I don't agree. The traditional news outlet that broke this story (The Guardian) has a lot of advantages over WikiLeaks. It has experienced reporters who understand the issues involved. It has a well-known and respected editorial process that can weigh the consequences of a leak versus the potential value to the public. It has a process through which the public can contact the organization and correct errors. When WikiLeaks put out the cables I noticed that there was one cable where they redacted the names of people who had met with US diplomats from the body of the document but not from the title of the document. I looked very hard for any way to contact WikiLeaks to get the matter fixed and found nothing - their website suggested that people interested in providing feedback contact human rights organizations or a couple of law firms in the UK. On the other hand, traditional journalists typically post their email addresses and twitter handles and will often respond to queries.
Yes, the administration is aggressively challenging leakers, but newspapers have a long, successful history of defending their first amendment rights in the courts. Nor is it clear that a UK-based newspaper such as The Guardian would be subject to Justice Department subpoena's or prosecution.
WikiLeaks, particularly under Julian Assange, has demonstrated a complete lack of transparency and biased reporting (c.f. the Collateral Murder video). I have a lot more confidence in, say, The New York Times or The Guardian than Wikileaks.
>>It has experienced reporters who understand the issues involved.
You mean it has experienced reporters who editorialize the leaks. Because that's one of the many benefits of Wikileaks: you get the data in its raw form and can reach your own, independent conclusions if you choose to do so.
>>It has a process through which the public can contact the organization and correct errors.
This is well and good, but the process is not efficient enough to deal with the sheer volume of leaks in a timely manner. Just as an example, Wikileaks released 400,000 leaked documents in October 2010. How much time would it have taken for The Guardian to process them, and would the information still be relevant by the time they were released?
Seriously, I have a hard time accepting a lack of editorializing as a serious argument in favor of Wikileaks. Collateral Murder was editorialized to the point that it hurt Wikileaks' credibility, if anything.
Yes, we got the raw information as well, but often after highly publicized, deeply editorialized publicity stunts.
I agree with the premise of the headline: an organization like Wikileaks is incredibly valuable to a functional and transparent democracy. Wikileaks itself, however, suffers from far too many fundamental problems to serve as anything other than a vague outline of what such an organization should be.
To be fair, Assange advocates what he calls “scientific journalism”[1] in which the editorialized piece is presented along with the raw and unedited primary source(s)†.
He also acknowledges that Wikileaks is an “activist organization” that uses “transparency as its method”[2].
I do not necessarily agree with the editorial voice of Wikileaks but the style of journalism that it promotes is obviously a Good Thing.
>but the style of journalism that it promotes is obviously a Good Thing.
I very much disagree.
The type of editorializing Wikileaks engages in fundamentally undermines their credibility as an information clearing house. When the raw information takes a back seat to the editorial content, it makes it easier for those that would seek to suppress that information to discredit them as a source.
It simply comes down to trust, and I have personal issues trusting a source that has a stated goal of editing and framing the information they release to suit their agenda.
The Collateral Murder release really is a great example of some of the many issues with Wikileaks' approach. It deliberately presents the footage out of context with post-hoc commentary that frames the entire thing in a pretty misleading light, all wrapped up in an intentionally incendiary title.
And the real tragedy of that?
The story behind the footage is tragic enough that it doesn't need that sort of spin to be effective. Wikileaks tried to tack on claims of deliberate maliciousness to what is, in reality, a clear illustration of the brutal, wasteful, and confusing nature of war in the real world. And, by doing so, Wikileaks made it easier for their critics to dismiss them as propagandists since that's essentially what they were engaging in.
I want an information clearing house that I can trust to simply perform the role of disseminating information while protecting themselves and their sources. I simply don't believe that such a clearing house can be trusted and taken seriously while also pushing an editorial agenda.
Julian Assange has said a lot of times that he doesn't like to edit the leaks in general because it is a slippery slope. Many times they do it to prevent dishonest attacks from people regarding some information, stealing impact from the more relevant worthwhile information of the leaks. I agree that the edited version of the collateral murder video was unfortunate but it hardly changed the substance of the video: collateral murder. The changes were minimal, specially if you take into account the impact that the video had. You're giving too much weight to the editorialization of that video, which amounts to nearly nothing in context of subsequent (and previous) leaks from wikileaks. To top it all off, there is not other news organization at the same level of wikileaks in this stuff (I wish there were tho) so for now we're stuck with them, and they are more than good at what they do.
>You're giving too much weight to the editorialization of that video, which amounts to nearly nothing in context of subsequent (and previous) leaks from wikileaks.
I completely disagree with this.
Collateral Murder frames the entire incident as the intentional, deliberate killing of civilians and a journalist. It's filled with commentary telling you exactly how to interpret what you're seeing. You're told that this guy on the video is clearly carrying around a camera. You're told that, sure, some of these guys were carrying around rifles, but they were just calmly hanging around. You're shown a quote from the military saying that they did not deliberately civilians, then shown images of a van with big arrows pointing at it labeled "CHILDREN." The entire thing is presented with the clear implication that these were deliberate killings of innocent people.
The actual context of that video? A mechanized infantry unit in the area was taking fire from unknown sources and the Apache was there to provide air cover. The Apache gunner is sitting in a helicopter being buffeted in the air while peering through a 5"x5" monochrome display -- something roughly the size of two iPhones sitting side by side -- and sees a large group of men obviously armed with rifles nearby. He sees a large cylindrical object and calls RPG because large groups of armed men in a war zone with active shooting going on are more likely to be carrying around an RPG than a Nikon. He opens fire on them.
The result is the same: a bunch of people died absolutely needlessly and tragically. It never should have happened.
But in one context, you're telling people that the military is going around deliberately killing innocent people for no reason. In the other context, people are dying despite the best intentions of the troops involved because war is a messy, confusing, and terrible thing.
Presenting it in one context is just going to turn off anyone who -- rightly -- thinks you're just trying to sell an agenda. The other just might get people realizing that war is something to be avoided because there's no such thing as a clean war.
Wikileaks has two audiences: the people that agree with its editorial voice and the people that are interested in the raw data.
The former are not going to be easily dissuaded from taking Wikileaks seriously because of loyalty (perhaps misguided), nor will the latter because you cannot discredit raw data (except for denying its provenance).
Furthermore, by providing the raw data, scientific journalist give other organizations a chance to provide alternative context and/or analysis.
>Wikileaks has two audiences: the people that agree with its editorial voice and the people that are interested in the raw data.
This borderlines on being paternalistic in overlooking another audience -- arguably the most important one for an information clearing house -- those whose opinions can be swayed by new information if they trust the source of that information.
Engaging in editorial commentary that overshadows the content of the actual data undermines that trust in a very real way. When you're pushing an editorial agenda, people are going to dismiss the data because it's coming from a source they consider ultimately untrustworthy.
>Furthermore, by providing the raw data, scientific journalist give other organizations a chance to provide alternative context and/or analysis.
This is exactly why the clearing house and the editorial voice need to be separate entities. If the data is available, then anyone is free to (and will) perform analysis on it without tainting the data itself with the reputation of agenda of the organization releasing it.
The trustworthiness of data is a function of its provenance, not its accompanying analysis or commentary.
Conversely, the trustworthiness of information (i.e. analysis and commentary) is a function of the degree of bias of the source and not the data that informs it.
If the raw data is universally accessible then there should be no shortage of trustworthy information sources for the third audience you mention. Unbiased sources are ideal but that’s too much to hope for, so the next best thing for that audience is to consult a multitude of sources that are known to be examining the same data.
Finally, I do not think Wikileaks is ideal (I prefer something more like what Nate Silver does). But I take it as axiomatic that a free press — even one with an editorial voice — is a Good Thing. A journalistic organization that also releases its sources is a Better Thing and hence must also be a Good Thing.
>The trustworthiness of data is a function of its provenance, not its accompanying analysis or commentary.
From an idealistic standpoint, sure. From a real world standpoint, trustworthiness colors peoples' perception of the data itself. Including commentary with the release has lead to Wikileaks being viewed as untrustworthy in many people's eyes, resulting in them dismissing the analysis of data sourced from them outright.
Again, in an ideal world, the data would rule all, but that's simply not the way it actually plays out. It's not hard to find examples of exactly this playing out with Wikileaks, and it lessens the overall value of the data they do release in swaying public perception.
>(I prefer something more like what Nate Silver does).
Nate Silver does meta-analysis. He doesn't perform any data gathering himself. He represents the third-party editorial voice I'm advocating. In fact, Silver's model even further illustrates what I'm getting at because it accounts for and weights the reliability of the sources of the raw data.
>This is well and good, but the process is not efficient enough to deal with the sheer volume of leaks in a timely manner.
You seem to imply that anything that can be leaked should be leaked. There is no morality in haphazardly leaking any and all classified information. This is precisely why established news organizations are effective. They have the will to actually vet classified information for things that would count as whistleblowing. Wikileaks has no such motivation.
It is not black and white. Both models have their flaws.
By and large most reporters of The New York Times towed the line before the Iraq invasion and the Wall Street melt down. When you get called into a room by very important people, and are told do it for the sake of the country, few people are going to push back. That's where overly paranoid folk like Assange have a role to play. They force the system to reevaluate the status quo.
>newspapers have a long, successful history of defending their first amendment rights in the courts.
They are also dying. Newspapers make their money from advertising. The price you pay for the paper barely covers the cost of printing and delivering it. But print advertising has fallen off a cliff in the face of the web. You can hear all the old hands complaining about how it's all Google's fault (or whatever), but it isn't anybody's fault, it's just a fact. It's a fact that leaves newspapers without the level of resources they had thirty years ago to fight against government overreach.
And it's another fact that most of those "missing" advertising dollars have gone to the tech sector. Which means we have a responsibility to pick up the slack, one way or another.
Well, the article says "an entity like WikiLeaks," and appears to be referring to its statelessness and ability (or at least willingness) to stay online despite governmental efforts to take the service down. You may be right that WikiLeaks itself is a low-quality or irresponsible example of such an entity, but I still think it's a valid point that these types of entities are beneficial.
Absolutely. I'm completely on board with the concept of an organization acting as an information clearing house for leakers; I just feel that Wikileaks is the wrong organization to be doing the job.
Whether it's intentionally making releases dripping with spin or the inability to function internally (e.g., resulting in the destruction of the Citibank documents), it's clear to me that Wikileaks just isn't up to the job of serving as that sort of clearing house in a credible manner.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anyone else stepping up to the plate to take up that challenge at the moment.
FYI the redactions of the cables as originally published were done with the assistance of several established news organizations. One of which was The Guardian. Therefore the result you criticize was the result of the same editorial process that you extol.
(As for Wikileaks itself, they eventually released all of the cables without redaction.)
One difference is that I can email or call the Times and they are generally responsive. I couldn't contact Wikileaks.
Yes, at first journalists from reputable publications guided the redaction process. However, Wikileaks also gave access to unredacted documents to some very dodgy people, including Israel Shamir, who may have shared documents with the Belarusian dictatorship, leading to arrests of activists (c.f. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/why-i-had-to-lea...)
Of course the unredacted documents were ultimately released. This was done, as I understand it, by a combination of a Guardian journalist revealing the password to a file that he thought was not public and WikiLeaks putting that same file on a server.
To quote from The Guardian:
>>The newly published archive contains more than 1,000 cables identifying individual activists; several thousand labelled with a tag used by the US to mark sources it believes could be placed in danger; and more than 150 specifically mentioning whistleblowers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/julian-assange-a...
I'm not suggesting that The New York Times or The Guardian are perfect - they aren't - but they have decades of experience balancing the costs and benefits of leaks and overall they do a good job (from the Pentagon Papers to today's report). By comparison, what have we learned from the leaks of the diplomatic cables that was worth people getting arrested by dictatorial regimes or getting killed?
By comparison, what have we learned from the leaks of the diplomatic cables that was worth people getting arrested by dictatorial regimes or getting killed?
Historians will argue that one for decades. However I've seen it claimed and argued by knowledgeable people that learning what the US thought about their local dictatorships was a major contributing factor that made the Arab Spring possible. Contributing to the freeing of over 100 million people from dictatorship is a pretty good counterbalance to the ways in which some dictatorships have been able to abuse the information released.
The point that the World Affairs Journal writer seems to be making is that it wasn't the content of the cables that was significant - everyone in Tunisia knew that the Ben Ali regime was corrupt - it was the fact that these cables came from an American source that was particularly humiliating.
I think that's a highly speculative argument. In many of these countries dissatisfaction with the government, social inequality and major unrest have been going on for decades. The kinds of issues that the writer talks about have been discussed very openly in the Arab world (take for example, the Egyptian book and film The Yacoubian Building). I think Wikileaks may have contributed to this milieu, but I don't think it was revelatory.
I acknowledged that it was not an open and shut theory when I said that historians will debate this for decades. However I first heard about it from Teri Gross' interview with Bill Keller, at the time the executive editor of The New York Times.
I have every reason to believe that his opinion was highly informed. Certainly it is more so than mine. And if he gives Wikileaks credit, then Wikileaks likely deserves some credit.
> By comparison, what have we learned from the leaks of the diplomatic cables that was worth people getting arrested by dictatorial regimes or getting killed?
Sorry, are we talking about actual events or is this fiction? Because that didn't happen.
> By comparison, what have we learned from the leaks of the diplomatic cables that was worth people getting arrested by dictatorial regimes or getting killed?
> So I decided to grit my teeth and carry on. Dismay mounted, however, with the arrival of Israel Shamir, a self-styled Russian "peace campaigner" with a long history of antisemitic writing. Shamir was introduced to the team under the pseudonym Adam, and it was only several weeks after he had left – with a huge cache of unredacted cables – that most of us started to find out who he was.
> Press enquiries started to trickle in. A little research revealed his unsavoury history, but I was told Julian would be unwilling for WikiLeaks to publish anything critical of Shamir. Instead, shamefully, we put out a statement simply distancing WikiLeaks from him.
> There followed even more damning allegations. Shamir had been seen leaving the interior ministry of Belarus, an eastern European dictatorship.
> The next day, the country's dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, boasted he would start a Belarusian WikiLeaks showing the US was funding his political rivals.
> Scores of arrests of opposition activists followed the country's elections – but Shamir wrote a piece painting an idyllic picture of free, fair, elections in a happy country.
> Human rights groups demanded answers, amid fears that Belarus may have received material from the cables. No answers were supplied. Julian would not look into the matter.
Notwithstanding that the credibility of James Ball is questionable at best there just isn't any reasonable evidence that someone was arrested or killed in that piece. Surely it does not serve as the basis for your claim?
> It has a well-known and respected editorial process that can weigh the consequences of a leak versus the potential value to the public.
It is neither well known nor respected. The process is not public and there is a great deal of self-censorship that has nothing to do with public safety. There were examples of this even in the publication of the Wikileaks cables.
The New York Times and other media organizations have an independent public editor whose job is to examine and explain how the paper has handled a particular issue and to provide criticism if they feel it is appropriate. They also publish letters to the editor and op-eds by people who disagree.
Again, I'm not saying that the New York Times is perfect, but its a lot better than Wikileaks.
Those are weak checks and balances and are essentially ineffective for those most important problem: Stories which are never reported.
There are serious systemic faults that the NYT cannot solve. For example,
1. Corporate influence
2. Government influence
3. NYT management self-interest
4. NYT institution self-interest.
I'm not saying Wikileaks is perfect, but it certainly plugs those holes.
Finally, you needn't choose between NYT and Wikileaks, both can co-exist. But the world certainly could use more Wikileaks-like organizations than NYT-like ones.
> It has a well-known and respected editorial process that can weigh the consequences of a leak versus the potential value to the public.
Unfortunately, the well-known and respected editorial process isn't transparent to the public. I'm not implying this is bad; just that it is vulnerable to being used for hushing up stuff, dusting important (but inconvenient) information under the "not important" carpet.
I'm with you. The article assumed that making leaks easier is a good thing. I contend that it should be hard to leak stuff -- you should, at the very least, have to convince an editor whose own credibility (and potentially their job) could be on the line. That sort of process makes it less likely that you'll recklessly endanger people over minor issues.
Ironically the unredacted release of the diplomatic cables was caused by the Guardian journalist David Leigh, when he published the password as a chapter heading for his book about Wikileaks.
Keeping the data available once someone leaks it has never been the problem (at least, not since the early 1990s). The only value of something like Wikileaks is in sourcing leaks, either by socializing the "whistleblower" values to make leaking more likely, or providing anonymous communications channels and scrubbers to make leaking safer.
In reality, Wikileaks actually set back government accountability -- PFC Manning going to get life, the whole drama related to Julian Assange, rape, and hiding in an embassy, the internal political strife within the organization, etc.
Doesn't anyone wonder HOW the Guardian got access to those documents? Not only classified, but also to not be shared with foreign allies.
Conspiracy theory:
If I were a Chinese official whose team obtained a truckload of these docs - and given the recent rhetoric coming out of Washington, wouldn't that be the perfect punch in the nuts?
Lets look at the issue more deeply.
Consider the other end of the spectrum: Say the govt collects no data, no surveillence at airports, no wiretaps, no monitoring of any online channels.
Are we ok having our 'privacy' at the cost of security? The sad reality of our world is that there are terrorists, and they need/use things like email/chat/online forums/regular phones for communication.
So the question is where do you draw the line on what is acceptable/not.
The question needs to be looked at a deeper level. Sure, collecting data and having machines do data mining on it is not an invasion of privacy. Thats what these companies do anyway! What defines invasion is the usage. The Fourth Amendment needs a revision to account for the new reality.
Only acceptable use of data should be for detecting patterns that correspond to national/international terror threats.
Unacceptable uses of private data:
- if you are evading tax and the government finds out, this data cannot be permissible as evidence in court and/or used to prosecute.
- if you committed/planning to commit a crime, this data cannot be used as evidence or to prevent it
- the data in general cannot be used as evidence in a court of law or for taking any form of civilian action against an individual
So there is a need to look past the blind 'down with big brother' attitude and decide as a society where to draw the line!
>Are we ok having our 'privacy' at the cost of security?
Yes. Security is fiction, the government cannot make you secure. All the government is doing is to make empty promises and spend your money on security theater and surveillance programs that make you less secure by drastically increasing your exposure against malicious governments, which have killed orders of magnitude more innocent people than any terrorists.
Your argument is a straw man. No one is suggesting that the government should be unable to conduct lawful surveillance subject to a warrant based on probable cause "and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." What people are suggesting is that we not have totally unchecked government surveillance power or be forced to design our technological infrastructure with dangerous security vulnerabilities.
> Yes. Security is fiction, the government cannot make you secure. All the government is doing is to make empty promises and spend your money on security theater and surveillance programs that make you less secure [...]
I really can't remember the last time I had to worry about pirates, smallpox, or a nazi invasion. The government cannot make me 100% secure, but they can certainly make me more secure than I would be on my own.
Don't get me wrong, what the NSA is doing is over the line in my opinion, but rhetoric saying that the government is incapable of any sort of security for it's citizens is a bit much.
The government is incapable of providing absolute security. You cannot be "secure" in the sense that sufficiently determined terrorists will always be able to kill you.
The way this issue is repeatedly framed is as a trade off between security and privacy, with the implication that people should always choose security over privacy and therefore have no privacy. Which is utterly ridiculous. Insert any other two things you please: In a trade off between speed and safety, you should always choose safety. It's complete rubbish because if you always choose safety you can never leave your house (or, ultimately, your cell).
Even the trade off itself is a fallacy, because the reason for privacy is security. Loose lips sink ships. The same logic applies to individuals and corporations. Someone who knows everything about you can easily kill you (or rape you or blackmail you or kidnap your children etc.) Creating a huge database of everybody's secrets is an enormous security threat.
>Are we ok having our 'privacy' at the cost of security?
Yes!
>The sad reality of our world is that there are terrorists,
Not very many of them. Your chance of being injured by a terrorist are basically zero.
>and they need/use things like email/chat/online forums/regular phones for communication.
They can also use things like coffee shops to talk in. We better get mics in there to record every conversation!
>So the question is where do you draw the line on what is acceptable/not.
I draw the line on none of it is acceptable. We're fighting a practically non-existent enemy. The government abusing this power is a vastly bigger threat and has already been happening for years.
The US government is simply too corrupt to be trusted with anything that avoids strict checks and balances. Why do you imagine the founding fathers put that stuff in there in the first place?
> if you are evading tax and the government finds out, this data cannot be permissible as evidence in court and/or used to prosecute.
For now. But that data will be there forever and attitudes on such things may change. And before you scream "ex post facto" I say look at the case of the guy accessing open AT&T links. That wasn't illegal when he did it, it became a crime well after the fact.
I don't understand why this has been downvoted as it doesn't violate any rule on HN. Even if I personally disagree with the comment, it explores a different point of view and it's a contribution to the discussion.
Downvoting to express disagreement is a plague that must be eradicated.
Whenever I see someone downvoted for an unpopular (on HN, anyway) opinion, I always upvote the comment, even if I don't believe that the comment otherwise merits an upvote. It's my way of striking back at the practice.
The "slippery slope" is a real danger when collecting data.
Once we have it piled up in nice data center it would be a shame just to leave it there, and soon everyone and their cousin will be lined up to get a share .. IRS, DEA, FBI and the rest of the alfabet soup. It has pretty much happened already with every government register and I don't see why it wont happen in the future.
And once we start to analyze the data we will see patterns. The guy who stops at the same local pub every day on his way home from work will most probably be scrutinized by both the police and DMV sine driving under the influence of alcohol is considered to be serious matter.
The fact that the pub he visits have the best hamburgers on this side of the Atlantic can't be seen in the gps-location log of his cellphone.
Once people who doesn't follow the ordinary patterns starts to get extra attention from them - the guys with guns and uniforms who have the authority to put you in jail - we will start to self-censor what we say, where we go and in general try to avoid sticking out.
This will hurt our economy, the entrepreneurs who wants to do things in other, better ways isn't there any more - they are buzzy trying to conform. You didn't find to many entrepreneurs in the former eastern block - nor will you find them in your future "balanced" surveillance state.
We will also effectively stop the any development of our society. Not so many years ago homosexuality was a criminal offence, how can the future version of the LGBT-activists possibly assemble, discuss and debate when the rulers of the country knows who and where they are and what they are doing. No more progress and humanism reforms.
We survived the cold war against the Soviet union without having to sacrifice our personal integrity or legal security, and they had spies, infiltrators, actively supported terrorist organizations across Europe and a military with thermonuclear weapons.
Our "enemy" today are a bunch of imbeciles with large beards dressed in nightshirts running around waving with a book that contains as much truth as something written by Brothers Grimm.
And you fear them enough to make the wet dream of stasi a reality?
"First a reasonable suspicion , then limited surveillance" is a principle that have served us well so far, and I hope it will continue to do so.
Unlimited surveillance will lead to unreasonable suspicion, how many honest people should get on the no-fly list of have their job/visa applications turned down for no obvious reason so you can "feel" safe?
the article is full of links, but they're all to newspapers, not the actual sites discussed?! and it won't let me comment without digging up some ancient wordpress account. but the org referred to is "freedom of the press foundation" whose site is https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/
I do not doubt you have good reasons for saying that. But can you share them with us? I contend that isolated opinion from almost anyone is not worth a bag of nuts unless supported by an observation, reason or argument.
I saw a BBC story about Assange that mentioned his mysterious original programmer. It stated that the original programmer and Assange's co-founders left him to create another Wikileaks-like site.
Agreed. If this surveillance is going to happen, it needs to be a two way street. We should be allowed to know how it is being used and when we are individually being tracked.
Yes, the administration is aggressively challenging leakers, but newspapers have a long, successful history of defending their first amendment rights in the courts. Nor is it clear that a UK-based newspaper such as The Guardian would be subject to Justice Department subpoena's or prosecution.
WikiLeaks, particularly under Julian Assange, has demonstrated a complete lack of transparency and biased reporting (c.f. the Collateral Murder video). I have a lot more confidence in, say, The New York Times or The Guardian than Wikileaks.