Since you agree with the general sentiment (about individual freedoms), but think that expressing outrage here is futile, can you suggest a response that is constructive instead?
Go into politics yourself. There's no better response, it's stand up or shut up with this kind of issue. Far too complex for most people to understand, ramifications of great consequence that are hard to vocalise.
Just don't forget what you were getting into power for when you get there.
Thanks - but I was hoping to hear from DanielBMarkham, basically because his position seems fatalistic to me but it's also intelligently reasoned, so I was wondering if I was missing something.
Incidentally - when was the last time politicians changed world for the better in a major way? (and I don't mean simply voting money to schools or hospitals - I mean structurally).
What do you mean "structurally"? Politician's can't really change things in a major way apart from voting and signing legisislation, can they? Wouldn't that take more of a (benevolent) dictator?
I think that's my point - major reform is almost impossible for politicians to enact without an external force to react to.
If we have structural problems (e.g. widespread corruption) then politicians alone won't fix it.
I can't say that I know whether Wikileaks is going to effective, or that it's going to cause any positive ourcomes, but it seems clear to me that if there is going to be positive action on corruption it's either going to happen as a result of a massive crisis (i.e. the system breaks down), or because a new force shines light on the corruption from outside, forcing politicians to act. Both paths carry a risk of things getting worse rather than better - although so does a slow decline resulting from inaction.
Personally, I'd hate to see any (more?) major breakdowns in society, and the idea of a slow decline is equally tragic. Perhaps wikileaks is doing it wrong, but the idea of a non-government actor exposing corruption - something the media has stopped doing - seems entirely healthy to me.
Pointing out things that are broken is easy, so I apologize if I do too much of it.
Suggesting possible solutions is much tougher.
But you asked, so I owe it to whomever cares to at least give it a shot.
The idea/structure of wikileaks itself is broken, and here's why: for some reason they've went down the road of promoting Assange and going for the big stories. This would be a great idea if you wanted to foment the next Marxist revolution or create a new internet rock-star, but it ain't going to work if you really care about people and want a better world.
If you asked me to create a list of things that should remain secret, no matter how good or bad the government is, at the top of the list would be things like tactical military reports, state department cables, personnel matters, security, and negotiations. For that very reason, these are the "hot button" issues -- the ones that give wikileaks the biggest bang for their buck. So they love those kinds of stories. And they're exactly the issues where they are going to piss off the most people. Wikileaks can't be a publicity hound and also be a force for good. The two don't go together. People will buy into the idea that too many secrets are kept, but there's no way in hell they're ever going to buy into the idea that some guy in Europe knows better than the will of the taxpayer.
It keeps getting back to that -- pissing off people. Whatever a person wants to do to instigate change, he/she has to piss off more people at the way secrecy currently works than he does piss off more people at the leakers themselves. Wikileaks is failing miserably here.
So I'd suggest a truly anonymous version of wikileaks that had an high ethical standard of what they would not publish -- things like alcohol addiction treatment of top government executives, or any top secret cable that mentions sources. (These standards would need to be developed)
A set of public ethics, along with a faceless dump of information, would generate much less initial hype, but would have a greater effect in the long run. You could even have people who "spoke" for the leaking organization but were not associated with it in any way, thereby separating the operation of the group and the publicity of it.
You want to tick me off as a taxpayer over how much secrecy there is? Try dumping the legislative notes of the Agriculture department, how deep they're tangled up in big business and how much they use secrecy to cover for that. Or how much secrecy is used by the FDA to use politics to make decisions on drug approval. There are hundreds of examples like this. And don't make everything so sure to tick off the right-wing in America. This is a structural problem, not a political one, and you'll have right and left wings of politics forever, no matter what your government structure. So leak some stuff on leftist organizations in Europe. Leak some stuff about China. Whatever you do, don't purposely antagonize one group or another. Dish out the medicine evenly.
Assange's argument of disrupting information flow between the nodes doesn't require flashy news conferences and huge PR events. Sure, that's more fun and gives folks a better visceral feeling of making a difference, but if you really want change, you don't need to be emotionally fulfilled, you need to do the things that over 20 years or so will actually change things. So far this aint' it.
I wanted to thank you for this well thought out reply even though the thread is close to dead. I totally agree with you about the kind of corruption that would be more meaningful for them to expose.
Have you considered the possibility that the current leaks are intentionally 'low value', and intended to cause outrage at Wikileaks to be spent early in the game, so that when they release something truly meaningful the story will no longer be about Wikileaks itself?
