[jyoti00]

"wikileaks is all about freedom of information..." I don't want to hurt any hacker's emotions but I feel "freedom of information" should end where it endangers those people's lives who are working for their countries, whether soldiers or diplomats. Freedom of information and expose MUST be for common man's good, not just for gaining publicity. Expose the wrong, not the mundane.Otherwise it's pure eavesdropping and bragging about your power to do so. Diplomacy IS "the art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations" (as defined by Merriam Webster dictionary). That is precisely what all the exposed diplomatic cables were doing.Anything wrong with that? If I study hard to get a job in foreign services and someday, somewhere, someone decides to divulge my confidential, professional conversations just for the heck of it, and it destroys my reputation then what it should be called? Expose or public titillation? And if freedom of information or "openness" is so vital then why WikiLeak's founder guards his privacy so fiercely? One rule for others, one for himself?

[pygy_]

... I feel "freedom of information" should end where it endangers those people's lives who are working for their countries ...

Who exactly has been endangered by the leaks? No concrete example has been given so far, and if there had been any, the US government would have jumped on the occasion to demonize Wikileaks even more. Without any proof, those allegations amount to FUD and hypocrisy, since the death toll caused by the US government is considerable.

Taking the Irak war as an example (but others abound, e.g. Chile or Vietnam): Bush attacked Irak based on lies, and, by 2006, the war had caused 654,965 excess deaths (direct and indirect casualties) [1]. I couldn't find a more recent estimate, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number had doubled by now.

Now that is a big death toll caused by hidden information, isn't it?

--

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casu...

[xentronium]

I believe, Wikileaks emailed the government on the matter of redacting the sensitive information and they [the government] rejected doing so.

[jyoti00]

For fear of making it a political debate, I will humble refrain from any more comment.

Only one point: Neither Iraq war nor War in Afghanistan is justified by ANY argument at all.

If WikiLeak is so powerful then it should have exposed how Bush conspired to destroy these two countries, kill millions of people over there and get its own soldiers killed in a war no one can justify.

Michael Moore did more to expose the wrongness of Iraq war through his book "Dude, Where's my Country" then WikiLeak can claim to have done. Michael Moore was the first American celebrity who opposed Iraq war from Oscar podium and for that he was booed. He stood against the general public sentiment and two years down the line, people realized how right he was. Please read that book if you can, you can find some information about that book in Wikipedia, here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dude,_Where%27s_My_Country%3F regards.

[ajays]

"Endangers peoples lives" ... if you came to this conclusion yourself, can you PLEASE share with the rest of us how did they do that?

"Freedom of information and expose MUST be for common man's good,"..... spoken as someone who's been brainwashed (pardon the use of that word) to be spoonfed information by those who control it. Who decides what's for "the common man's good" ? Why can't we see all the information and then decide for OURSELVES what's for our good?

"...and it destroys my reputation " .... just listen to yourself, man! Stop being scared of openness! Please, do us all a favor, go through the 1000+ cables and point us to 1 where someone's reputation is being destroyed.

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO SCARED OF WIKILEAKS??

[gloob]

You make two points:

  * "freedom of information should end where it endangers...people's lives"
  * "expose the wrong, not the mundane"

Forgive me if I'm just being naive, but: wouldn't exposing the wrong be way, way more likely to endanger people's lives? And, contrariwise, if this is all information everyone already knew -- why is anyone's life in danger from everyone being told about it?