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Fastfission stated for the record:
If I were somebody with access to U.S. military
secrets and I posted
them to Wikipedia, I would certainly be *personally* legally
accountable for having them up. Because Wikipedia is in the U.S., it
too would probably be legally accountable as well under U.S.
classification laws. But what if they were, say, Iranian military
secrets? The contributor, if they were Iranian, would probably be
personally accountable still. But since it is unlikely that Iranian
classification laws apply to entities in the U.S., there would be no
legal issue for Wikipedia to have them up (unless they in some way
fell under U.S. law, which a few categories of information still
would).
(The WP:V question is different entirely, of course.)
Except that the WP:V question is the crux of the matter! Those Iranian
military secrets would either be entirely unverifiable, and thus
un-Wiki-able, or they would be verifiable, and so not secret.
I just went through this loop a few times personally -- I posted details
about the [[S8G reactor]] plant back in the days before WP:V was
enforced. Recently, a newbie popped up and accused me of endangering
the lives of his shipmates and threatening to have me arrested.
Hilarity ensued, until I added the sources I had omitted earlier.
Obviously a secret widely available on the Web (including, as I recall,
a Russian Web site) is not much of a secret.
- --
Sean Barrett | We completely deny the allegations, and
sean(a)epoptic.org | we're trying to identify the alligators.
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