In defense of Wikileaks

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/25/is_wikileaks_a_good_thing_or_not

by greatgoof • 16 years ago

85 36 16 years ago

walt.foreignpolicy.com

esponapule• 16 years ago

I am thankful the world has wikileaks

retree• 16 years ago

A good article. Too often I feel the debate about wikileaks has become polarised.

On the one hand you have those saying everything should be open and available. And then on the other hand you have those who say that nothing should be leaked because it puts people at risk.

There is no doubt that, in the world, there are some very unpleasant people who want to harm/kill other people, and for that reason surely some things should be kept secret? But then surely those trying to protect us should be held accountable? There is a fine line, and people draw that line at different points.

Wikileaks provides a valuable service, but I do find it ironic that, for an organisation that tries to cut through and destroy government PR/propoganda, Julian Assange is very good at using similar PR to further his goals.

John Young of Cryptome has been very happily leaking documents without the whole "not staying in the same place for than 2 nights" mentality that Assange has.

hugh36• 16 years ago

I'd trust Julian Assange a lot more if I thought that his goal were actually some sort of obsessive-compulsive desire for openness of information, rather than fighting against US interests.

rhizome• 16 years ago

You don't need to trust Assange, he's only providing facts.

loewenskind• 16 years ago

>It is also increasingly clear that the U.S. taxpayer is funding a vast array of clandestine activities of which they are only dimly aware

Increasingly clear? This book was published in the early thirties [1]. This has been totally clear for decades for anyone who cared to look. The quest is; what (if anything) can be done to make people care what the government is inflicting on other peoples in their name and with their money?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

rokamic3• 16 years ago

I was going to question that idea too. That book you just brought to my attention is amazing. A man in that time, speaking out like that? Wow.

anamax• 16 years ago

> A man in that time, speaking out like that? Wow.

Why are you surprised at such stuff from the 30s? (There's similar stuff from the 1910s, the 1890s, 1860s and even that wasn't novel.)

hugh36• 16 years ago

Remember, there was a huge strain of aggressive pacifism in the US in the 1930s, which is how the US stayed out of World War 2 until 1941. Come to think of it, there was a pretty huge strain of aggressive pacifism in England as well, which is how Hitler got as far as he did.

The 1930s was pretty much peak hour for pacifism. We'd just had World War 1 to remind us that war was a terrible thing, and hadn't yet had World War 2 to remind us that war wasn't the worst possible thing.

One could argue that the more popular pacifism gets the more likely war becomes, but it would be overly trite and based on an insufficient sample. It's a good line though.

chaostheory• 16 years ago

You've already made the point that I'm about to make. That book is from the 30's, it hasn't made the best seller lists in decades; nor am I aware if it's required reading for most classes.

People need a modern reminder like Wikileaks.

hugh36• 16 years ago

People need a modern reminder like Wikileaks

Is there really a lack of suspicion of intelligence agaencies going about? Roughly one out of every three movies currently being made is something about the US Government being secretly involved in dodgy clandestine activities. How many movies have the "twist" that the real bad guys turn out to be some corrupt US Government official?

Want to make a short list? Count up the number of movies where the CIA is portrayed in a positive light. Even the latest James Bond, a series which has been refreshingly positive in its depiction of the Western intelligence agencies, had the CIA as the bad guys.

Ask people what they think of the CIA and you'll find that they have an image much more Jason Bourne than real life.

greatgoof2• 16 years ago

Thanks for pointing out this book. Its a very interesting read. Direct link to the online version of the book : http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c1

sausagefeet• 16 years ago

I think I agree with this article for the most part. In my opinion, for important things you need people on pushing the extremes so you can get to the healthy middle. My friend often quotes to me "If you get what you asked for, you didn't ask for enough", and I think people who make the extreme claims (there should be no secrets, all software should be open source) are helping us people that actually want a middle ground.

rokamic3• 16 years ago

<quote>I believe that human beings are more likely to misbehave if they think they can shield what they are doing from public view.</quote>

I do not agree. I think that people are more likely to misbehave when they want to misbehave, regardless of a shielding mechanism.

anonymous245• 16 years ago

For a politician "shielding from public view" is the same as "shielding from consequences". Do you agree?

If you still disagree with the quote, then you're saying that people will misbehave regard of consequences.

greyman• 16 years ago

There is also a good summary of the leak in this Spiegel article -> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-72402... (in English).

It's quite revealing just how brutal the war in Iraq has been, with all parties willing to commit atrocities (al-Qaeda, Iraq police and U.S. army). It's definitely a much stronger image than media have been serving to us about the war.

Also, for those who feel some sympathy towards al-Qaeda, the reports about their decapitations practices are also quite enlightening. ("A document dated Nov. 3, 2007, for example, relates that an Iraqi woman approached US troops to tell them that Islamists had cut off her baby's head. The officers sent out a few soldiers to look into the matter. The report ends: "Confirms baby is decapitated."").

dennisgorelik• 16 years ago

That's such a good article from Sipegel. I submitted it as a separate article on HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835767

melonakos• 16 years ago

I did a very similar blog post back in August and took the other side, here - http://www.melonakos.com/2010/08/02/wikileaks/

DanielBMarkham• 16 years ago

But unless you're willing to believe that the people in charge are always right and that their lies are therefore justified (and if you think that, you haven't been paying attention), you ought to be in favor of any mechanism that brought more facts to light.

First, I'm a huge fan of leaking information. We have a thousand times too much secrecy as we can stand already. People who leak things -- especially things that the government finds inconvenient for political reasons -- should be praised.

Having said that, this author is arguing at the extremes. I am not in favor of using any mechanism to bring facts to light. Murder? Bribery? Torture? Nope, I expect leakers to come forward honestly, not under duress. Do I support the selective leaking of information by foreign intelligence services? Nope, because the purposeful leaking of information to sway public opinion is called propaganda, and it's the most effective when it's true information. Things exist in a context.

Because of the context question, it's actually better that wikileaks dumped thousands of records. If, say, there had only been a couple hundred, folks could easily charge that the docs were hand-picked.

Second, and this is more important, as much as I love leaking and openness, I am not a child. Some amount of secrecy is necessary for a government to function. Salary negotiations, diplomatic memos, military threat assessments, signals intelligence -- lots of things need to be keep secret. Even if you have a complete bunch of idiots in charge of running things, that doesn't mean that any method used to dump any kind of secret information is good. And that's exactly the point the author is making in the quote above.

I hate to say this, and I know you guys are going to downvote me for it, but I can't help but think that this all gets back to political affiliation: if you don't like the politics, then leak the information. It's the good guys against the military-industrial complex. If you like the politics, then it's a crime to leak the information. It's the zealous idiots against the sane organization of humanity into governmental structures.

I don't buy any of it. Not everything has to be open, and we must have an extreme amount of more public information available in order to function intelligently as voters. Both of these views can coexist. That doesn't mean that what Wikileaks did is right: in fact if they get somebody killed? I'd view them more as another combatant rather than a player for good in all of this. I have to draw the line with leaks -- whether I like the politics or not -- with getting people killed. After all, one of the main reasons we have an executive branch is to put people in charge of making sensitive decisions based on secret information that get people killed. Looking over their shoulder every minute is not part of our role in a democracy. Checking up on them and getting as many facts as we can? Sure. But not micro-managing.

If the executive branch didn't have secret information and make sensitive decisions that large portions of the population didn't believe in? There would be no point in having it. The president is nothing special -- he's just another schmuck -- but he does have a defined job and he needs the tools to do that job. Secrecy is part of the tools he needs, no matter how much we wish it weren't so.

mcknz• 16 years ago

This isn't really a question of secrecy -- you can be on any part of the political spectrum and still agree that troop movements and strategy should never be made public.

This is more about disinformation -- if any entities (al-Qaeda, NATO, North Korea, the US) intentionally release false reports, they deserve to be called on it.

For all the talk of asymmetrical warfare on the part of al-Qaeda and its ilk, and how the allies toil under the strain of the Geneva Conventions, ultimately the rules of war are arbitrary, elusive, and ambiguous.

I take very seriously the idea that Wikileaks could harm people as a result of the information they release, but it's a bit rich when the Pentagon raises this objection. Between Wikileaks and the US military, it's pretty clear who the asymmetry favors.

leot• 16 years ago

... indeed, it is a bit rich to hear the US DoD, which appears ok with causing 10s of thousands of deaths in support of its (questionable) strategic aims, taking moral umbrage at the possibility that the behavior of another party might in the same way cause a few hundred.

jbooth• 16 years ago

Well, sure, the government has a right to classified information in some way, shape or form.

But do me a favor and watch the evening news for the rest of the week. After that week of news watching, would you conclude we're spending multiple billions of dollars per week prosecuting 2 wars with hundreds of casualties per week at the hands of American munitions?

No, but you can find a guy scrawling deranged conspiracy theories on a chalk board about how the President was born in Kenya. Great. I'm all about the loyal opposition, but come on, really?

Wikileaks is just a symptom - our media sucks. They should be on this stuff themselves.

wnoise• 16 years ago

> but I can't help but think that this all gets back to political affiliation: if you don't like the politics, then leak the information.

This happens somewhat, but I think you're overstating the case.

I want bad _policies_ and bad _actions_ leaked. I want bastards abusing their position caught. I want bastards not abusing their position to be afraid of getting caught. Naturally what I think of as _bad_ depends on my politics. And naturally the policies and actions taken by those in power depend on their politics (though not all that much.) And naturally there is some bias in how I judge based on the politics of those in power. But I still want abuses leaked no matter whose watch they're under, because I want the abuses to stop. I want the public to be made aware of the consequences of war, both intended and non, as they need to be the ones judging if it is worth it.

rgrieselhuber2• 16 years ago

> That doesn't mean that what Wikileaks did is right: in fact if they get somebody killed?

Has there been a single report that this happened the first time they leaked the information?

The article itself said "Robert Gates has acknowledged that earlier Wikileaks releases did not in fact compromises sensitive information or methods".

hugh36• 16 years ago

Has there been a single report that this happened the first time they leaked the information?

Would we know, if there had?

Also, isn't justifying reckless behaviour on the grounds that it hasn't killed anyone yet a bit of a weak justification? The average drunk driver hasn't killed anyone yet.

cromulent• 16 years ago

The context of this article is the Iraq War Logs, and certainly comments relating to the executive's need for secrecy in relation to security are relevant. In some areas, a balance is needed. Would anyone be served by leaking the nuclear launch codes? I think I would rather some things were secret.

However, it's fairly common now to associate Wikileaks only with their leaks relating to the US war interests. They leak a lot more than that. I guess you leak what you can get, and the more secretive the information, the bigger the leak is.

I'm very happy that they leaked the proposed Australian internet censorship blacklist, even if it meant they were subsequently placed on it (I'm sure mirrors will sort that one out).

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

I found that particular quote to be incredibly disingenuous:

> "But unless you're willing to believe that the people in charge are always right and that their lies are therefore justified (and if you think that, you haven't been paying attention), you ought to be in favor of any mechanism that brought more facts to light."

This reeks of "if you're not with us, you're against us" bullshit. So, because I am not in favor of complete carte blanche leakage of everything using whatever immoral means necessary, I'm suddenly a sheep that believes the government is always right?

No thanks author guy, I live in a world with shades of grey as opposed to some juvenile form of black and white.

anigbrowl2• 16 years ago

Ironically, this kind of misplaced self-assurance was what led us (qua 'the west') to trash our own standards on issues like torture and human rights in the first place.

Though Assange has a propagandist air which I find troubling, these leaks basically strike me as a good thing. The accumulated insults to conscience and intellect over the course of the Iraq war have long eclipsed any legitimate strategic interests that were at stake. I think a period of review and self-examination is in order.

baddox• 16 years ago

I don't detect any implication from the author of an absolute dichotomy. It's fine to disagree with specific leaks for certain reasons (personal safety of someone named in the leak, for example), but I believe (and I think the author would agree) that Wikileaks as an entity is performing a valuable task.

There's a difference between questioning the wisdom of a specific leak and calling Wikileaks an anti-[US, military, etc.] criminal organization that must be stopped.

In defense of Wikileaks

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