They have a right to private opinions and conversations. They should be held mercilessly accountable for their decisions, not for what they say behind closed doors in confidence. Most of these leaked "diplomatic cables" have yielded worthless gossip which has only served to embarrass individuals the leakers don't like. It has prised a freedom(inalienable or not) from the grasp of law abiding citizens without yielding a tangible benefit and deny it though you might, you are defending it because the victims have such staunchly different political ideologies to your own.
you are so fucking stupid and dogmatic that it isn't funny.
Firstly, most of the conversations recorded by the cables aren't private conversations between private individuals. They are candid, off the record exchanges between government officials acting in their official capacity. They weren't talking about what they had for lunch or how many times they've had sex in the past week at a fucking party, they were talking about issues that were of concern to their respective governments in an official setting. They knew who their counterparts were, they knew that what they were saying would be recorded, and in most cases were being recorded in their presence, and shared. Volenti non fit injuria. If they didn't want anybody to know what their real thoughts were, they shouldn't have shared them.
Secondly, there are no such things as "inalienable rights". Politicians give up their right of privacy the moment they run for public office, the same way criminals give up their right of liberty, and in some cases their right of life, the moment they commit a crime. A free flow of information is vital to the functioning of a democracy. We vote for a public official based on his policies and some other criteria eg his character, education, past experience etc. It is essential that information regarding these aspects of the politician be made readily available to public scrutiny. We need to know what he really thinks about an political issue, both in public and in private. We need to know what his policies really are. How else would we be able to make an informed decision? How would we determine who to vote for? You might as well decide by flipping a coin.
