Sotomayor: WikiLeaks war logs posting 'will lead to free speech ruling'

[G_j]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/27/wikileaks-war-logs-free-speech-supreme-court


WikiLeaks war logs posting 'will lead to free speech ruling'

US supreme court likely to have to rule on issue of balancing national security and freedom of speech, says judge

David Batty and agencies
The Guardian, Friday 27 August 2010

US supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor has said the court is likely to have to rule on the issue of balancing national security and freedom of speech due to WikiLeaks posting a cache of US military records about the Afghan war.

Sotomayor said the incident, which has been condemned by the Pentagon, was likely to provoke legislation in Congress that would require judicial scrutiny.

Her comments came in response to a question about security and free speech by a student at Denver university. The judge said she could not answer because "that question is very likely to come before me". She said the "incident, and others, are going to provoke legislation that's already being discussed in Congress, and so some of it is going to come up before ".

WikiLeaks posted more than 76,900 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the Afghan war on its website last month, providing a devastating portrait of the war. They revealed how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents and how Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

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[derby378]

1. You have the right to free speech - provided, of course...

...that you're not dumb enough to actually try it!

:grr:

[mmonk]

2. Free speech has to be approved by the government

in the new America.

[nashville_brook]

3. k n r

[unblock]

4. there is legitimate ground for military secrets

the problem is that it is VASTLY overused -- abused, rather -- to keep as secret VAST amounts of information that have negligible national security value.

very little of our national security secrets are troop locations or explotable defects in our military equipment and that sort of thing.

what's needed is a better way to balance what's kept secret from the start. there needs to be a far stronger threshold in order to classify something as secret. right now, the government can pretty much slap a "secret" or "top secret" classification on just about anything it wants to.

[Caliman73]

5. Agreed. Rational approach.

That the system is abused does not mean that it is illegitimate, just that those who are using the system are using it illegitimately. Divulging information about war strategy that would aid our enemies is treason and not subject to protection. The problem is as you rightly pointed out, that the government hides behind national security to do all manner of illegal or unethical things.

[G_j]

6. even such things as exposure of our troops to chemical weapons

(Vietnam, Gulf War)

oh and, not to mention war crimes...