You&#x27;re right on whether University shouldn&#x27;t show classified information: that&#x27;s technically the law. The rest not so much.<p>Let me stop you right at legality. According to classification law, the act of classification may never be used to cover up illegal activities or merely embarrassing information by agencies under executive branch. The black programs started under the Bush&#x2F;Cheney administration were so illegal that they had dedicated cronies to try to write BS justifications for them and relied on secret interpretations of law not existing in any public court. Leaking them isn&#x27;t just ethical: it&#x27;s legal or in a grey area of legal. Further, there were other unlawful programs such as BULLRUN where organizations that were supposed to protect government systems were weakening everything they depended on. If we ever get a &quot;cyber-9&#x2F;11,&quot; there&#x27;s a good chance the NSA&#x27;s programs will be responsible for it due to the holes they leave in for the enemies to find and exploit. Not to mention preventing critical infrastructure from benefiting from high assurance protection like GOTS guards, Type 1 crypto, etc. Any patriot seeing an intelligence agency aiding the enemy and attacking Americans should definitely leak that information before betraying the oath they swore.<p>Now, far as secrecy laws, we have three options: follow strict rules passed by dirty Congress a long time ago; try to release whatever is justifiable through freedom of press (hear of that law?); try to fight it in court with jury nullification of abusive aspects of classification to set precedents. Congress is still dirty: beholden to national security organizations, esp with stock options &amp; contracts. So I left them out. Voters are apathetic &amp; hard to reach individually. That leaves two options for anyone seeing something that straight up shouldn&#x27;t be classified or deserves a public debate. Which is the choice of the person and how much risk he or she wants to take. Neither is more ethical than the other as the real ethical failure is the lack of integrity by lawmakers and executive branch with punishments for people that show it.<p>&quot;This guy disclosed information he literally had no right to disclose&quot;<p>He has several rights that cover it. In the First, speech and press are the obvious ones. A protest also requires ability to name the wrong. Many religions also forbid doing evil to others, esp unjustified (eg bulk). The Third is violated by botnets &amp; C&amp;C nodes. The Fourth is routinely violated by TAO without a court order. The Fifth is undermined by NSA collecting private communications and sabotaging crypto. Parallel construction, also in leaks, skirts the Sixth and Seventh in so many ways it&#x27;s not funny. The Nineth&#x27;s right to privacy interpretations are ignored. State&#x27;s versions of the same under Tenth are ignored. Then there&#x27;s law I referenced against classifying wrongdoing and Federal&#x2F;State laws that encourage whistleblowing on it.<p>So, there&#x27;s all kinds of <i>rights</i> and <i>laws</i> supporting disclosure of illegal or unethical information despite it being classified. You suggesting we should throw them all out to support arbitrary locking of information in black boxes? Or maybe throw <i>that</i> out when it doesn&#x27;t make sense?<p>Note: Another thing I find strange in your side&#x27;s position is how the decision to classify something can be one person&#x27;s discretion but no discretion is allowed in whistleblowing or declassifying it. Kind of nonsense position from the start, eh? Gets dumber when we add a conflict of interest for the organization that commits wrongdoing, classifies it, and (as the &quot;owner&quot;) is the one you expect to... properly declassify that? Lol. My interpretation and strategy sound more honest as they can avoid non-punishable leaks by drawing a line between legit and corrupt practices.