Reply #9: That is the problem of our government. How does it protect its secrets?

[JDPriestly]

Apparently it did not do a good job of it. But our government has no one to blame but itself. If the US could get the diplomatic correspondence of other countries, don't think for a minute it wouldn't take them.

My suggestions are that our government be more discerning in determining what really is a secret. Then it should really protect the things that are, as you describe them vital to our safety and just let the press have things that aren't so important if the press wants it. That would lessen the amount of information, the number of documents (electronic or hard copies) that must be protected.

Assange is just a reporter. He just took this information and passed it on because he could. He may have his ideological grounds for doing it. He may believe, for example, in absolute transparency.

The real problem is not Assange but that this information was so easily accessible. We do not know who obtained it from our government -- could have been someone in our state department. Maybe a mole from the Bush administration? Could have been a foreign country? The Russians and the Chinese are quite good with computers. I'd like to know in what country the computers that the US diplomatic corps uses are made. There could be a problem there.

Maybe some member of our diplomatic corps lost a computer or maybe just left a computer in a hotel room in Beirut or Kabul for a few hours. Doesn't take much to download everything from a computer, I suppose.

Whether Assange is a force for good or bad is not the question in my opinion. It is whether our government's excessive secrecy is actually endangering our country. Why were labeling gossip about Berlusconi's shocking personal behavior as a secret. It's sort of confidential, but shouldn't our government be focused on keeping military information secret, not that sort of silly stuff? We might not want to advertise what we know about Berlusconi's private life. But it doesn't need to be protected to the same extent that some of the other information needs to be protected.