America the Vulnerable by Joel Brenner

Author:Joel Brenner
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

WIKILEAKS’S STATEMENT of purpose is high-minded. In its view, “principled leaking” changes history for the better, and “transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies.” It describes itself as a “multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public.” Since its founding, it claims that it has “worked across the globe to obtain, publish and defend such materials, and, also, to fight in the legal and political spheres for the broader principles on which our work is based: the integrity of our common historical record and the rights of all peoples to create new history.”51

“Multi-jurisdictional” means that the group is not only transnational in principle, but also beyond the ability—thus far—of a government to regulate or shut down. Governments, whether democratically elected or not, have no special status in the WikiLeaks worldview. After all, many governments exercise power beyond their own borders, so why shouldn’t people outside those borders have a say in how they operate? According to this argument, international organizations are ineffective at policing the activities of other governments, because international organizations are just cliques of the governments. That’s where WikiLeaks comes in, because somebody has to decide what information you and I “should” have, and WikiLeaks has nominated itself for this role: “[T]he time has come,” it says, “for an anonymous global avenue for disseminating documents the public should see.”

WikiLeaks relies on crowd sourcing to test the authenticity of its postings. That is, if you publish something for all to see, then the truth about it should quickly come out, regardless of whether the initial information was false, misleading, or defamatory.52 Besides, unlike companies that are interested in shareholders’ profits, and governments that are interested in power, WikiLeaks’s motives are ostensibly pure. It represents “the people” and—here’s hubris—functions as “the first intelligence agency of the people.”

Better principled and less parochial than any governmental intelligence agency, it is able to be more accurate and relevant. It has no commercial or national interests at heart; its only interest is the revelation of the truth. Unlike the covert activities of state intelligence agencies, WikiLeaks relies upon the power of overt fact to enable and empower citizens to bring feared and corrupt governments and corporations to justice.53

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