Obama administration now worse than Bush on press freedom

[Simon_Jester]

I didn't dodge your "point", my rebuttal was that your comparison is not apt, because it is missing a key trait. The military is not actually trying to discredit itself. It is actively avoiding this by classifying reports of activities that would discredit it.

You are straw manning the argument to "is it ok for the military to get away with war crimes" when my original response was to your attempt to claim the military is guilty of espionage against itself. Frankly I don't care if it's "ok", that's not what we were talking about at all.

How does this relate to my own more general issue, that the Espionage Act doesn't apply to classified information alone, and that therefore by your argument all political speech opposed to war would be covered under the Espionage Act?

[General Zod]

I didn't dodge your "point", my rebuttal was that your comparison is not apt, because it is missing a key trait. The military is not actually trying to discredit itself. It is actively avoiding this by classifying reports of activities that would discredit it.

You don't seem capable of reading very well. The point is that if we're going after people wikileaks for exposing the military's fuckups, then we should go after everyone who's ever exposed military atrocities. Otherwise why the fuck are we just going after wikileaks and nobody else?

You are straw manning the argument to "is it ok for the military to get away with war crimes" when my original response was to your attempt to claim the military is guilty of espionage against itself. Frankly I don't care if it's "ok", that's not what we were talking about at all.

You're arguing that we should punish wikileaks based on some nebulous mealy-mouthed definition of "intent", but no other groups that do the same thing because . . . stuff.

Hey Zod, can you point out to me exactly where I said Abu Ghraib wasn't explosive?

And CBS worked with the Bush administration, to report in a manner that did not harm the army, or did you miss Rather's lawsuit.

In the very next sentence you posted that publishing information in a politically explosive manner can cause harm. So either you're arguing that it wasn't politically explosive or it didn't cause harm, in either case I'd like to see some justifications. Why is it no "harm" resulted from Abu Ghraib but somehow Wikileaks might cause harm despite some of the top defense experts claiming otherwise?

[Themightytom]

I asserted that wikileaks is an accessory to violating the Espionage Act, and I clarified to Zod early on that I considered Assange's prosecution to be the response to that offense. The information that Wikileaks has released has to have been classified information that was "To convey information with the intent to interfere with the operation, or success of the armed forces of the United States."

Ahem. I would like to see proof of intent, because I don't think you've managed that.

Is it that we are not accepting Wikileaks organizational mission as intent?

Here is a more detailed case, and i will insert cliff notes to articulate my points.
http://mirror.wikileaks.info/wiki/Secre ... 1966-2010/

Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.1

The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.

The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.2.

The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in "client states"; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them. 3

This document release reveals the contradictions between the US's public persona and what it says behind closed doors - and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what's going on behind the scenes. 4.

Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington - the country's first President - could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today's document flood would be a mere embarrassment. 5 Instead, the US Government has been warning governments -- even the most corrupt -- around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.

1. This removes decision-making power from institutions that classify what should and should not be released for purposes of national security. This weakens both the validity of the concept of confidentiality, and the credibility organizations retain that are tasked with maintaining it.

2. Wikileaks intends to intentionally prolong the impact, and sustain attention on this data. Rather than permitting a simple leak, response, and resolution, they are dragging it out, to gain maximum impact/do maximum damage to existing institutions.

3. Client states refers to "allies". The intent here is to undermine our political associations by generating or enhancing objection to these interactions by characterizing them as corrupt and unsavory.

4. The intent is to turn the citizens of the United States against its government, on the premise that we are not represented. As the government that is being turned on, this represents harm, and interference.

5. Wiki leaks does not intend for this to be an innocuous release of information for historical purposes. They are deliberately trying to embarrass the US government, and cause damage to its international credibility, and they are acknowledging this, and attributing it to their perception of the US government as innately corrupt.

We can argue all we want about whether the US really is corrupt, or whether Wikileaks is right or wrong, but they do intend to harm the U.S. government or at the very least interfere with it. They have stated this, and even explained why.

Wikileaks conveyed classified information. According to their own mission, it was intended at the very least to cause maximum political damage. Politics are an inextricable component of American military activities, both at the domestic, and international levels...

In that case, aren't all acts of antiwar protest or demonstration, and all news sources NOT pro-war, acts of espionage under the Espionage Act?

I see what you're saying, i think I made it a point to include "Classified" information because that speaks to more deliebrate intent. Conveying information that occurs, objectively speaking is what reporting is supposed to be. Conveying information you know to be secret, or classified, by the government requires the acknowledgment that you wish to oppose the decisions made by the government.

That being said it's not part of the Espionage Act, which what I think Zod was trying to argue, sorry Zod.

After all, the Act doesn't punish "conveying classified information," and you didn't say "convey classified information. The Act punishes, and you referred to, the act of conveying information. Period, end of sentence. Any information.

Correct, but only to a point, the act punishes conveying information, but only information with the specific intent outlined.
This is obviously why media organizations are terrified, for the precedent it will set, but it is also why it is one of the only tools the Obama administration can use for a new situation.

Though I concede that information conveyed for the purposes of interfering with the operation or the success of the armed forces does not need to have been classified in order to be subject to the Espionage Act.

If I convey information that has the effect of undermining domestic support for a foreign war, the Espionage Act doesn't care whether it was classified or not. It shouldn't matter whether the information is classified, because the Espionage Act also bars the spreading of non-classified information for the same purposes. Someone who uses only unclassified sources to put together documents for the benefit of an enemy's attack plans would still be guilty under the Espionage Act, after all.

But when that fact is combined with your interpretation of what counts as a crime under the Act, we have a problem. Because political activity counts as undermining the military to you.

In that case, how can it ever be legal to oppose a war? Is it "conveying information to interfere with the success of the armed forces" to tell people that we're not winning a war? To go interview people in the war zone and report

I agree that the clause "conveying information" need to be clarified to protect and define more appropriate acts, or, the act itself should address exactly what manner of interference is to be illegal.

Was it "conveying information to interfere with the success of the armed forces" to release the Pentagon Papers? What about publishing information on the My Lai massacre- that certainly affected domestic support for the war, and therefore reduced the probability that US forces would (somehow!) succeed in South Vietnam. Was that a crime under the Espionage Act?

Well the pentagon papers couldn't have been prosecuted, because a senator entered them into public record in a protected manner. The report on the Massacre... probably could have been. That in no way diminishes the moral fortitude it must have taken to report those events, rather it highlights them. In that case, the leaker was willing to face legal consequences, as was the media outlet that reported them. By contrast Wikileaks is relying on its ability to evade legal consequences, and through that evasion offer protection for whistle blowers..

In short, as far as I can tell, any attempt to say anything that does not encourage the American people to support a war would count as a crime under the Espionage Act for you.

Ok the argument could be taken to its logical extreme, but that doesn't disprove the argument that the actions taken by wikileak wasn't intended to interfere with the armed forces, it only disproves the penultimate argument that all information conveyed with the intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States should be criminalized. That is not my argument, that is the argument that justified creation off the Espionage Act.

If you are arguing that the Espionage act is poorly worded for this situation, I would concede that. I don't see a better option, however, and i maintain that the Obama administration is acting reasonable in this situation, as there is not a perfect option, they are choosing the best one available.

That's not acceptable, because I want to live in a society that has the ability to decide not to fight a war, or to abandon a war if it can't be won. At a bare minimum, that means people have to be able to say "Uh, guys? We aren't winning." Or "Uh, guys? We're up to some really atrocious stuff over there." It also means allowing people to present evidence to support those claims.

Well said, and I respect your position, but frankly, this is the sentiment that wikileaks has stated it would want to engender. I don't have a problem with it when it comes to things like massacres being covered up, but when it comes to what one diplomat says about another behind closed doors? That's not going to improve the system, its going to degrade it. it was much easier to accept wikileaks when they were leaking gun camera of civilian casualties in Iraq with soldiers cavalierly mocking them in the background. that was an incident which highlighted specific changes that needed to happen. Soldiers were becoming burnt out, careless and were indiscriminate with whom they killed.

Wikileaks is no longer restricting its activity to exposing singular events, it has begun a campaign of attacking and promoting systematic weaknesses. It is Obama and his administration's responsibility to protect that system, while working within it to reform it. This is an area I would rather, frankly speaking, have defined by the Obama administration, than the Bush administration, because as much as laws can restrict behavior, they can also authorize and protect it.

There's no way to have real civilian control of the military if the civilians are not allowed to know what their own military is doing. Therefore, we cannot censor the information the public needs in order to have that knowledge.

Yes there is a way, and it doesn't require every citizen to have complete access to every diplomatic cable. Civilian oversight is conducted by our elected officials. If we lose confidence in our elected officials, we should be contacting them to tell them so, participating fully in the election process, and staying apprised of current events. We don't need to be armchair quarterbacks, and we don't need an internationally unaccountable organization running interference in our ability to self govern.

Now, hopefully this is an exaggeration on my part because I've missed some nuance in your argument. I really really want to believe that... but I can't find that nuance.

Hopefully my position isn't as extreme as you think. I don't think it is personally, I acknowledge the Espionage Act has some pretty dubious implications, and would expect that to be part of the response that the Obama administration takes on this.

...and the activities of the armed forces best fit the "repressive" activities Wikileaks claims a desire to interfere with...

Hardly. Wikileaks seems at least as concerned with the actions of American corporations and diplomats, hence the release of so many State Department cables. American soft power reaches a lot more places at once than the US military, since we don't have the manpower to garrison the planet.

See, that is why I would maintain that a lot of our internal system fails can be attributed to a need for election reform. I would be much more involved in that discussion, if I weren't defending my position in this one.

[Themightytom]

I didn't dodge your "point", my rebuttal was that your comparison is not apt, because it is missing a key trait. The military is not actually trying to discredit itself. It is actively avoiding this by classifying reports of activities that would discredit it.

You are straw manning the argument to "is it ok for the military to get away with war crimes" when my original response was to your attempt to claim the military is guilty of espionage against itself. Frankly I don't care if it's "ok", that's not what we were talking about at all.

How does this relate to my own more general issue, that the Espionage Act doesn't apply to classified information alone, and that therefore by your argument all political speech opposed to war would be covered under the Espionage Act?

I... spent so long working out a response that the trhead is moving past me.

In my more wordy post I conceded that you are right, "all" political speech would be classified Espionage. I believe I started responding/referring it as to "classified information" as part of my argument supporting intent.

[Themightytom]

I didn't dodge your "point", my rebuttal was that your comparison is not apt, because it is missing a key trait. The military is not actually trying to discredit itself. It is actively avoiding this by classifying reports of activities that would discredit it.

You don't seem capable of reading very well. The point is that if we're going after people wikileaks for exposing the military's fuckups, then we should go after everyone who's ever exposed military atrocities. Otherwise why the fuck are we just going after wikileaks and nobody else?

No, we should have the ability to go after anyone who exposes classified information. I already conceded to Simon that "Classified" is not actually in the Espionage act, though, which is what I assume your after when you refer to "military fuckups"

At the moment, we are going after Wikileaks because they have positioned themselves as a safe means of opposition for anyone who feels like releasing classified information.

You are straw manning the argument to "is it ok for the military to get away with war crimes" when my original response was to your attempt to claim the military is guilty of espionage against itself. Frankly I don't care if it's "ok", that's not what we were talking about at all.

You're arguing that we should punish wikileaks based on some nebulous mealy-mouthed definition of "intent", but no other groups that do the same thing because . . . stuff.

Or because none of the groups you have presented do the same.. stuff...

Hey Zod, can you point out to me exactly where I said Abu Ghraib wasn't explosive?

And CBS worked with the Bush administration, to report in a manner that did not harm the army, or did you miss Rather's lawsuit.

In the very next sentence you posted that publishing information in a politically explosive manner can cause harm. So either you're arguing that it wasn't politically explosive or it didn't cause harm, in either case I'd like to see some justifications. Why is it no "harm" resulted from Abu Ghraib but somehow Wikileaks might cause harm despite some of the top defense experts claiming otherwise?

Because... CBS complied with the Bush administration's request to hold the story while it effected damage control, and Wikileaks didn't?

[General Zod]

We can argue all we want about whether the US really is corrupt, or whether Wikileaks is right or wrong, but they do intend to harm the U.S. government or at the very least interfere with it. They have stated this, and even explained why.

What I'm ultimately getting at isn't whether or not Wikileaks plans to "interfere" with it, whatever that means. But whether or not what they did should be punishable. By your logic exposing a criminal organization for what they are harms the criminal organization as well, but most people wouldn't argue that it's a bad thing. Why should exposing government corruption be punished?

I see what you're saying, i think I made it a point to include "Classified" information because that speaks to more deliebrate intent. Conveying information that occurs, objectively speaking is what reporting is supposed to be. Conveying information you know to be secret, or classified, by the government requires the acknowledgment that you wish to oppose the decisions made by the government.

I don't see how that's much better given the sheer amount of over-classification prevalent in the government. And even if they wanted to oppose the decisions made by the government, so what?

Though I concede that information conveyed for the purposes of interfering with the operation or the success of the armed forces does not need to have been classified in order to be subject to the Espionage Act.

Like anti-war activism?

Well the pentagon papers couldn't have been prosecuted, because a senator entered them into public record in a protected manner. The report on the Massacre... probably could have been. That in no way diminishes the moral fortitude it must have taken to report those events, rather it highlights them. In that case, the leaker was willing to face legal consequences, as was the media outlet that reported them. By contrast Wikileaks is relying on its ability to evade legal consequences, and through that evasion offer protection for whistle blowers..

What protection? The private who leaked the documents has been held in solitary without a trial or charges being filed for the last several months.

Wikileaks is no longer restricting its activity to exposing singular events, it has begun a campaign of attacking and promoting systematic weaknesses. It is Obama and his administration's responsibility to protect that system, while working within it to reform it. This is an area I would rather, frankly speaking, have defined by the Obama administration, than the Bush administration, because as much as laws can restrict behavior, they can also authorize and protect it.

Systematic weaknesses? Oh please. They received hundreds of thousands of documents at once. It's not as if they're getting a constant stream of new material.

[General Zod]

No, we should have the ability to go after anyone who exposes classified information. I already conceded to Simon that "Classified" is not actually in the Espionage act, though, which is what I assume your after when you refer to "military fuckups"

They've already arrested the private responsible for submitting the documents to Wikileaks.

At the moment, we are going after Wikileaks because they have positioned themselves as a safe means of opposition for anyone who feels like releasing classified information.

How are they a "safe" means when it was easy enough for the government to find the leaker responsible?

Because... CBS complied with the Bush administration's request to hold the story while it effected damage control, and Wikileaks didn't?

Except Wikileaks slowed down their release of cables and began to redact sensitive information on their sites, such as the locations of some of the informants in Afghanistan.

[Simon_Jester]

Is it that we are not accepting Wikileaks organizational mission as intent?

Here is a more detailed case, and i will insert cliff notes to articulate my points.

http://mirror.wikileaks.info/wiki/Secre ... 1966-2010/

[snip]

1. This removes decision-making power from institutions that classify what should and should not be released for purposes of national security. This weakens both the validity of the concept of confidentiality, and the credibility organizations retain that are tasked with maintaining it.

This is true. On the other hand, it would be equally true of any unpleasant revelation about these organizations. Is there a limit on what governments have a right to keep secret from voters?

2. Wikileaks intends to intentionally prolong the impact, and sustain attention on this data. Rather than permitting a simple leak, response, and resolution, they are dragging it out, to gain maximum impact/do maximum damage to existing institutions.

I do not think this is an accurate characterization of their intentions in "dragging it out." The sheer volume of the material means that if they released it all at once they'd choke the media's ability to process the information- and "processing" includes things like doing redaction of the material to protect the names of the innocent.

There are very good reasons not to just dump all this stuff out there on the same day, many of which are in the best interests of the people the cables are about.

3. Client states refers to "allies". The intent here is to undermine our political associations by generating or enhancing objection to these interactions by characterizing them as corrupt and unsavory.

Does that mean it is untrue? Moreover, anyone can call a nation like Saudi Arabia an American "client state." You can make a good argument for it being true based on the definition of the term.

If it's espionage to assert that America has client states, all political speech that would reflect poorly on the American state is espionage, and that is not an acceptable position in my opinion.

4. The intent is to turn the citizens of the United States against its government, on the premise that we are not represented. As the government that is being turned on, this represents harm, and interference.

This presents the same problem- by this definition, all opposition to or disagreement with the policies of the present government becomes espionage. You can't even run for office without committing espionage under such rules; the only possible government that this could be consistent with would be a totalitarian one.

5. Wiki leaks does not intend for this to be an innocuous release of information for historical purposes. They are deliberately trying to embarrass the US government, and cause damage to its international credibility, and they are acknowledging this, and attributing it to their perception of the US government as innately corrupt.

We can argue all we want about whether the US really is corrupt, or whether Wikileaks is right or wrong, but they do intend to harm the U.S. government or at the very least interfere with it. They have stated this, and even explained why.

That does not translate to the specific intent of harming the US armed forces in the sense the Espionage Act justly outlaws. Political operations are not military operations, and cannot be. Among other things we must have the freedom to discuss, on the political level, whether or not we should go to war.

Whether to fight a war, whether it is justified to do so, can never be a question protected by military censorship. You cannot say "we are not allowed to argue about whether to fight the war, because that might make it harder to fight the war!" That begs the question by assuming that it's in the interests of the society to fight the war at all.

In that case, aren't all acts of antiwar protest or demonstration, and all news sources NOT pro-war, acts of espionage under the Espionage Act?

I see what you're saying, i think I made it a point to include "Classified" information because that speaks to more deliebrate intent. Conveying information that occurs, objectively speaking is what reporting is supposed to be. Conveying information you know to be secret, or classified, by the government requires the acknowledgment that you wish to oppose the decisions made by the government.

In and of itself, that is not relevant to the Espionage Act.

If the Espionage Act can be stretched to cover the reporting of classified information with political intent, rather than with the specific goal of causing battlefield defeats for the US military... it can be stretched to cover the reporting of unclassified information with political intent.

At which point politics becomes criminalized and the only form of government left to us is a totalitarian one in which the power of the State exists purely to preserve and glorify the State. And under which citizens have no right to restrain or even disagree with the State, because the State is by definition the proper expression of the Will of the People, and no one has a right to stand in the way of the People.

And yes, this is disturbing as all hell. That's my point: that is where you end up when you equate "has political goals opposed to the present policy of the government" to "is a treacherous spy trying to weaken the nation."

[By the way, capitalization was added where appropriate to the kind of rhetoric used in fascist societies, to emphasize that The State and The People do not necessarily mean what normal people mean by "the nation-state" or "the people who live in it." Instead they are quasi-deified abstractions, so that you can have a situation where The People demand something that the majority of the population is opposed or indifferent to. It's a nasty sort of doublethink.]

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After all, the Act doesn't punish "conveying classified information," and you didn't say "convey classified information. The Act punishes, and you referred to, the act of conveying information. Period, end of sentence. Any information.

Correct, but only to a point, the act punishes conveying information, but only information with the specific intent outlined.
This is obviously why media organizations are terrified, for the precedent it will set, but it is also why it is one of the only tools the Obama administration can use for a new situation.

Though I concede that information conveyed for the purposes of interfering with the operation or the success of the armed forces does not need to have been classified in order to be subject to the Espionage Act.

It is also why this must not stand as a judicial precedent: because it would effectively outlaw any political position on any imaginable war that does not involve jingoism. We wouldn't be able to say anything but "the war is righteous onward to victory!"

We wouldn't even be able to say anything embarrassing about the country but not directly related to the war. Because admitting that we're involved in some kind of economic-imperialist dirty deeds in (for example) Indonesia could conceivably harm the military posture of troops fighting in (for example) Somalia.

I agree that the clause "conveying information" need to be clarified to protect and define more appropriate acts, or, the act itself should address exactly what manner of interference is to be illegal.

In the original intent of the act, and in the context where it's reasonable (i.e. does not outlaw all political speech on the subject of warfare or foreign policy) this definition is pretty clear, I think.

Espionage under the Act is sending information to an enemy, with the direct goal of giving them militarily useful information that threatens the armed forces.

The information on Wikileaks is not being sent to the enemy; it is being sent to the press. There is a difference of intention there, though granted that the enemy can read the newspapers.

There is no direct goal of supplying an enemy with useful information- again, were this the case, the information would have been distilled into a form useful to enemies and given straight to them, not to the New York Times.

The information is, by and large, not militarily useful. It does not provide useful information on the weaknesses of the armed forces, on targets the military is actively defending or that are credibly threatened with attack. If we were up against a well defined enemy with the capability to pose a more credible threat of brute-forcing past our defenses (say, someone with submarines and cruise missiles), that might be different... but we do not.

Our armed forces are, by and large, not threatened. The army is not weakened by the knowledge that the US and China worked together to undermine the Copenhagen global warming negotiations, for instance.

This is overwhelmingly a political leak, which must be addressed on the political level. Treating it as a military matter leads to the conclusion that political speech detrimental to the foreign policy of whoever is in the White House at the time is criminal.

Which leaves no room in American society for civilian discussion of military policy, or foreign policy in general, and thus abolishes civilian control of the military and the foreign policy establishment.

Well the pentagon papers couldn't have been prosecuted, because a senator entered them into public record in a protected manner. The report on the Massacre... probably could have been. That in no way diminishes the moral fortitude it must have taken to report those events, rather it highlights them. In that case, the leaker was willing to face legal consequences, as was the media outlet that reported them. By contrast Wikileaks is relying on its ability to evade legal consequences, and through that evasion offer protection for whistle blowers..

Leakers tell the public that the government is doing things the public does not want the government to do.

Why is it better that these leakers need to fear punishment for their actions?

Based on what you just said, I can only conclude that (for example) it would be best if the My Lai massacre had been hushed up, because it was right for anyone who said anything about it to be punished for harming the war effort. And yet at the same time anyone who said anything about it must have been very brave, for saying something they could have been punished for...

...I don't get it. It sounds like "They shouldn't do it and I hope they're punished for doing it, but good on them for doing it."

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In short, as far as I can tell, any attempt to say anything that does not encourage the American people to support a war would count as a crime under the Espionage Act for you.

Ok the argument could be taken to its logical extreme, but that doesn't disprove the argument that the actions taken by wikileak wasn't intended to interfere with the armed forces, it only disproves the penultimate argument that all information conveyed with the intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States should be criminalized. That is not my argument, that is the argument that justified creation off the Espionage Act.

If you are arguing that the Espionage act is poorly worded for this situation, I would concede that. I don't see a better option, however, and i maintain that the Obama administration is acting reasonable in this situation, as there is not a perfect option, they are choosing the best one available.

I disagree.

I believe that anyone who looks at this issue can tell that the reasons for cracking down on whistleblowers and media outlets who print the information they send out are hostile to the idea of constitutional democracy. It really is that simple. The American government tries to conceal nearly all information about its activities in the sphere of foreign policy, as often as it can get away with it. There is no way for the public to hold the government accountable so long as secrets of that kind are kept.

This makes the leaking of such secrets an essential part of political speech, because no political speech is possible in an information vacuum. By trying to preserve such an information vacuum, and punish people who try to fill the vacuum, Obama (like Bush before him) is trying to make it impossible to have a realistic political discussion of his activities.

That is a profoundly anti-democratic act, one which betrays the spirit of the Constitution by making it impossible for anyone to hold Obama, or his appointees, accountable for their actions.

To compound this, we know that Obama has fought to avoid allowing the abuses of the previous administration to come to light- not only does he oppose accountability for himself, he opposes it for the person he promised to replace and promised to be different from.

That is an even more anti-democratic act.

Taken together, we have a combination of actions that are unconstitutional (suppressing the right of the press to report the truth about the government) and anti-democratic (suppressing the right of the voters to know the truth about the government, so they can decide who to vote for).

It is not reasonable for the Obama administration to do things that are unconstitutional and against the interests of American democracy. For them to do such a thing is a foul and treacherous act, far more anti-American than anything Wikileaks has done. It involves betraying their oaths to serve and protect the American people, and their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

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Well said, and I respect your position, but frankly, this is the sentiment that wikileaks has stated it would want to engender. I don't have a problem with it when it comes to things like massacres being covered up, but when it comes to what one diplomat says about another behind closed doors? That's not going to improve the system, its going to degrade it.

When these diplomats are saying "Gee, China, let's try to prevent any action from being taken about global warming..." I disagree.

There are things in the cables that, taken in isolation, will not improve the system. But there are also some really big land mines in there that the public needs to know. Particularly in places where the government has publicly said it would to X while in reality doing Y. Democracy cannot function when the government is allowed to do Y, say it is doing X, and then punish anyone who accuses them of lying.

Wikileaks is no longer restricting its activity to exposing singular events, it has begun a campaign of attacking and promoting systematic weaknesses. It is Obama and his administration's responsibility to protect that system, while working within it to reform it. This is an area I would rather, frankly speaking, have defined by the Obama administration, than the Bush administration, because as much as laws can restrict behavior, they can also authorize and protect it.

The Obama administration has not done so. They have continued all the Bush policies on leaks, on secrecy, and our foreign policy is nearly the same as it was under Bush. There has been no attempt by the administration to ferret out and punish crimes committed by the previous administration, or by this administration.

If the Obama administration will not clean its own house, it falls to the American public to clean house for it. This is only possible when it becomes clear exactly what the Obama and earlier administrations have done. And how much of it was never sanctioned by the voters because the voters were never told it was happening- and were often promised it wasn't happening.

There's no way to have real civilian control of the military if the civilians are not allowed to know what their own military is doing. Therefore, we cannot censor the information the public needs in order to have that knowledge.

Yes there is a way, and it doesn't require every citizen to have complete access to every diplomatic cable. Civilian oversight is conducted by our elected officials.

Imagine that our elected officials are derelict of their duty. Now imagine that they use the power of their office to hide the evidence that they are derelict of duty.

What are we to do in that case? If the elected officials refuse to admit that they're refusing to address abuses in our foreign policy, and if they can classify the evidence of their failure to do so, how can they be held accountable? What forces them to listen to our opinion when they can simply lie and tell us they're doing what we want, when in fact they're doing the opposite?

[Themightytom]

What I'm ultimately getting at isn't whether or not Wikileaks plans to "interfere" with it, whatever that means. But whether or not what they did should be punishable. By your logic exposing a criminal organization for what they are harms the criminal organization as well, but most people wouldn't argue that it's a bad thing. Why should exposing government corruption be punished?

Fair enough, I think it probably is punishable by the Espionage act, because it is so broadly determined, I can however see your point that they should not necessarily be punishable in every case. The Espionage act should be revised.

I don't see how that's much better given the sheer amount of over-classification prevalent in the government. And even if they wanted to oppose the decisions made by the government, so what?

It's the Obama Administration's responsibility to protect the existing system, while addressing its inequities. I am not saying he should be trampling human rights in the process, I am saying he can't let his government be discredited.

Though I concede that information conveyed for the purposes of interfering with the operation or the success of the armed forces does not need to have been classified in order to be subject to the Espionage Act.

Like anti-war activism?

Yes. Repeat Concession. Espionage act is poorly worded. I can definitely see why, as the blog says, media agencies have suddenly reversed their response to wikileaks to favorable.

What protection? The private who leaked the documents has been held in solitary without a trial or charges being filed for the last several months.

Well wikileaks can't protect an asshole who boasts to a hacker who gets arrested

But their selling point on their website is that they protect whistle blowers.

Systematic weaknesses? Oh please. They received hundreds of thousands of documents at once. It's not as if they're getting a constant stream of new material.

I meant systematic weakness, as in, diplomats regularly present dual personalities, public and private. Wikileaks is no longer saying "look at this big screw up!" its saying"Look their whole system is broken from the ground up!"

[Themightytom]

I do not think this is an accurate characterization of their intentions in "dragging it out." The sheer volume of the material means that if they released it all at once they'd choke the media's ability to process the information- and "processing" includes things like doing redaction of the material to protect the names of the innocent.

There are very good reasons not to just dump all this stuff out there on the same day, many of which are in the best interests of the people the cables are about.

I'm not disagreeing with you here, but while wikileaks states that it is releasing leaks slowly for the purposes of "maximum justice" or whatever the quote is, they really aren't presenting themselves as being worried about the subjects of the cables. I was clarifying their intent as stated, but i suspect that Wikileaks wouldn't be able to provide more, any more than the government could, because at that point you are dancing around an accidental disclosure.

Does that mean it is untrue? Moreover, anyone can call a nation like Saudi Arabia an American "client state." You can make a good argument for it being true based on the definition of the term.

If it's espionage to assert that America has client states, all political speech that would reflect poorly on the American state is espionage, and that is not an acceptable position in my opinion.

I agree that the position is untenable, and i will abandon it, i was speaking to wikileaks intent to interfere, not the higher moral argument, of whether they have a right to.

This presents the same problem- by this definition, all opposition to or disagreement with the policies of the present government becomes espionage. You can't even run for office without committing espionage under such rules; the only possible government that this could be consistent with would be a totalitarian one.

I will again concede that the Espionage act must be taken to terrible lengths in order to work here.

That does not translate to the specific intent of harming the US armed forces in the sense the Espionage Act justly outlaws. Political operations are not military operations, and cannot be. Among other things we must have the freedom to discuss, on the political level, whether or not we should go to war.

Am I being naive in thinking that senators and representatives can do this? My objection here is to making all of this information available to the public, rather than actual decision makers.

Whether to fight a war, whether it is justified to do so, can never be a question protected by military censorship. You cannot say "we are not allowed to argue about whether to fight the war, because that might make it harder to fight the war!" That begs the question by assuming that it's in the interests of the society to fight the war at all.

Are you referring to the wikileaks material, or the Wilson example given a few posts back. I agree with your statement I am just not sure what you are referring to.

In that case, aren't all acts of antiwar protest or demonstration, and all news sources NOT pro-war, acts of espionage under the Espionage Act?

I see what you're saying, i think I made it a point to include "Classified" information because that speaks to more deliebrate intent. Conveying information that occurs, objectively speaking is what reporting is supposed to be. Conveying information you know to be secret, or classified, by the government requires the acknowledgment that you wish to oppose the decisions made by the government.

In and of itself, that is not relevant to the Espionage Act.

If the Espionage Act can be stretched to cover the reporting of classified information with political intent, rather than with the specific goal of causing battlefield defeats for the US military... it can be stretched to cover the reporting of unclassified information with political intent.

At which point politics becomes criminalized and the only form of government left to us is a totalitarian one in which the power of the State exists purely to preserve and glorify the State. And under which citizens have no right to restrain or even disagree with the State, because the State is by definition the proper expression of the Will of the People, and no one has a right to stand in the way of the People.

And yes, this is disturbing as all hell. That's my point: that is where you end up when you equate "has political goals opposed to the present policy of the government" to "is a treacherous spy trying to weaken the nation."

[By the way, capitalization was added where appropriate to the kind of rhetoric used in fascist societies, to emphasize that The State and The People do not necessarily mean what normal people mean by "the nation-state" or "the people who live in it." Instead they are quasi-deified abstractions, so that you can have a situation where The People demand something that the majority of the population is opposed or indifferent to. It's a nasty sort of doublethink.]

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Yeah, and you're right about where that position could end up. At this point i really do have to concede my argument, because if the Obama administration stretches the Espionage Act in the manner I have articulated it would be infringing on civil rights to such an extent that they would be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

There is no direct goal of supplying an enemy with useful information- again, were this the case, the information would have been distilled into a form useful to enemies and given straight to them, not to the New York Times.

Is there more text to the Espionage Act than Zod posted? it looked like the version I read but you're right, that more context makes more sense.

This is overwhelmingly a political leak, which must be addressed on the political level. Treating it as a military matter leads to the conclusion that political speech detrimental to the foreign policy of whoever is in the White House at the time is criminal.

Conceded, I could (and have) argued for individual points that are harmful, based on the premise that political interaction supports military activity but you are right it is way to broad a brush, and taken to its conclusion its not worth it.

Leakers tell the public that the government is doing things the public does not want the government to do.

Why is it better that these leakers need to fear punishment for their actions?

I disagree that all leakers tell the public that the government is doing things the public does not want the government to do.

Leakers leak confidential information. If there is a consequence, than the leaker has to evaluate if the severity of the leak is worth facing the consequence, which acts as a check and balance.

Based on what you just said, I can only conclude that (for example) it would be best if the My Lai massacre had been hushed up, because it was right for anyone who said anything about it to be punished for harming the war effort. And yet at the same time anyone who said anything about it must have been very brave, for saying something they could have been punished for...

Well i was going to argue that the My lai massacre was actually leaked to public officials first, and thus stayed in the appropriate forum... but now that I think about it most of the public officials involved ignored it, so point conceded.

I disagree.

I believe that anyone who looks at this issue can tell that the reasons for cracking down on whistleblowers and media outlets who print the information they send out are hostile to the idea of constitutional democracy. It really is that simple. The American government tries to conceal nearly all information about its activities in the sphere of foreign policy, as often as it can get away with it. There is no way for the public to hold the government accountable so long as secrets of that kind are kept.

Which is probably why Robert Gates is claiming nothing is wrong. he recognizes that in cracking down on the leaks, the government is indicating hostility to freedom of information. Again, I'm conceding this point because clearly I have some inaccurate conceptions of how much is classified about foreign policy.

The rest of your post was well articulated Simon, I am assuming because I conceded the argument I don't have to respond to any particular points.

[Simon_Jester]

Does that mean it is untrue? Moreover, anyone can call a nation like Saudi Arabia an American "client state." You can make a good argument for it being true based on the definition of the term.

If it's espionage to assert that America has client states, all political speech that would reflect poorly on the American state is espionage, and that is not an acceptable position in my opinion.

I agree that the position is untenable, and i will abandon it, i was speaking to wikileaks intent to interfere, not the higher moral argument, of whether they have a right to.

The problem is that "intent to interfere" is only relevant if we make the connection that is the linchpin of the position you just abandoned- if we equate political speech (and efforts to bring about political change) to a military attack on the armed forces by disclosing military secrets.

Even ignoring the extent to which Wikileaks is outside the jurisdiction of US law (quite large), that's still a problem with trying to condemn them on the basis of their "intent to interfere" with wartime US activities, such as it is. They've avowed that they want to "open governments," and I'm sure you can trace statements to Wikileaks members along the line of "we want the US government to be less imperialistic." But I see no convincing evidence that their intentions extend to specific interference with military operations: that they are trying to get soldiers killed.

This presents the same problem- by this definition, all opposition to or disagreement with the policies of the present government becomes espionage. You can't even run for office without committing espionage under such rules; the only possible government that this could be consistent with would be a totalitarian one.

I will again concede that the Espionage act must be taken to terrible lengths in order to work here.

Precisely, which is why I would argue that it shouldn't and the Obama administration is doing something horribly wrong if it tries.

That does not translate to the specific intent of harming the US armed forces in the sense the Espionage Act justly outlaws. Political operations are not military operations, and cannot be. Among other things we must have the freedom to discuss, on the political level, whether or not we should go to war.

Am I being naive in thinking that senators and representatives can do this? My objection here is to making all of this information available to the public, rather than actual decision makers.

Yes, you are being naive. Remember, a republic cannot grant a blank check to its elected representatives, because it has to be able to decide whether to hire them again for the next term of office.

No organization can function if workers are allowed to conceal information about how well they do their job from the people responsible for hiring and firing them. Elected representatives are workers in a republic, and hiring and firing decisions are made by the public. While details of what is going on right this instant, of specific things that enemies would like to know, can be kept secret from the public under this model (think confidentiality)... there are limits. The broad strategic realities must not and cannot be kept secret from the public in a working republic.

The US government is increasingly trying to do this: hiding evidence that members of the government have violated the US legal code, hiding evidence that they are acting against the public interest, hiding evidence that the people they've allied with in other nations are doing things the American public would never endorse, or even tolerate.

This isn't healthy.

Whether to fight a war, whether it is justified to do so, can never be a question protected by military censorship. You cannot say "we are not allowed to argue about whether to fight the war, because that might make it harder to fight the war!" That begs the question by assuming that it's in the interests of the society to fight the war at all.

Are you referring to the wikileaks material, or the Wilson example given a few posts back. I agree with your statement I am just not sure what you are referring to.

To the Wikileaks material.

Information about what we're up to in Afghanistan and Iraq is critical to the question of whether it's worth staying in those countries to keep fighting the war at all. If the rational decision is to pull out of those countries, it's irrelevant that knowing we should pull out would lead us to lose the war by default (because we pulled out). You cannot keep the fact that the war is unwinnable a secret for fear of not winning the war. That just traps you in an Orwellian loop: you'll always be at war, you'll never be able to admit it, and anyone who calls you out on all this gets slapped down.

And yet this is the situation we may well be facing in the Middle East: that we're trapped in a war that cannot be satisfactorily resolved in our lifetime, due to inability to create a stable status quo in Afghanistan (something no one else has managed since the days of the Mughal Empire, at least).

At this point it's in question whether the governments US occupation troops leave in place in Iraq and Afghanistan will even last longer than it took to put them in place... because we've spent the past decade installing them and quite a few governments in that region don't last that long.

Given that cold reality, it may be time for us to cut our losses... but we can't discuss that question intelligently if we're not allowed to know what conditions are like in the countries being occupied. And the government has a history of lying about its involvement in this kind of war, starting from 1964, when Johnson made campaign promises not to escalate in Vietnam while simultaneously planning to escalate in Vietnam.

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In and of itself, that is not relevant to the Espionage Act.

If the Espionage Act can be stretched to cover the reporting of classified information with political intent, rather than with the specific goal of causing battlefield defeats for the US military... it can be stretched to cover the reporting of unclassified information with political intent.

At which point politics becomes criminalized and the only form of government left to us is a totalitarian one in which the power of the State exists purely to preserve and glorify the State. And under which citizens have no right to restrain or even disagree with the State, because the State is by definition the proper expression of the Will of the People, and no one has a right to stand in the way of the People.

And yes, this is disturbing as all hell. That's my point: that is where you end up when you equate "has political goals opposed to the present policy of the government" to "is a treacherous spy trying to weaken the nation."

[By the way, capitalization was added where appropriate to the kind of rhetoric used in fascist societies, to emphasize that The State and The People do not necessarily mean what normal people mean by "the nation-state" or "the people who live in it." Instead they are quasi-deified abstractions, so that you can have a situation where The People demand something that the majority of the population is opposed or indifferent to. It's a nasty sort of doublethink.]

Yeah, and you're right about where that position could end up. At this point i really do have to concede my argument, because if the Obama administration stretches the Espionage Act in the manner I have articulated it would be infringing on civil rights to such an extent that they would be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Thank you. I'm sorry to keep pounding on this, but frankly, the precedents this is likely to set scare the hell out of me when I think about them from the historical long view.

There is no direct goal of supplying an enemy with useful information- again, were this the case, the information would have been distilled into a form useful to enemies and given straight to them, not to the New York Times.

Is there more text to the Espionage Act than Zod posted? it looked like the version I read but you're right, that more context makes more sense.

Large portion of the original text here. Basically, it's written in legalese, and century-old legalese at that. The practical upshot seems to me to be that "Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation..." does pretty much anything involving the gathering, storing, transmitting, or handling of information other than turn that information over to the nearest security officer, is defined as a spy.

It's really quite amazing how broad the scope of the law is, which is one reason I'm opposed to using it for anything during peacetime... or during a war so remote and small relative to the resources of the nation that the nation is not in any danger of coming to real harm from it.

(By the way, I can go on at great length about the problems of defining "state of war;" it's a problematic term when we're talking about colonial wars fought in remote locations by a large and powerful country. More on that later, possibly in a follow-up post)

Leakers tell the public that the government is doing things the public does not want the government to do.

Why is it better that these leakers need to fear punishment for their actions?

I disagree that all leakers tell the public that the government is doing things the public does not want the government to do.

Leakers leak confidential information. If there is a consequence, than the leaker has to evaluate if the severity of the leak is worth facing the consequence, which acts as a check and balance.

It also serves as a way to intimidate potential leakers who do have damning information the public ought to know. There are a lot of people who can be deterred from doing the right thing by the threat of spending a few years in Leavenworth, to put it mildly.

That's particularly problematic if we're punishing not just the individual who spills the documents, but the media organizations that disseminate them to the public. If I'm a reporter, is it worth losing my job and spending five to ten in the federal pen to publish documents proving that the president conspired to do this-and-that? I have a family to feed and I'd like to be able to get a job fifteen or twenty years from now; being an ex-con isn't going to do me a bit of good in that respect.

Forcing people to choose between acting in the public interest and keeping their life un-ruined is a bad idea, if we want the public interest to be served.

The rest of your post was well articulated Simon, I am assuming because I conceded the argument I don't have to respond to any particular points.

OK. Like I said, sorry to keep hammering on this; again, the precedents I'm seeing the US moving towards as a nation scare the hell out of me, because we already live in a fairly dysfunctional democracy. Anything that increases the disconnect between the voting public and the realities of the American economy and government policy is a disaster in my eyes.

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And now for that bit on "state of war." This is mostly cribbed from some things I wrote here a couple months back, but it seems relevant to me since the original issue was about espionage in wartime, with ramifications for the armed forces. It is not in any way a direct attack on Tom, just me stating an opinion.


The fact that the US government is claiming the right to apply wartime standards of behavior everywhere at all times without any official acknowledgment of this fact is even more troubling, in and of itself, than their claim to be allowed to assassinate American citizens in a war zone. If war zones were specific, limited areas of the world that you could conceivably avoid, that would be one thing. But when the war zone stretches across the entire world without any defined limits in time or space on how far the war will go, there is no escaping it.

At which point even the normal "laws of war" become extremely oppressive institutions, because the entire point of those laws is that they're designed on the assumption that war is an anomaly, that there exists some definable state of "peace" and that we only need to relax certain standards for the purpose of dealing with the emergency that is a war.

If war stops being an emergency and becomes the new definition of "normal," then our ability to justify doing whatever the hell we want because we are "at war" becomes very shaky. The problem is that by using "there's a war on" to justify certain (normally illegal) actions, you're linking two concepts of war.

One concept is the empirical idea of war: two or more armed belligerents who are fighting each other in an organized fashion. This is War in the abstract Clausewitzian sense: "War is an act of violence intended to compel our enemy to obey our will."

The other is the legal idea of war: a state of collective emergency in which rules constraining our behavior are relaxed for the sake of collective security. This is the state of war referred to when talking about "martial law" or "aiding the enemy in time of war." It implies not just that we are engaged in an act of violence intended to compel an enemy to fulfill our will, but that there is enough risk to the future of our society that we need to cast aside some of the restraints that we would accept during a state of peace.

If this is not true, if the war is not a crisis for the state, then the government has no standing to suspend or ignore its citizens' rights on account of the war, as the US has started to do. Nor does it have standing to suspend or ignore international treaties, as the US has been doing for some time when it comes to the treatment of prisoners.

I maintain that the US's military campaigns in the Middle East (I can't say that they're "against terror" in any coherent sense because they have not been efficiently aimed at reducing the amount of terror in the region) are wars in the empirical sense, but not the legal sense. That limits the measures that can be justified for the sake of the war.

[As a corollary, trying people under an espionage law created at a time when the US was at war with powerful, capable opponents, a law that places extreme restrictions on our ability to have a political discussion about an ongoing war that could easily stretch for decades, would not fall within the limits I'm talking about]
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Now, the US is obviously engaged in acts of violence; things are blowing up as a direct result of American actions in the Middle East on a day to day basis. But the US as a nation is not in a state of emergency by any reasonable definition of the term. The 'home front' aspect of the war is practically nonexistent, and there is precious little evidence that there's any organized threat to the US left to fight. Our interests might be in danger, but the nation itself is not. Not in the same sense that, say, Britain was endangered by German bombers during the Blitz.

So while we are in a "war-as-in-act-of-violence," we are NOT in a "war-as-in-state-of-emergency." That's where it becomes important that the US government isn't willing to declare a war against a defined opponent. Or to try to impose some kind of real, serious war economy measures, such as drafting occupation troops to be sent overseas, or raising taxes to pay for the cost of military operations instead of borrowing the money. Because they know damned well that the US populace would not support that kind of war indefinitely.
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So in any case, we have three possible statements:
A: "The US government has the power to ignore the Constitution to achieve that end,"
B: "The US is in a state of national emergency and must concentrate on security at all costs," and
C: "The US is engaged in an act of violence intended to compel an opponent to fulfill its will..."

Now, B could arguably justify A; the Constitution is famously not a suicide pact. But B is simply not true; if it were, there would be more evidence of it in official government policy. Our government would be acting like a government faced with a national emergency, not an imperial state preoccupied with domestic matters while absent-mindedly waging a colonial war on the side.

But C cannot justify A, any more than "I like spaghetti" can justify "therefore, my house is made of bricks." It's a total non sequitur. It simply does not follow from "the US is engaged in an act of violence" that "the US government has a blank check to do whatever it pleases so long as the violence goes on."

So we have the claim A coming from certain parts of the political spectrum, and those people trying to support it with the fact C (which doesn't make any sense).

As I see it, the problem is that if you have a five hundred word vocabulary, B and C both get mutated into "the country is at war," a statement that can be built up out of that vocabulary. This can lead to people thinking that B and C are the same thing: that because the country is "engaged in an act of violence intended to compel an opponent to fulfill our will," it must be true that the country "is in a state of national emergency and must concentrate on security at all costs."

And when it's used to make B and C merge together, suddenly that deceptively obvious statement "the country is at war" becomes very poisonous to the idea of the rule of law.
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Losing track of the difference between "we are engaged in an act of violence in order to compel an opponent to fulfill our will" and "we are in a state of emergency that justifies extreme measures" is a really bad idea, especially for a state that is supposed to be governed by the rule of law. Because a large and powerful nation can keep up low level "wars as acts of violence" as long as it wants; there is no limit on that from a logistics standpoint. Without a clearly defined line between "we are fighting somewhere" and "this is a national emergency," that opens us up to the bizarre possibility of a permanent emergency.

At which point public control over government policy is effectively dead, because the government can keep ratcheting up its immunity to oversight in the name of the permanent 'emergency' it has trumped up.