In reading Duncan’s Perspective regarding the website Wikileaks I was struck by some of the questions that were asked. “If a person releases this type of information while knowing the potential harm it can cause to many people, why does he still release it?” Well, there are many reasons to release information that is harmful to people or organizations. The term whistle blower is defined as “an informant who exposes wrongdoing within an organization in the hope of stopping it.” Does that answer the question? Wikileaks ‘terrorist’ like releases have led in 2009 to Amnesty International awarding WikiLeaks their Media Award for exposing "extra judicial killings and disappearances" in Kenya. It has exposed toxic dumping by the commodities giant Trafigura along the Ivory Coast of Africa which according to the United Nations, affected over 108,000 people’s health and in many cases resulted in death. It has caused criminal investigations to be begun regarding the Bank giant Kaupthing Bank and their illegal actions just prior to the collapse of the banking sector in Iceland that led to the their financial crisis. These are just a handful of documents that Wikileaks has released and let us not forget, these documents are not created by Wikileaks, they are created by the people responsible for these actions. Perhaps a better question should be why these people and organizations are doing things that if they come under public scrutiny would be harmful or devastating to their organization? Perhaps we should not be making memos and documents that are harmful to our future relations with foreign leader and their countries. Perhaps we should not be bombing people in Baghdad without confirming that they are not journalist first. All these actions were done by our government and yet we are outraged that Wikileaks has exposed them and not that they occurred at all?
I will admit that not everything that Wikileaks has done is one hundred percent fine in my estimation, but then I’m not fine with lots of things that our government has done either. I actually think that leaking these documents to the world is a lot more effective and noble than selling them to our enemies without us knowing about it. It is also a lot less damaging to our public relations because at least we know what our enemies are aware of and we don’t have to guess. We have given lip service to a more transparent government but that has not become a reality. I would also like to point out that Wikileaks is not the wholly irresponsible anarchists they are made out to be. They have a careful review process of the documents they publish that verifies their veracity and authenticity. Most news organizations are not this careful and in fact most governments aren’t as well. Need we be reminded of the whole ‘weapons of mass destruction’ debacle our own government faced? We went to war over that only to find out later that it was false. Wikileaks has also made an attempt to protect people in Afghanistan who would be killed if they were identified as collaborating with us. They have withheld over 15,000 documents for review, deleting names from the documents before their release. They also asked the Pentagon and several human rights groups for help in identifying and removing names to reduce potential harm to these people that these documents could cause, but were denied assistance. If the argument is really that people could die because of these documents than this action on our part makes no sense. If however, it is political posturing then it makes perfect sense.
Duncan also writes, “I also believe that it should be considered an attack on the United States and he (Assange) should be considered in the same category as a terrorist.” Well, since there are hundreds of definitions for the word terrorist, I’m sure that by some of them Wikileaks could be classified as a terrorist. However, so could Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Glen Beck, the Christian Coalition, Karl Rove and countless others. The word terrorist has really lost its meaning in America today and is just thrown out there as an emotionally charged word to make people react in fear and not really consider the situation rationally. This is by its very definition an act of terrorism. In reality, the Wikileaks organization is going to be very hard to prosecute as terrorist or as a group involved in espionage and there is a very good reason for that. The First Amendment, arguably the most important Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Wikileaks is protected under both freedom of speech and freedom of press. They are not stealing these documents, they are merely reporting them. This will make prosecution of Wikileaks very hard according to our own Constitution as several Supreme Court cases have previously established “that the American constitution protects the re-publication of illegally gained information provided the publishers did not themselves break any laws in acquiring it.” The government has also reportedly considered prosecuting Assange (Wikileaks director) for the trafficking of stolen government property, which would also be problematic as the diplomatic cables are intellectual property rather than physical. And let’s not forget that one of the biggest problems with prosecuting Assange is the fact that he is not American and would have to be extradited to the US in order to do so. International Law also protects the Freedom of Speech and of the Press. After all, that is essentially what Wikileaks is, a journalistic resource that provides accurate and authenticated information. A smear campaign has occurred concerning Wikileaks and Assange and most people have been swayed by the emotionally charged and overblown images that this campaign has employed. Saying they are terrorists and should be prosecuted for treason or espionage is simply ridiculous. Its fear mongering and people are falling for it.
I felt that Duncan’s Perspective did not delve deeply enough into this issue. I find that the current debate over Wikileaks is less an issue of the US protecting themselves and how, “It’s frightening to imagine that after 911, we are still a very vulnerable country.” to quote Duncan, and more an issue of if we are going to respect our own laws even if they are inconvenient, potentially embarrassing or even dangerous as some claim. Evan Hughs the editor in chief of Wired.com said, “"The greatest threat we face right now from WikiLeaks is not the information it has spilled and may spill in the future, but the reactionary response to it that’s building in the United States that promises to repudiate the rule of law and our free speech traditions, if left unchecked." On December 3 of this year Ron Paul, a Texas Republican Congressman said in defense of Wikileaks, "In a free society we're supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble." I think he is absolutely right.
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