What does WikiLeaks want? Do they see themselves as a bastion of freedom of speech? Are they trying to uncover treachery by the United States government? Do they just want their name in the paper?
Julian Assange himself seems like a pretty slimy character. He’s allegedly a megalomaniac who is impossible to work with, a womanizer, and now, a rapist. I just get the vibe from him that he couldn’t care less about uncovering wrongs… he just wants his name in the news.
I haven’t decided yet if WikiLeaks is a good thing or a bad thing. I’m leaning towards bad.
It seems to me that the mission is pretty straightforward: to keep people informed about what their governments are doing and to make it more difficult for unscrupulous governments to pull off shady acts under the veil of secrecy. None of this seems particularly nefarious to me.
What I find particularly interesting is the extent to which Assange is being demonized by a lot of Western governments, media outlets, and private individuals. Many of the same sources, meanwhile, trumpet their commitment to an open society and openly support dissidents in non-Western nations. I wonder: what if Assange was, say, a Chinese citizen that exposed government wrongdoing. In response, the government arrested him on trumped-up charges and threatened to strip him of his citizenship. Would the same Western sources side with the Chinese government? Somehow, I doubt it. This entire matter reeks of hypocrisy.
I’ve thought about that, too. That the rape charges seem very convenient at this time. In fact, it was the first thing I thought when I heard about the charges.
At the same time, I don’t think WikiLeaks’ purpose is all that altruistic. Posting a document containing the most vulnerable targets in the U.S.? That’s not keeping people informed of government shadiness. That’s assisting terrorism.
It’s not a list of “the most vulnerable targets in the U.S.” It’s a list “critical US foreign dependencies” as determined by U.S. embassies, which, “if destroyed, disrupted or exploited, would likely have an immediate and deleterious effect on the United States.” That is, it’s a list of important international sites whose destruction or disruption would hurt the U.S. Here’s a Christian Science Monitor story about it. I’m quoting from the CSM quoting from the documents.
Whether or not they are altruistic isn’t relevant, I don’t think. They say their interest is transparency, and it’s not just regarding governments. I don’t think their goals involve encouraging violence or terrorism. Assange has been pretty public about what he is doing, although you don’t have to take his statements at face value.
Actually, the document in question listed not the most “vulnerable targets” domestically, but the installations that the US found most critical to its best interests, most of them located abroad. Personally, I doubt that a lot of terrorist will now target pharmaceutical factories in Western Europe because some US ambassador claimed that they were important to the US.
Moreover, I think that this particular release has real value. It demonstrates to the world just how reliant the US is upon other nations, its bluster about self-reliance and indifference to the outside world notwithstanding. It’s a valid reality-check, and one that I welcome.
EDIT: Beaten to the punch by Marley23. Damn my slow typing.
They’re a non-profit organization that subsists on donations, and like all such organizations, their super-top secret plans can be discovered by going to their webpage and clicking on the “About wikileaks” button.
“Transparency” is just a code word for those to freaking lazy or irresponsible in a physical, emotional, intellectual, and moral level to decide what should and shouldn’t be “revealed” to the public when given said information.
I’m not sure what this means. The U.S. government, which is usually the arbiter of this kind of information, has one opinion on which of its communications should be public. Wikileaks has a different opinion and thinks a larger volume of information should be public. How is that a moral or emotional issue?
Are they using any sort of filter in their selection process to reveal stuff? Besides the obvious the “info is so boring nobody could possibly care” one.
Let me give an example.
Somebody finds out nuclear bomb secrets are poorly kept. They steal them to show that THEY ARE POORLY KEPT. The important thing being the poorly kept part.
Scenario One. They give this info to a trusted source for a major news organization. These folks handle this info with due care, show it to experts that would know. These experts say “shit yeah, this is the real deal”. News organization writes embarrassing story, makes money, gubment goes “oh fuck” and fixes security.
Scenario Two. Same concerned info thief/good citizen gives plans to Wikileaks. Wikileaks give it a glance, says “oh fucking yeah baby” and publishes said plans on the internet in the spirit of “transparency” to prove the same point about poorly kept secrets (yeah right).
So, let me see if I get this straight: you’re advocating both free speech AND rampant self-censorship by the media in the interest of preserving governmental secrets? Does this mean that you never want an individual or organization to release a classified document, even if said document does no more harm than to embarrass the government or reveal its illegal acts?
I don’t think I can get on board with that position. These aren’t nuclear weapon schematics we’re talking about. These are documents showing that the US wants to spy on UN diplomats and whatnot.
There’s a difference in the editorial process, yes, and that’s always a concern I have about stuff that is leaked to the 'net or published on blogs. The motives and characterizations exist in your head, though, and I’m not sure they have any relevance to what the publications are doing. If the basics are the same - the secrecy is bad, attention is called to the problem, and it gets addressed - what does it matter?
The whole thing reminds me of the Supreme Court case United States v. Progressive, but there are enough differences that maybe they are not very comparable. The short version is that a magazine wanted to publish a story about the hydrogen bomb in 1979, and the government wanted to stop it, arguing that the information was secret even though the Progressive only used public sources. From what I can tell, little has changed with the nuclear program. There’s information the government keeps secret, but if you are sufficiently determined, you can figure it out and publish it. Is that dangerous? Is it valuable that someone is pointing out that this purportedly secret information is out there? Is it just research that should be allowed in the spirit of academic inquiry?
Apparently you missed the whole darn point. And the distinction you cant see exists soley in your head.
Lets say I wanna expose how easy it is for some new form of consumer fraud to occur. One, I get some experts to check it out and say “yep, thats a problem to be sure”. Write warning article. Problem exposed, Society saved, very little real harm done.
Or, I just publish the recipe for how to do it, including all the personal info millions of households that make it possible, including that of Casa de La Marley.
Seriously, you can’t see the difference in the two?
I recall reading a statement describing exactly what their goals are. I think it was on their official website. I don’t want to go to that site from work but I can give you the gist from memory.
Basically they believe that there is a conspiracy of the wealthy and powerful to control the rest of us. Conspiracies, by definition, requiring conspiring. Conspiring requires communicating in secret. Wikileaks believes that if they remove their ability to communicate in secret then they’ve removed their ability to conspire, thus stopping, or at least damaging, the conspiracy.
So in their minds it isn’t about the particular secrets. It’s about secrecy itself.
All true enough . . . except that the conspiracy of the wealthy and powerful is not so much to “control” the rest of us, as to either exploit or ignore/discard/exclude/marginalize us as the occasion arises.
I dunno about that part. Those who want to communicate in secret will always find a way.
I don’t necessarily disagree. I’m just saying what they believe.
I have been reading that some U.S. diplomats are running into difficulties with their counterparts suddenly being reluctant to be frank with them and asking things like “are you going to write this down”?
Wouldn’t it be ironic if this led to less communications between governments and a less stable world?
My own opinion is that he’s doing his best to bring down the US. This release is certainly bad for the security of our country. Since 9/11 we have stopped a number of incidents from ever happening, and have helped other countries stop them as well. This will have a negative impact in our ability to get good intel. Definitely a bad thing.
