Buzz Kill

The details coming out these days about what the American government is doing are very troubling. Any article with NSA in the headline is sure to ruin my day. It's very unsettling to think of the invasive things that they and other agencies are doing to us, purportedly to protect us from those who would do us harm, but harming us considerably in order to do it. At best, it's like undergoing especially harsh chemotherapy to rid us of a cancer. They propose to very nearly destroy our freedom in order to save it.

As unpleasant as that is, the means by which we've learned much of this makes me very uncomfortable. Men like Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning (whose name and gender change I must confess I have yet to internalize) and Julian Assange have taken it upon themselves to release very sensitive information on the grounds that the government is doing bad things in secret and should be exposed. I don't know.

The leaks from Bradley Manning went to Assange's WikiLeaks. Assange is an awfully unsavory character in my opinion, and not just because he released documents without redacting the names of Iraqis who worked with our government. I oughtn't have to say that when such people are exposed, their lives are put at real risk. Maybe Assange didn't think that was important. I think it would have been a nice courtesy.

Assange fled to the protection of the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he's been for the last year. Snowden, who saw fit to condemn the American government's bad behavior, fled first to Hong Kong and then to Moscow. He had evidently meant to reach Cuba, but failed in that. I would be interested to hear his defense of taking refuge with those places given their track records, but I doubt very much whether I would be convinced. I would have been awfully impressed if he or Assange would have agreed to face the music, as other whistleblowers have done.

Still, there is information we have only because of these people. It's good that we have it, but we have it because of what I judge to be dubious motives. Are we to say that there are only good leakers, or is it so that some are good and others are bad? If there are bad leakers, then I am not comfortable trusting that our government and all the entities of which it is composed consist entirely of well-intentioned, decent people. There are many people in it who I'm sure I don't want to make some decision of conscience.

This is one of those things where I feel very alone in my point of view. I read little from my friends but support for these people. I can appreciate that it's hard to process nuance. It's hard to deal with the fact that Bashar Al-Assad is bad, but that many of his enemies aren't good. They say that you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, and maybe that's what it seems I am doing. Maybe that is what I'm doing. I don't understand it all, but I know I'm not any more happy with the people exposing this stuff than I am with this stuff in the first place.