He never adds any context. PP was a specific analysis. We want leaks that are revelatory.
He leaks stuff that is simply embarrassing or damaging to relations. PP demonstrated actual lies and crimes. A good leak represents something more than a gossip column.
He's giving us mountains of information and letting us decide on the relevance, importance,
Assange gets to claim the trappings of ethical behavior, but does not review the documents. He checks veracity, I applaud him for that. I am sure he thinks that by releasing it all he is either ethical or avoiding the dilemma. I feel the decision to not get involved is unethical.
They review them pretty closely to make sure that they're not revealing important information that could cost lives. Even the Pentagon concluded that no deaths could be attributed to the leaks.
Take the document of the Saudi official commenting they would like to see Iran attacked. If you have it, do you leak it? A person (lets call her Sarah) received that information in trust and passed it along in trust. If there is an authority that if they knew, they would investigate Sarah, leaking the document to them means Sarah will receive some form of due process.
This is why I find the whole "secretive" nature of these conversations to be useless farce. This information can be deduced by anyone who spends .02 sec considering the economics of the Middle East. The religious differences between Saudi Arabia and Iran need not even be considered. If American attacks Iran, Saudi Arabia makes a ****-ton of money because one of their major competitors gets demolished, and they spend no treasure and no lives of their own.
We literally learned nothing from that leak. The major thrust of Wikileaks is that America wastes a lot of time and money keeping obvious information secret.
Another ethical value wikileaks ignores is fairness. Going after America in general is OK with me. It is the biggest country and in deep with two wars. True revelations about the war are important. However, Assange appears to be releasing everything on America without context. I think it is unethical that he is not being fair by not releasing the documents of other nations or not holding back on the US release. It should be obvious at his location that much of the leak is just embarrassing chaff. I feel it is unethical to release that material of only one nation if you cannot do the same for other nations.
We have the information, it's our duty to put it in context.
My concept of fairness is grounded heavily in American common law. Remember when the supreme court through out the Texas sodomy laws? One of the reasons it was rejected was that a law on the books that is infrequently used and only used to unfairly target a group is unconstitutional. I feel that is a good reflection on the ethics of fairness and I feel wikileaks violates it.
Wikileaks is not a government bound by a Constitution. They're a private player. If he has a personal grudge against the US, so be it, he's just releasing information.
It should also be pointed out that many nations were affected by these leaks.
Next, he says he is going to release documents on a large, American bank. It sounds like some of the documents will describe perfectly ethical behavior. In that case, why are those specific ones being released? Doesn't a company and the people in it have rights to their trade secrets? I am sure I can repeat this exact same post when he does it and note the same moral lapses.
If he only released documents that displayed unethical behavior, people would complain that he was painting an unfair picture---you know, not giving any context.
I prefer the mass of information. This allows me and others that I respect and trust to go through the documents and discover for themselves what is and isn't important.
The only real problem that Wikileaks will cause is the doubling down of secretiveness in our government. Part of the reason they were able to get all of these transmissions was that agencies are required to share information in the wake of 9-11. If you'll recall, 9-11 occured in no small part because the FAA didn't have the information the FBI had. The FBI didn't have what the CIA had, and so on. Thus, more people were given access. This will most certainly end.
Of course, the better reaction would be to simply realize the futility of 99% of our secretive behavior.
