[q2]

This is more freedom and more transparency. What is wrong with that?

Remember, openness and transparency has many levels. You may be at different level than Wikileaks. If this level of openness is uncomfortable, so be it but there may be many who feel, this level is ok. Look at how some Govt's point at others as closed societies. Just in this case, there is some one who took more higher level of openness than traditional ones.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "This is freedom and complete transparency. What is wrong with that?"

It's stolen documents of a private company. Most of the information is nothing more than embarrassing.

>> "If this level of openness is uncomfortable, so be it but there may be many who feel, this level is ok."

So you publish your communications openly then? Seriously, one minute HN is complaining (rightly so) about government invasions of privacy and the next it's congratulating theft of private communications from someone it doesn't like.

Wikileaks has lost what little remaining credibility it had in my eyes. This is little more than stolen documents to satisfy the kinds of people that read gossip sites.

[Zigurd]

I'm not arguing against your position that the legal workings of a corporation, in the context of fair laws administered by a legitimate government, should not be splashed around.

But, if you believe we don't have a legitimate government specifically because some big corporations have bought the government, there really is no barrier between those corporations and the government they bought, and there is no difference leaking government or corporate documents.

Evidently, the people at Wikileaks think the latter.

[k-mcgrady]

I agree, in fact the lobbying system really bothers me. If that was all that Wikileaks published I might not have a big problem. But they didn't redact, they released everything, the majority of which just satisfies voyeurism.

[Zigurd]

Lobbying, if it is clean and transparent, and there is good access from expert organizations that are not just a fig leaf for buying the government, is fine and healthy. But, in contrast, secret influence-buying to enshrine bad copyright law into a hard-to-modify treaty, is not so good.

[sdoering]

I second this.

[q2]

All societies, at some point in the past, may have started at similar level of privacy ...etc. Due to various reasons, if we see now, some societies are more open than the rest and this is due to the choices they made consciously or accidentally or made by influencing entities in those societies. Wikileaks is following the same trend but may be with more speed/velocity.

If we see history, there are no absolute boundaries of privacy and it changes with time and it may feel outrageous now but if we see multiple similar incidents, then it becomes natural,common and after few years, it becomes standard of life and I won't be surprised if future generations in these societies feel proud of that level of transparency and make fun of those who lack that level of openness.

[k-mcgrady]

That's fine but you can't force openness (because it aligns with your beliefs) through theft. Society has been becoming more open (as people tweet and blog publicly) but forcing the changes you want through illegal means, especially when there is no consensus that that is what society as a whole would like, is wrong.

[q2]

No one is forcing openness here. You are not in "follow it or else" situation. You can just ignore as if nothing has happened. Where is force applied? It is imaginary.

In many cases, people act without consensus based on their decisions. Did you take consensus before posting above message? Just like you did what you thought as right, some one else make other decisions w.r.t wikileaks. Always, there will be initiative and later on consensus comes into picture.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "No one is forcing openness here."

Of course they are. Information that wasn't supposed to be public was stolen and made public against the will of the creators/owners.

[pliny]

>This is more freedom and more transparency. What is wrong with that?

People have an inherent right to privacy, and they don't (generally) forfeit that right when they decide to coordinate their actions with other people (within or without the context of a corporation) that also have a right to privacy.