[EliAndrewC]

Strong agree that those documents had the potential to lead to the murder of informants - this alone convinces me that the mass release of those cables without any edits or redactions was irresponsible.

However, I've previously assumed that we (incredibly) made it through the aftermath of the leaks without any of those potential murders taking place, for the same reasons listed in the grandparent comment; the media would have reported it, and the government would have surely cited it at Chelsea Manning's trial. So I'm skeptical but intrigued by your assertion that informants may have been murdered, but that there's be no way for us to know whether this had happened. My (uninformed) expectation would be that we WOULD know, since:

- we had (previously but not anymore?) informants in those places in the first place

- such murders would be (easily?) dicoverable after the fact, especially since the Taliban would have motive to tout them

- the government had a strong motive for wanting to portray the leaks in the worst possible light, and therefore would want to discover and verify such murders

Your observation that we have very little knowledge of these places does make me more uncertain about whether any murders occurred, but at this point we're far enough out from the leaks that the burden of proof lies with anyone asserting that murders probably DID take place, for the reasons listed above. (As opposed to the question of whether the leaks were irresponsible in the first place, which for me is a resounding yes even if we somehow made it through without any murders.)

[tptacek]

Why are you arguing about whether anyone was murdered over the releases? The circumstantial evidence that the thread was real is overwhelming, and the poor visibility we have into Afghan tribal culture makes it impossible to settle the argument. Furthermore, by continuing to litigate the point, you help build the argument that Assange bears some responsibility for that threat. Why not instead just say, "sure, bad things happened, but they're offset by the good Wikileaks did", or something like that?

[EliAndrewC]

Your assertion that we may never know whether anyone was murdered was a surprise to me, which is why I responded. It seems relevant because whether the good outweighs the bad depends on how much bad was actually done. (Technically what's relevant is how much bad one would expect to have happened in advance, but what actually ended up happening last time will affect our guesstimates of what is likely to happen next time.)

[tedunangst]

Don't know we also need to know how much good was actually done? Can that be quantified? (Can we name somebody who wasn't murdered because of the leaks?)

[EliAndrewC]

Asking how to quantify the good and bad that resulted from a thing is something we can ask about literally anything. It's especially hard in this case, because the potential harm was immediate and personal (people being murdered, etc) while the good was broad long-term (a public with greater insight into what its government is doing, etc). But there are plenty of areas with similar tradeoffs; if raising a speed limit lowers commutes for millions of people but raises fatalities by some amount, then that's equally hard to compare.