How to tell our enemies how we plan to track them down and kill them

I keep hearing more details about how the U.S. government pulled off the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. These tactics and strategies are all being leaked by U.S. government employees, of course, because no one else was in a position to leak this valuable and sensitive technical information to the press. Government officials are energetically crowing about how to trace a wanted figure, details on how to do electronic surveillance, how to plan a surgical attack and how to carry it out, down to minute details. Everything a enemy might want to know. It seems to me that this is the type of information that should be kept secret, lest some other enemy of the U.S. might need to be tracked down in the future.

Now compare to the details leading up to Osama Bin Laden’s death to the types of information being leaked by Wikileaks, most of which falls into the categories of exposing lies, revealing torture, revealing civilian deaths, and revealing hypocrisy on behalf of U.S. officials. I suppose that it matters more who is leaking the secrets than what kind of secret is being leaked.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. Avatar of Tony
    Tony

    I am glad to see that in the future you Americans want to do more liquidations of your enemies. Maybe you can ask help from the East-Germans, after all they gathered a lot of experience at the iron curtain on how to execute people without a trial, sorry, I mean how to "kill your enemies". After all, and Osama was to my knowledge never charged with 9/11, but these are mere details – and trials and justice based on laws are for pussies. Shoot on sight, baby! Declare them enemies and kill em all! Declare them all to be Hitlers! And invade countries! Carpet bomb them! That's freedom, baby!

    I you find any sarcasm in this comment, you can keep it.

    1. Avatar of Erich Vieth
      Erich Vieth

      Tony: If you missed any sarcasm in my post, you can keep it.

      If you haven't noticed, the U.S. government is working hard to prosecute (and torture) those who are bringing forth information that the American public has a right to know. http://dangerousintersection.org/2011/04/20/more-

  2. Avatar of Miles McCullough
    Miles McCullough

    The kind matters: if it brings glory, it's good; if it reveals human rights abuses, it's bad. Pretty much act like a PR person, forget the troops and, screw your constitutional duty to protect from enemies foreign and domestic.

  3. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    Robert Gates is lashing out. And I told you so:

    "Gossip and unauthorized leaks from U.S. officials, politicians and retired military officers about the highly classified raid to kill Osama bin Laden have jeopardized the ability of special forces to carry out similar operations in the future, said Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

    'Too many people in too many places are talking too much about this operation,' Gates said, adding that the level of disclosures and blabbing violates an agreement reached in the White House Situation Room on May 8 to keep details of the raid private."

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/robert-g

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