Not quite. You could believe that US foreign policy is a net negative in the world, and thus leaking any randomly sampled set of documents is likely to be a net positive.
I think this hyperbole is no more helpful to the conversation than your original one ("patently childish").
I replied separately that this was not the point of my post, but I will reply here in a separate reply (so as no to conflate things) about illegal activities exposed by Manning.
It looks to me that the Manning dump includes more details about the US interrogation methods at Guantanamo than were previously publicly revealed, and I think there is a strong argument that some of the interrogation methods used at Gitmo were illegal under existing US laws against torture.
That was not the point of my post. I did not say or imply that that illegal activities were unmasked by the Manning dump.
I am saying that your prediction that people who think the Manning dump moved democracy forward necessarily believe that basically all secrecy is bad is unhelpful to a conversation about what the whistleblowing laws should be. For instance, some people may think that US foreign policy should all be public while domestic criminal investigations can be private. Some people might believe that the Manning dump was illegal but that some illegal activities (like lunch-counter sit-ins or suffragettes chaining themselves to the White House fence) move democracy forward.
I would like to say however that I am on the side that believes that some illegal acts move democracy forward, I just don't believe that the Manning dump did that, primarily on the basis of not having revealed illegal behavior. As your other post notes it did add a bit to the torture debate (I had previously not known this), but I personally think that the added info wasn't worth the damage to DoS operations, but drawing that line is clearly a fuzzy process.
If you didn't know about the Gitmo thing, which was a very prominent part of the leak that took me literally 10 minutes to discover today by using Wikipedia, what else might you be missing in your understanding of the leak? How can you conclude that it didn't "move democracy forward" without having a strong understanding of its contents?
I know I won't be able to draw a conclusion about the helpfulness of the leak to democracy without much, much more study.
So demands like "name an illegal activity" are missing the deeper moral/ethical point, regardless of whether there are illegal activities in the dumps (I'd also say it's bad form to make such a demand in the middle of an Internet thread where it's highly unlikely that your fellow commenters have the time to review thousands of diplomatic messages/documents/videos/whatever).
Wrt the bad form, the Manning dumps have been out for longer and are much more public than the Snowden leaks; they've been combed pretty damn thoroughly. Suggesting that my comment requires original research of the documents is disingenuous.
Talking about legal policies without considering the greater moral framework in which they exist is disingenuous; it implies there is nothing important other than policies.
Suggesting that my comment requires original research of the documents is disingenuous.
At the least it requires research of the reporting on the Manning dumps. An any case, I maintain that a one-line demand for something with borderline relevance that may require extensive research is in bad form.
And I don't know how I forgot, but the Manning data included the footage used for the Collateral Murder video, which "may depict a war crime" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrik...). So there's your illegal activity.
And torpedoing productive policy discussion with increasingly vague discussion is also so. What help is hand waving about the unfortunately approximate relationship between policy and ethics?
Your comment suggests a question about the relationship (without asking one) as if it were a wise counterpoint. OK, now what? It's not as if any reader of that comment was prior unaware of the inexact correspondence between law and morality. Am I required to solve that relationship in the general case before proceeding with policy? How about only in the problem space of agreements (such as the classified NDA)? Or do I also need to resolve that relationship in all cases concerning the relationship between individuals and society and the state?
Your argument approaches that irritating stoner kid in sophomore year who could get to "But in the end can we even say anything is wrong?" from anywhere. If there is specific bit of ethics or morals that should be addressed then bring it up, otherwise is it just a general call for remembering to think ethically? If so, then thanks I guess?
The video was investigated openly and was ruled an accident. Like it or hate it it's been determined not a war crime, though it has become something of a form of snuff film for people who really want to find US warcrimes.
Two points: 1. You're not the only person who can decide the scope of a conversation on an Internet forum. 2. Accusations of "torpedoing" and "hand waving" are unfounded. Here's the thread so far, in which you seem to be the one waving hands:
> > > > [BWStearns] You basically have to believe that
all US foreign activity or all secrecy is inherently
bad to say that that the Manning dump moved us forward
as a democracy.
> > > [jbapple] I think this hyperbole is no more
helpful to the conversation than your original one
("patently childish").
> > [BWStearns] Name an illegal US activity that was
unmasked via the Manning dump.
> [nitrogen] There's more to right and wrong than
strict deontology. What's legal or illegal is only a
very fuzzy approximation of what's ethical or moral.
So demands like "name an illegal activity" are missing
the deeper moral/ethical point, regardless of whether
there are illegal activities in the dumps...
> Your argument approaches that irritating stoner kid in sophomore year who could get to "But in the end can we even say anything is wrong?" from anywhere.
Your argument approaches that irritating paternalizing of government rhetoric in which "sober" analysis can only come to one conclusion, that the "current best solution to the problem is where we are currently". I've been discussing in good faith, at worst omitting implied context to save space and time, and you're resorting here to what comes across as thinly veiled ad hominem.
There is plenty of interesting and productive conversation to be had about secrecy and whistleblowers, but this thread has become too long, too narrow, and bordering on too personal for me to desire to continue here.
On the productive side, do you have any suggestions regarding a way to make a whistleblower law that increases the odds of "good whistleblowers" without just saying "we're done enforcing classification"? Our disagreement over whether or not Manning's dump does anything for democracy is actually a great illustration of why it's hard to make such laws/policies.
Criticizing me for not figuring out a better solution isn't suggesting a better solution. I honest to god want to hear one. Hell, I'll throw out something I can at least lie myself into seeming like a good idea:
A leaker, believing public disclosure of classified material to be necessary in order to uphold their oath to the constitution, is not subject to the Espionage Act if they immediately submit themselves to the authority of the Supreme Court where a [unanimous|8|7|6|5] vote decision is required to press charges of [insert relevant non-espionage act crimes here, stealing gov't property, clearance violations, etc], and if so which charges to press.
In general when I solve a problem I try to go as close to the source as possible, and/or look at a layer of abstraction that isn't often considered.
Obviously this protects the government from a rogue piece of itself more than it protects the people from a rogue government. However, I am disinclined to take the fully cynical view of this since I have yet to concoct or hear a plan which was capable of a) maintaining a legally enforceable classification system, b) permitting ethically and patriotically motivated unilateral public disclosure of unconstitutional activities. Perhaps this is a failure of my imagination (I suspect that if there is an answer it relies in finding a way around needing the second requirement).
I think that the current best solution to the problem is where we are currently (I said best, not good). That is to hope that in the event of sufficiently egregious abuses an individual will set aside personal risk and expose said programs. In the ideal Disney version we as a society recognize that they did this in service to the constitution and fulfillment of their oath and urge the president to pardon the risk taker. Maybe call it the Jefferson Strategy, after the quote about the tree of liberty needing to be watered with the blood of patriots. Maybe, in order for the republic to stay healthy, we need people brave/stupid enough to be executed or die in jail as the modern equivalent to the rebellion Jefferson was referencing.
This plan has several failure modes. First is a false positive. This is the mode where someone for whatever reason believes that they're being a whistleblower and just dumps a bunch of documents that hurt US foreign policy but don't really expose any wrongdoing. You basically have to believe that all US foreign activity or all secrecy is inherently bad to say that that the Manning dump moved us forward as a democracy. Note, I'm not defending her treatment or sentencing or whatever, but the dump was pretty devoid of any gross U.S. wrongdoing (we can argue about the chopper video elsewhere). This failure mode is dangerous but probably won't end the republic. It is increasingly damaging per occurrence though because someone can take far more documents than they could ever read. This has a negative potential effect on the accountability of the leaker since they can take now and sift later. I wonder if this will lead to a cycle of more "example making" and leakers putting out more docs per dump since they know they'll be made examples of anyways.
The other failure mode is that everyone stays silent, which is also not ideal, but large orgs have issues with secrecy even without relying on self-sacrificing affirmative decisions, so I'm not worried about this one over the very long run.
Edit:
There's no way to shape policy to recognize ahead of time that it's ok to leak illegal programs (such a policy would need to be ok with the existence of legal programs in the first place). It's similar logically to saying that it's OK to torture people who know about terrorist plans. You can't really know ahead of time for sure that they know what you want to know, so making a moral exemption on such a basis is inherently flawed and you should refer back to the general case of "don't torture people" (in this case, the general case is "don't leak classified").
I was primarily directing the "childish" comment towards the idea that we ought to get rid of the classification system entirely. It's a nice utopian ideal, and I can see and even maybe agree with the logical arguments that secrecy in any form in government is an inherently corrupting feature. What I can't see however is how to conduct the business of government (diplomacy, intelligence, and military specifically) in any fashion without it, and I'm left with the impression that a sober view of the situation has to accept secrecy in some instances and look to mitigate its corrosive effects rather than to complain about its existence.