant that i think the u.s. govt's primary interest is its own survival and that it doesn't give much of a shit about anything else. why would i care about its position at the bargaining table? pretty sure dr. morbius believes the exact opposite of what you're saying he does but like i don't know who he is and can't put words in his mouth, i was just using it as shorthand for the above.

i just... can't see why this is hard. goole and j0hn otm xxxxposts

"free information is always a net good."
I'm not sure anyone truly believes that, purely on the basis of signal:noise problems.

Matt, do u believe that the US government can have any positive impact on its citizen's lives, or are you a stone-cold libertarian? How about international intervention? Do you think there's such thing as a righteous war or do you believe the US should be totally neutral in all affairs? (I can't help but feel like you haven't thought your position out very well.)

I expressed some skepticism of that and said that while I think information can be good, it can also be bad and each leak should be independently evaluated for its value.

see this is just retarded to me, sorry

xp Philip: Reread k3v + j0hn's position! I tried really hard not to strawman it, I believe this is EXACTLY what they believe. And Matt, you just articulated my position exactly.

Material cataloguing blunders justifies decision to deploy 30,000 more US troops, US president says

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/27/barack-obama-afghan-war-logs1

IMHO this decision is far more life-threatening than any leak.

mordy did you ever respond to what goole said here:

i don't think you can separate the objects of "the state" and "the people". the state is not a mechanism, or a force, or an idea, or an arrow on a flowchart, it is a subset of the people, acting. i'm enough of a libertarian to disagree with the dictum you've quoted -- "governance" is just as often the means by which a man swallows his neighbor.

No, I haven't, tho I meant to. Essentially I believe that the people create the representative state to represent their issues. But in order to represent them, the State requires a certain amount of power. (They need to be able to prosecute criminals, for instance, in order to protect the people who voted for them, or whatever the issue is -- build roads so you can drive around, etc.) They're not separate, but there is an intentional power imbalance between them. Theoretically we vote for them and then they attain some power from that voting that allows them to act disproportionately to private citizens. This is, as I understand it, the way Democracy is supposed to work.

Ie: It's not just a subset of people acting. It's a subset of people acting who have been imbued with uncommon power (monopolies on certain kinds of force, information, power, etc).

the thinking is that the bad behavior and fuckups resulted from desperation and mismanagment which resulted from being ignored in favor of the iraq adventure.

pretty typical of democratic foreign policy, i have to admit -- the problem wasn't the fundements of the effort, it's that i wasn't around to do it right...

xps

my 'position' is that having more hard info about what's going on in a war your country is fighting is always a good thing, because your country will naturally want to keep anything related to the shitty ugly things it's doing secret, and the less it's secret, the more people might want to say 'hey, that's shitty and ugly, let's stop it.'

assuming, of course, that the people are interested in not being shitty and ugly, which IMO is a massive assumption that is not at all a given

yeah

another thing: really, if this argument is just boiling down to "WL should ~consider things~ before releasing intel willy-nilly" v. "WL should release everything all the time!" then it is imo a pretty fucking retarded argument.

of course, WL is going to evaluate whether or not it should release documents. julian whatever is a rational actor, and unless he has a policy of actually just releasing EVERYTHING he's given, then it's safe to say there's some contemplative process at work.

arguing about the ethical framework that might inform WL's decision-making process might help firm up your own, but imo the only question that has any ~stakes~ here is what to ~do~ about wikileaks. which, to me, is a pretty easy one: nothing.

which is to say: i am comfortable with the existence of a website, run by a guy, that leaks intel about what it has maybe arbitrarily deemed "nefarious doings." worrying about whether or not he'll fuck up and get someone killed is, as i said before, major concern trolling. like, wild-eyed, hair-pulling concern-trolling.

because, what's the alternative? shut it down? appoint a govt attache to WL that will say what's ok and what isn't? replace julian whatever with someone who doesn't make Mordy "wary?" what?

when it gets down to brass tacks, the whole WL issue is either a) do something about it (silencing them) or b) do nothing about it.

(sorry, i have not read the entire thread, so)

Could they be held liable in civil courts by family members of spies, say?

what, like wrongful death? due to intel leakage?

gbx, I think reasonable people can feel uncomfortable about the situation, hope that it will end up for better than for worse, and be attuned to the issue. if WikiLeaks did release something i felt was really destructive i reserve my right to feel like he should be shutdown. I think that's a really reasonable position.

like anything they could ever do would be as destructive as current US policy, yeah right.

knowing that the veil of secrecy allows you to do shitty things out of public view means... those with the power to make things secret will do shitty things! because they can! the principle of free information IS the principle of restraint of power, it IS the counterweight to the monopoly of force. a few more julian assanges around and the calculus for the political costs of military action start to change.

― goole, Tuesday, July 27, 2010 1:48 PM (2 hours ago)

straight fire beautiful post

I don't believe that the government should have to give up every secret but the ones that will lead to immediate, quantifiable, and direct harm to their citizens.

I don't want to be, you know, the kinda of "you side with the Bad Man, ergo you are a Bad Dude" dude like this, ok, but will you concede that it is this reasoning exactly that allowed the previous administration (and the current one, it must be remembered) to withhold information about a network of secret prisons in which unidentified persons have been held, interrogated, and tortured, and probably killed, at taxpayer expense, without accountability to any known authority save the very government that authorized the detention, interrogation, and torture of these prisoners, who are not afforded prisoner of war status nor any legal rights whatsoever? their reasoning for not disclosing this abhorrent policy (and continuing to stonewall on the subject) is this: "if our enemies find out that we are detaining and interrogating people without charge or any recognized international rights, and sometimes torturing them and maybe killing them, our enemies will get all pissed off, and then they might hurt somebody; therefore, nobody has a right to know what we're doing, and, in fact, we have a moral duty to safeguard information about our activities."

Because Dr. Morbz has a very superficial position wrt Democracy + government. He is essentially waiting for a charismatic figure to lift us out of the bonds of history + alienation.

You should be ashamed of yourself for misrepresenting somebody's position so willfully under the guise of providing a fair description of that person's position; Morbius's (otm imo) disgust with the actors in place doesn't mean he is "waiting for a charismatic figure." Despair in current conditions does not imply belief in some later magic solution.

like anything they could ever do would be as destructive as current US policy, yeah right.

― bug holocaust (sleeve), Tuesday, July 27, 2010 1:03 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's an unfair distinction though. vast and vastly powerful entities (like government) are far far far more capable of destructive action than small ones (like advocacy groups). in fact, i'd suggest that the casual destruction that large governments necessarily leave in their wake, as the cost of mere existence, necessarily dwarfs the worst that could possibly be accomplished by something like wikileaks.

i don't really get this thread but yeah, that is an odd characterization of Dr. Morbz's politics, though i don't share them.

xp

knowing that the veil of secrecy allows you to do shitty things out of public view means... those with the power to make things secret will do shitty things! because they can! the principle of free information IS the principle of restraint of power, it IS the counterweight to the monopoly of force. a few more julian assanges around and the calculus for the political costs of military action start to change.

― goole, Tuesday, July 27, 2010 1:48 PM (2 hours ago)

straight fire beautiful post

― terry squad (k3vin k.), Tuesday, July 27, 2010 1:15 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

Despair in current conditions does not imply belief in some later magic solution.

except that whenever Morbz is pressed for a suggested solution he invariably veers off into "MAGIC!" territory. I think Mordy's OTM tbh.

maybe that part is true; don't really see morbz as being invested in a charismatic figure tbh

anyway sorry, p sure that's not what this thread is about

"necessarily dwarfs the worst that could possibly be accomplished by something like wikileaks."

insofar as a strategic leak could alter the outcome of elections, the worst case scenarios are on par with govt.

you guys sure have a lot of faith in people

xp to shakey: I think what he means by that is that no solution is forthcoming, not that he expects any magic to occur. The accusation that people dissatisfied with the administration are asking for miracles is a popular one, though.

Destructive to US power, possibly. It seems like a very possible scenario, and as many problems as I have with US governance (stuff like torture, overthrowing democratically elected governments, etc), I'm not so convinced that there's significantly better models out there. I subscribe to the position that Europe is able to curtail many of their military needs because the US has stepped up to that role globally (I first read this in Zizek's new book and later in a few other places), not to mention that different countries have varying historical and even contemporary levels of responsibility (like in the UN). So the question is, assuming US power is limited, who steps up to fill the gap? (To paraphrase Zizek, should our only choice be between American-style civilization and the emerging Chinese authoritarian-capitalist form? If the answer is no, then the only alternative is Europe... But can Europe deliver such a thing?) xp to above

J0hn, I think it's pretty clear that's where his positions lead him. He is not merely dissatisfied but unable to understand how the system itself functions. You have a similar problem -- you've let idealism get in the way of actually understanding how Democracy works. Being idealistic is good, but letting that blind you to the world is silly. The lesson of Watergate wasn't that Presidents had gotten progressively and progressively more corrupt until the contemporary era when they were all bad and so we should go back to the time of honorable men. The lesson of Watergate was that we now have the tools + media infrastructure to expose government corruption. A thoughtful person feels bad about when things don't work in the world and when bad things happen, and then tries to figure out the best way to work within a system to move them. Morbz says that no one can do anything good, everyone is evil and corrupt, and it's not worth playing -- but that something better exists. Except he won't show the steps to get to something better, just his principled feeling that he can. This is not different from the positions of religious people who believe in following a moral, ethical code and that when the Messiah comes, everyone + the world will be transformed.

like, my immediate assumption re: a hypothetical disclosure of the American military being complicit in doing bad things to random groups of dark people is that the average American will shrug and go "oh well, it's not here; pass me my cheeseburger"

those with the power to make things secret will do shitty things! because they can!

hi dere I'm not sure that this can be fairly described as an example of one person having "a lot of faith in people" but it may be that I'm not clear on what faith means in this context

can we not discuss people who are not posting to this thread plz

it would be best if we didnt veer into mordys pet theories about dr morbius

xp

Ok, so apply everything I said to j0hn. It serves as the same critique.

Er, Smith. Sorry.

oh i like where this is going

I should probably just drop the whole thing.