Contemplating Wikileaks

I’m thinking about Wikileaks… like everyone else probably… but I’m not ready to take a position yet.  I need to ruminate.  Here’s what I’ve chewed up so far.

The leaks have always been disturbing, but it seemed as though the goal was transparency, not subterfuge.  Now, with the leak of these diplomatic papers, the implications have changed.  Wikileaks isn’t just airing old, dirty laundry anymore.  They are interfering in ongoing international relations.  Diplomacy isn’t a military mission with firm starts and ends.  Diplomacy is forever.  Diplomats… good diplomats anyway… don’t quit; they move on to the next challenge.  To undermine the trustworthiness of a diplomat is to reduce that diplomat’s ability to function, to serve.  I might go so far as to call a diplomat damaged in this way a casualty, no less injured than a soldier who loses a limb.  This kind of attack cannot be allowed.

Over the last decade, privacy has become secondary… at best…  to security.  Americans were shocked when they learned that the government has been secretly listening in on their phone conversations and reading their emails.  But the outcry was, “How could the government do this to American citizens?”  That the U.S. was also monitoring foreign nationals was met with no outrage at all… if anything, it was expected.  To expect no reaction from the rest of the world was naive.  Wikileaks is another shot… cannonball… fired in the privacy wars that are sure to rage over the next half century or more.  Is personal privacy the private citizen’s analog to governmental national security?  Should my private emails be less secure than a diplomat’s or General’s?  If not, why not?

Governments claim that they are entitled to invade our privacy in order to keep us safe.  But isn’t providing for my safety more than just keeping me alive?  Safety is more than just physical.  If anything, my privacy is one of the things I most want my government to keep safe.  Security is more than protecting my physical self; it is also protecting my place in society while simultaneously protecting my ability to speak freely, worship freely… all that first amendment stuff… including the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances… everyone forgets that one.

George Orwell couldn’t have anticipated Wikileaks.  It never occurred to previous generations that the public would have as much access to information, to power, as governments.  The cameras are everywhere, it’s true, but the cameras don’t belong to Big Brother.  They are in every computer, every cellphone… every purse and pocket.  Someone is always watching, but it isn’t capital A Authority, it’s us.  We are the eye in the sky.  I wonder if that’s democracy or socialism?

If Julian Assange is arrested and prosecuted, others will rise to take his place.  And the U.S. won’t always be the only target of these groups.  How long will it be before there is an Iranian or North Korean Wikileaks?  Will we be as outraged then?

I don’t remember the first time I heard someone say that privacy is a myth.  As it turns out, “classified” and “top secret” are myths too.

That’s a lot to chew on.  I’ll let you know when I decide where I stand.  I’m open to suggestions.  Feel free to leave some.