I disagree with him here. I'm all for truths that serve the public good and I support most whistle blowers.

The problem with this recent Wikileaks release is there was data in it that did a lot of damage while providing no public good. The fact that Hilary Clinton's staff thinks certain world leaders are crazy really doesn't do anything for me as a citizen. But it does hurt the State Department's ability to negotiate with those world leaders.

Truth is an important value but it's not an absolute one. Put it in real terms. You might hate your mother-in-law but it does no good to tell her that. Same here.

Also note this release is already causing knee jerk reaction laws to be passed that will hurt whistle blowers in the future. The reason that's possible is because the information is so trivial (no politician would be brave enough to pass a law against a whistle blower that revealed important information for the public good)

In a similar vein: Daniel Ellsberg knew the contents of the Pentagon Papers and knew exactly what the public interest was in having that particular information leaked. Mark Felt had a thesis about the public benefit in leaking Watergate. Jeffery Wigand knew what and why he was leaking tobacco documents. Mark Klein knew what & why about NSA surveillance. Those were purposeful leaks.

These leaks are indiscriminate. Does anyone believe that Bradley Manning had any idea what he was handing off to WL? Remember, WL themselves claim to have redacted those documents to protect innocents (the belief that they couldn't possibly have done so adequately animates much of the flak they're taking). If WL had to redact them, then the actual leaker (presumed to be Manning) had to have disclosed them unredacted --- to complete strangers.

I disagree with every one of your points. I don't think this leak did a lot of damage. After reading through the memorandums, all I see is a bunch of meeting minutes describing the routine actions that embassy personnel took. Very little of this should have been classified in the first place, and releasing this data is a good thing, in that it gives historians and researchers an inside look into how government personnel go about their day-to-day jobs, and how those day-to-day actions are affected by decisions made at the top.

The government's reaction to the leak is doing far more damage than the leak itself. By trumping up the significance of the data released, the government is harming its own image in the eyes of its own citizens and the eyes of foreign leaders.

>No politician would be brave enough to pass a law against a whistle blower that revealed important information for the public good.

I think that's an incredibly naive world-view. Politicians work first and foremost to secure their own power. If a politician thought that their power base was under threat by a leak, they'd seek to stop the leak by any means necessary. We've already seen this reaction with the Pentagon Papers. There, the New York Times was definitely publishing something in the public interest, but the Defense Department worked to suppress it for exactly the same reason the State Department is working to suppress this publication.

Finally, I question your standing to judge what the public interest is. The New York Times, The Guardian of London, and Reporters Without Borders all say that the leaked State Department memos are in the public interest.

What we need is more Ron Paul.

The last thing we need is more anti-science politicians, especially ones who favor massive increases in government power over our personal lives (Paul is against Federal government--he's fine with intrusive government if it is state government).

Given that we have 50 states and that their politicians are a lot closer to the people and that the Federal government would still be enforce freedom of mobility between states, I'd say that would be a huge improvement.

Ron Paul is by no means perfect but Sweet Zombie Jesus, he is still 100 times better then the wast majority of politicians.

The smaller the size of a group, the greater the tendency for it to oppress the freedom of its members.

That may be true for small groups like clubs, gangs, and tribes, but I don't think you can generalize that to governments.

Or in other words, the more actively engaged the electorate is, the stronger the "public" lobby is vs. other private lobbies.

And the smaller and more local a government is, the more engaged the electorate is. Prime example, the smaller states have more independent senators, governors, etc. By independent I mean literally (I) and not (R) or (D), not just metaphorically independent.

What we need is less politics on HN.

"Wouldn't it be great if someone leaked a bunch of evidence that would help further my goals - in this case to help take down an institution I dislike?"

It's hard to envision any person not wishing this sort of problem upon their enemies, when they're in a position of limited power/influence over the situation...

Interesting to contemplate a government with no secrets. Is complete transparency a total pipe dream? One wonders whether a government committed to complete transparency would be even more effective, as people would be more willing to trust it, less cynical about it, and politicians and bureaucrats would know that what they did was public and therefore be less likely to descend into the gutter. And that transparent government would be immune to Wikileaks. Just a thought....

I agree we need more WikiLeaks for the Federal Reserve. Where wikileaks screwed up was getting into the business of national security stuff. Leaking diplomatic and military secrets is going to get you in a world of trouble, and Assange deserves all the pain he's going to get for deciding to publish information that would jeopardize people's physical safety.

Hopefully a new wikileaks will pop up though, maybe one with some sanity.

>... Assange deserves all the pain he's going to get for deciding to publish information that would jeopardize people's physical safety.

I used to think the same way about the Afghan War Diary publication, but I've changed my stance. I haven't heard of a single informant that was killed or even placed under Army protection due to their name being revealed on WikiLeaks. Have you? If there really were people being hunted down and killed because of WikiLeaks, you'd think the Army would publicize those case to prove its point, right?

The fact that we haven't heard any such thing from the Army or the Marine Corps suggests that the Wikileaks publication was significantly less damaging than they originally suggested.

Informants save lives. Many terrorist plots that have been stopped since 9/11 were due to some insider alerting authorities. If people think they're identity is not safe with the government, they will not come forward and we will see people die as terrorist plots succeed.