WIKILEAKS

The recent Wikileaks activity is obviously a big free speech issue so I present below two more or less opposing views of what is involved. Rather amusingly, both come from Left-leaning sources

The WikiLeaks war logs change everything

“Whatever our keepers of intelligence secrets do know, and whatever abuses they’ve done to our civil liberties to learn them, they must feel less sure today about keeping it all contained. When that many people have access to information, however compartmentalized their bosses may think they’ve made the system, some of it will get out, which leads to something else we should worry about. …

The WikiLeaks war diary will absolutely spur our powerful institutions to look for increasingly draconian ways to clamp down on how we share information. What WikiLeaks represents is what governments and corporations fear: a threat to their cultures of secrecy and dominance in their domains.”

Source





Not the Pentagon Papers

“Just because some documents are classified doesn’t mean that they’re news or even necessarily interesting. A case in point is the cache of 92,000 secret documents about the Afghanistan war that someone leaked to WikiLeaks, which passed them on to the New York Times, Britain’s Guardian, and Der Spiegel in Germany. All three published several of these documents — presumably the highlights — in today’s editions.

Some of the conclusions to be drawn from these files: Afghan civilians are sometimes killed. Many Afghan officials and police chiefs are corrupt and incompetent. Certain portions of Pakistan’s military and intelligence service have nefarious ties to the Taliban. If any of this startles you, then welcome to the world of reading newspapers. Today’s must be the first one you’ve read.”

Source

I am inclined to share the concerns of the first article: That a crackdown designed to prevent further leaks may imperil free speech generally. Whether any such legislation would get past SCOTUS is another matter, however. Their decisions are pretty unpredictable but they have lately leant towards protecting free speech.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).