@ mooshi & kobuk: I wouldn't throw around terms such as morals or ethics, especially considering that not everyone uses the same standards here. *Cough myself for one cough* - it just confuses things.
However it can be said, it is in most likelyhood and situations ridiculously reckless to leak information (of the states secrets type), and is highly liable to result in
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NiceJobBreakingItHeroLastly, the leaks are of a much greater importance than wikileaks in the context of the discussion. In fact, leaking to the media would probably be more disastrous, if simply because Wikileaks occupies the little corner of the internet that pretty much only tin-hatters frequent, whereas the media has the resources to spread things much further, creating an even bigger fallout. Which would in any case spread to the internet via discussion on forums, blogs, etc. But closing down wikileaks is an incredibly loaded action; rather obviously by the discussion taking place here. Plugging the leaks, which would cause wikileaks to pretty much wilt and die in anonymity from the lack of what it needs, would solve all the problems - including it getting to the media, and then the internet - without causing any nasty political fallout. Focusing on wikileaks - for intentions of better or worse - only garners it more attention, generating more media focus on it, and inflaming the problem. It's like pouring sodium hydroxide on an open wound. It is GOING to make things worse. Much worse, much uglier, much longer to heal, and perhaps leave one heck of a scar.
GUYS: bottom line: creating a big hubbub about wikileaks is only going to further inflame the situation. If you want to stop state secrets from getting out, you have to aim for the roots of the problem - the actual leaks themselves; otherwise it'll grow right back like a weed, and then you'll be right back where you started, if not in an even worse position (especially considering cracking down on the media is essentially political suicide, especially in the US, where people can simply point to the first amendment).
If I were in the government, and I didn't want state secrets getting out, and I had the power to effect relevant policies, I would first pull all attention away from wikileaks, and focus everything on plugging holes in security at the source. Thus the freedoms of speech and press in their most liberal senses are retained, thus looking good there, while the actual problem - the release of classified information to the public - is eliminated!
So in sort of a symbolic gesture, I have labeled the subject of this post "Re:Security leaks" as opposed to "Re:Wikileaks", if anyone noticed.
What I'm saying is, let's NOT make an already inflamed situation worse by focusing on a side issue, and zero in instead on the real problem at hand. In fact, in a small way, by having focused on wikileaks from the start of this thread, we've probably only made things worse. In the grand scheme of things, yes, it's negligible what this forum's debate thread did, but if you zoom into just the community itself, you can see that it did have fallout, and quite a bit too. And if it was hurting us here to this degree, imagine what will happen when you try to get this onto a larger, national or even international level. It'll form yet another giant schism - another polarizing issue - and just like all the others, it will be nothing but a pointless diversion that does nothing but separate us all, and distract us from fixing, or even seeing, any of the real problems at hand.