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

I'm not sure how you can say that the principle of all information should be free is something long ago agreed upon by anyone. Foucault writes that information is an intrinsic piece of power relationships. Inequalities of information have been apart of the United States since its founding. That doesn't mean that information isn't good, just that it isn't unqualifiedly good. As in any other principle, nuance is important. I didn't say that k3v shouldn't believe free information isn't good, just that he should be more willing to examine case by case to see if it fulfills his principles. Surely you don't believe outing Valerie Plame was good, because you recognize that even tho it involved taking secret information and making it public, that was situated in full contexts that undermined some kind of essential principle. I'm just asking that you maintain that ability to think about even things like WikiLeaks, and not to defame people who want to have a more cogent response to a particular leak than, "yay, freedom of information!"

Also, you two realize you basically invented this idea about free information being at the bedrock of democracy thing and are running with it now?

Like certainly more free information is important in a Democracy than in a totalitarian government, but let's not pretend like information inequalities weren't built into the very foundation of Democracy.

Also, you two realize you basically invented this idea about free information being at the bedrock of democracy thing and are running with it now?

seriously how can you be making these claims with a straight face? admit that you are wrong & have been proven wrong. it's the gentlemanly thing to do.

http://www.jmu.edu/madison/gpos225-madison2/bill_of_rights_text.htm

honestly dude. one foucault ref does not make up for claiming that two guys on ilx invented freedom of the press.

really because it seems obvious to be that access to information by all parties & by people in all levels of political power is essential to a fair debate, and by extension democracy, the thing where everyone gets a say in how things are done

xps

to me*

meant to have an image in that post between lines & here it is

http://www.coloradospringscriminallawyerblog.com/Bill%20Of%20Rights%2012-26-09.jpg

Now you're just strawmanning me. I treasure the freedom of the press and think WikiLeaks is a good thing. I just don't believe every leak every on a case by case basis is good because of that. Also, you don't believe that either (see Valerie Plane) you just don't want to admit it.

Valerie Plane is a person with a right to privacy & with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, rights placed in jeopardy by the revelation of her identity. These are rights in conflict. You know this already and just want to argue; you know very well that asking "is the information valuable?" isn't germane to any discussion of freedom of the press. whether the information might cause someone to come to harm as a result of its revelation is absolutely a fair question. other questions about whether the information is useful or interesting may be fun parlor games, but the continued exercise of a free press is always worth celebrating.

And you were not strawmanned. You did indeed state that people here had made up the right of the public to information, which is the freedom of the press; how else does the public get its information? other than the use of our psychic powers I mean.

it's plame

other questions about whether the information is useful or interesting may be fun parlor games, but the continued exercise of a free press is always worth celebrating.

This is the real problem in my eyes. You've totally missed the forest for the trees. The reason why we celebrate a free press is because of how it equals an often inequal power dynamic. It gives information to those who tend to not have it from those who do. It wonderful to have a working press in place because that transaction is an important one. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't actually look when that information is transacted and decide whether it was valuable or not. The only reason for the principle is to have the valuable information! It's not magically worthwhile on its own, and if a particular piece of information doesn't actually affect that power imbalance it's totally legitimate to point it out. That doesn't mean media is bad, or that good information is bad. It just means this particular piece might not be worth something. Far from being a parlor game it's the ONLY game in town.

in later iterations of internet English the m was elided, do keep up with the linguistics max

how else does the public get its information?

http://www.ilxor.com

Thanks max, spelled it right the first time but phone-typoed it the second. And Smithy, I wasn't saying that you invented the free press. If you read that in what I wrote, I apologize. That's much broader than what I intended. What I intended was some kind of total free information principle is an invention. Even Democracy relies on some power imbalance to work (it's built into the very voting system, which remains confidential, and goes to the executive use of power where certain presidential claims to classified information have also been kept). Pretending like the State has no right to classified information is a willful misreading of history, I'd argue.

The only reason for the principle is to have the valuable information!

that's a nice thing to think, I guess, but now who's cutting stuff from whole cloth? the reason for the principle is the full exercise of the freedoms available to us as citizens. one of the functions of a free press is to read books that have scenes with people having sex. there isn't any valuable information in those scenes. most such scenes are badly written, repetitive, and debased. and it's still a great thing that people write, publish, and read them. "human freedom" is a perfectly fine principle not in need of nobler principles to help it out.

I hate to admit this but I kind of have the hots for Assange, what he's doing is pretty amazing and apparently that silver hair happened really suddenly some years back entirely from the stress of what he does!

Now you're conflating two things. One is making public what originated started as private and the other is allowing things into the public discourse. The former exists to correct power imbalances. The second doesn't (unless the State lists the sex book as classified). xp

I don't think I saw this linked, but if it was I'm sorry.

http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html

― Evan, Tuesday, July 27, 2010 1:25 AM (23 minutes ago)

You know he touches on some of the things you're bickering about here^

Ugh, typoing everything. I really need to sleep, Smith. Maybe someone who is sympathetic to my position can step in, or Smith, since I think I've written plenty, you can just carry on without me. Basically my position: Nuance is good, knee-jerk defense of a leak is silly, people who read a lot = yay, people who are blind ideologues = boo, and my heuristics tell me that this leak is not as valuable as the Pentagon Papers even if WikiLeaks is itself a good project.

(and I would respond to your next: we should always err on the side of demanding from the State a defense of its right to classify information, because states have very, very bad records in this regard. "free information" is only a restatement of the freedom of the press; the press presents information; the only restriction on its right to do so are the obvious [harm's way, above].)

guys mordy reads a lot, if you didn't know

the "value" of the info is not for those with the secrecy to make it secret to determine -- that's the whole point of a "free press" (long before it was a constitutional principle). no earthly power can correctly determine the real value of every text/idea, so best to let it all hang out.

however the "value of the data" qn is pertinent here, cos it is possible to think of specific pieces of gov't info, relating to war, that we can say in retrospect we're glad weren't widely known -- the d-day plans or some such.

but making that distinction throws the afghanistan data out of the ring, imo, it doesn't rise to that level of life or death importance. the ISI hearts the talibs? US troops have killed a lot of civilians? the war is going really fucking badly? this is the essence of the cynical seen-it-all response of a lot of war reporters across the political spectrum. jesus, what did you think was happening over there??

The only reason for the principle is to have the valuable information!

but who's to decide if information is valuable? the point is it's there - you're free to use the information any way you please, or to decide if it's valuable

Ok one more. Not totally true; Press doesn't have a right to privately owned information (patents or copyrights) except in places where exemptions (like fair use) have been made. I'm not a press lawyer but I suspect there are other limitations on that freedom too.

(responding to smiths assertion that only harm is configured ok sleep for real now)

the point here is that going "what's the big deal about this?" is just useless cynicism

Gotta agree with k3v, free access to information is a good thing, and what with 21st century warfare and the democratizing powers of the internet, it's an irreversible direction we're all headed in. Ironic that the net wouldn't exist without the military...

As for using intellect rather than emotions, being nuanced and adult about things over childish and knee-jerk, that's great. Maybe instead of using that debate to frame blogosphere & public opinion on the release of this information, we can apply it to what the information actually says. For instance the civilian deaths detailed in these logs tell of a war that is trying to be nuanced and adult and failing miserably.

To tell you the truth, the most alarming thing to me was that the NYTimes went to the White House before printing anything.

cynicism isn't useless if it's accurate!

the thing is, even at this late date i don't think the public is cynical about this. i am, i read this shit everyday.

Ok, really one last thing: Here's a very specific piece of information I think was destructive in this particular bunch of leaks. Everyone knew that Pakistan was covertly funding rebels in Afghanistan. The US clearly knew, but still wanted to work with them. Maybe they felt working with them would mediate this particular problem, or that maybe the problem was worth ignoring. But now the memos are out there and not only does the US know, and Pakistan knows they know, but it's all in writing and public. I don't know that this is a net good thing. I feel ambiguous about further poisoning the relationship between these two countries. Maybe all information wants to be free, but maybe it's not great all around when certain pieces of information become free.

But Mordy, you're now extending the harm question & the private enterprise question further: you're saying "if possible future interests of a government might be impacted, then that's harmful." you do see how this is arguing for the right of the state to censor the press, and how any administration (like say the Bush admin, who made this kind of argument all the time) can then argue "well, this isn't an immediate-need thing, but here, let me construe our desire for state secrecy in such a way that I get to abridge your freedom of speech"? right? I mean that is perilous, perilous stuff.

i think the logic in mordy's last post is openly ridiculous

the cynicism - secrecy angle works like this, imo: none of these things should have been secret in the first place. a few details aside these are things that have become known over the past several years -- the cables are all from between 03 and 09 iirc. the press or you or i, or fuxake, our representatives, should be able to call up the pentagon and say "just how shitty is it over there, and what shitty things are we doing?" and the flack would say "real shitty sir" and hand him the folder.

apparently there are a few callsigns or something of some special forces guys that were revealed. that might be the only thing that rises to that level of harm. but everything else? empty works projects? civilians killed by taliban, or by us? supposed missile strikes on helicopters? drug corruption? no, these things are just BAD, but not like the plans to a nuclear reactor or something.

the will to make secret is ultimately the will to alter the public's perception of what's going on.

clearly the onus is not on the press to decide whether or not relations between two governments are going to be hurt at all by the release of information

pakistani civic culture is so cinematically fucked up i don't think we should make any guesses as to what it will really "mean" over there.

the press or you or i, or fuxake, our representatives,

I thought this said "or fukaxe" and I thought it was like some nonce-name posited person, you know - "or anybody, let's call him 'Fukaxe'" and for a moment there I was like giddily happy

I don't agree that free information is about correcting power imbalances or right to know or whatever Foucault thinks - free information is only the default because it makes govt work more effectively, in that it means govt can be properly held to account. This might be what you're talking about re power imbalances, but that's dressing it up as high principle needlessly imo.

Free information can be trumped, therefore, if release makes govt work less effectively. It's easy to think of big things where secrecy is better, like troop movements. That's where the info itself needs to be not known. But it's just as important that processes be protected too, even if the info in these bits isn't major in itself, if such processes are a net good. You can't argue that the govt should enter negotiations with an open hand.

More importantly, some of these leaks are reports of meetings that only a very few people were at - i.e. the source's identity is very close to being revealed. Who in Afghanistan now is going to talk to the US if they think this is going to happen to them? The effect of such leaks might well be that information dries up totally and the govt becomes unable to function at all, or at least does so far less effectively.

pakistani civic culture is so cinematically fucked up i don't think we should make any guesses as to what it will really "mean" over there.

― goole, Tuesday, July 27, 2010 2:13 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there are about six different centers of power that the us military and the state dept have to deal with anyway so its not super easy to say 'pakistan will react in such and such a way'

wash post is being hilariously bitchy about not being on the short list for the leaks:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_l67ejsXnvk1qa9bmvo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1280299255&Signature=oBDSLQ7p3fC3vrCblT4675Sbw94%3D

oh those old things? well we wouldnt have wanted them anyway

I don't know that this is a net good thing. I feel ambiguous about further poisoning the relationship between these two countries. Maybe all information wants to be free, but maybe it's not great all around when certain pieces of information become free.

― Mordy, Monday, July 26, 2010 11:04 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark

sympathetic to yr position here, but look at it this way: the U.S. fed (a powerful and secretive entity) is the sole possessor of some hypothetical information set. the info will be made avail to the world only on the U.S. government's terms. it is thus what we could call "fully controlled" information. moreover, as no one outside the government has access to it, neither you nor i nor anyone else can say what parts of it should or shouldn't be made available. there's nothing wrong with this hypothetical scenario - so long as we're both comfortable with the fact that the information in question is fully controlled by the entity in question. if we have doubts, however, then this arrangement may become unsatisfactory.

if the information is somehow leaked, then it becomes less fully controlled. it is at this point that other entities become able to say what should or shouldn't have been made available. note that this becomes possible only when at least partial control of the information has wrested from the powerful and secretive entity that ostensibly owns it. i.e., we are only able to make the informed judgment that the info maybe shouldn't have been leaked in the 1st place because it WAS leaked. naturally, the acceptability of such leaks will depend largely on the information in question and your faith in the institutional entities that controlled the info in the 1st place.

which is the always the problem in these cases. we can't know what ought to be known until more is known than someone else is comfortable with. and that's the sense in which all leaks are good leaks - even those that seem to harm us (however you conceive that "us").

and to think yesterday i was worried that this wasn't getting enough attention from ilx!

There's also a huge grey area in the middle xp, though, where information becomes known with which someone isn't comfortable, but no complaint is made because there's also a harm in drawing attention to it by protesting. Stuff gets leaked every day but, because the material is low-level or there's still some benefit in keeping a poker face, the govt either just gets on with it or else deliberately makes no comment. Condemnations of leaks are actually pretty rare. You get into realms of game theory thinking this way, but I'd guess it's probably safe to assume that a condemnation usually means that significant harm has been caused.

For all we know, a lot of the value in these documents might come down to context. A document which reveals that the taliban have weapon X might seem underwhelming because we already know it has weapon X - but the context might reveal a lot of secondary information, like:

- reveals that it had weapon X in 2009
- reveals that weapon X wasn't known about in 2008
- doesn't say anything about weapon Y

They might be significant to someone with more knowledge. Say you're in the taliban purchasing directorate. You negotiate with dealer A to acquire weapon X in 2008. You continue to acquire weapon X from dealers A and B through 2009. On one visit in 2009 dealer A introduces you to dealer C, who sells you weapon Y. If you know these facts, you now know you can trust A and C, but not B. That might be pretty important information, and wikileaks doesn't even know that it's giving it away.

When stuff is secret it's most likely to protect who the source is, not the actual content.

oh really? So that's why the US coalition suppresses reports of its soldiers killing Afghans? I suppose you are right, if the soldiers doing the killing could be defined as the source.

Aiui a lot of the reports that have been leaked also concern taleban killing civilians - don't understand why they would be kept secret if the purpose was suppression to make the US look good. I don't really understand this aspect of the leaks tbh - there are plenty of reports of civilian casualties, where do they normally come from? I'd assumed it was from regular journalism, but if it's from army briefings I don't understand why they'd report some but not others.

Really, though, I'm just trying to explain why stuff is kept secret when most of it is banal anyway. There are layers of meaning to these things, of which we're only aware of the surface. It's just the nature of that game, and I don't think that non-participants claiming an unrestricted or at least extremely broad right to know in great detail is at all appropriate.

can we just go ahead and fully privatize the military then?

tbh you're not doing a great job of explaining besides vague government talking points

So funny that there are so many stories saying "This won't change anything". As if everyone read all 90,000 logs yesterday while looking into the future via a crystal ball.