No doubt readers of this blog are getting their fill of the big Wikileaks story elsewhere. But I can't resist linking to this smart post by Stephen Budiansky, a writer I've been familiar with for a long time. He offers a measured perspective that is critical of both "excessive secrecy" by the U.S. government and the latest Wikileaks dump. Of the former, he notes that
the government's obsession with secrecy promotes the public's obsession with conspiracy; as an observer both within and without the "black" world I'd also note that excessive secrecy breeds contempt for the entire system of secrecy: classification of the trivial makes it harder to protect the classification of the vital.
