Free speech is not a blanket protection that allows you to say anything you want at anytime. Whether or not what Wikileaks is doing falls under the protection of the 1st Amendment is something I would love to see the Supreme Court decide, but it isn't as simple as crying foul on free speech b/c Amazon disabled their account.

I'm pretty sure the Supreme Court has decided that what wikileaks is doing falls under free speech in a number of cases.

For one, there's whistleblower protections.

For another, it's legal to advocate fascism or any other unpopular ideology.

This isn't shouting fire in a crowded theatre. Unless it falls under espionage, it should be free speech.

Exactly what whistleblower protections were you thinking applied here?

You're right, they're totally besides the point, because they apply to the whistleblower and not the media. It was generally assumed (until this week apparently) that it's always ok for the media to print things after they've been leaked. Nobody went after the NYT's hosting, for example.

There's some detail on the actual laws at http://whistleblowerlaws.com/

How do the leaked cables not fall under espionage?

Wikileaks did not commit espionage here, unless you're alleging that Julian Assange took those cables himself. The person that leaked the cables is liable for espionage (if the Pentagon can catch him or her). However, as the Supreme Court ruled in the Pentagon Papers case, the publishing organization has no prior restraint obligation. That is, the publisher doesn't have to hold back publication of something that's potentially damaging just because the government says so.

The Pentagon Papers case wasn't quite a free pass to publish anything you want, but more of a "government doesn't win by default" ruling. It doesn't mean the government can't win other cases involving other leaked info.

The Supreme Court has decided the WikiLeaks issue. It decided it when it ruled that the New York Times could publish the Pentagon Papers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers).

The Pentagon Papers did not give carte blanche to publishers, and they could still be brought up on charges under the Espionage Act.

> Times v. United States is generally considered a victory for an extensive reading of the First Amendment, but as the Supreme Court ruled on whether the government had made a successful case for prior restraint, its decision did not void the Espionage Act or give the press unlimited freedom to publish classified documents. A majority of the justices ruled that the government could still prosecute the Times and the Post for violating the Espionage Act by publishing the documents. Ellsberg and Russo were not acquitted of violating the Espionage Act; they were freed due to a mistrial from irregularities in the government's case.

(from your wiki link)

There needs to be a more defined separation between what we might think we want to be the legal line and what the line actually is.

I would hope that if our notion of free speech protects pornography, it protects important political speech like this.

There are also legitimate concerns over the protection of state secrets.

WikiLeaks and other whistleblowers form an important part of modern society, but we should also be wary of single-spigot fountains of information that come via unverifiable channels. After all, the leaking of false information to promote an agenda is a time-honored tradition of statecraft.

i feel like it's up to the state to protect their secrets. I mean really, they made this info available to 2 million people, and easily accessible from machines that I'm guessing had enabled usb ports, cd writers and email.

100% this info was already sold to all other countries.

Perhaps I should have said "protection of state secrets out of context".

My main concern isn't that these secrets are getting exposed, its that they are getting exposed in a way that is easily editorialized by whoever is distributing them. Ordinarily US citizens wouldn't have access to our country's diplomatic cables (even though other countries might) - now we do have them, yet we have absolutely no way of verifying that we've gotten the unadulterated whole of them. That is what concerns me.

Plenty of companies won't host or promote pornography either.