15 May '06 - 514 W - + 9 - 8 Leaks and Declarations
Via
Digby, I find today that
ABC News reporters are having their cell phone calls tracked by the government. I can't say I'm all that surprised.
I wonder, honestly, how such actions could be justified. The only
conservative response to this article I've been able to find was over
at
Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds's place, a simple one liner:
PLUGGING LEAKS: The real reason the press is upset about the phone-number-tracking story?
Now, I realize this isn't an explicit argument on his part. But part of
my training as an analytic philosopher involved being able to pull out
implicit assumptions or arguments from a text. Now, there's two
assumptions or pseudo-arguments here, both a bit dangerous. First,
obviously, he's assuming that "plugging leaks" is a good thing. Second,
there's the implication that the press requires leaks, that they
benefit from the leaks being open.
These two things are deceptively uncontroversial. After all, who would be
for
leaks in the first place? Isn't information security a good thing? And
isn't it true that the press directly benefits from the leaks being
open? The answers seem simple, but answering these questions in the
affirmative and leaving it at that is a bit troubling.
First, leaks do not simply serve to make information insecure. They
also serve to keep the public informed of actions or policies that the
government does not, itself, want disclosed to the public. To seal off
leaks altogether would be to insure that the only information Americans
will receive about their government's more clandestine activities is
disclosed with that same government's permission. And call me crazy,
but I don't trust my government to keep me informed of its most suspect
actions, no matter who's leading it.
Second, the suggestion that the press only wants leaks open because of
the financial benefit they derive is completely ridiculous. The
motivations of individual journalists differ from the interests of the
corporations (or the shareholders) that employ them and some may,
believe it or not,
actually place a value on keeping the public well-informed.
Finally, and most importantly, reducing the journalist's "real reason"
for concern to something about "plugging leaks" is to completely ignore
the fact that these are individuals whose private phone records were
gathered and analyzed, and sidestep the question of whether it's
legitimate for the government to be collecting this data on them in the
first place. Who is doing the collecting? Was there judicial oversight?
Were Ross's and Esposito's rights to privacy violated in the search? Is
it legitimate for the government to try to close leaks altogether? Or
are some leaks (say, those that tell us of secret CIA detention
centers) legitimate, while others (say, those that out CIA officers for
political retaliations) illegitimate?
Snarky comments like Reynolds's are, on the one hand, just that -
snarky comments. But they also forego any substantial analysis (or even
acknowledgement of issues) in favor of reinforcing certain positions.
It can be turned into a declarative statement: "Leaks are always bad,
newspapers/journalists only want them to make money." Everything else
gets lost.
Nice writeup, and I’m glad to see that your login is working. I would add one thing to the implicit argument you’re responding to, and that is the issue of the ends (supposedly) justifying the means. I’d say that Instapundit or whomever would respond to what you’ve said so far by saying “Yes, we do want to plug leaks, and yes, this does violate a few incidental rights along the way, but the ends justify the means.”
Of course, such an argument presupposes that the ends are good in and of themselves, and dismisses the means as minor attrition. So, the way to respond to it would be to point out that the ends are not so good (as you already have done) and that the means are even worse (as you’ve also done, at least a bit).
But yeah. Thanks for writing.
Aaron (URL) - 16 May '06 - 05:24
That’s true, I think. There’s been a lot of ends justifying means floating around lately, especially when the
GLOBAL WAR ON
TERROR is concerned. Since, you know, that changed everything. Or something.
I think it’s odd that the president and government need more powers to prosecute the
GWOT then they did to deal with the Soviet Union, an (at times) hostile nation that could have quite literally reduced this country to ash. But that’s a topic for another post entirely.
Tim (URL) - 13 September '06 - 22:30