I still don't think that Bradley Manning or Julian Assange are the people who should determine what information should or should not remain secret.

...better we leave that to our betters, like the bureaucrats in the military who have no motive other than to make sure that we are all protected... of course, along the way they make sure their own backsides are protected too.

I suppose Daniel Ellsberg was also not the right person to decide what the American people should or should not know.

to make such a decision and certainly had more credibility than eith Mr. Manning or Mr. Assange.

but I'm under the impression Ellsberg believes Manning did the right thing.

...so one must have a college degree, or better, an advanced college degree, before one can act based on one's conscience.

Pffft.

because the ones who should be doing it are abusing that power.

may be easilly manipulated by someone who seems to be sympathetic to him and a computer hack who has been accused of rape.

I tend to question the agenda of the persons who expose secrets on this level. Are they doing it because they truly believe it is the way to provoke change and force governments to do the right thing, are they revealing this information to punish those in power with no regard for the consequences of their actions or is it an attempt to gain fame and notariety for themselves?

First, secrets are inherently suspicious, and should ONLY exist when necessary - a government culture of secrecy is so wrong, and so opposed to American values, that ANYONE uncovering hidden corruption is OBLIGATED to expose it unless it's a current military secret the size of, say, the location and date of the Normandy Invasion.

Nothing in the released documents DESERVED to be secret, therefore none of it SHOULD have been. Simple enough.

And I have a strong bias AGAINST diverting questions of morality and corruption towards the personal characteristics of the messenger - it nearly always turns out that whatever they are, they are ultimately irrelevant and unimportant, except to the messenger and their own personal relationships. But they generally have NO BEARING on the quality or value of the data they release, until such a direct connection is demonstrated (i.e. the data has no importance BEYOND the fact that they were involved in releasing it.)

My world, as a human being on the planet Earth, nominally governed by the United States of America, was vastly improved, on scales from the personal to the national to the global, by the release of these documents. If we reject people like Bradley Manning as a way of getting them out, what alternative do you suggest to the obvious and corrupt failure of our existing institutions to address the secrecy problem and get the documents out when that needs to happen?

Where are the recs?

Thanks!

and I'll get out of your hair.