Leaking Confidential Information Through WikiLeaks To Promote Transparency
Contents
Concerns with WikiLeaks
Wikileaks claims that the basis of their work is Article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights arguing that civil rights require expression and receipt of information rights without boundaries. However, leaking US diplomatic cables content made civil rights organizations reconsider their previous positive stand on WikiLeaks, which is notable because of WikiLeaks’s belief that their work is through the agency of civil rights. Many believe that Wikileaks is not an effective method of exposing ethical, historical, or political information transparency because even the successful aspects of these social structures are built on the same ambiguity of information that leads to corruption.
Risk Assessment
WikiLeaks’s public disclosures put lives at risk, however, these administrators fail to think about risk assessment. For many, their mindset creates the fallacy that they will not be the ones that are harmed, others will. This is true of the executives of WikiLeaks especially in the context of the Iraq War Logs and Afghan War Diary leaks that caused widespread panic amongst government officials, not because they were being exposed, but because they worried that the public access to this information would put a lot of lives at risk. The Afghan War Diary is one of the, if not the most, important leaks that led to WikiLeaks’s loss of support because they were accused of revealing hundreds of identities of people who were involved with the Afghan coalition which put them at risk. Systems like the Witness Protection Program exist to protect informants from individuals who would harm them for testifying and information is classified for large scale disasters like the Afghan War for the same purpose.
Government Transparency
WikiLeaks is comparable to newspapers around the world because of the tendency for both to publish classified information without authorization. One of the most common issues in the journalism field is the hypocrisy that over-ambitiousness creates in journalists. Journalists relentlessly chase after stories with no regard for how the people involved will be affected by the angle they curate to make their story front page news. If there was no way for people contributing to stories in the media to keep their name off the record, it would be impossible to have stories in the first place! Witnesses would not testify for crucial criminal cases, people would fear to describe suspicious activity they have seen around their neighborhood, and no one would report and identify abusers if there was no way to keep their information confidential. Losing a right to protect sources would lead to extreme transparency, but this would not create a truer form of democracy or a more civil society. It is very unrealistic and naive to expect the government to be completely transparent about their sources and dialogue because the government exists to make the best decision for the country as a whole. This is a nearly impossible task in the first place, however, the political divide continues to grow wider annually. So, creating a huge glass window into the inner workings of government decisions would not create a more united course of action to solve issues. Instead, it would emulate the metaphor of ‘having too many cooks in the kitchen’ and make it infinitely more difficult to make progress as a society by expanding every issue into an unnecessary debate amongst people that have no control over the problem at hand.
Confidentiality vs. Transparency
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere stated that “Confidentiality and transparency are not mutually exclusive, but rather two sides of the same coin.” (“Spiegel Interview with German Interior Minister: 'Wikileaks Is Annoying, but Not a Threat'.”) People in support of WikiLeaks suggest that the exposure of the government will hold them more accountable and encourage more transparency in different diplomatic areas. There are certainly instances that could have been solved by having the government under a magnifying glass, but it is important to recognize that simply leaking classified documents to the general public is a very extremist method of motivating change and there is a better way to achieve the same goal through a more middle ground approach rather than WikiLeaks or nothing. Another severe downfall of WikiLeaks’s methods is the fact that it is extremely difficult to judge how important the data set is because such a large amount of diplomatic cables became publicly available. To leak thousands of pages of documents and expect the general public to come to one consensus about the main ideas of the issue is impossible. People see and hear what they want to, and as a result it is not productive for people to have access to a confidential issue so they can skim certain paragraphs and hyperfixate on elements of the cables that are irrelevant. Ultimately, it is very probable that WikiLeaks will have the complete opposite effect than intended, meaning an increase in government restrictions and Internet censorship. Stephen Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy stated “ . . . And above all, it has launched a sweeping attack not simply on corruption, but on secrecy itself. And I think that’s both a strategic and a tactical error. It’s a strategic error because some secrecy is perfectly legitimate and desirable. It’s a tactical error because it has unleashed a furious response from the US government and other governments that I fear is likely to harm the interests of a lot of people besides WikiLeaks who are concerned with open government. It may become harder to support protection for people who disclose and publish classified information after WikiLeaks.” (“Is WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange a Hero? Glenn Greenwald Debates Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News”) WikiLeaks has already been the target of denial-of-service attacks following their publication of diplomatic cables in November 2010 that exposed sensitive government issues on a global scale. So, there have already been evident signals pointing to firmer legislation and increased surveillance.
Legal Attacks Against WikiLeaks
There are also multiple bills in progress like the SHIELD Act targeting forces like WikiLeaks and making it illegal to publish names of informants and another aiming to extend US government rights to wiretap. It would be very simple to use WikiLeaks as a case to pass these bills because it has dipped into issues “including access to government information, censorship and the blocking of websites, government secrecy and the over-classification of government information, treatment of whistleblowers, government transparency and the legalities surrounding classified information.” (“What is the effect of WikiLeaks for Freedom of Information?”) Wikileaks has a very extreme method of motivating information transparency that does not take into account the multitude of reasons why the information they leak is considered confidential and not authorized for public knowledge, so it is more likely to cause stricter restrictions and surveillance to keep these structures in place.
References
“Iraq War Documents Leak.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Sept. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak.
“Is WikiLeaks' Julian Assange a Hero? Glenn Greenwald Debates Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News.” Democracy Now!, https://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/3/is_wikileaks_julian_assange_a_hero.
Latonero, Mark, and Zachary Gold. Data, Huma Rights & Human Security. 22 June 2015, https://datasociety.net/pubs/dhr/Data-HumanRights-primer2015.pdf.
Pontin, Jason. “Is WikiLeaks a Good Thing?” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology Review, 2 Apr. 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/02/22/119564/is-wikileaks-a-good-thing/.
Stark, Holger, and Marcel Rosenbach. “Spiegel Interview with German Interior Minister: 'Wikileaks Is Annoying, but Not a Threat'.” DER SPIEGEL, DER SPIEGEL, 20 Dec. 2010, https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/spiegel-interview-with-german-interior-minister-wikileaks-is-annoying-but-not-a-threat-a-735587.html.
“United States Documents Leak of the War in Afghanistan.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 June 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_documents_leak_of_the_War_in_Afghanistan.
“What Is the Effect of Wikileaks for Freedom of Information?” IFLA, https://www.ifla.org/publications/what-is-the-effect-of-wikileaks-for-freedom-of-information/.
