A Note on Wikileaks

To my fellow wingnuts: Someday we might need to leak something.

To repeat something I have said before:

OTOH, the most obvious organization for terrorists and fellow travelers to infiltrate is the Federal Government, so we Americans should be given immediate access to classified material. We should be wary of secrecy. It can enable enemies of freedom to flourish.

This even applies to the Current Unpleasantness. For example, many government agencies have reacted by taking any discussion of threats offline. Since The Enemy has been plotting for years, they probably already know about those threats and even if they didn't it would take them years to do anything. Taking any mention of the threats offline will hamper the ability of ordinary citizens (the people who prevented the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania from being used as a weapon and the people who stopped Maxwell Stupid, the shoebomber) to come up with countermeasures. Instead, we are supposed to let the goofballs in the FBI, CIA, etc. to defend us.

But wait, there's more. Ralph Nader, the Arab American most likely to be a real sleeper agent, went to great lengths to get Dubya elected. Is there another sleeper agent in Dubya's staff? Was the same person responsible for the criticisms of Israel, the word "crusade," the phrase "Infinite Justice," and dropping food packages the same color as bombs? Is the secrecy policy a matter of national security or is it to enable moles to work undetected by reporters?

Even if the Feds haven't been infiltrated, deputizing spies will merely provide them with more information than they can handle. A single organization can't monitor that much information. That's why everybody must have snooping devices. The CIA can't monitor wannabee terrorists, their neighbors will have to do the monitoring.

If we look at the Current Unpleasantness, the government had the data needed to catch the terrorists ahead of time but did not have the manpower to analyze it. Once we get close to 300 million people on the case...

Modern wars are fought with intelligence. Each of us is a member of the unorganized militia and now we should regard each of us as a member of the unorganized CIA.

This even applies to encryption. Supposedly, it is now a public menace. If that's the case, we should ensure that decryption is as widespread as possible. IOW, the DMCA must be repealed.

Addendum: This movie was mistimed.