There’s been a lot of talk about WikiLeaks and the implications on national security. Amazon kicked WikiLeaks off of it’s servers, lawmakers are trying to past “anti-WikiLeak” legislation, and the founder of WikiLeaks himself, Julian Assange, is being sought by prosecutors in Sweden on alleged rape accusations. (Which the media always caveats by saying “completely unrelated to the WikiLeak issues”, which I think is pretty suspicious).
For anyone who doesn’t know, WikiLeaks is a website that allows people to anonymously submit sensitive documents: government, corporate, religious – basically anything that any group or person wouldn’t want the public to see.
Sounds juicy, right?
While it’s illegal for a government official to leak sensitive and confidential information, it’s not illegal for a site like WikiLeaks to pass on that information. As you can imagine, this creates a host of enemies for WikiLeaks, including the US Government – there are a lot of secrets that the government would prefer to remain secret.
Some of the latest leaks:
- The US has been spying on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, to find out, among other things his credit card numbers, frequent fly account numbers and his “management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat”.
- The US Embassy called Prime Minister Gordon Brown “abysmal” and his election to office a “disaster”
- The State Department wanted to know if Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was medicated
- And so much more….
I’ve gone back and forth as to whether I support WikiLeaks. On one hand, I’m of the opinion that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you always should. On the other, given how biased media is, I wonder if WikiLeaks is the only way for the public to see world news without the political shielding.
Ultimately, I want to see the world the way in which it happens. I’m sick of news media slants, be it left slanted or right slanted – it’s not journalism.
What happened to the Bob Woodwards and Carl Bernsteins of the world? Until we get them back, I’ll support WikiLeaks.
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