Neo-neocon: Question Authority.

This is a tremendous blog. Click her photo to the right for info.

Here's how the series starts:

The story of the CIA detention centers leak raises issues far bigger than the personal fate of the leaker, or even whether the particular information divulged in this case might have damaged national security.

What could be more important? The old, old question of individual conscience and responsibility.

For a person joining a group that requires confidentiality and/or obedience to a certain set of rules, when is it all right to disobey the rules and/or to break confidentiality? In fact, when does it become a duty to disobey or to break confidentiality? And, if so, how best to go about doing so? And what should the personal consequences be to the person who disobeys?

It's the same issue raised during the Nuremberg trials, when defendants used the "we were just obeying orders" line as an excuse for egregious crimes against humanity. It's a question that comes up in the life of nearly every military person, whose duty to obey goes hand in hand with a concomitant duty to disobey what is a clearly illegal order, if such an order should ever be given.

It's an issue faced by psychotherapists and all others who are privy to confidential information and are duty-bound to protect it for certain obligatory exceptions. For example, ever since the landmark Tarasoff case was decided in 1976, therapists have struggled with the so-called "duty to warn," which requires them to breach confidentiality whenever they receive credible information that their client is planning to harm another person...

The rest of part I here.

Part II here.

Part III here.

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