Continuations

I have written on and off about my ambivalent feelings about a society where we value individual privacy over collective intelligence. Whenever I bring up this argument there is a counter to the effect of “but we need secrets” or “concealment is a condition of civilization” (from this piece by the NYU philosophy professor Thomas Nagel). While I completely agree that our society at present is constructed in a way where secrets and concealment abound, it still seems fair to ask whether that is ...

So the sentence for Chelsea Manning is 35 years. The intention of government here is obvious: like everything else in the ridiculously harsh treatment of Manning it is an attempt to deter others from leaking information. So is the detention of David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner under the Terrorism Act in the UK and the destruction of computer equipment at the Guardian’s offices. The game plan is clearly to intimidate any potential leakers and anyone who might help them. This is an extra...