Clay Shirky:
I don’t think such a law [Joseph Lieberman's proposed SHIELD law] should pass. I think the current laws, which criminalize the leaking of secrets but not the publishing of leaks, strike the right balance.

That's been my position all along. Not that I'm implying it's a simplistic issue, but the majority of the outcry should be directed at those who leaked, and that we have such porous government agencies, regarding sensitive information. I don't see Julian Assange as a hero, nor do I agree with WikiLeaks' decision to publish certain things just because they can. Still, I don't think that going after organizations such as WikiLeaks, or adopting new laws to do so, is the answer, assuming that those organizations are merely passive recipients of the sensitive information they choose to publish.

Clay Shirky:
The key, though, is that democracies have a process for creating such restrictions, and as a citizen it sickens me to see the US trying to take shortcuts. The leaders of Myanmar and Belarus, or Thailand and Russia, can now rightly say to us "You went after Wikileaks' domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations, all without a warrant and all targeting overseas entities, simply because you decided you don’t like the site. If that’s the way governments get to behave, we can live with that."

USA = China? No, but I don't think it's asking too much that we at least "walk the walk" ourselves, if we're attempting to influence other nations regarding civil liberties issues.

RE: Wikileaks and the Long Haul « Clay Shirky