Why I will not analyze the new WikiLeaks data

http://www.drewconway.com/zia/?p=2537

by agconway • 16 years ago

90 82 16 years ago

drewconway.com

burgerbrain• 16 years ago

Seems rather juvenile.

grandalf7• 16 years ago

Court jester? Is this guy serious?

The value of Wikileaks is that it makes secrecy more difficult for governments. Period. What Wikileaks publishes is dependent on what is leaked, and so far (in my opinion) Wikileaks has done much to gain credibility as an institution. Notably, it has moved away from journalistic interpretation of the leaked info and has left that to established papers. Instead, it has focused on its role as conduit and trusted intermediary.

Ironically, Wikileaks will enhance the credibility of government in a good way b/c it helps the public view its government as fallible, corrupt, and absurd, all of which help rein in the scope of government action so that what is actually undertaken stands a chance of being accomplished honestly.

Sadly, much of what has been leaked shows simply that the government is putting on a show for the American people and that much of what is kept secret is done so for propaganda reasons, not security reasons.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

It's a bit hard to take wikileaks as an unbiased outlet considering it's heavy editorializing on the July 2007 Baghdad airstrikes.

chc• 16 years ago

I think that would be the point of the "moved away from journalistic interpretation" part of the parent's comment.

adamsmith3• 16 years ago

Do you trust these newspapers to have access to the raw information? Even if the public doesn't see the names of informants/etc, that doesn't mean that foreign governments aren't intercepting the information being handled by the press.

I guarantee you the NYT INFOSEC budget is lower than you think. : )

More importantly, lots of the information is compromising in a way that is not in the best interests of the public. For example, it embarrases the Yemeni president, along with many other countries. Will that make these people more or less likely to work with the US (or anyone else for that matter) in the future?

grandalf7• 16 years ago

I don't think there is much threat of fallout from this other than embarrassment. The forces that lead to large scale geopolitical action are not impacted by the small gravitational pull of these leaks.

The main consequence will be (in my opinion) the diminished ability of the US to take security so lightly... Which is exactly the goal of wikileaks, to make it harder for governments to use secrecy. Sure there will still be some secrets, but ideally they'll be used for important things rather than political propaganda or manipulating allies.

eli• 16 years ago

"Notably, it has moved away from journalistic interpretation of the leaked info and has left that to established papers. Instead, it has focused on its role as conduit and trusted intermediary."

Wikileaks certainly has an agenda. There's a good New Yorker piece [1] from back before a lot of this stuff broke about how Assange edited the 'Collateral Murder' video to maximize emotional impact. I personally do not view Wikileaks as a trusted intermediary.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_...

Qz2• 16 years ago

The question is: is it more trustworthy than your particular government? How will we know without Wikileaks to tell us when they're lying?

grandalf7• 16 years ago

The Collateral Murder video was from before Wikileaks transitioned away from its own journalistic interpretations. So I think my point is still valid. The impact of the footage was powerful, but was diminished by criticisms that the title was biased, etc.

ScottBurson• 16 years ago

When bringing up the "Collateral Murder" video, it's always worth remembering that WikiLeaks released the unedited original alongside their version.

charlesattlan2• 16 years ago

Assange himself would agree that the emmotional impact was strengthened and has said so in his interviews: his aim is to get the biggest political impact to honour the courage of the submitter. The full video was an hour long if I recall and this was condensed into a watchable 10 minutes. Nothing was added apart from annotations and the original video was released. The New York Times is not to be trusted; they are begrudgingly reporting on these leaks. I shall give you concrete evidence that there is heavy censorship at that paper:

"Frago 242" (short for Fragmentary Order 242), was a high level dictat to troops to ignore torture by Iraqi forces, or at least not to intervene directly. This was a key expose for that release, and Assange talks of a story actually getting killed by the editors -

140 results Guardian.co.uk http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&...

And buried in some community comment section a solitary 1 result at NYTimes.com http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&...

You are not being fair to Wikileaks.

GHFigs2• 16 years ago

it helps the public view its government as fallible, corrupt, and absurd

This is in agreement with the author's assertion that "WikiLeaks’ motivation is that of a court jester, to mock and ridicule the contradictions of a state."

What the author is saying in the post is that this is not what his motives were for doing analysis on prior leaks.

grandalf7• 16 years ago

If your interpretation is correct, I don't think the jester analogy holds, since it is the jester who acts/looks absurd.

rtra2• 16 years ago

> WikiLeaks’ motivation is that of a court jester

Can anyone elaborate on that?

gwern• 16 years ago

> "It has always been the prerogative of children & half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, & the emperor remains an emperor."

--Neil Gaiman

rtra2• 16 years ago

I'd really like to get an honest try at the motion to see how far it goes.

linuxhansl3• 16 years ago

I respectfully disagree. This is my government, working on my behalf, with my money, and I want to know what this government is doing.

If public release of this information is damaging to US interest, the answer should not be to suppress this information, but rather to behave in an agreeable way in the first place.

adamsmith3• 16 years ago

Would you say that governments should have no secrets?

I think the issue is more nuanced than it first seems to most people.

snprbob862• 16 years ago

While government secrets can be useful, I think that the lack of secrets is far less damaging than entrusting the government with determining what may or may not be kept secret.

So, yes. I do say that governments should have no secrets.

nickpinkston3• 16 years ago

I'd say making it fully legal to publish this content (a la WikiLeaks now), but allowing the government to punish those who leak it originally is probably the best approach. Then we'd have leakers releasing either trivial things that wouldn't be detected easily, or huge ones that really matter and are worth getting imprisoned for.

I remember Fareed Zakaria talking about how transparency hurts good governance - basically using a tyranny of the majority / anti-democratic type of argument. I think the example of ancient Greece having more war under democracy than "tyranny".

However, if everyone did see all the info we had on us, and the dirt on everyone else as well, perhaps it would lead to more outrage universally / less war. Then again, there'd be ALOT more gov't PsyOps going on to decisive the public.

antipaganda2• 16 years ago

Wikileaks edits its releases to avoid harming human sources of intel, sir. Put away your strawman.

metachris• 16 years ago

I hope leaks like these help change the way the governments handle the identities of their informants. In particular, if an informant is guaranteed anonymity, the identity should not be disclosed in any communication within governments itself.

jbooth2• 16 years ago

Do you think governments should produce enough secrets per day to fill a library? (made up statistic).

That's a lot closer to the truth than governments having no secrets.. yes, there's probably at least 1 secret worth keeping at any given time, but don't keep your mind so open that your brain falls out :) We're talking degrees, here.

noarchy• 16 years ago

This is the equivalent of seeing the US government sent through a full-body scanner. I, for one, think it is great. If they have nothing to hide, why are they worried? Isn't that what governments tell the rest of us, when they wish to intrude upon our privacy?

potatolicious3• 16 years ago

The problem here is that this is not universal. If WikiLeaks is going to make a habit of this sort of leak, it will completely kneecap US foreign relations and make it impossible to speak to any of our foreign allies in confidence.

Meanwhile our allies and enemies alike will have no such handicap.

WikiLeaks can potentially shift the balance of diplomatic power drastically - and not in a particularly good way at that. It would be a difference story if they could get leaks out of every major government - but a few seem particularly problematic: China and Russia come to mind.

In the US, Pfc. Manning faces court martial and jail time for leaking this information. In China they'd just put a bullet in your head without any kind of process, and then in your families' too just for good measure. This is information asymmetry, and is downright dangerous.

stantonk• 16 years ago

Absolutely. The diplomacy that goes on behind closed doors does so for a reason. Politics tends to shift the focus to the irrational side (just look at the current state of political discourse in the US). If we had access to other nation's documents like these, I think the US would look downright saintly (or at least no worse).

klbarry• 16 years ago

If this really is information that other countries don't know, then interested parties will make much better use of it than American citizens will.

daniel_levine• 16 years ago

I have to agree with Drew here.

I believe that our government should be more transparent and that its primary purpose is to serve its citizens.

That said many of the documents being leaked contain information that was exchanged under the assumption of privacy.

Just as it is sometimes necessary to defend anonymity on the Internet and a citizens right to privacy, the same right should be granted to many of these documents. The expectation of privacy in diplomacy can be an extremely powerful tool in creating honest and helpful dialogue.

It can also be abused and has been in certain instances to keep information from the public but I do not think it is the right of Wikileaks to rectify that mistake. Especially at the cost of individuals' safety or diplomatic relations.

linuxhansl3• 16 years ago

Upvoted, not because I agree but because you have a good point (as all upvoting should go anyway).

To your point, though, I do not think the government has a general expectation of privacy. On the other hand some of these cables might have been private in nature or might have been sent with an implicit expectation of privacy, so this is a difficult area.

Still, I'd rather have us err on the side of transparency.

sigzero• 16 years ago

I would be on the side that under certain circumstances governments should and do have expectations for a level of privacy. Wikileaks is doing the wrong thing here period.

netcan4• 16 years ago

It's a tradeoff. Obviously an ideal situation is one where privacy can be used as a diplomatic tool and in the many other situations where it is powerful but refrain from using it for no legitimate purposes. We can't and don't have that though, anywhere. Secrecy and the ability to withhold information are and will be abused in at least some cases.

Supporting or opposing wikileaks is tweaking the level of secrecy available. Secrecy is always doubtful. There is always a chance a secret will get out. Wikileaks increases those chances.

This will have negative effects. For example, diplomats will have a harder time using secrecy to do good things. This will also have positive effects. Diplomats will have a harder time using secrecy for things their constituents think are bad.

The primary effect of wikileaks and leaks in general is unseen. People must take into account a higher chance their secrets will come out. This affects their actions. The effect is not really measurable. It will affect the next war more than this one. Overall, I think it'll probably be for good. People behave better in public.

potatolicious3• 16 years ago

I'm inclined to agree. There are some things that the cables have revealed that IMHO are worth leaking (e.g., the US using its diplomats in the UN as effectively spies, conspiring to acquire biometrics for top UN officials, and violating the Vienna Convention by conspiring to spy on diplomatic communiques). The rest of the stuff is mundane, uncontroversial, and honestly, should not have been leaked.

Governments desire and need privacy for a great many reasons, and IMHO unless this privacy is used to abuse governmental power or commit a gross injustice, the government ought to be entitled to it, just as we are entitled to our privacy unless a crime (legal or moral) is suspected.

Don't get me wrong, I think whistleblowing organizations are a fundamental part of a healthy democratic process, but this indiscriminate "the US is not allowed to have secrets" thing is unproductive, nor is it fighting any injustice or abuse of power.

ChristianMarks• 16 years ago

If he refuses to analyze the data, his meta-analysis is worthless. He could point out that Assange seems to focus on corruption and violence perpetrated by the United States and its allies, and appears to shy from reporting on non-allied regimes. But the consequences might exceed indictment for rape.

ajays• 16 years ago

FTA: "Having worked inside the U.S. intelligence community, ..."

Drew knows perfectly well that if he even touches this data with a 10-foot pole, he'll be persona non grata in the intelligence community. So my cynical view is that his decision to not analyze this data has more to do with future employment prospects than with the methods of WikiLeaks or the contents of the data...

xilun0• 16 years ago

This seems dubious. Everyone and his dog will soon have read it, and he'll better to work in the U.S. intelligence community by being the only one not having looked at it? If this really is the reason, it seems this indeed would reduce his value to work in this domain. Would be weird.

netcan4• 16 years ago

Wikileaks motivation and the politics of its founders are somewhat of a red herring so long as they simply make documents available verbatim, leaving commentary to others. I would prefer it if there were 5 or 10 wikileaks to to balance the effect of this power being concentrated, but one step at a time.

Meanwhile the immediate effects of breaking down secrecy are potentially volatile. For example, Iraeli papers are currently running stories about Israel coordinating with the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. Anyone following ME politics knows that (a) this is almost certainly true. (b) proof of its truth will play to the hands of the anti-compromise, theocratic elements in that region.

Similarly, Arab States (eg Saudi Arabia) supported US invasion of Iran. Similarly unsurprising. Similarly bolstering of anti-compromise, theocratic elements.

My reading is that both of these are bad.

The long term effects are more difficult to gauge. But I think they will be positive. Basically, governments will have to align their private policies more closely to their public ones.

lucasjung4• 16 years ago

"Wikileaks motivation and the politics of its founders are somewhat of a red herring so long as they simply make documents available verbatim, leaving commentary to others."

The choice of which documents to leak, when, and in what context is in itself a form of commentary. Drudge is a master of this: his website consists of nothing but headlines and a few pictures, and yet he is constantly accused of various biases.

netcan4• 16 years ago

Hence somewhat.

I don't think the politics are immaterial. They may influence in exactly that way. Reporters, news shows and everything else has biases. When it's an opinion article, that bias is the central component. When it's fact based reporting the bias is a smaller component.

The context here is "WikiLeaks’s continued and reckless pursuit of classified document disclosures seems to have much more to do with the proclivities of the organization’s founder, and very little to do with building knowledge or improving democratic discourse." and "by continuing to analyze new disclosures I am tacitly supporting this."

I think that the above is somewhat of a red herring considering that we are talking about source documents released verbatim. How could wikileaks' bias come in to play? Withholding documents where people sound good? Withholding documents where the "other side" sounds bad?

smutticus• 16 years ago

Every time I hear someone criticize Wikileaks it just seems to me like they simply don't want to know what's happening in the world. Because if you want to gain more true understanding of what's happening in the world then why would you criticize more source material? The conclusion I then draw is that people who criticize Wikileaks seek ignorance.

hugh32• 16 years ago

I'd be happy for me to know everything. But if the cost is that everyone else gets to know it too, I need to think more carefully about that.

grantheaslip• 16 years ago

The simple-minded open=good mentality is thin enough when it applies to technology, but it just plain falls apart when you're talking about diplomacy.

Let's be clear: What Assange and WikiLeaks are doing is incredibly irresponsible. They're uncovering important channels that are going to close up if neither side can trust that what's said won't become public (this is especially true of critical Middle Eastern relationships). Even worse, they're outing confidential informants and information critical to national defence. I hope they're prepared to have blood on their hands.

These documents will undoubtedly reveal some important stuff that the public should know about, and I'm not saying that everything that the government does is automatically good, but I think that most experts in the field would agree that Assange is doing way more harm than good here. There are important trust-based relationships and sources, nurtured for decades, that have just been utterly ruined, if not severely damaged.

Diplomacy is incredibly complicated and nuanced, and this naive belief that indiscriminately releasing thousands of documents and cables is automatically going to make the world a better place is totally out-of-touch with reality.

My theory (and sorry if this sounds mean) is that the same personality traits that make geeks great at visualizing logic and data comes at the expense of being able to understand nuance. You see it with the tech press' bizarre, highlanderistic insistence on everything being a something killer, you see it in the anti-government streak that is rampant on HN, and I think you're seeing it here.

gintas• 16 years ago

I'm not sure it's just personality traits though, the technical professions may be influential as well. In technical matters, things do tend to be much more black-or-white, and if something is "subtle and nuanced", chances are it's a bug. Arts majors have been going on for ages about Aristotelian/Boolean logic being coarse and artificially compartmentalizing, there might be a grain of truth there.

dpatru• 16 years ago

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." — Brian W. Kernighan.

I think good programmers value simplicity and clarity more than the average person because they have more experience with and a better understanding of complexity and nuance. It's easy to build incomprehensible software: just don't make an effort to keep it simple.

I would think the same is true of diplomacy. Without a strict policy of honesty and open dealing, national embarrassment is practically inevitable. It's unreasonable to believe that you can build sound foreign relations on lies and deceit.

Diplomats, like lawyers, are effective because they are persuasive. Not because they are good liars.

spektom• 16 years ago

Whatever happened, happened. I'd not appeal to journalists' conscience, but rather try to protect sensitive documents better in the future. I have not doubts that revealed information will harm in some way to "good guys" if they let it fall into "bad guys'" hands.

plinkplonk• 16 years ago

I wonder how much outrage there would be if the exposed documents were not diplomatic records of the USA.

As a thought experiment, assume these documents were from (say), Iran, China or Russia (miraculously translated to English , hey this is a thought experiment)- fundamentally any power opposed to the United States. For even more fun, throw in Pakistan, North Korea or (really stretching here, because they don't do formal nation state like diplomacy or maintain records thereof) the Taliban or Al Quaeda.

I suspect a good portion of the people who decry WikiLeaks today would be analysing this data, or otherwise using it to draw insights to further US interests and lauding Assange as a hero, while the Chinese (or whoever) would be making the "this endangers our people/troops" and "Wikileaks is irresponsible" argument.

I doubt US citizens would be doubting Assange's "agenda" or saying things like "many of the documents being leaked contain information that was exchanged under the assumption of privacy." and so they shouldn't be public and so on. I suspect people would laud Assange as some kind of heroic figure for exposing an enemy regime at great personal risk.

Is Assange a US citizen? If not why should he care about the impact on the USA? Would an American care about the impact on say Chinese diplomacy before he exposed any records he had on their thinking?

Nothing wrong with being nationalistic/patriotic as long as you are aware of your biases (if any) therefrom. Most HNers are Americans and the discussion here is somewhat biased in that direction of whether this is good or bad for the USA. That is just one possible perspective of many and hardly universal. Just something to be aware of.

As an outsider (not a USA citizen though largely pro American), I think this is all to the good in the long term.

yason• 16 years ago

So, before talking about whys and why-nots, what is there that has leaked? Obviously someone has to feel morally equipped to analyze the data before any sane discussion can take place of whether it should have been leaked or not.

Now, if I had to form an opinion about something related to this (but that I don't exactly know anything about), I might consider my baseline the fact that any nation that continuously exerts offensive military activity outside its own borders should not in the first place have the slightest expectation of any "rights" to remain private.

It's indeed the U.S. whose "secrets" on the stake here; however, I'm not pointing particularly to the U.S.

Why I will not analyze the new WikiLeaks data

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