So J.A. has been arrested. When will they give us the password?
I would have no problem with giving that kind of power to a capable government, but as it stands I don’t much like the people in power at the moment. They are doo doo faces who I wouldn’t trust with a gun.:retard:
That’s a good thing about the form of government that the United States (and other countries with similar governments) has:
We can ‘vote the bums out’ if they don’t do what we want. Obama, to me, has been a weak capitulator but I’ll still vote for him in 2012 because he’s still light-years better than the current crop of alternatives. Wish we could get a strong lefty Dem into the White House… 
That being said, as long as the Wikileaks guy isn’t revealing intelligence that could potentially harm undercover people in the field (such as revealing the name of an undercover operative), I don’t have a problem with it.
As the Right loves to say, “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.” Right? 
God forbid people compromise. Its called a “representative democracy”. Ever heard of it?
In any case, he’s invading personal privacy of diplomats, which is kind of a dick move. Its really similar to broadcasting something you say in a conversation to a friend about someone else to that person.
Yes but why would we vote them out if everything that they do which isn’t in the interest of the people is hidden? The US government in it’s current shape is nowhere near capable of handling that kind of power.
Yeah, I just caught up a bit after being sick the past few days.
I don’t mind so much about the information or the password, but this is just sad.
executed?! what the fuck man.
When they say politicians, they probably mean one random man on the street near the capital.
EDIT: Okay, it was Huckabee. Pretty much the same thing. He isn’t even a politician anymore.
Also, depending of the repercussions of the leak, execution could be a possibility, if people die because of it (cover blown, some diplomatic crisis emerges, etc.).
A sadly large section of the American public doesn’t need much to start a witch hunt. This guy may be on the lunatic fringe of the right, but he was still a presidential candidate. Guys like this are everywhere inside the government. It isn’t just him.
What I’m worried about may not be the death of an innocent man (though it is atrocious) as much as the symbolism behind it. What would die with him? Freedom of the press? Freedom of speech? The guy wasn’t engaged in spying himself. He sat at a desk, the real security breaches sent him information and he published it. The government has a documented history of refusing to bring criminal charges against recipients of secret information, even if that information is published. That changes now, why? Because of the ‘War on Terror?’
Nobody can really dispute that at this point his motivations are personal, but who’s wouldn’t be after all he’s seen?
I really wouldn’t care if he got arrested for this. To publish a classified document really should be illegal, its only logical. Its not freedom of speech then.
now i am just surprised the TPB guys didn’t get a worse punishment
Someonerandm: What if the “classified document” was evidence of a politician murdering his mistress?
Jerry, the Texas Beef Production guys?
Then it would be a classified document about a politician murdering his mistress.
What’s your point? That governments shouldn’t have secrets? Its a general rule of diplomacy that lies will happen, and the government must protect them. Don’t forget the person who took the documents is undeniably in violation of the law, so I believe the publisher should be too.
We can all point to hypotheticals in which a system would not be optimal. However, that is no reason to abolish a system.
The point being made, I believe, is that governments can ‘classify’ whatever it is they wish, even if it’s completely immoral behavior. Just because someone exposes it, that means they deserve to die because they exposed government secrets?
Do you think that politicians and others should abuse the practice of classifying documents to cover up wrongdoing? Read my post above (thread entry #10). I have no problem with governments having secrets. And I think that having secrets is necessary for a society such as ours.
HOWEVER–
The practice is being abused to the extreme. From what I’ve read about Wikileaks, the secrets that were being released were not harmful to a society such as ours and, like investigative reporting does, sometimes reveals potentially embarrassing things.
Unless you have evidence that what he was releasing was dangerous to people, society, and/or government.
i meant the pirate bay(typo, whoops)
and no, of course, some things are best kept secret, my point was that it is kind of stupid to execute him, while he wasn’t the one stealing the info. This kinda reminds me of 2012(the movie) when they don’t tell anyone about the end of the world before it ends. IMO sometimes government info should be published, even if they think it is embarrassing.
And just so that I state it at some point, Robert Gibbs has come out and said that nothing Wikileaks released poses any significant threat to national security.
Exactly.
Politics kills…
Then he should not be executed. He should be arrested, however, since he did release classified documents to the world.