Our correspondent Victor has commented on Wikileaks and I thought his arguments provided a good counter point to the free flow of information comments on the Web. I am posting it as its own post accordingly.
The problem is that those cables were encrypted on transmission—our enemies captured those encrypted transmissions.
Now, from wikileaks they have the plain text of those transmissions.
As our enemies now have the encrypted versions and the plain text they can go back and decrypt millions of other US diplomatic cables and identify names–and kill them.
The defense minister of Lebanon has already been targeted and there will be many, many others.
The FOIA Act (Freedom of Information) enables access to documents in a sane manner.
Our enemies have fed Wikileaks with documents so that the released product contains lies with a filler of truth.
The Wikileaks head will be arrested–he will reveal his sources–or he will not reveal his sources–he will be released at some point either way–our enemies will believe that he revealed sources and they will kill him.
As you know diplomacy and negotiation require a degree of strict confidentiality–without it we will have a Hobbesian world of life which will be nasty, brutish, short and lonely.
Without confidentiality lawyers, doctors, therapists and business cannot operate.
If people violate confidentiality via the Web then the Web as we know it will end as every state will apply the China solution.
Actually it is already happening, NYT reports that students discussing wikileaks on Face Book or Twitter will never get security clearance for US Govt jobs.
Strictly confidential means strictly confidential—we have FOIA to to keep that within reasonable limits–but spreading confidential information on the web promiscuously will lead to the China solution in no time flat.
