On 01/12/2010, at 3:51 PM, Doug Pensinger wrote: > There seems to be overwhelming sentiment against Wikileaks' release of > confidential documents and I was wondering how people here (some of > whom may have read Brin's Transparent Society) felt about it.
Judging by how they do it - letting the powers-that-be know quite a while in advance what they have and what they're planning to release, and giving time for operations to be moved/ended and some redactions to occur, I think it's a good thing that this material gets released. Also, it's not top secret - about 3 million US govt employees would have had access to most of this anyway, according to an article I was reading earlier. > > I'm generally for transparency and haven't heard of anything yet that > is beyond mildly embarrassing to the U. S. government. I do think > where the safety of our troops is concerned confidentially is > important, but that government secrets should have a relatively short > shelf life in all cases. Precisely. Situations like here in Victoria where the contracts for building the new railway station in Melbourne are sealed for FIFTY YEARS are ridiculous - they're anti-democratic and foster corruption. Charlie. _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
