Leaks (Wiki and others)
August 2, 2010
Wikileaks, an organization created in 2007, released more than 10,000 classified Army documents on the war in Afghanistan.
Wikileaks’ purpose, according to its website, is to: “protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public.
They believe that “transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people.”
There is a paradox in the way Wikileaks operates. Wikileaks claims transparency but will not reveal the source of the information they diffuse. How can one ascertain that the information is correct if the source is anonymous? This was pointed out by Farhad Manjoo, a blogger on Slate.com who asks: “Is radical transparency compatible with total anonymity?”
Was there a moral justification or even a moral imperative to release these documents? Apparently Julian Assange, the spokesperson for Wikileaks, believes so. He said that the documents content might show evidence of war crimes.
Robert Gates, the U.S. Secretary of Defense thinks otherwise. He said: “There’s also a moral culpability they have put this out without any regard whatsoever for the consequences.” He believes that the publication of those documents will threaten the lives of individual Afghanis named in the documents that have given assistance to the U.S. Army
We know that in the past the Government and the Army have used national security argument as an excuse to prevent the American public from finding out information that was detrimental to Government’s reputation and that had nothing to do with security.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the case of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers that “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”
However, in this case, it is most probably true that the Taliban will target the Afghanis that were named in the documents.
How should we deal with confidential information that we might come across that we believe could be harmful to individuals, our corporations? When should we become whistleblowers?
Let me list a few thoughts.
We should:
1. Make sure that the information we have is accurate and factual.
2. Check our motives and make sure that they are purely disinterested.
3. Think about the consequences both for ourselves and for others.
4. Be willing to pay the consequences of our whistle blowing even if it means having to go to jail.
As Edmund Burke once said:
“It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.”
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