I am still going to repeat what Brent said earlier: "The public does NOT have a need to know everything that goes on."
If by chance any info. that Wikileaks leaked were to somehow endanger, harm, or kill military personnel and/or civilians in the next several days, weeks, or months, Then how would that make you feel, Foxpup? Could you sleep soundly at night knowing that leaked info. of a sensitive nature harmed or killed innocent people: Men, Women, or even Children? What if something happened in your own country of Australia? How would you feel then?
*facepaw* I'm only going to say this one more time, so pay attention:
Wikileaks does not actually leak anything, they only publish information that was already leaked, and which would have been made public anyway. I also firmly stand by what I said earlier: the public
does have a right to know when they're paying with their tax dollars and their blood. Now, if people die as a result (which nobody has yet, by the way), then that's tragic, but ultimately, trusting people's lives to secrecy of information is
always a bad plan, because you never know when an enemy might be spying on you. Here, we're lucky Wikileaks is a neutral party, not an enemy.
The same goes for everybody else. Can you live with a guilty conscience? The people who are gathering, spreading, and leaking all this information obviously have no idea what they're doing. They claim and disguise what they are doing as "freedom of information" or some other such phrase or quote, etc. But all they really are doing is putting people all over the world in danger in whatever country they live in, and also ruining foreign relations. Is that something to be proud of? I think not! The people who are leaking info. have no morals, values, or ethics that I can see. IMO, they disgust me, and so do the people who support Wikileaks.
Really? The people who are leaking this information are risking their careers and in some cases their lives to do so, so maybe, just maybe, they actually
have put some thought into it and
do know what they're doing. Most of these people
can't live with a guilty conscience, which is
why they're leaking this information in the first place. Would we still be in Afghanistan if we
really knew what was going on? How many lives could be
saved by exposing this information? Maybe my sense of ethics is screwed up, but I don't see how "because the government said so, and they're always right, even though they're not telling us the whole story" constitutes a good reason for killing thousands of people. I need more than that.
This country wouldn't be where it is today if not for the efforts of the military, various civillian agencies, etc. to keep information safe and the public protected. I like openess just as much as the next person. But what Wikileaks is doing goes too far. It needs to be shut down...........permanently.
*walks away from this thread*
Um, right... moving on.
Seriously, if there is a security problem here, it should be addressed at the source of the problem. And this guy isn't it.
It's possible there could be spies or traitors, etc. inside various agencies. If that's the case, then the US and/or other countries need to find out who they are and fast.
Yes, but spies and traitors don't tell you they've spied on you then show you exactly what information they've collected.
From a New York Times article two months ago:
But now, WikiLeaks has been met with new doubts. Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have joined the Pentagon in criticizing the organization for risking people’s lives by publishing war logs identifying Afghans working for the Americans or acting as informers.
A Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan using the pseudonym Zabiullah Mujahid said in a telephone interview that the Taliban had formed a nine-member “commission” after the Afghan documents were posted “to find about people who are spying.” He said the Taliban had a “wanted” list of 1,800 Afghans and was comparing that with names WikiLeaks provided.
“After the process is completed, our Taliban court will decide about such people,” he said.
In case anyone was skeptical of the argument that Wikileaks' utter irresponsibility can, has, and will get people killed.
Not really, the Taliban
already had this list of people. Not to mention they've got their own spies who can gather information far more effectively than Wikileaks.
stuff
Amen!