I think he missed an opportunity, there. One of the stickiest claims against Wikileaks, at least among the tech crowd, is that they stand for radical transparency and believe government should hold no secrets. I would have liked him to expound on exactly what secrets the government can or should keep, as it seems fairly central to their mission. By not doing so, I think he allowed the narrative put forth by his critics to retain dominance.
> Do you think governments should be allowed to keep some secrets?
> This is a question that is much more interesting than the answer. In some cases – tracking down organized crime, say – government officials have an obligation to keep their investigations secret at the moment that they are performing them. Similarly, a doctor has an obligation to keep information about your medical records secret under most circumstances. This is a question about obligations. It is absurd to suggest that simply because a police officer may have the obligation to keep secret certain information relating to an investigation, that the entire world also must be subject to a coercive force.
I don't think you can get much more specific than that. It's a fuzzy issue.
I think an exposition of a state's right to secrecy in regards to national security and diplomacy would have been helpful, as that's the area to which most of Wikileaks' criticisms are addressed. Specifically, I would like to hear what information a government or military:
a) Should keep secret (troop movements, etc)
b) May keep secret (?)
c) May not keep secret (abuses, human rights violations, etc)
Furthermore, I would like to see similar answers in regards to international diplomacy. A "horse's mouth" statement on the matter would go a long way towards alleviating confusion.
I don't think the question of what should be open vs secret is a very interesting debate, because the bulk of that answer is largely agreed upon. I think the more interesting discussion is answering this problem: How can a government have the ability to keep secret those things that are necessary, in a way that disallows (or minimizes) the ability to abuse that power to keep other things secret as well?
I agree that having an explicit statement that there may exist military and diplomatic secrets that are legitimate would help convince the people (like myself) who think his positions are too extreme to be useful.
"In some cases – tracking down organized crime, say – government officials have an obligation to keep their investigations secret at the moment that they are performing them." -- Julian Assange, in the linked article
Seems like a straightforward statement that he believes there are legitimate secrets for a state to keep, at least temporarily.
The problem is that there is not, and frankly can not be a fixed definition of any of that. We may well all have a common understanding that we all agree is moral and lawful, but the second it makes a government uncomfortable its will suddenly get redefined.
There is a curious thing that happens with language and government. They make up new words or redefine current words to mean what ever their agenda is. For an unrelated example, WMD used to be nukes only, and austerity measures is the new word for cuts. Remember when things needed money? Its resources now.
What I understand from this is that it is not about what information governments can keep secret but what means they can employ to keep that information secret. In Wikileaks' case they are forcing non-government entities, the media to keep state secrets.
I think the key quote from the article relating to this is "Legitimate authority is important. All human systems require authority, but authority must be granted as a result of the informed consent of the governed. Presently, the consent, if there is any, is not informed, and therefore it's not legitimate."
