What's the Risk of Wikileaks?

Less news-item, more I-need-to-talk-about-this-because-it's-important.

found at strollerderby, which is excellent

The coming indictment of Julian Assange as spokesman for Wikileaks is fraught with a lot of talk of "damage" and "danger". The Cablegate leaks have been called "irresponsible" by about as many as have lauded them for being a win for diplomacy or transparency or good government in the long-term.  There are many different arguments supporting both sides, many of which are really, truly legitimate. I believe wikileaks as an organization is flawed, and the information they make available to be incendiary by nature, even when it's boring. I don't even necessarily believe that all of the information leaked should have been made available.
But I've got a lot of questions about the claims that the leaks are pernicious and literally put lives at risk. Not because I think they're wrong--but because I think they're talking about the wrong lives.
(more post-jump)

On ABC news this morning I found the US Attorney General saying "The lives of people who work for the American people has been put at risk; the American people themselves have been put at risk by these actions that are, I believe, arrogant, misguided and ultimately not helpful in any way." And my brow furrowed, and I got a cup of tea, and buckled down for some serious braining.

I can imagine how the release of secret documents that show a country's embassies to be working unprofessionally, and sometimes illegally, would make working in those embassies difficult. I can empathize with the fact that working in the context of other countries is hard to do, and that the intersections of culture, international relations and politics are always going to be challenging to navigate. That's what being a diplomat is. I can also appreciate the desire, and the occasional need, for secrecy and information security in the course of doing this work.

But I have a few caveats:

1) I don't think that the world knowing that Gaddafi gets Botox is going to kill anyone. The information in the cables is damning and damaging, but mostly to institutions, not to individuals that aren't already in the public sphere. This is intentional.

2) I know that wikileaks contacted the State Department for help with redaction on the cables in order to keep people safe, and they refused. That would make anything not redacted and actually dangerous something that the US government could have explicitly avoided, and didn't.

3) Wikileaks has a truly incredible track record with keeping people safe--better than its track record for damaging institutions.

But foremost among all of these is this: I'm honestly confused as to how any of this puts lives at risk more than state-sponsored actions like invading and attacking middle-eastern countries.


If it's a question of unilateral decision making--that nobody got to vote on the leaks being, well, leaked--I'm not entirely sure how much that holds water in the face of the War on Iraq/Afghanistan/Terror's limited democratic input, and what input there was being solicited using outright lies. And if it's a question of adherence to bodies of international law, looking at what the UN had to say about invading Iraq can shoot that full of holes.

If it's a question of harm to the American people specifically, I can think of a dozen domestic policies that have been walloping the tar out of Joe Plumber and co. for the last ten years (roughly as long as I've been capable of holding a political thought) more than knowing Serbia thinks the Russians helped Ratko Vladic, or almost anything else in the cables.
And I have deep, deep doubts that the countries involved will threaten the incredible superpower that is the United States, because some minor diplomat said Prince Andrew had something in his teeth. They still hold all the cards, all the military supercarriers, and most of the money. Even if they owe it all to China by now.

So who will it hurt?

How about the press? How about net neutrality, or freedom of expression? As the US scrambles to get their opacity back, in order to get their power back, Assange's theses become more and more evident, and wikileaks becomes more and more necessary. As people arrest a 16 year old kid on suspected botnetting for Anonymous, try and equate Assange with wikileaks to discredit wikileaks, and call exercising freedom of the press a terrorist act, I worry more and more what I'll be able to say, do, and think if they take down wikileaks.

The reason I started this blog is because I looked around and got spooked at how easy the insane battle for the freedom of our speech and the soundness of what little democracy we have left as Westerners is to overlook. 

And to have a place to talk about it, and occasionally turn my head up to the ceiling and scream "What the fuck is happening to the world I thought I lived in??"

/end rant.