A Somewhat More Nuanced Discussion of my Position on Wikileaks

To begin with, it's difficult to overstate the impact that Wikileaks has had on the way that the internet affects the world on the largest scale. For the first time in human history we are able to transmit information across the globe at the speed of light, and for the first time in human history there is a space where, one information enters, it can never be erased or suppressed. Even if Wikileaks is effectively dissolved, the capacity won't go away, and the organization has had entirely too much publicity to expect no one to rise up and fill the gap. We better get used to it, but it still raises a great deal of interesting question, philosophically, morally, and politically.

I am generally supportive of the work that Wikileaks has done, but at the same time I'm not terribly supportive of Wikileaks. I will try to explain.

First and foremost, I am supportive of a transparent government. More than that in fact, I think that transparency is the bedrock of democracy. I'm a big fan of democracy, and I like to see it work well, because despite the fact that the cold war is over, the threat of totalitarianism still looms, and it always will. Democracy is not and never will be inevitable nor guaranteed.

I would like to see a government which is transparent enough that organizations like Wikileaks aren't popular, where people can rest assured that they know enough about what their elected officials are doing that they don't feel that they need someone like Julian Assange creeping in the shadows. But, that's no guarantee. In fact there's almost no incentive for the government to do that on its own. Thats why we have journalism.

Today journalism is a sideshow, reality tv at best. It's not critical of the government, it's critical of the opposing party and even then it's criticism is superficial. And in the absence of any real watchdog role played by the press, orgs like Wikileaks spring up. They dump massive amounts of information without regard for the content or the newsworthyness of that information, and they generally cause a massive shit storm.

This is the real reason that I support the work that Wikileaks has done. I hope it wakes up the Fourth Estate and makes it realize that if someone is leaking classified information that endangers national security, it's because they haven't done their job in responsibly weeding out the real story and making everything else unnecessary.

I don't think it's the job of military personnel to leak classified documents. I don't think it's the job of Julian Assange to let the world know what it's government is doing. But if you don't like it, blame journalism.