I am hearing this example too often. It is far from an intelligent response and reminds me of the meta contrarian [1]. An equally flippent and useless retort would be here: fragme69. There's the launch code; what use is it to you? It might take the next level of insight to point out the "danger" of Wikileaks, but further reflexion brings you back to the initial gut feeling: THIS CAN BE NOTHING BUT A GOOD THING? So what if even 100 informants get murdered? If these leaks prevents the invasion of Iran (note: Saudi Arabia are agitating for this [2]), then tens if not hundreds of thousands of civilians will be saved.

People are really laying into wikileaks. Do not forget that they are just the messenger. A near boy has been held without trail for 8 months I think now, and for what? To risk his life by highlighting fraud and corruption, only for people to be still to stupid or too embedded in the system to realise. If Wikileaks had a cache of embarrassing Chinese data, you wouldn't be able to hear anything above the "Amerkah Fuckyeah". You live in a democractic society (probably), enjoy the freedom of information, then realise you actually live in a kleptocracy and the US is a pathological state.

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco...

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable...

>It is far from an intelligent response and reminds me of the meta contrarian [1].

Talk about forcing a response.

You're petitio principii is showing please put some pants on.

Shouting "this can be nothing but a good thing" [wake up sheeple!] and claiming that this is blatantly obvious to anyone of modest intelligence doesn't make it true. Only if it's an obvious answer and I were reacting to that would it make this "meta-contrarian".

>There's the launch code; what use is it to you?

With no secrets I know where the bases are, all the computer schematics, all the cable connections whether or not remote launch is enabled, where to dig to jack into cables, which satellites to tap, what the guard rotations are on bases, what the secret service have found out about military personnel that foreign powers might use to blackmail them, etc., etc.. To me, now, those codes are useless - so is the knowledge of how to build a nuclear bomb though as I don't have the resources to act on it. There are plenty of people who do have the resources and who would be interested in holding America to ransom using their own nuclear arsenal.

IMO to consider that this sort of information isn't harmful to the security of a country is naive in the extreme.

Yes, if no one in the world were greedy or lusted for power then there would be no need for the final remaining human to keep secrets from himself.

How about a tamer example: if the government can't keep secrets then anyone can log in to Obama's email account and send an email that appears to be from him. Suddenly no government entity can be authenticated online. Iris scan, well yeah but the output of the scanner is public knowledge and the signing key is too.

At the very least I hope you can concede "well of course some secrets have to be allowed". Now define the boundaries.

To me, your response sounds like the knee-jerk reaction of a rebelling teenager. Do you think that Iran's closest neighbours want them to be invaded because they doubt that Iran will use nuclear weapons?

Your 100 informants getting murdered sits well with you? If it does it can only be because whilst you see that as saving thousands of Iranians you don't consider the billions that would most likely die if Iran initiate WWIII.

Instead of missile launch codes, how about "knowledge of how to built a nuclear weapon"? That was a pretty big deal in WWII/Cold War. Sure it's probably not useful to any particular individual, but it was certainly useful to the Soviet Union. State secrets aren't just being kept from individual actors.

Following this line of reasoning to its extreme (if impractical) conclusion - a world in which missile launch codes cannot be secret would very quickly become a world without missiles. You don't knowingly make or keep a weapon that you cannot control, you destroy it before it can be used against you.

And all unicorns could poop rainbows, too. A world wherein secrets cannot be kept does not exist, so any argument that suggests it is pointless.

The world is not black and white. Unless it was physically impossible to keep secrets (which would likely mean zero privacy for any of the citizens, as well), people in power will keep secrets whether they are "official" or not. You will still never know about what you don't know about.

Oh please. This is a completely specious argument. (Like Glen Beck saying that national health care necessarily leads to fascism).

Of course some things need to be secret for practical reasons. The problem here would be secret nuclear weapons (Israel) not the codes that protect them from misuse.