Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

We Need to Have a Chat About Julian

A lot of people have asked me in the last few days what I think about Wikileaks and the ongo­ing con­flag­ra­tions over their most recent release of thou­sands of pre­vi­ously secret US dip­lo­matic com­mu­nic­a­tions. I’ve worn myself out yakking on about it, as it’s some­thing on which I do indeed have a view, so I thought it might be best if I scribbled some­thing down towards which I could point future ques­tion­ers and save myself some oxygen.

The last few weeks have been an inter­est­ing time because until recently I sided firmly with Wikileaks spe­cific­ally and the hacktivist/information-wants-to-be-free move­ment in gen­eral. But I’m get­ting bet­ter at not stub­bornly fol­low­ing prior alle­gi­ances these days, and given that extra shot of objectiv­ity I can say with reas­on­able con­fid­ence that this time, in my mind, Wikileaks have sadly over­stepped the mark.

A lot of people have become aware of Wikileaks’ exist­ence only recently, as a res­ult of this most recent batch of releases. This is unfor­tu­nate, because often these people are unaware of pre­vi­ous releases Wikileaks has made, which have been of a some­what dif­fer­ent stripe to the dip­lo­matic cables released dur­ing the last few weeks. They have most sig­ni­fic­antly included video mater­ial show­ing the sanc­tioned killing of journ­al­ists and civil­ians in Iraq, and most recently the Iraq War Logs — thou­sands of clas­si­fied reports of US mil­it­ary activ­ity in that coun­try. These dis­clos­ures high­lighted wide­spread abuses and con­tro­versy that had up to that point been sup­pressed from the public.

The dis­tinc­tion here, then, is the concept of pub­lic interest. This is the met­ric by which the eth­ics of the actions of a leaker or whis­tleblower are judged, and in the cases I’ve just men­tioned you would — I’d hope — struggle to jus­tify keep­ing that mater­ial secret. These are acts car­ried out by forces fun­ded by the pub­lic and admin­istered by lead­ers that we elec­ted, so they owe us a degree of trans­par­ency and account­ab­il­ity. They work for us and in our name, so if they’re car­ry­ing out illegal or immoral acts, we deserve to know. We have a right to know.

When it comes to the recent release of dip­lo­matic cables, how­ever, I don’t believe this defence applies. I haven’t read all the mater­ial that’s been released; I’ve only garnered tid­bits from the media. My under­stand­ing, how­ever, is that the mater­ial being released is cer­tainly acutely embar­rass­ing and pro­voc­at­ive, but not reveal­ing of any abuses, cover-ups or trans­gres­sions of any sim­il­ar­ity at all to those detailed in, for example, the Iraq War Logs. In releas­ing these cables, Wikileaks have engendered a lot of red faces, but for entirely dif­fer­ent reas­ons to the Iraq War Logs. The con­tent of these cables does not, for me, seem a valid jus­ti­fic­a­tion for their release.

Worse, in releas­ing the cables Wikileaks has, I fear, caused a lot more trouble than they could pos­sibly be worth, and here’s why: without the pub­lic interest defence, Wikileaks has lost a massive chunk of the moral high ground on which it pre­vi­ously stood in the minds of many. And in anger­ing and embar­rass­ing the US and inter­na­tional gov­ern­ments as they have, they stand to greatly harm the pro­spects for any­one want­ing to blow the whistle on immoral or illegal activ­ity in the future.

Here’s the thing: while I don’t now look par­tic­u­larly favour­ably on Wikileaks, it’s my belief that it’s essen­tial that whis­tleblowers have an out­let in the soci­ety in which we live. That out­let used to be news­pa­pers; now it might be Wikileaks; in five years it’ll prob­ably be a dif­fer­ent group. But the cap­ab­il­ity of someone to release inform­a­tion without fear for their own safety — be it abuse of detain­ees or fals­i­fied clin­ical tri­als or asbes­tos in coun­cil hous­ing or whatever — is abso­lutely vital. Without it, all these things go unchecked and those doing the wrongs are never brought to account. Previously, how­ever, those pub­lish­ing the leaks were them­selves held to account and so exer­cised a degree of dis­cre­tion over what they pub­lished. Wikileaks, it appears, have aban­doned dis­cre­tion and lost a lot of cred­ib­il­ity in the pro­cess. An organ­isa­tion that pre­vi­ously garnered a lot of respect now ends up look­ing at best like the per­pet­rat­ors of an awful mis­judge­ment and at worst, a bit childish.

My fear is that Wikileaks has now set in motion a revenge machine that will not stop until all these voices are silenced. The pur­suit of Julian Assange is largely an irrel­ev­ant sidebit in this story — he’s just one face of the organ­isa­tion, after all — but most people have already for­got­ten the plight of Bradley Manning, the US sol­dier accused of being the source of much of Wikileaks’ recent mater­ial. He’ll likely be sent down for some time, and the stage will be set for any future whis­tleblower with the mes­sage that harsh pen­al­ties (crim­inal or oth­er­wise) await those who want to fol­low their con­sciences. What hap­pens to Manning will prove more sig­ni­fic­ant than Assange, but will likely be lost in the media cir­cus. And sadly the US is likely to fur­ther reveal its true col­ours in the meas­ures they take to silence Assange and con­vict Manning — some already under­way and already of great con­cern — and these will be the dire portents on which future leak­ers will look.

It’s pos­sible that Manning was coerced, fin­an­cially or oth­er­wise, but I cer­tainly don’t know and I sus­pect few do, des­pite what they may claim. But how­ever they got this latest inform­a­tion, the point is that in ‘free­ing’ it as they have Wikileaks may well have greatly dam­aged the pro­spects of respons­ible dis­clos­ure hap­pen­ing in the future, and it’s a great shame that the straw that finally broke the camel’s back was a pack­age of watery dip­lo­matic grumblings instead of valu­able exposés of evil and out­rage at the hands of our gov­ern­ments and militaries.