I just cannot make up my mind where I stand vis-à-vis Wikileaks and its recent efforts to reveal everything we already suspected but couldn't prove about most governments today.
Clearly, there will be substantial outfall for diplomacy. Is that a good or a bad thing? Making diplomats a little more cautious about what they say and how they advise their governments could be a "good." On the other hand, all these revelations might make international cooperation much more difficult because of the fear that every comment will end up on the front page of the New York Times. By and large, on this issue, I don't think Wikileaks makes much difference. Diplomats will do what they have to as their governments make demands on them. Wikileaks' seeming focus on the United States might skew the diplomatic scene for Washington for a time, but not forever. The affairs of state will continue around the world.
The military leaks are of a different nature. And here, I class puportedly diplomatic leaks involving covert operations on the ground in war zones. There will almost certainly be deaths and capture with torture. And, there will be fear. Fear of helping one side or another in the conflict. Fear of being an outcast in one's own country. Fear of death. Fear of being abandoned by the very side one was trying to help. To this, add the idea that such Wikileak revelations could be considered espionage, making their publisher subject to US or other law on the subject. The proof would be rather easy. The real problem would be to get jurisdiction over the person since espionage is not an extraditable offense in many countries, although an unintended consequence of the Wikileaks episode may be that many governments rush to make espionage an extraditable offense. However, for the time being, the "espionage" could continue even after a legal proceeding started. But, here, I am opposed to the publication by Wikileaks, or anyone else.
As for revelations threatened to be coming later, mostly about a major US bank, I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what is revealed and what the reaction is. But it is easy to imagine that Wikileaks will eventually publish embarrassing revelations of a personal nature, thus becoming the latest "L.A. Confidential." We already know how to respond to these leaks. We devour them as the day's candy and then ignore them for the most part.
That brings me to some basic questions: Should an entity like Wikileaks be allowed to exist? Is there any social value in its publication of private or "secret" information?
I will certainly be writing more on these questions as we watch the tale unfold, but here are a few preliminary thoughts.
1. Because of today's technology, shutting down a Wikileaks-like entity permanently will be almost impossible. Governments have already tried to block Wikileaks from internet servers based in their country, and the result has been that Wikileaks jumps to a server in another country. The nature of the internet is that information is free and should be available to everyone. In itself, that is not a bad thing. Information is power, the kind of power people need if they are to be good citizens, alert to the hidden agendas of their governments and ever ready to bend their government back to the purposes it was created to fulfill. That is an eternal and never-ending battle - the freedom and political power of citizens in the face of governments that often lie or badly damage the truth to bend their citizens to the government's will.
2. The social value of information, any kind of information, lies in its ability to improve society, thereby helping ordinary people to live better lives. Technology plays a major role in this. Wikileaks types of entities may be the price we will have to increasingly pay for our freedoms. One day, their "leaks" will be just like the morning news headlines, a "ho-hum" after we have quickly evaluated the quality and real value of the leak.
So, we may be entering a new age of information, but it will undoubtedly not have as dire consequences as we expect from our vantage point today.
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