To: The Dallas Morning News
Date:  February 11, 2011
Subject: In the news:  captured hikers and documents posted by WikiLeaks
Result: part one printed, with some editing (they've done worse); part two deleted

Dear Editor,

I have opinions about two current situations we have, which were both reported
on in the "World" page in the Monday, February 7 edition.

First are the three people who are the latest to have been taken into custody
by a hostile country, when they were hiking near the Iranian border. The woman
was released and the two men remain incarcerated and at the mercy of the
Tehran Revolutionary Court. Their excuse – like the earlier women who had the
same problem in North Korea – was that, if they crossed the border, it was
"inadvertent". My problem is what kind of idiot would go hiking anywhere near
the border of such a country? Now they have endangered not only themselves,
but also put America in a difficult position where we have to spend all kinds
of money in their behalf trying to get them free, plus it compromises our
national security because it gives our enemies possible bargaining chips to
negotiate for their objectives.

The other situation is with Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks guy who posted all
those top-secret documents on his web site. As bad and dangerous as that is,
I don't see any difference between him and any other news reporter who took
the information that was provided to him and went with it. I mean, if a newspaper
like The Dallas Morning News had received just about any one or more of the
documents, they probably would have printed them, and gone to court if necessary
to protect the confidentiality of their source.

The ones to blame, are, first, the guy who stole and downloaded all that stuff
to Wikileaks. He should be locked up in solitary confinement for the rest of his
life and have nothing to do but think about the bad thing he did (assuming he wasn't
just somebody else's pawn). On the other hand, the people whose lack of control over
the systems they created – no doubt for a very pretty penny – must bear their fair
share of responsibility for enabling such a low-level person as the thief to assemble
and disseminate such a vast quantity and variety of documents.

And finally, the people who originally sent the documents that got stolen, to me, are
to blame. There have been enough instances of compromised internet security for
everybody to know that anything you put out there should be considered to be going
to the whole world.

It looks to me like Julian Assange is mostly just a scapegoat for other people's negligence.

Thank you, John Vehon