Talk:'MI6 officers' named on US-based website

This is lead story material, imo.

it needs to be expanded some before being put as a lead.--24.129.198.129 20:19, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

The 9/11 commission suggested we all start "thinking outside the box" in order to prevent another attack. Just trying to think outside the box, I am wondering; A; Is "secret" government activity (like having spies) and having a government "of the people" mutually exclusive concepts? B; Is "spying" a constructive activity that helps anyone? C; What good have these agents(CIA;MOSAD;M16) ever done for the people? D; Would we all be better off if there was no such thing as "classified" government information? In summary; Since I have concluded that the very usefulness/overall benefit of having spies is in doubt; I have no reason to care whether spies are exposed or not; so to me it's not a big news item. Paulrevere2005 02:54, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion spies are needed exactly to discover secrets. If nations had no spies, they would have no idea what military capabilities other nations have. For example, the Japanese thought the US either lacked the military capability or political will to defeat it and thus attacked Pearl Harbor. If they had adequate spies, they would have had a more accurate picture of American industrial capacity and political will, and may very well have canceled the attack. More recently, al-Queda seems to have thought that the US would withdraw from all Muslim lands as a result of a major attack. Had they known this would result in the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, they wouldn't have had much justification for the action. Discovering terrorist plots before they unfold should be the major emphasis of spies today. Other issue where we need intelligence is the state of North Korea and Iran's nuclear programs. StuRat 03:27, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

America,at least,is supposed to be an open government "of the people".How can the "people" be in control when they are not "in the loop" about important stuff?...and if it's not important; there's no reason at all for it to be secret; and if nothing's secret; then there's nothing for spies to discover. Plus; our satelites and drone aircraft do all the surveilance work for nuclear programs.Paulrevere2005 12:43, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's a good idea to post all the names mentioned on that website here... What purpose does it serve, and wouldn't it be doing precisely what one side (i.e. the site owners) wants (i.e. the dissemination of that information), to the detriment of the other? --165.21.154.113 06:22, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

• The information is already very well disseminated into the masses by the posting on cryptome.org alone. Many of the names are also searchable on Google and you can discover a lot more about some of these people. The information as posted, is similar to saying "Valerie Plame worked for the United States government" after other news articles have already said much more detail. As a reader, if the cryptome.org website was down, _or_ I simply decided that it would not be safe to access the website (due to government monitoring of Internet)... then having a (somewhat incomplete) copy of the original information will be beneficial. That is my reasoning for the post. If others agree or disagree with posting this information partially (or fully posting?), lets discuss and come to a consensus. --24.182.60.134 06:53, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

NO ! We need to reach a consensus BEFORE you do anything like this that could potentially shut WIKI down, since posting this info is a violation of UK law. If you try to repost this without first getting the full approval of the WIKI board of directors, I will ask to have you permanently blocked from the site. StuRat 08:21, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia (Wikinews’ parent foundation) is not a UK company they are a Florida, USA company. I do not believe posting this list is a violation of US law, even if it was it would not result in the the shutdown of the server, but merely being forced to remove the list. With the exception of a few pages and tags you do not need to get consensus before making any edit. See Wikipedia:Be_bold_in_updating_pages Edits without consensus can and often do get reverted if they go against the will of the community; however you are of course welcome to make them. The Wikimedia board of directors almost never comments on issues effecting individual cases like this. Also you have no authority to threaten to permanently block a person; making uninformed threats to ban people like this if repeated can be grounds for banning.--Cspurrier 12:14, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

1.The analogy above by 24.182.60.134 (to Valerie Plame)applies + since we have already run the list; to "self-censor" is ludicrous. There are plenty of UK agencies around who will tell us if this is a problem. Paulrevere2005 12:19, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Just checked the name "alexander william younger" on google;[[1]] it's on 50 web-sites. Wikmimedia is a U.S. company and we still do have " Freedom of the Press"; if barely. Paulrevere2005 12:26, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

My mistake on the location of WIKI (corrected above). I did not "threaten to permanently block a person" but only said I would "ask" to do so. Asking something of WIKI is certainly not grounds for banning anyone. As for the content, it certainly seems to represent a threat to WIKI to me. Consider the case of Napster, which was done considerable harm by lawsuits from the recording industry for posting material (or allowing material to be posted) which they had no legal write to post. If WIKI avoids copyright violations, they certainly would also want to avoid more serious violations such as this. While it's true that they can't file lawsuits against all sites that post this info, they may very well pick on the largest sites (or those appearing highest in search engines), which might just include WIKI. StuRat 17:32, 23 August 2005 (UTC)