Wikileaks Morals: The Cliffs Notes Version

What you do is make a personal moral choice. Morals are all about your relationship with your own higher power or sense of duty and honor. I cannot tell you what your morals would lead you to do, but I can point out that I believe there are only three choices (yet again)

1. Do nothing. Either leave and pretend you never saw the documents, or give them to your government to do whatever they want to with them.
2. Release selected documents. Pick a theme (or several) and release documents around that theme. Hope to make a better world by showing where things could improve. Be willing to take the consequences of taking it on yourself to so drastically affect the lives of others without their consent.
3. Declare war. Decide that the entire system of secrets is so broken that any attack on it is better than the other two options. Refuse to accept personal reprisals because you are fighting for a greater cause which you know is best.

And there you have your personal choice to make. That's the moral choice. Now let's take a look at your various arguments for action based on the point of view of a citizen of country X. This is not to prove to you that you are right or wrong, simply to explain to you how things work in the world, ie, how your moral choice has ramifications.

1. You say you are not the leaker, You are simply the publisher.A publisher, by definition, publishes something. I know that sounds silly, but in all of recorded history any sort of publisher has a physical work that you can point to and say "here is the thing I published." The thing has a narrative and a purpose. It exists to serve an audience, if only an audience of one.

   The reason free speech is so highly valued is that by sharing these narratives, voters can become more informed and choose a better government. We educate and persuade one another. Free speech is inherently an option 2 phenomenon. Without giving me the ability as a voter to decide whether something is broken or not, I cannot take any action to change things. Telling me a hundred stories of corruption and oppression with supporting documents might be useful to me as a voter. Goodness knows there are enough of them.

   But this does not scale. If you give me two hundred thousand documents of all sorts of quality about all sorts of things, there is nothing I can do to make things better. If your goal is to clog up the network so each node cannot easily communicate with the other, then you are no longer publishing, you are using a barrage of information as a tool to prevent my government from working. You are taking away my agreement with government on how to change things that are secret -- that involves a leaker, a story, a publisher, supporting documents, and the will of the people -- with simply a blanket attack on everything about my government. This is clearly working under option 3. Therefore it shouldn't be surprising to you if me and my country come over and do things do you -- perhaps through your own government -- that you find unpleasant.

2. There is a greater good being served. In this case, the question is whether or not your definition of greater good matches mine, and whether or not you get to take your definition of greater good and apply it to me. Once again, we're working under option 3, and for all practical purposes you must be assured that you have the best reasoning and logic and willing to apply it to everybody else.

   Funny thing about people like that, they have a tendency to be wrong. But, for sake of argument, let's assume that you are absolutely correct: this blanket action will do more good in the world than harm.

   The thing here is that, even if more good is done, this does not change the relationship between voters and their government. You can certainly do the right thing and at the same time be a criminal worthy of death. A simple argument that you are doing the right thing doesn't somehow give you a free "get out of jail" pass. So if you are willing to do the right thing and take punishment, then, just like always, I as a voter will pressure my politicians to sway your case one way or another. That's not theory, that's how justice works in practice. People don't get re-elected by letting criminals go free, not unless the criminals are loved and adored by millions, and even then it's highly unlikely.

   The interesting thing here is that, through the marvels of technology, you are assuming the role of your own nation. I have to admit it's an idea I find amazing and seductive. You are saying that those documents you found on the beach are your property to do with what you wish, that you have no obligation to your current government, and that you reserve the right to take independent action because of your assessment of the greater good.

   Amazing situation, but think about it: if I were your neighbor, I would be wondering: "Who are you to invoke the wrath of big angry country X on all of us simply because you have a bug up your ass?"

   It's a fair question. How can you remain the citizen of a certain country and yet decide to conduct your own foreign policy? Negotiating with departments of state over what to release, affecting peoples living in parts of the world you have never visited, forming alliances and rewarding and punishing those who you don't like? These are all primarily jobs of the state, not of the individual. You really want to be your own government? How many F-15s do you have?

   It's a great dream, but it's just silly. I won't keep beating this dead horse. Do the math yourself.

3. It doesn't matter whether you vote or not, it doesn't make a difference. There is a long string of these "but its all just futile so this is the most rational choice" arguments. So fine, let's assume that voting will not make a difference. But that's not the question. The question is whether or not the act of voting, debating, publishing and such -- all normal parts of the political process -- is working well enough for most people. And clearly it is. Most folks, even if they freely admit that things suck and nothing will change for the better, are more happy with leaving it alone than with tearing it all down. This is called "the will of the governed" and it's the thing you can't screw around with in a democracy. Don't confuse the desired result with the process. The process in a democracy is such that it can always change. I can guarantee you that if Wikileaks managed to severely piss off 80% of the American people, things would change. The process may be broken beyond repair, but it still works enough that most people are okay with it. If you pick option 3, you have to be aware that this is the case and plan accordingly.
4. You're missing the key factor: power dynamics. You see, Daniel, the reason I don't give those documents to my own government is because they wouldn't do anything with them. Big old bad country X is too big for them. Therefore, because I and my country are so powerless, I have an obligation to act for the greater good.

   I don't see how your vision of how things might turn out or not is justification for impacting so many lives. In fact, I would argue that the entire reason for having a country is so that you all can make community decisions about what matters to take action on or not. If you decide you are no longer a citizen of that country, then (I guess) you are free to go to another country which you might find more to your liking. But how could you continue living in a place for which you have no respect for their foreign policy? I guess if it works for you, that's great. But the country you are living in is sure to have much different feelings than you do.

5. I am not a citizen of any one country. The idea of countries has reached the end. It is time we all became empowered individuals again. I think this gets close to the heart of the issue, at least from what I can read. But you are clearly, then, at war with those who feel otherwise. Don't pretend that it's for a greater good, or that you're simply a publisher, or any one of the other tired excuses outlined above, just admit that you are a revolutionary, you are at war, and this is the first strike. The rest of us will take action accordingly.

   Having said that, I would encourage you to study forms of government and histories of various revolutions. They usually don't turn out so well. The folks who are "standing up for the little guy", you heroes, many times turn out just to be the next egocentric oppressor. More people are harmed than helped on the way to this glorious future, and it leaves scars that last for a long time. Pretty big undertaking simply because you found some stuff on a beach. Be sure you know what the hell you are doing.

I will throw in one bonus argument, that because wikileaks asked the state department to review the docs that somehow this changes the nature of the dicussion. So you're the guy on the beach, and what? You write a letter to country X and ask them "this is your final chance, let me know what you'd like to keep and what you wouldn't, and I'll make a determination after that."

For all the reasons outlined above, this is not a normal state of affairs, and I don't think this point is germane to any of the discussion.

A fellow hacker emailed me last night. "You know," he said, "you can't expect anything more than what you see on HN. This entire issue is red meat for teenage and early 20-something hackers. It's got the little guy versus the big bad guy. It's got lots of high tech. It's got a vision of a Utopian society. It's got lots of press. It's got the chance for everybody to make a difference. There's just no way they can resist a reptile brain response to that. No amount of reasoning is going to work with them."

I don't know. Perhaps for most, but I know a lot of folks that will think through these things if everybody comes at it from an open and honest perspective. I know I will. You guys convince me that I'm wrong and I will happily rescind everything I've said. I have no ego or pride in my words, they are simply me trying to sort it all out. If there's anything I've learned from working with tech teams, it's that lots of technical people are willing to challenge their assertions if you just treat each other like adults.

This essay is dedicated to those people.