Jochen Fromm wrote circa 10-12-07 01:41 PM: > Now if a state has "state secrets", is this fundamentally different from > privacy issues for > the individual (only for the state)? Should > a state in a democracy have any real secrets > at all? And if the state has the right to prevent invasion of privacy, > shouldn't the individual have the same right, too?
I don't think so. I think the whole "corporations are people" concept is flawed. And the state is just another form of corporation, at least it usually seems that way. I also don't think it has much to do with the political system (democracy or not). I think there's a fundamental difference between an organism, like a human, and a collection of organisms. I suppose the interesting cases are things like lichen, biofilms, aspen groves, etc. As with the backscatter machines and tsa pat-downs, Wikileaks' actions will be beneficial as a foil for how we feel about these issues. > It is clearly evil what Wikileaks has done recently, > they went to far this time. But too much censorship > and secrecy is not a good idea, either (as the "top secret america" > investigation from the Washington Post showed). What do you think? As a whistle-blower organization, they went too far. As far as I know, no illegal or unethical activity was exposed by the cables. It's like the paparazzi for diplomats. But as a foreign transparency advocate, they did the right thing. They did not commit any crimes and they published, as journalists, what they thought the (global) public ought to know. Even exposing potential targets for attack is no worse than, for example, me posting the results of running nmap on Owen's machine, or white hat hackers blogging about Microsoft vulnerabilities. The enemy is the secrecy, not the facts. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
