Originally posted by d-miurge
What is a French door? Does that mean my neighbours are watching my gf and I too? I'm confused.
Oh, French people! Ever so kinky!
igottaknow
quote:
Originally posted by d-miurge
What is a French door? Does that mean my neighbours are watching my gf and I too? I'm confused.
To be perfectly honest I wasn't impressed that she had sex with her bf until I heard it was in front of French doors.
MrJiveBoJingles
All of you exhibitionists out there. Do it proper, missionary in the bedroom with all the the lights off. Have you no shame?
Arbiter
quote:
Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
Governments are supposed to represent and do what is in the best interest of their citizens. There are cases where that needs to be kept secret.
I agree, although no government in history has ever met that idealistic standard. Now, which of these two approaches to maintaining that secrecy sounds more reasonable to you:
1. The government should do what it takes to keep such information secret in the first place; or
2. The government should employ negligent security procedures and allow the information to leak out, relying on private organizations in other countries to respect the government's interests out of the goodness of their own hearts, then bitch and whine about it when someone inevitably doesn't.
There is absolutely information within government that is in the citizens' interest to keep secret. But if the government fails to advance the public interest by failing to keep the information secret, they should put their big boy pants on and take full responsibility for their failure instead of crying about how those dastardly foreigners, who had no obligation toward them to begin with, failed to help them do their job of keeping those matters secret.
Thanks, we call that kind of door "porte-fenêtres", literally "door-windows".
@Lira: you know I'm not the kinkiest one here! :)
Moongoose
quote:
Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
All of you exhibitionists out there. Do it proper, missionary in the bedroom with all the the lights off. Have you no shame?
Shame? Yes. Morals, no.
narcism
"Well thats their fault for bringing their kids into a battle" :wtf:
Thanks to wikileaks this is made public
Lira
quote:
Originally posted by d-miurge
Thanks, we call that kind of door "porte-fenêtres", literally "door-windows".
@Lira: you know I'm not the kinkiest one here! :)
I know no one compares to the Pie, but you're the one who gave her the idea of having door-windows in her living room!
Joss Weatherby
quote:
Originally posted by Arbiter
I agree, although no government in history has ever met that idealistic standard. Now, which of these two approaches to maintaining that secrecy sounds more reasonable to you:
1. The government should do what it takes to keep such information secret in the first place; or
2. The government should employ negligent security procedures and allow the information to leak out, relying on private organizations in other countries to respect the government's interests out of the goodness of their own hearts, then bitch and whine about it when someone inevitably doesn't.
There is absolutely information within government that is in the citizens' interest to keep secret. But if the government fails to advance the public interest by failing to keep the information secret, they should put their big boy pants on and take full responsibility for their failure instead of crying about how those dastardly foreigners, who had no obligation toward them to begin with, failed to help them do their job of keeping those matters secret.
Yes, but that doesn't absolve the people spreading the leaked information of any guilt or wrong doing.
Arbiter
quote:
Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
Yes, but that doesn't absolve the people spreading the leaked information of any guilt or wrong doing.
Well, they certainly have a degree of responsibility for the results, but I don't know if I'd call it wrong doing.
If another government obtained the documents by espionage and did with them whatever they though was in their interest, including publishing them generally if they thought it was to the advantage, then I'd say they outmaneuvered us fair and square.
A private organization like WikiLeaks is arguably different because they don't owe the same kind of duty to advance a set of separate and potentially conflicting interests, but I'm not convinced they have any obligation to respect our interests, either. I'd definitely call their conduct hostile towards us, but I don't know about wrong.
narcism
quote:
Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: “You’ll risk lives! National security! You’ll endanger troops!” Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can’t be both. Which is it?
It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US , with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.
US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan . NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.
Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
Your citizens not knowing about these special relationships helped them, having them public knowledge hurts them because once it is public in a free and open society then it is public to the world.
Ugh...I can't believe I'm finding myself agreeing with Nou and Kevin in this thread, but this is exactly why.
You get Wikileaks to disseminate ALL information on ALL governments across the world, I'd say, go for it. But that will never happen, and everyone knows it.
Go and look at how often I agreed with these guys over the years in the PD forum and you'll see that I almost never agree with them. That said, I have taken International Relations classes and majored in Government in college, so I've heard the arguments relating to this stuff before, as well as seen the impacts.
In a representative democracy, especially in one the size of the US, you vote for people who you trust to most implement the policies that you'd approve of. Knowing every thought of our diplomatic personnel isn't a necessity. If you think for one second that any US citizen is going to read through EVERY leaked document to formulate their views in order to make a decision at election time, you're nuts. On the other hand, if you don't think every other nation in the world isn't hiring analysts to read these and formulating their future foreign policy directives as a result, you're also nuts.
I'll also mention is that I see this creating vast amounts of damage to future transparency/speed of information. Wikileaks isn't, imo, for transparency. Either that or they're really short-sighted. Do you really think that the US government is going to work in the same manner following this? They're going to try to clamp down security, and in doing so, more things are going to happen over the phone, in person, etc...where NO ONE can repeat things with any legitimacy.
The other aspect that I'll point out, is that this is a good example of how the US reaction to 9/11 & the threat of terrorism ed us. Bin Laden should be happy. Out of fear, we gave access to data to many more internal people than deserved it in order to show the US citizens that we were doing everything possible to combat terrorism. As a result, a like PFC Manning was able to download gigs of data onto a flash drive that he eventually was able to disseminate to Wikileaks. Do you think, even for a second, that he reviewed (or understood all of) what he was passing off? No, he was some moron, upset about his job, and decided to take revenge at an employer, and this was a way to do it. The same thing is probably what happened to the "big bank" exec whose leak is impending.
