STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

Well...at the risk of setting off a debate, I'll play.

It may be helpful to first explain a "wiki" - forgive me if this is already obvious. A wiki, as in "wikipedia," is a web-based software that enables collaboration. It allows lots of users to add/edit content.

WikiLeaks, then, is a wiki-style website in which anyone can anonymously submit documents/video/etc. for publication on the site. (They also accept submissions by postal mail.) They consider themselves a media organization and are a non-profit. Information is vetted and verified by staff editors before being published. I believe several people must sign off on the research before the information is posted.

The documents primarily come from inside governments and corporations. In structured work environments like these, whistleblowers are often dealt with harshly. So WikiLeaks was founded to allow stories to come to public attention while protecting the sources from persecution. In the US, you might be harassed and fired for exposing the truth...but in some countries you'd be killed and your body burned beyond recognition.

So for a couple of years WikiLeaks was praised around the world for exposing corruption, corporate scandals, and criminal dealings. But few in this country had ever heard of them, until earlier this year when the site received many many thousands of documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. A few months later there was a similar "leak" regarding the Iraq war. Last month, some US diplomatic documents were given to WikiLeaks.

The information released and published on the site ranges from comical (the president of Russia likes to party and isn't that bright) to very damning (massacres of Afghan civilians by the US military that were then covered up). The Army private who is accused of submitting many of the war documents, Bradley Manning, has been in jail, in solitary confinement, for seven months.

So on the one hand, WikiLeaks provides a vital service to democracies. In a democratic country, the public is obliged to make informed decisions - after all, we vote. We need to know what our government is doing so we can bring about positive change, and our elected representatives can get very little accomplished without public support (ideally). The media, which includes not just regular news but the vast amount of information available on the internet, exists to educate the public for the purposes of having a thriving democracy. And in a democracy, people value "transparency," see-through-ness, meaning nothing our government does should be kept secret from the public. We deserve the truth - about oil company corruption, the impact of foreign policy decisions, what countries are developing nuclear programs. This is what WikiLeaks set out to do.

On the other hand, WikiLeaks has published classified information that is, well, quite embarrassing to the military and the government. It is argued that releasing such information will inflame anti-US sentiment and jeopardize US interests, or add risk to already sensitive US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whether the release of such information is legal or not is also debated - but legal according to the laws of what country, well, that's another story. WikiLeaks is either a Swiss or a Swedish organization and something of a moving target. It has been successful in the past at defending itself against legal attacks.

The people who run the site are now under government surveillance and constantly harassed by law enforcement. The site itself has been hacked/shut down and its funding sources compromised. Some of the site was hosted on Amazon's web storage servers, and recently Amazon opted to kick their data off. MasterCard also announced it would not allow its cardholders to donate to the site using their MCs. The founder/editor, Julian Assange (an Australian, and quite an enigma in his personal life) has been called a terrorist by conservative political pundits and his life has been threatened repeatedly. Ironically, Assange was just arrested in London after being accused of sexual misconduct by two women in Sweden.

In my personal analysis:

The people of Afghanistan and Iraq already know that civilians are being murdered by the military. They don't need WikiLeaks to tell them this. But the American public is generally under-informed, so we are shocked. It's a classic kill-the-messenger situation. The media outrage over WikiLeaks is manufactured, and is used to distract us from the actual content of the leaks. It is also embarrassing to traditional journalists who have not worked hard enough to uncover some of these stories themselves. As indelicate as the means for disseminating the information may be, I would never choose to remain ignorant, and I would never advocate that the public should remain in the dark about serious issues.

So it's not the release of the information that should concern us, it's *that these things are happening* in the first place, and being kept secret. This should never be acceptable to Americans.

Frankly, the whole thing makes me feel like I live in an alternate universe where people don't care about the truth, they just want to murder the person who is responsible for shining a light in some dark times.