As summarized in London’s Guardian newspaper, “several thousand [documents were] labeled with a tag used by the U.S. to mark sources it believes could be placed in danger, and more than 150 specifically mentioned whistleblowers.” References were, as well, made to “people persecuted by their governments, victims of sex offenses and locations of sensitive government installations and infrastructure.
Comment
I’ll defer to the judgment of editors who’ve gone through all the material and are in touch with government sources. But frankly, if you are an informer against your own country (“Afghan source of information”), the better word for you would be “collaborator”…. and the character (and fate) of collaborators isn’t usually an edifying one. Not even the fact of their being on “our” side makes that better.
The rest, I agree, should have been redacted.
But, did Assange intentionally release that information? Or did a lot of it just end up on the site because it hadn’t first been vetted?
Next. What rights do governments have to pronounce on privacy when their routine conduct involves surveillance (Echelon, NSA programs that monitor satellite and cell phones, for example)?
I agree mostly with you. The problem most people have is that they simply have zero trust in there government. So when people start to believe the government is hiding something (weather it be good or not), there is just so little trust out there in the community. Also, Assange and his team knew exactly what they were posting.
What rights do governments have to pronounce on privacy when their routine conduct involves surveillance (Echelon, NSA programs that monitor satellite and cell phones, for example)?
Darest thou question our God, the State?