I don't think I agree with either one of your points.
1. About Mexican officials -- my understanding is that the ambassador did everything right -- unfortunately it cost him his job. Mexican officials were embarrassed, and they rightly should be. Hiding the truth of their situation and brushing it under the rug won't make anything better. The fact that it's in the open now hopefully will motivate.
2. About the government becoming less open -- they are incredibly closed off as it is (to the outside), how would they be any less open? If being more closed internally due to fear of leakage is worth the cost of potential poor communication across agencies and thus raising the risk of poor execution in times of crisis -- then that's a decision they have to make. Truthfully the risk has always been there, Wikileaks' actions don't change anything other than bring awareness to that risk. Personally I don't believe that fear is worth it.
Now that Wikileaks has given them a good basis for their judgement, it is up to the Mexican people to do their job and get rid of the corrupt Mexican officials.
Isn't this what was part of the discussion about Tunisia about?
Then they can re-instate the effective ambassador.
Hiding the truth of their situation and brushing it under the rug won't make anything better. The fact that it's in the open now hopefully will motivate.
Who elected Brad Manning or Julian Assange (et al.) to make that decision?
As I don't have an answer here, let me just present an argument here for the sake of discussion: It's given that governments are fallible just as anything else on this planet, and can become corrupt to a point where internal correction becomes increasingly improbable. (I would say looking back to any stage in history proves the truth of this.) And so, as citizens (of a country, world) we all have a responsibility to keep government(s) in check, just as they have responsibilities towards the citizens.
Obviously Assange (et al.) didn't ask anyone if they could leak sensitive data -- and perhaps they should have (but how exactly would that have gone do you expect?) -- but I believe Assange is acting on this above principle. So does this responsibility exist outside of certain laws and expectations? Should it? Is it necessary that it does for it to be effective?
Obviously Assange (et al.) didn't ask anyone if they could leak sensitive data -- and perhaps they should have (but how exactly would that have gone do you expect?) -- but I believe Assange is acting on this above principle.
In summary, he treats government as a conspiracy (liberally defined to be a social network) whose total conspiratorial power (the sum of the weights of the edges of the social graph, where the nodes represent people and the edges the potential to share information) can be kept in check by increasing the cost of exchanging information -- which is exactly the effect of leaking classified material.
1. About Mexican officials -- my understanding is that the ambassador did everything right -- unfortunately it cost him his job. Mexican officials were embarrassed, and they rightly should be. Hiding the truth of their situation and brushing it under the rug won't make anything better. The fact that it's in the open now hopefully will motivate.
2. About the government becoming less open -- they are incredibly closed off as it is (to the outside), how would they be any less open? If being more closed internally due to fear of leakage is worth the cost of potential poor communication across agencies and thus raising the risk of poor execution in times of crisis -- then that's a decision they have to make. Truthfully the risk has always been there, Wikileaks' actions don't change anything other than bring awareness to that risk. Personally I don't believe that fear is worth it.