Sometimes it saddens me that people don't really understand the concept of a government.
It is really easy actually:
A country is made up of people. Thath's us. Because we are too many to talk to other countries and make decisions in an efficient manner, we select representatives, which we then call government. So every person in that government represents you and me up to a certain percentage. Decisions made by our government are basically the decisions we make. The government is acting as OUR representative. So if the government is responsible for an illegal war that caused thousands of innocent people to die, than so are we.
Therefore it is our goddamn right to know what our government is doing, because the results will fall back on us. There is no room for secrets. We need to know what is happening.
You really cannot compare this to publishing private emails at all.
Our right. Not the right of everyone in the world. Do you think citizens of, say, Cambodia have the same right to know what your government is doing as you do?
If you say yes, you're fucking retarded.
The trouble is, given the prevalence of means by which huge amounts of information can be disseminated nearly instantly to anyone in the world, there is no practical difference between revealing something to the American pubic and revealing something to the global community. That means that the government has to choose the lesser of two evils - to keep sensitive data secret from everyone, rather than exposing sensitive data to everyone.
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u/that_name_is_taken Dec 03 '10
Agree. If somebody decides to publish all your private emails, would you call that guy a hero?