It's not that difficult to make the rule about what should and shouldn't be secret

[Ken Burch]

As much as possible for private individuals.

As little as possible for governments.

This should settle the "If Assange gets away with it, NONE of us will have any privacy" canard.

[RandomThoughts]

1. I think the status quo supported the Patriot Act.

Maybe they should have thought about that before tapping phones, and putting cameras all over the place.

[BzaDem]

2. I think the rule is that democracy decides these sort of things. Not some random person who is

pissed that the voters have a different conception of secrecy than he does (such as Assange).

[Fumesucker]

3. Yeah, the voters decide what's gonna' be top secret and what's not..

:eyes:

There doesn't seem to be all that much I've seen released that is a great secret other than from the American people..

Your arguments are usually smarter than this, too much eggnog?

[BzaDem]

4. Don't the voters elect representatives?

I mean, some people believe that all elections are fixed by e-voting machines and the voters have no say, etc etc.

But assuming you don't believe that, then voters ultimately have the power to elect representatives to change secrecy policy if they feel like it. The fact that they don't doesn't mean they don't have the power.

[Fumesucker]

6. And representatives always do what they say they're going to do, right?

Like Obama saying he was going to support a filibuster of the FISA/telecom immunity vote..

[BzaDem]

7. Didn't Obama vote for fisa BEFORE the election?

Most people here voted for Obama in full knowledge of his vote for FISA (and his explanation afterwards) before the election.

[Fumesucker]

8. I was using that as an example of a representative keeping their word..

There are plenty of other such examples.

[BzaDem]

9. Even if we accept that, a politician not keeping their word doesn't mean we don't have a democracy.

This still comes down to someone who didn't get his way in an election (actually who isn't even an American) deciding he is going to change duly enacted secrecy policy by fiat.

[Fumesucker]

10. Assange has no duty to keep American secrets..

Given that he's not an American.

It is my opinion that less government secrecy in the world would be a good thing, it's hard for citizens in a democracy to decide for whom to vote when they are deliberately kept unaware of much that their government does.

Obviously there are some things that should stay secret but I think it's fair to say that secrecy is often abused in order to hide wrongdoing or embarrassing events.

The timing of the current outrage against Assange is interesting, the full fury was unleashed when Assange revealed that he had incriminating documents against a major bank.

[BzaDem]

11. I'm not saying he is legally prohibited from publishing it.

I'm just saying I don't approve of posting much of what he has posted. I thought that was the subject of this thread -- secrecy policy. The legality of this is a whole separate question.

"Obviously there are some things that should stay secret but I think it's fair to say that secrecy is often abused in order to hide wrongdoing or embarrassing events."

Of course it is. But you seem to acknowledge that there are limits to how much openness there should be. So whose decision is it where to draw the line? Is it the people's decision, through their voting decisions to elect representatives? Or the decision of some random person who don't like the voting decisions of the American people?

Neither solution is perfect at all. But nothing is perfect. As some say, Democracy (as a form of government) may have the most problems, except for all other forms of government.

[Ken Burch]

12. And again, since all of the secrets he exposed were kept in the service of right-wing goals

Why would you OPPOSE what Assange does?

There's no good reason for any non-right wing person to defend the National Security State. Secrecy is used solely to perpetrate killing, inequality and misery. It has never lead to peace, justice or reconciliation anywhere.

No on who keeps secrets in the government is on OUR side. And you know it.

Hillary damn sure isn't. She's just there to keep Obama chained to the war machine.

[BzaDem]

13. Your arguments are always the same.

The ends justify the means, over and over again. Extremely general statement with absolutely no basis in fact, over and over again.

In reality, the world is not black and white. Sometimes, the means do matter, whether or not you like the ends. Often, X is not "solely" used for Y, regardless of what X and Y are. In other words, you aren't just wrong about your specific statement regarding the merits/demerits to secrecy. Just about every POSSIBLE argument you could make in those general terms is wrong -- even on subjects completely unrelated to secrecy or security.

[Ken Burch]

15. And YOUR argument on this is always the same

The National Security State isn't reactionary if there's a Democrat in the White House.

Or, just simply, we SHOULD trust our leaders blindly.

It doesn't matter to you that if that got us into Vietnam last time, all it can get us into the future is OTHER Vietnams.

And what, exactly, does "the means do matter, whether or not you like the ends"?

And, for the record, I don't believe that "the end justifies ANY means".

No end justifies torture, or causing a people to starve, or the overthrow of a democratic government. None justifies suppressing internal dissent.

[BzaDem]

18. "The National Security State isn't reactionary if there's a Democrat in the White House."

I don't think I said anything about the National Security State in the abstract.

I simply said that SOMEONE needs to make the decision of where to draw the line, and from a process standpoint, I would rather have the line-drawer(s) be democratically elected and accountable to the people in the next regularly scheduled election, than some random unaccountable person.

[Fumesucker]

16. My point is that the people are often lied to about what their representatives will do..

And indeed the people are often lied to about what their representatives are doing and have done.

How do the citizens in a democracy make intelligent decisions when much of what they need to know is obfuscated and hidden from them by the very representatives who they elect?

If it came down to a choice of total secrecy or total openness in government I would choose total openness.

[BzaDem]

19. Though in a thought experiment, you probably wouldn't be in favor of some device that broadcast

everyone's thoughts to the public.

But some of the same principles there apply here. Diplomacy works as a way to resolve problems between nations peacefully because secrecy is allowed. Interactions between people often are possible because of secrecy -- a lack of secrecy entirely would remove the ability of people to work together to solve many types of problems, including in government.

I would agree with you that there is a much stronger case to expose illegal actions. But exposing diplomatic cables outlining completely legal thoughts and actions undermines the ability for diplomacy to work in the first place.

[Fumesucker]

21. Out of a total of five people in the world that I trusted absolutely..

Two of them have treated me very badly, I'm no longer a trusting person.

And consider that two of those who never treated me badly were my parents who've been dead for about forty years now. Basically there's one living person that I really trust, everyone else falls into the "verify" category. It was a long, painful and difficult journey from naive kid to cynical old fart and the final step was taken within the last couple of years.

I'm not a big fan of secrets in general, I find them to far more often than not disguise a hidden agenda that is rarely to the benefit of the person or persons from whom the secret is kept.

ETA: I found this thread interesting and disquieting, the FBI considered the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" to be Communist propaganda, a secret that's just now being revealed. What kind of horrors are we going to find out fifty years from now that are being kept secret at the moment?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=75593&mesg_id=75593

[Tunkamerica]

5. Is there some secret vote that I've missed?

[Ken Burch]

14. If they TOLD you about it, it wouldn't be a secret!

:eyes:

duh!

[Ken Burch]

17. Democracy didn't decide what this government keeps secret

No country puts the actions of its intelligence service up to an open and transparent democratic vote.

And, since the members of the Intelligence Committees in the U.S. House and Senate are sworn to secrecy, we have no way of knowing what they vote on.

Face it, we have no reason to trust any decision by anyone in our government to keep things secret.

[BzaDem]

20. The director of the CIA is appointed by a democratically elected official, and confirmed by 100

other democratically elected officials.

The policy he follows in terms of secrecy was passed by a Congress and signed by a President, and can be changed by a Congress and a President.

[Ken Burch]

22. But never will be, because Congress and the president never defy the CIA

When it comes to who decides what is secret, democracy is always subservient to paranoia.