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Wikijerks
I had a great conversation with my 14-year-old son the other night.
What would you do if you found out the government was doing something completely terrible -- say butchering up babies and eating them -- but you were told it was a national security secret and couldn't say anything?
My son worked through this in his head. I could almost see the gears turning. Finally he said something completely unexpected:
"I wouldn't say anything"
I was astounded. "What?!?"
"If it's a secret, that means we shouldn't tell people."
I felt he meant well, his heart was in the right place, but I was worried he hadn't thought through the edge cases.
"Can't you imagine something so terrible that you would have to act?"
The conversation spun off from there, but he and I basically came to this conclusion: if you promise to keep a secret yet feel that you are being asked to do something highly immoral, you have 3 choices:
- Do nothing. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. If everybody put their own opinions above the government's, society could not function. Being in a government means agreeing to its terms.
- Reveal the secret and accept the consequences. Revealing one wrong does not relieve you of the obligation of having done something wrong yourself. It is possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason.
- Make war with the government. Things are so bad that you and the government cannot continue to co-exist. Do anything you can, including taking up arms, to make sure this secret is revealed and the government is stopped. Other considerations, like people getting killed, are simply collateral damage in your greater cause.
Perhaps there are other conclusions to be reached, but we couldn't think of them. Which leads me to this question: have the wikileaks supporters lost their minds?
These are reasonable, kind, generous, smart, clever people whom I like a lot -- at least the ones I know personally. They seem to be very concerned about secrecy and openness and want everything to be out in the open: no more secrets.
That'd be great if it actually worked, but governments have to have secrets. How could you negotiate a treaty without secrets? Handle personnel issues like addiction treatment? Have battlefield commanders report on enemy positions and their current tactical weaknesses?
I feel their heart is in the right place, but I'm worried they haven't thought through the edge cases.
I've been perplexed at this for a few days now. Seems to me that whatever you think of wikileaks, it all boils down to 1) keep your mouth shut, 2) talk but take punishment, or 3) declare war.
It seems surprising to me that so many kind and friendly people I know want to declare war on me and my government.
Even more surprising is that everyone of these people I know are ardent freaks about keeping their own lives private. They use obscure usernames, or work through proxies, or are careful about what they say online to whom. Yet these are the very same people that want all diplomatic cables open! So if you speak to an American consular official, you deserve that conversation to be made public? But if you comment online about file-sharing, you deserve to remain anonymous? Why is your comment about wikleaks protected and sacredly kept secret from prying eyes, but my comment to the American ambassador about trade relations fodder for everyone to see?
I know the answer to that one -- its that everything should be open: there should be no secrets at all. But do you really want to live in a world without secrets? I know I don't. I like having my life private. I don't want our species to turn into the Borg. Every little bit of my individuality I cherish.
This just isn't logical, guys. You aren't making any sense. Amazon AWS should be punished because they took down WL due to a violation of the TOS, but if they had taken down a site that shared copyrighted files that would have been okay? WL is fine with dumping United States State Department secrets, but if they had dumped all your financial and personal records, that would be bad? If wikileaks dumping all your personal information would be bad, who would you have punish them? The government? The government that you are denying the ability to keep secrets? And just how would the government conduct a criminal investigation without keeping secrets?
Larry Sanger -- one of the founders of wikileaks -- had a great article about this a few days ago. Let's cut to the chase:
"...Speaking as Wikipedia's co-founder, I consider you enemies of the U.S.--not just the government, but the people..."
As much as I'd like to understand my fellow hacker's opinions, I'm left with the same conclusion. Wikileaks have gone from a force for good to anarchists. They are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force. Sucks to say that, but there it is.
The really sucky part is that I agree with the idea that we need leaks to make our governments more open. Wikileaks has shown to me yet again that idiots who agree with your cause can hurt your cause much more than clever people who oppose it. We will not remember wikileaks as the guys who ushered in a new age of information openness. Nope. They'll be the assholes who caused even greater clamping down of information and ushered in a new age of the security state. At best -- and this is stretching it -- they will be the proximate cause for an information war which will rage for decades, perhaps centuries. Not a happy result, and not one I can support, even without all the other arguments against what they've done.
I hate the secrecy we live in so much that I can only think of a few items that have to be secret in order for the government to function. And Wikileaks is going after just those things. That makes them my enemy. And jerks.
Given all of this, how can anybody possibly make them into heroes or some kind of cause to be celebrated? You'd have to lose your ability to think clearly to go down this road -- or hate the U.S. so much that any attacker of the U.S. is a friend of yours. How could wikileaks have done so much harm to civility?
Wikijerks.
I realize that some of this commentary is over the top, but please remember that the purpose of my blog is for me to organize my thoughts, and I am truly exasperated, perplexed, and saddened at the reaction I'm seeing to this story from people I respect
Totally agree with your lucid assessment. Assange is on a massive power trip, & wants to be seen by history as a hero. Though he doesn't have the maturity or moral foundation to use his power wisely & for the greater good. He's a reckless & disturbed individual who probably should be locked up.
The issue is that governments have kept secret things which they have no right to keep secret from the public. Many governments are actively deceiving their citizens and acting in ways that intentionally do not serve them but serve the ruling elite and their corporate partners. That is the issue.
Very few Wikileak supporters would suggest that governments cannot have any secrets. You're attacking a straw man. The problem is that secrecy and deception are now the standard practice of governments. Transparency and service should be the default; secrecy should require compelling reasons...reasons that serve the citizens and not the elite.
Hiding material to protect the people in power from embarrassment, corruption charges, or a loss of accumulated wealth is unacceptable. Engineering laws to suite corporate interests rather than that of the global citizenry is unacceptable. Spying on members of the UN and illegally obtaining their personal information and biometrics is unacceptable.
No person in favour of freedom and democracy can argue that this things are acceptable and necessary for the functioning of an open and free society.
Will,
Thanks for the comment! I appreciate your taking the time to explain to me your thoughts.
"Many governments are actively deceiving their citizens and acting in ways that intentionally do not serve them but serve the ruling elite and their corporate partners. That is the issue."
Nope. That is the _problem_, not the issue. The issue is which of the three responses are acceptable given this problem. I'm firmly in camp #2: leak things that you are willing to take punishment for and that serve a larger good.
Seems to me like WL wants it both ways: they want to rant and rave about how bad the problem is, then deny any responsibility for their actions in trying to address the problem. Look, I didn't invent these three categories: they just exist as part of the problem. You can't invent your own category, #2.5, where you get to dump every secret you have peaceably because things are so bad. You can't attack the entire structure of government in general and then claim that you are non-violent. It just doesn't work.
I fully understand the issue. I fully understand the problem. I am simply pointing out that you have to choose one of these 3 options. If there is another one, please, explain it to me. I'd love to hear about it.
"...up to and including lethal force"
Yeah, you are someone who definitely needs to "organize your thoughts" and that's fine if you want to do it on your silly blog.
But please stop linking on other sites to your cowardly calls for violence
Bob,
Thanks for the comment. Glad to see you're responding.
I find it ironic that we have have had decades of spy novels which all involve some secret or another getting out and the super-agent spy using all sorts of violence to prevent it getting into the wrong hands. This was so innocuous as to be considered jovial light entertainment. Yet when we have a real-world situation where hundreds of thousands of cables are leaked, somehow that's okay?
You guys really need to do a checksum here. You're not making any sense.
I'll stick with the cofounder's opinion and my common sense that tells me that indiscriminate leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret cables is probably being done by somebody who wishes both me and my government harm. I expect my government to act accordingly. After all, as broken and as screwed up as they are, they ARE my government, and I'll be the one to change them (by voting). This principle is a pretty big deal.
Private individuals deserve private lives. It should be seen as a right. On the assumption that no-one else is being harmed, there is no reason to be looking into other peoples lives. The "other people" should be free to bring their life to you and equally true you should be free to walk away if they wish to do that. As a British person I admire the American constitution, as the above is what it strives for.
However the governments of the world are not harmless. I am making certain sacrifices to them. Money time etc. In return I expect to be able to trust them to do a good job on my behalf.
For a good few years the have been "crazy" conspiracty theorists who have been highlighting many different things about the governments of the world. That they are doing wrong. That in the end total power will begin to rule above the law. That thought crimes will soon exist.
Wikileaks has done nothing but uncover the truths that exist in those conspiracies. There is now evidence of international espionage where we should have reason to expect peace. There is corruption in those groups of people we voted for, we pay for.
This is not harmless to us and so those people committing those acts deserve to be known about as much as any other criminal. The people should not be afraid of the government, the government should be afraid of the people. They are our elected servants and they put themselves as individuals in a position of responsibility and representation. As such they decide to lose their privacy when it comes to doing their work. I vote, I pay and I want to know what your doing with that time and money.
I did not vote or pay to see innocent civilians murdered by American gunships. To know British soldiers have been ordered to torture the innocent. How do the "western" governments expect us to go to war, to sacrifice our TAX money and our friends and families, in the name or rescuing parts of the world from corruption and control. When we are the ones being brainwashed and lied too. This is no longer conspiracy theory. The cold hard facts are laid out on the Wikileaks website.
Personally I don't care if "member of parliament x" had three lovers. Or that they don't like prince who-ha of wherever. I do care when they break laws designed to protect me and feel they can get away with it.
The often argued point that people will be killed because of these leaks. Who? When? Where are the names of these Iraqi and Afghani informants who have been killed because of the Wikileaks website. I don't believe the US has come forward with any victims other than its own politicians and bankers.
I am not ruled by my government. I elect them to rule on my behalf. Many politicians would do well to remember that.
My apologies for not handing out my email address. I do not welcome unsolicited spam. If you wish to contact me personally I'm sure you'll find a way.
Robert,
Awesome well-thought out comment that didn't get into name calling. Thank you.
When I vote, I vote to elect people who can see secrets that others can't. These people are empowered by me to make decisions on my behalf.
Now there are a lot of problems with all the western governments right now. Boy could we go on for a long time about that. But the key point here is that by participating in my government, I am giving up violence in return for a stable way to correct mistakes.
When others come into my relationship with my government -- even others with good intentions who are telling me the truth -- they are assuming a governmental role. If they choose to publish certain secrets because of something horribly gone wrong, then I become a better-informed voter and we deal with their crime.
If, however, they consider my system of government so corrupt that an overall attack on all it's communications nodes is a good thing, then we part ways. This is choosing option 3, and I won't go down that road. We need to fix the problem, not throw fuel on the fire.
Daniel,
Thanks for taking the time to write this. I can appreciate some of your points.
My real issue is your claim that you blog to organize your thoughts. If you were merely writing for that purpose, you would be journaling for yourself, and not publishing your essays. I'm not criticizing the fact that you blog - I've read several of your essays and find you an intelligent author. However, publishing essays for the entire world to see, and inviting discussion on said essays, is clearly not just to organize your thoughts.
"They are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force."
How is this civil?
Julian is not American and WL hasn't leak anything - they are just retransmitting the information, no differently from any news agency. So why aren't you suggesting that the government start killing other foreign and domestic journalists, who are reporting on the released documents?
I find this post disturbing.
"How is this civil?"
I think that's a great question, so I'll turn it around on you.
How is it civil to have an organization dedicated to destroying my government by massive dumps of secret information?
I'm sorry, I'm really at a loss here. Would you suggest a strongly-worded letter?
Look, I'm not saying to go bomb the guys, I'm saying that whatever appropriate use of state force is, I support that. What can be done legally is an entirely separate question.
> After all, as broken and as screwed up as they are, they ARE
> my government, and I'll be the one to change them
How can you change them without knowing what they _are_ doing. Simply put, the government is not allowing you to know what is happening. There are people in the world that want you to know so you can make an informed decision. The fact that your government is worried their actions will upset you, hence stopping you voting for them again, is terrifying to me.
Governments should not get into bitchy arguments with each other. We should not be force to vote for the lesser of two evils. We should be voting on that person whome will do society the most good.
> If, however, they consider my system of government so
> corrupt that an overall attack on all it's communications
> nodes is a good thing, then we part ways.
Several points here. Firstly the Wikileaks team have only passed on this message. They should be treated with the dignity and respect we would expect of any journalistic body. The fact that the Wikileaks team do _not_ fear the government does not many them enemies of the government.
This is also not an attack on every communication line. There is nothing here from face-to-face meetings. From documents too secret to be stored on media etc. etc.
Frankly the Wikileaks teams have not had to run surveillance on the government. They have sat back and been given lots of information. Then decided it is up to the rest of the world what to do with it. Sure some stuff has been held back. This also scares me. The last thing we need is someone holding our governments to ransom.
However by declaring Assange should be assassinated for what he has been given, well, its scary that someone acting in a journalistic fashion is forced to take such measure against foreign governments. Especially when I read diplomatic rights having been used to protect people from "actual" rape charges.
WL is dedicated to spreading the truth. If that is enough to destroy your government, maybe it should be.
"How can you change them without knowing what they _are_ doing."
You are confusing the specific case with the general instance.
In the specific case, the government does something that I would hate if I knew. So somebody leaks the information, committing a crime for the greater good. As a taxpayer, I am now better informed and vote to change things. Because a greater good is served (as measured by the taxpayer, not some external agency) usually the people involved get very little punishment.
The general case is what we have here, though. Assange has said he wants to massively leak information to make the nodes of my government stop working correctly. That's not informing me: that's deciding that my government is so broken that you are going to take it on yourself to attack it. Even though things are awful with the secrecy state, the social contract is still valid. If you attack the overall structure of my government, I do not choose option 3. Ergo, you are my enemy. In the specific case, you can fix a lot of problems. In the general case, you're declaring war on me. Not a good thing.
I hear your argument about wikileaks simply being a publisher, but this cuts both ways: publishers are responsible for the effects of the things they publish. If they publish things in the greater good, everybody benefits. But if they publish because of another agenda that involves deconstructing my government, we might have some problems.
State Department cables are one of a few things that I would argue would be secret in any kind of world. So I can't see making the argument that wikileaks is just another publisher. In any kind of setup, you can't publish the things that wikileaks is doing.
Am I missing something here? I'm happy to change my stance, but this sounds like a lot of hand-waving about how bad things are and how innocent wikileaks are. If they had published a thousand things on a thousand topics over the last year, I could be okay with that. But an all out assault on secrecy is another matter entirely, and not one that is covered under free political speech.
"WL is dedicated to spreading the truth. If that is enough to destroy your government, maybe it should be."
I think that 99.99% of the secrets we have are unnecessary and hurt democracy.
But no mater how much hand-waving you can do, you can't turn that 99.99% into a 100%, and that's where we are going to have a problem.
I'm glad you think this is your government, but it belongs to all of the citizens of the United States. I would like my country to be a quality place for my family, and keeping it open and free is the ONLY way that can happen. The information was leaked by classified personal of the US Government and then handed to wikileaks. It is not their responsibility or promise to keep that information behind closed doors. It is now public. Get over it, move on, and fix the security holes we have within our political communications system.
Information distribution is just going to get faster and easier as the digital age comes about...get on board, or get knocked over!
Mr. Markham: I appreciate your going out on a limb and leaving your thoughts open to criticism. We disagree, and I think it's radical to call for the assassination of a foreign publisher who owes no duty to the United States. Shall we also assassinate the diplomats who leaked the information?
> I'll stick with the cofounder's opinion and my common sense that tells me that indiscriminate leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret cables is probably being done by somebody who wishes both me and my government harm.
I give no weight to the gentleman from Wikipedia who considers Mr. Assange an enemy. You realize he's not affiliated with Wikileaks, yes? Did you intend for this to be logically in support of your argument?
"I would like my country to be a quality place for my family, and keeping it open and free is the ONLY way that can happen."
I agree! Let's go vote for somebody to make that happen.
Hell, I love the pace of information flow. Keep speeding it up.
But that doesn't change the way representative government works.
You know Joe, the weird thing is that I have absolutely no idea what the appropriate use of state force is in this case. We've entered a strange new territory where small groups of actors can make major international moves. We're working at another level here, and I think we're going to be making up the rules as we go along -- which is not a good thing.
I'm not calling specifically for assassination, because I have no idea what the right response is. I'm just saying that I support whatever decision is made. This is an attack on my system of government. But it's an attack in a fashion that is completely new.
Things will get interesting now, and I don't mean that in a good way.
Thank you Daniel. Finally, somebody showing some common sense with this wikileaks ordeal. While I totally believe in government transparency and freedom of speech without "big brother" breathing down our necks, wikileaks is different. Secrets ARE necessary... otherwise, why else do we bother with public key encryption and passwords? Wikileaks isn't getting heat for speaking up against the government. God knows I have too many gripes about it, and if our government was to attack them for speaking out against it, I'd be the first to defend it. This issue is about a criminal act. Somebody STOLE these documents and wishes to publish it. That's not free speech, that's theft and espionage. If I broke into your house and stole your social security number and your girlfriend's phone number and posted it on the web, I deserve to suffer the consequences. To top it off, we are compromising the safety and security of our soldiers, our country, and ultimately... our own lives. Thank you for displaying some common sense.
Bill,
Thanks for the feedback. I owe you an explanation.
The process of writing a piece and honing it for publication helps me organize my thoughts in a way that simple journaling would not. It makes me have a clear point, makes me support that point with clear examples that make sense.
Likewise, when folks comment it helps me make sure I'm not off-base. You guys are my sanity check. I don't need you, but I certainly appreciate it every time somebody makes a comment. So really, I'm using you guys horribly, but probably not in the same way most bloggers use their readers. You guys are my brain extensions.
I think after this experiment that I would just journal if for some reason I couldn't blog. I've really grown to enjoy and rely on it over the past few years.
Your whole "do nothing" section, is awful. I'll explain why but I want to reiterate your premise first - "you promise to keep a secret yet feel that you are being asked to do something highly immoral". Secret & highly immoral. Secret & highly immoral. OK.
Doing nothing is only an option for someone with no morals. If you truly believe that obedience is legitimate when you "feel that you are being asked to do something highly immoral" then you have no morals, you have no principles, you have no code. You are complicit in that immoral act. Here's an example: A guy joins a fraternity at college, one night there's a drunken party during which he sees three frat brothers go into a room with a drunk girl. After 20 minutes he sees them come out with the girl crying. One of his frat brothers later confides in him that they assaulted her during those 20 minutes but is sworn to screcy because of a frat house pledge. Sure the "needs of the many" (the frat brothers future) could outweigh "the needs of the few" (one assaulted girl) but is "doing nothing" a legitimate course of action?
"If everybody put their own opinions above the government's, society could not function." - This is just wrong. Everyone does & should put their own needs ahead of government's everyday. It's only in the pursuit of one's individual needs that leads to a free society. America was built on "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Your rhetoric is more commonly spouted by apparatchiks in communist countries. The role of government is to serve its citizens, citizens must never be servile to their government.
"Being in a government means agreeing to its terms." - Again this is just wrong. We are not in a government. We are in a society. If we are to live in a civil society we must have principles, we must have morals. Morals which, sadly, you seem happy to discard.
I have no idea whether you're Christian but I would find it hard to believe Jesus would think "doing nothing" is as A-OK as you suggest.
Tom,
You make a wonderful case against option 1. I really can't find fault with it.
The only defense I could make is that everything is not black and white. "Immoral" like making the buses run late is probably different from "immoral" like killing grandmothers.
People can gin up all sorts of things that they think are immoral. A sense of humility would lead one to be very sure that the thing is truly immoral and not just a matter open to interpretation before picking option 2.
I think the key point is: this is an individual's choice. The government can't make me keep a secret that's immoral and I hate, and Wikileaks can't release a secret that's moral and I like. The road goes both ways, and each individual is the one driving, not some external agency.
Probably screwed up that metaphor, but hopefully you got the gist of what I am saying.
"Make war with the government. Things are so bad that you and the government cannot continue to co-exist. Do anything you can, including taking up arms, to make sure this secret is revealed and the government is stopped."
This is where we are.
I hope for your sake you own guns.
Sorry, my tin-foil underwear stopped fitting years ago.
I'm non-violent and quiet. All I do is absorb information on how groups of people work, process it, and spit it back out.
You guys can go have the information Apocalypse without me. I'm busy that week.
Thanks Daniel, appreciate it.
I'm glad we agree that it's not about morality or at least that morality is not universal. Maybe you would also agree that there are many more options than "making war"? And that by participating in civil society, taking positive, non-violent action and educating & informing others through intelligent debate and is the best way to effect change.
The speed with which you advocate armed response is alarming.
Tom,
I'm sorry if I alarmed you with my talk of violence, but like I said, I'm really at wit's end here.
If you relate to me a particular story of some injustice, we can make the moral case to the voters -- who get to decide -- that these are not just secrets. But if you give me 200 thousand documents, there is no single story to judge. There are tens of thousands of stories. How could anybody ever decide whether the greater good is being done or not? It destroys the conversation between the voters and the government over the secret information.
And that's the purpose, really, to destroy our conversation. WL has decided that things are so bad that they are going to attack the system itself. That is a fundamentally different thing from leaking one particular story and going to the voters with it. That's asking the voters to accept the idea that tens of thousands of stories are all better off told rather than kept secret. I simply can't see how that is a reasonable request to make on people. It doesn't work.
So if WL wants to release 200 documents supporting the idea that the US is a criminal organization bombing innocents in Afghanistan, hell, I'll support them. I'll even go march with them. We might disagree, and I might have a lot of angry words for them, but if the release documents making some certain point of injustice I will fully support their right to do so -- and to take whatever consequences come.
What other place is there between "willing to take the consequences" and "armed conflict"? You can pretty it up all you want, but it seems like being a little bit pregnant: either you are or you are not, there is no halfway here.
Your post has one glaring flaw: Wikileaks made no agreement with the government of the USA, or the Government of Kenya when they leaked documents from there.
You are making the false assumption, that many Wikileaks critics make, that Wikileaks has a responsibility to the parties documents are leaked about, which they don't.
Wikleaks the organisation, and I am assumming all the employees there of, have signed no contract with said governments, and have taken no money from them in tacit agreement to keep a secret. In short, Wikileaks has done no wrong, and have no moral obligation to them.
The leakers, however, DO fit your criteria.
You are also holding the false view that a foreign national and/or entity should bend to the will of the government of the USA. International Law seems to cover that one.
And where does that leave Espionage? Espionage is the government sponsored attempt to induce the very scenario you are conjecturing. Isn't the whole concept therefore wrong?
In summartion, your hypothetical works for Bradley Manning, but not Wikileaks, and the conclusion - the "Wikijerks" is misplace and unnecessarily emotive.
Mike,
Thanks for the comment. Looks very well-thought out.
I don't understand how you've come to the conclusion that I believe wikileaks is under some sort of contractual obligation to me or my country. If I led you to believe that, I'm sorry.
You have a very legalistic view of this matter. Very good. The basis for law is a lot of things, including the social contract -- a contract between U.S. voters and their government which wikileaks is harming. I would expect both parties to take action, and probably not in civil court.
I kinda like "wikijerks" -- describes my feelings at those guys for causing so many intelligent and kind people to behave in ways I cannot understand.
Thanks again for the post.
I kind of agree with what wikileaks have done. ACTA is why.
As you said, social contract. The government represents the people, and the interests of the people. So, they need secrecy to do it? Ok, I can buy that.
Along comes ACTA, everyone is thinking that their government is negotiating on their behalf, even though the negotiations were super top secret. What do we find out? They didn't exactly have our best interests right where they should have...
What else have they negotiated "to our advantage"? No, ACTA set the standard, all inter-governmental communication that is not related to co-ordinating joint military efforts should be made public. I no longer trust my representatives to keep secrets from me. We need to update the terms of the Social Contract.
Also, as you say, if you agree to keep a secret, you should keep it. Agreed. Most heartily. A man is only as good as his word, and all that.
I cannot express my agreement enough.
Yet, did the government have the right to add that clause to the contract?(still not condoning the breach of said contract, just throwing it out there)
You, and some commenters, conflate personal privacy with government secrecy.
The two are not equivalent.
My social security number, physical address and banking information cannot be seen as the same as diplomatic communiqués which expose US government aggressive coercion of foreign governments to commit war crimes.
You may well agree with actions taken in your name by the US government, however if these actions are secret then there is no way for you to show your support/disdain or make any form of value judgement.
Such systemic deception undermines the very machinery of democracy as it makes the government essentially unaccountable for its actions.
Hi Andrew,
"I kind of agree with what wikileaks have done. ACTA is why."
You are confusing the specific with the general. Specifically, in one instance, the government may be doing something really bad. We need to know about that. Targeted leaks of documents to tell us where something is wrong is a good thing, and I completely support it.
But the general case, that everything is so bad that a total release of thousands of docs on thousands of topics is justified, doesn't work. It doesn't work for the easy reason that as a voter I am unable to ascertain the impact or trade-off made between the leaks and the greater good. It takes away my process of checking the government. This is, effectively, choosing option 3.
Graney,
Thanks for the comment.
"My social security number, physical address and banking information
cannot be seen as the same as diplomatic communiqués which expose US
government aggressive coercion of foreign governments to commit war
crimes."
Yet again we conflate the specific case with the general one.
If you would like to leak something to draw out government aggressive coercion of foreign governments, then by all means, make the personal decision to leak that information and the voters -- the folks who are paying for that policy -- will be informed and can decide.
But that's not what is happening. What's happening is some third party has decided that our system where a leaker makes a moral choice, then faces the consequences from an informed public, is so broken that they have the right to attack the entire system.
Dude, the system is totally whacked, but it's MY system. It's millions of Americans system. If you'd like to work for a better world, pick a topic that you feel strongly about and make a stand. Hell, if you want to declare war on my system of government, then by all means leak whatever you can find.
But don't try to have it both ways. You can't attack my system of government -- perhaps for good reasons -- and then appeal to my sense of outrage that the government is doing the wrong thing. Aside from the illogic of it, it's a completely ineffective strategy. You end up making a hundred voters mad at you for every one you might convince to rise up in revolt, and the numbers don't work out.
Let's be honest here, this has nothing to do with privacy _or_ government particular misdeeds. This is all about hackers with a vision of a post-modern world where nations aren't important attacking the biggest dog in the pack, hoping to foment a revolution. It's a lot of guys seeped in pop culture theory with stars in their eyes about how AES and BitTorrent changes the world attempting an overthrow by disrupting the system enough to make it even more broken than it is. This is war. Just war by a bunch of chicken-shits who don't have enough courage to be honest with themselves or others about what they are doing.
Good luck with that. And I mean that sarcastically.
One of the problems with all this Wikileaks fuss is that the media jumped this bandwagon without ever questioning the real motives behind Wikileaks and Assange. It's a big "party" and no media wants to be left out of it, without even thinking about the long-term consequences of all this.
Should corruption and bad behaviour be exposed? Without any doubt! This is something that newspapers and other media have been doing for a long time. Do we need more whistleblowers to help on this? Without any doubt.
Now are these cables really something to be comparable to corruption and bad behavior? What should we expect from governments and diplomacy? Are we really so naive that we never thought that politics is a dirty game and governments have to take though decisions? I don't think so!
Wikileaks seems to have pointed guns to a single target, the US. This is immediately a call for alarm to try to understand why are they doing this. It's not a democratic process, it's basically anarchy and a statement that "we can do whatever we want because some idiot decided to give us stuff and we will do it, whatever the cost (because we don't really care about costs)". Wikileaks started with a purpose that was subverted with time and now it's locked on a single target.
And no, there's no distinction between private stuff and government stuff. Wikileaks smashed that barrier with their attitude and lack of editorial. The problem with this is that they are lowering everybody's expectation of privacy, and that can be in favor of governments and against us, citizens. I would love (not that I really care) to see all information about Wikileaks and their members made public, so we could really know who they are and their motives, and also have them to taste their own poison. The "game" is only fun when you attack others, not when you are also attacked. That's one of the problems here.
All this enthusiasm towards Wikileaks and so called public information will turn against everyone in the medium to long-term. Let's wait and see!
Daniel, I think we have a fourth option:
- Tell the party concerned that you fully intend to publish the documents, but will take advice from said party to ensure no one's life is directly in danger.
That is exactly what Wikileaks did: http://documents.nytimes.com/letters-between-wikileaks-and-gov
Mike,
Yep, I hear this a lot.
If you'll check out my next article, I think I deconstruct this argument. It's one of those comebacks that sounds okay on the surface, but really doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
Thanks for the comment, though. All of the commenters have been great. Although I'm really frustrated, I'm doing the best I can to keep an open mind. You guys are keeping me honest :)
Thanks for the article. I've been reading through the news that's come from this debacle, and feeling conflicted for days. On the surface I believe that openness and honesty in our government is the only way to fight the corrupting influence of power, and that there needs to be someone standing over the shoulders of our leaders at all times holding the flame to keep them honest. However, this wholesale flood of cables from wikileaks seems counter productive to any noble or honest agenda.
There have been some gems come to light because of the leaks that probably should have been leaked, but they have been mostly lost in the deluge. This is what leaves the rotten feeling in my gut about wikileaks. They should have, from the beginning, worked with journalists who understand the power of the information to distill it down to the items that needed to be addressed (I know that they did work with journalists but they should have left it at that). If that had been the case then we could have, as you said, been a more informed populace and began to make amends. Instead it seems that anarchy was the actual goal. The signal to noise ratio of all this is deplorable, and it is only hurting communication, and putting everyone in a confrontational mood. In this day and age it is possible for truth in sufficient quantities to be noise and mis-information.
The way this information was handled and disbursed has made it nearly impossible for any good to come of it. It is a tragic missed opportunity for progress, and it leads me to believe that those involved with wikileaks either have ignoble intentions, or lack the ability to handle the responsibility they have taken for themselves.
John,
Thanks for the great comment. I think we are in fairly close agreement in our analysis.
If wikileaks had published one story, I would be firmly behind them. If they had published 20 stories, I'd support them. Heck, I'd support 100 stories.
But publishing stories -- narrative pieces of information presented to the public so that we can have an informed electorate -- was never the goal. This was attack by truth, which is a very strange concept. I find that I agree with everything people say about wikileaks -- right up to the point where they say _everything_ should be dumped because everything is so bad that anything is an improvement. At that point we part ways.