Aussie petrolhead and Daily Telegraph blogger Tim Blair points out that the New York Times didn’t publish Climategate emails because, it said:
The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.
And that the New York Times published the recent set of WikiLeaks documents because, it said:
[. . .] the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.
Blair adds that the WikiLeaks documents, just like the Climategate emails, “were acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements never intended for the public eye”. He doesn’t seem to understand that the two cases are completely different. Because, because, er, well, they just are, OK?
And here is Radiohead (Montreux Jazz Festival 2003, Jonny Greenwood on glockenspiel).
Of course they are different
ReplyDeleteHere is R0B at the "Standard"
"Compare cases like this leak of cables (or the leak of Nat emails to Nicky Hager, or Mordechai Vanunu). In these cases people inside an organisation leaked information because they were desperately concerned about the behaviour of that organisation and felt that there was significant and legitimate public interest in the material released. History proved (or will prove) them correct. For the sake of argument I’ll call those good leaks.
On other hand there is the climategate situation, where an external agent hacks in to an organisation, steals stuff, and then misrepresents it to the world in an action that can only be immensely damaging to humanity. For the sake of argument I’ll call those bad leaks.
I’m all for good leaks, and I’m all against bad leak"
See nothing to it, if R0B is for it it is ok
Ray F