I don’t agree. Personally I don’t feel that the government is entitled to have secrets from the governed, as the government derives its power from the consent of the governed, and you cannot consent unless you are informed. A government with secrets from those it requires the consent of to govern is illegitimate and corrupt.
The fact that some claim that it is or should be illegal to tell someone to collect evidence of uninvestigated and unpunished war crimes for publication for the edification of the public shows you just how far down we’ve slipped down the slope.
The US doesn't either. That is why there are declassification rules that reduce the secrecy level of information after a while.
So yes, you are correct and this trust the government gets to declare something a secret has been abused and the ONLY way to get to the truth was what Assange and Manning did. That this is the ONLY way is pretty important for the legal defense.
So, if the government had a weapon plan with the power of a nuclear bomb, and could easily be created with certain instructions...that should be leaked because something something the government has no entitlement to have secrets from the governed...even if it's to protect those it governs.
The Supreme Court addressed this in New York Times vs. United States (1973), when the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, which were classified, and which the government argued must remain secret in order to protect the national security.
The court ruled that in order to restrict freedom of the press, the government "carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint." The court further ruled that freedom of the press can only be restrained if there is clear, serious, immediate harm that would result directly from the publication of the material. Speculative arguments about what could happen are not sufficient to block publication.
Justice Hugo Black's argument is really quite beautiful: "The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."
Remember what publications we're talking about here. These were documents detailing a war that the US and British governments entered into under false pretenses, and which they continued to lie to the public about. The public was served by knowing this information, and trying to put the people who published it behind bars, and treating them as if they were spies, is disgusting.
Wikileaks is not the New York Times. Wikileaks did not redact certain documents that ended up burning sources and agents, putting lives in danger. Major news publications don't do that. Major news publications also don't tell someone exactly how to hack into something to get a story. They can massage a source, they can solicit sources, they can contact a source...but you can't tell someone how to hack into a military data bank for the purpose of a story and then say it was free speech. The publishing is -not- what the government is charging Assange with.
Hugo Black didn't write that only the New York Times had the right to publish government documents. He also didn't write that only organizations that meet partiallypro's liking can publish government documents.
Wikileaks is fulfilling an important role, publishing documents that shed light on the secret actions of governments. That's a service to democracy.
There idea wide gulf between completely open government and one where secrecy is the default reaponse with very few checks and balances to ensure that those items marked top secret have a valid rationale for being labelled as such.
I would argue that countries like the USA have moved too far in the latter direction and could use a good shove back to the middle.
How can we even be sure such a weapon exists or can exist if we can’t review the workings of it?
This whole “it’s for your own safety, let us protect you with it, trust us (no you can’t read it)” is not informed consent and no amount of mental gymnastics will make it informed consent.
The government requires the consent of the governed or it is illegitimate. Secrets preclude informed consent. There is nothing special or unique about the humans in the government that entitle them to access to secrets whilst denying the governed that same access.
We know that nuclear weapons exist, but generally you can't find plans on how to make the kinds we produce that yield much larger degrees of damage. So, I'm not sure what your point is. We also know that an F-35 and F-22 exist...but we have no idea what the schematics are, we don't even know what it's coated with, they are secret.
That's not true. Nuclear weapons are a 1940's technology, a fat-boy gun style device is simple enough and can be quite powerful. The only thing that's stopping everyone from producing their own is that refining uranium requires a massive amount of energy and scale. Delivery of warheads is the main problem though. What needs to be secret is the delivery / strategy part.
The technology is old, and the theory is open knowledge...it is not well documented or public on how to actually build a working bomb. Especially thermonuclear bombs. There is a reason North Korea struggles to provision a working bomb when it has all the materials in place. The reason Israel got the bomb is because France shared the information with them. Not everyone has that information.
Then again, I think all known practical methods of setting off a fusion bomb involve using a fission bomb to do so, so the barrier to entry for even experimentation/development is extremely high.
Lol, how to actually build it is the easy part. Again, the hard part is the refining uranium to get Uranium-235 and that's (thankfully) mostly a highly resource intensive job with large scale industry needed.
Note that we are talking about 1940's "fat boy" here.
Also, note that the fact that the poorest nation on Earth can do this today kinda says everything.
I think this is one of the things that we should be alarmed at, at how easy it is to make nuclear weapons in today's age. Putting your head in the sand and refusing to accept reality is dangerous.
The fact that some claim that it is or should be illegal to tell someone to collect evidence of uninvestigated and unpunished war crimes for publication for the edification of the public shows you just how far down we’ve slipped down the slope.