Does Wikileaks change anything?

[lazarus]

Part of me thinks it will change nothing but another part of me thinks it will change everything! (an iphone kind of everything).

Help me out here.

[Gerr]

Should governments be hiding anything other than military secrets?

[Bravus]

Agreed 100% with Gerry. I've been having this conversation elsewhere, and how happy we all seem to be to have government surveil us all 24/7 while not having us surveil them at all perplexes me deeply. Openness and accountability seem to be the watchwords of the past couple of decades - but not when it comes to governments.

I don't think Julian Assange is a particularly nice man, and he may even be a rapist - that should not be excused because I like the work he's doing (with others).

But so much of the outraged response on the part of the media is frustrating because Wikileaks is showing up how badly the media themselves have abdicated from their appropriate role in an open democracy of holding the government's feet to the fire.

In terms of this latest release, I don't think there's anything world-changing. A few frank opinions that were no doubt already known about by their targets are nothing. The prior round that showed clearly that Tony Blair had already decided to commit to the Iraq War *not matter what the evidence* is much more explosive.

[Bravus]

I hope, but am not optimistic, that the message governments will take away is 'don't do bad things'. Sadly, I suspect the message they receive will be 'cover your tracks better'.

[Bravus]

Quote from a friend on Facebook:

Quote:

What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western

democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its

political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the US and

UK in not regulating banks); corrupt (all governments in relation to the

arms trade); or recklessly militaristic (the US and UK in Iraq). And

yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way.

[phkrause]

Excellent statement Bravus.

[Gerr]

But are these REALLY secrets? According to a recent TIME article, over 800,000 have been cleared to have access to these files. You might as well let the whole country know. The sheer volume of information that these people have to wade through to classify what is truly a secret that would be detrimental to US security should they be divulged is so great that they wind up labeling just about everything as secret. As the article pointed out, when everything is a secret, then nothing winds up being a secret.

[lazarus]

I hope, but am not optimistic, that the message governments will take away is 'don't do bad things'. Sadly, I suspect the message they receive will be 'cover your tracks better'.

I Agree.

Are we seeing the information war go mainstream? Mastercard.com is down as a result of the backlash over its Wikileaks decision. Is this the shape of things to come? Rather than take to the streets do we just simply turn on our computers and do a DNS attack?

[olger]

I hope, but am not optimistic, that the message governments will take away is 'don't do bad things'. Sadly, I suspect the message they receive will be 'cover your tracks better'.

A big facebook Like from the farm !

g

[John317]

...recklessly militaristic (the US and UK in Iraq). And

yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way.

I believe that history will judge that the US and the UK were right to do what we did in Iraq. It doesn't mean every action taken there was right, however, but then not every action is ever right in any war. It seems to me that even president Obama finally came around to seeing Iraq as important to win, even though he wouldn't say it straight out.