re: #82 Varek Raith

My support for them goes something like this:
- In the past they have provided a useful service by combating corruption and unwarranted secrecy.

-They have been burned (rightly) for altering material they have received in the past.

-In order order to combat the perception they have a bias they need to release pretty much all of what they receive.

So when someone hands them 250,000 state dept cables, some of which do reveal information which is useful( e.g info on the Saudi stance towards Iran, US pressure on Germany over renditions). Wikileaks has three options they can sit on the whole trove, and by doing so compromise their ability to serve as a leak site. They can edit the data, which they got burned for in the past. Or they can release all of it.

They went with option #3 in the least destructive means possible.

They contacted the Us government, informing them of what they had and offering to work with them to protect people.

They gave several noted newspapers advance access to the cables and asked their opinions on what should and should not be released.

As far as I’m concerned they did good due diligence on these cables. Much better than the Iraq/Afghanistan stuff they published.

Am I happy that they published this stuff? Not especially, but I’m willing to tolerate it provided that they don’t act like complete assholes because they do good work often enough to be useful.

And with that I’m off to run errands.