Wikileaks: What the good book says

“There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nothing hidden that will not be made known. Everything you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight; what you have whispered in locked rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops.”  – Luke 12:2-3

The Bible is not really my cup of tea but this quote is spot on..   so too is the article where I found it -on Daniel Ellsberg's blog, citing a press release by the 'Institue for Public Accuracy' about Wikileaks and the American government's problem with integrity, justice and accountability. 

It was Ellsberg that leaked the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War - and the press release is signed by list of heavy weights all familiar with the predicament Julian Assange & Private Manning now find themselves in.

All power to their elbow...  Go read!

Wikileaks: the messenger and the hydra's teeth

You can understand that it is uncomfortable for some to find their dirty washing hanging out in public.  I am all for privacy...

But whose privacy? Do we want privacy for government and surveillance of the individual?  Or the opposite.  Transparency in government and privacy for the individual?

Governments, senior politicians and powerbrokers everywhere are leaning hard to close down Wikileaks...   their DNS servers, their Paypal account.  One is struck by the effort going into closing down the source of the leak - rather than admit to or address the issues raised.. 

But why shoot the messenger?  Whistleblowing is a recognised and protected principle.  Journalistic sources are protected  - for instance in the Swedish constitútion - and in many countries including the US, there are laws protecting individuals rights to blow the whistle on misdoings and get protection for it...   In Britain for instance the Public Interest Disclosure Act covers dicslosure of

• a criminal offence;
• the breach of a legal obligation;
• a miscarriage of justice;
• a danger to the health or safety of any individual;
• damage to the environment; or
• deliberate covering up of information tending to show any of the above five matters

Do the cablegate leaks count?  Well judging by the international coverage of them I'd say the case for public interest is proven.... 

So do we want THEM to put the genie back in the bottle?  To go back to feeding us a massaged variant of the truth?  Well... mixing my metaphors a little - it looks like it is not going to happen.  Wikileak mirrors are springing up all over to carry the torch.  Cut off a head and another grows in its place.

The truth will out... inconvenient or not...

For information on Wikileaks mirrors check here...

Assange and the He said She said

The press is full of it.... 

..sexual misconduct by Julian Assange that is.  And, while this is a great spectacle it is ultimately not that interesting.  Any trial is going to come down to a simple 'He said, she said' and while there may well be plenty of testimony it's unlikely that we will end up with a a full unbiased opinion of what actually took place. 

To be honest I don't care.  The ladies in question, driven either by the trauma of their experience, their virtuous desire for justice or a 'hell hath no fury' desire for revenge have reported an incident they believe breaks the law. Julian Assange almost certainly has a different interpretation of events...  and a court will decide if he either did, or didn't do something that breaches Sweden's laws. It will sell a lot of papers....

Neither outcome has any particular bearing on the activities of his brainchild Wikileaks. 

The fact that the case seems to have been badly handled by the Swedish authorities is largely a sideshow.  It seems likely that the way it has been handled falls short of the standards here for legal protection of information on a suspects identity - something they will no doubt get mauled for - but as far as I can see that all hinges on the original prosecutor who, when asked on the phone by a journalist if they had raised a warrant on Assange stupidly said 'yes' rather than 'no comment'.  Journalists we should remember are professionals in weedling information out of people... 

In fact the most interesting thing from my point of view is who tipped off the press?  .. and with what motive?  (...since it resulted in unproven but serious accusations about someone's private life becoming front page news around the globe)

But being Sweden, the press's sources have full legal protection...  so I'm not likely to find out anytime soon.