WikiLeaks: When is it 'right' to leak national security secrets?

[unhappycamper]

WikiLeaks: When is it 'right' to leak national security secrets?
By Howard Lafranchi, Staff writer / August 2, 2010

Washington - Shortly after speculation hit the Internet that a US Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, might be one source of the 91,000 classified documents on Afghanistan that the website WikiLeaks released, a visitor to a liberal blog offered the following comment: "Bradley Manning is my kind of war hero."

~snip~

No doubt, this mix of Jekyll and Hyde is the sort of characterization that leakers and whistle-blowers have always endured. But the US military's focus on Manning in its investigation of the highest-profile leak of classified documents since the Pentagon Papers in 1971 raises questions about the culture of leaks in the Information Age – and in the era of the pocket-size USB stick.

Are the opportunities for leaks of classified information ballooning, given that the military and America's 16 intelligence agencies are classifying more information and that, according to a Washington Post investigative report, more than 854,000 Americans have clearance for top-secret work?

Is the likelihood rising that someone with access to information will feel a moral obligation to "get the truth out" – as the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq grind on and as many debate controversial practices such as waterboarding and secret prisons?

The existence of WikiLeaks, of thumb drives, and of thousands of young soldiers recruited for the wars every year supports answering that question with a "yes."

[ThomWV]

1. This is an issue that has been so confused as to be meaningless

Military intelligence can never effect national security.

[zipplewrath]

2. It's a bit like immigration reform

In theory, the anti-immigration folks are correct, people who come here illegally should be charged with crimes and subject to criminal penalties including expulsion.

In reality, we want these people here, we NEED these people here, we derive benefits from having these people here. Yet we establish laws that entice them to come, and then keep them in legal limbo their entire lives so that they can be second class citizens. We need reform so that people who we want and need to come here can do so in a reasonable manner. Truth is we need to establish reform so that we can figure out which ones of them we want to stay, and which ones need to leave.

Same way with this leaking business. In theory, leaking classified information is doing harm to the US, and potentially to allies and individuals that work with us internationally. The people that do so should be put on trail for a crime. They have committed a crime and need to be judged by a jury of their peers. If they can convince a jury that their act was justified or not really a crime, then they will have had their "day in court".

The reality is, and these documents are illuminating this, is that WAY too much information is being classified, for way too long. This is done for several reasons and some of them are mundane things like laziness, over abundance of caution, or an inflated sense of self important or an inflated sense of importance of the information. But it is also out of a sense of political self preservation, or preservation of goals and methods that would otherwise not be tolerated if generally known. It can also be used to cover up costs, or errors that might bring consequences if known more widely.

There are no easy answers. I think that we could approach a better system if there were effective ways for the clasification level of information to be "challenged" both by the owners, as well as other users with access. And the laws need to be written such that if I am accused of violation of the release of classified information, the accuser must first establish that the information was, and still is, worthy of the classification level to which it was originally assigned.

It was my complaint about the torture situation. If the information was so valuable, and if the torture was so necessary, then sit before a jury of your peers and make that case. If your acts were justified, you should be required to make that case before a jury of your peers. It was them after all that you were supposedly "protecting" with your act of torture in their name.