It occurred to me as I was looking at the various Wikileaks-related posts and news articles today, that the way to combat Wikileaks is to add to its stash. If they've got 250,000 pieces of classified material, add another 250,000 full of nonsense. Witness the amusing fallout from the Pak press gobbling up what somebody told them (but they were too lazy to verify) was Wikileaks content.
A lot of people, many of them people I like, are making the mistake of thinking Assange is standing up for freedom and openness. My opinion is that he's standing up for his own ego at the expense of some of government's very legitimate requirements for confidentiality, covering not only the protection of sources but also the requirement that diplomats be able to pass their frank assessments to their governments even though they have to smile and nod and profess undying admiration for people who're actually crapbuckets. It's so much fun tugging Uncle Sam's beard that nobody's really thinking about the consequences. David Warren explains it thus:
A conscious act of treason has been performed -- very smugly -- and there is yet no prospect that anything will be done about it. Wikileaks continues to publish privileged U.S. diplomatic traffic day by day, with the full co-operation of the world's "progressive" media, and with the impunity that is granted by an elite "liberal" culture, which lives in something like Michael Ondaatje's moral universe.
Which is unfortunately the alternative universe from which Barack Obama stepped, when he became president. He evidently does not have the intellectual equipment to understand the grave duties he has assumed. And that includes the duty to do something about open acts of treason. If you don't believe that there are is a legitimate requirement to protect sources then google Ivy Bells and Richard Pelton. If you don't believe that dropping diplomatic correspondence into the wrong hands can have catastrophic effects then google Zimmermann telegram. Used to be most diplomatic correspondence was classified for anywhere from 50 to 100 years. A lot of the classified stuff I worked with was reviewed, not declassified, after 30 years, not so much for content as for sources. |