Should publicly exposing illegal activity be a criminal offence?

Julian Assage did do one huge info dump that was not approved by Snowden or the Guardian. That was wrong.

However, there has been no evidence produced of any operatives being killed. If evidence existed, they would definitely have release it because that would have given them the political capital to close Wikileaks for good.

[quote] I despise the illegal surveillance that Snowden shined a light on, and I think that in some areas our own government are some of the worst kinds of criminals.[/quote]

That is fair enough. And if Snowden hadn't done what he did then we would never have known about any of it.

@Burnley123: Yes, because of course the government will release info on the deaths of their undercover agents.

@BlueDiver: But obviously they are still alive as of now and the leaks haven't killed them. Having things de-classified after fifty years does not stop things happening in the now.

"But obviously they are still alive as of now and the leaks haven't killed them." - where are you getting this from?

@BlueDiver: Maybe I misunderstood your point. Why wouldn't the Government release information on the deaths of agents if the Snoweden info killed them. This happened years ago and it would be in the Govts interests to discredit Snowden.

The government never releases info on their secret agents, no matter how convenient it might be. that's just policy. And as much as I'm sure they'd love to make an exception in order to discredit Snowden, the truth is that many if not most of our spies are in place in violation of international agreements, or at least in positions where it would be politically damaging to acknowledge that they exist. And in the case of any agents killed or captured, publicly acknowledging them would be akin to saying "well, we had these 3 spies in xyz country, but then xyz country found out about them because of the leak and either killed or captured them." Can you imagine the results? Either there would be an outcry to make the country pay for killing our agents, or an outcry to rescue our captured agents, sending soldiers in, or people would say "well, it serves our country right for sending in illegal spies," in which case our government looks stupid. It's a lose-lose-lose for our government, no matter which way public opinion goes.

So why would the government defy their own longstanding policies on releasing agent information, when the only results would be something between embarrassment, an international incident, or in the worst case, war? All to discredit someone who's no longer in a position to do any damage?

@BlueDiver: Hmm... Well it would discredit Snowden and provide disincentive for other people.

Yes there would be some consequences. But if the US is hiding agents doing illegal activity then I don't think that should be protected.

And yet, every country that plays on the international stage uses spies. If we have a treaty with xyz country that says we're not allowed to use spies, but we know that they use spies on us, and that they know that we use spies on them - if everyone fully recognizes that everyone uses spies on everyone - then should we just withdraw all our spies because a piece of paper says that they're not supposed to be there (even though both sides recognize that the reality on the ground is completely different than what's written on the paper)?

@BlueDiver: I guess my perspective is that of a left-libertarian internationalist. I don't like the idea of spies and I think that power should always be accountable.

I am not going to agree with you but I respect your well informed opinion. All the best.

I don't like the idea of spies much either, I just think that the reality of the world doesn't allow us the option to not use them. Fair enough - all the best to you too.