Classified information is often used as a way to stifle criticism and debate as well. One interesting take on this from someone who did quite a bit of work on this question is Daniel Moynihan's "Secrecy: The American Experience." Moynihan (a late, distinguished senator) basically concludes (after serving for many years on a Senate Committee on Secrecy or something along those lines) that there is much more classification in the US government than is needed to maintain national security, and indeed much of that classification in the past had been used to ill effect (which can mean a number of things; i.e. Moynihan believes that if the VENONA information had sooner been declassified then the whole McCarthy hysteria could have been avoided, as people would have seen that yes, there was a Communist espionage network, but that it was fairly small and manageable, avoiding the extremes of both the left and the right) and has lead to incorrect and insular thinking (Moynihan blames classification for the US not being able to predict the crash of the USSR long ahead of time). Other instances include the Pentagon Papers (Daniel Ellsberg, Vietnam), and the use of classification to restrict certain types of debate over the arms race, assessments of foreign intelligence, etc.
All I'm saying is that the practice of questioning secrecy laws and classification is NOT something restricted to any insular world of Wikipedia -- it has a long history with many quite mainstream and respectable advocates. It is not a fringe internet issue.
FF
On Apr 1, 2005 2:14 PM, Blair P. Houghton blair@houghton.net wrote:
I love this thread. It points out just about everything that's wrong with the surreal, insular world of Wikipedia.
Information is classified because divulging it will place people in harm's way. In some cases, it will place millions of people in harm's way. There are politicized exceptions to this, but for the huge majority of classified items keeping the information secret will save lives, as will hindering its dissemination if it is somehow leaked.
The fact that any of you are considering anything other than immediately removing the information indicates that you care less about human life than your petty authority over a toy encyclopedia. It's sad and it's scary.
--Blair _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l