Slashdot Mirror
Why WikiLeaks Is Unlike the Pentagon Papers
daveschroeder writes "The recent release of classified State Department cables has often been compared to the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg, the US military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, has said he supports WikiLeaks, and sees the issues as similar. Floyd Abrams is the prominent First Amendment attorney and Constitutional law expert who represented the New York Times in the landmark New York Times Co. v. United States (403 U.S. 713 (1971)) Supreme Court case, which allowed the media to publish the Pentagon Papers without fear of government censure. Today, Abrams explains why WikiLeaks is unlike the Pentagon Papers, and how WikiLeaks is negatively impacting journalism protections: 'Mr. Ellsberg himself has recently denounced the "myth" of the "good" Pentagon Papers as opposed to the "bad" WikiLeaks. But the real myth is that the two disclosures are the same.'"
They keep telling us that if we don't like them knowing what we are doing then maybe we shouldn't be doing it. How come we can't say the same in return? It seems even more difficult to swallow, considering they work for us via the hard earned money ripped from our hands to pay them to do these things.
Anybody else think the whole "oh noes, Wikileaks might tell the truth about something, those bastards!" and the whole "they're traitors! (by being open and honest when gov't doesn't want to be, what treachery)" is completely overinflated and overblown?
Only the very powerful very entrenched type of interests have anything to fear from anything Assange is going to do. Am I the only one who would love to see them squirm for once? They kill thousands and harm the quality of life of millions. It's quite amusing to see them suffer. I am not going to take any action myself, but it sure is nice to see them taken down a peg or two. They need it. We need it. What's the problem here?
The "damages" caused by Wikileaks seem to use RIAA-style math, where every copy is automatically a lost sale with no burden of proof attached to that claim. In other words, it's bullshit. Name the first name, last name, and location of a single individual person who has been physically injured by anything Wikileaks has published and explain how he/she would not have been physically injured if Wikileaks didn't exist. Nobody in media wants to do that. They want to go for the emotions instead of the evidence. They are part of the problem, and if they don't like Wikileaks that's basically a damned seal of approval to me.
I think Floyd Abrams hit it right on the head. The idea of any secrecy being somehow intolerable in diplomacy is a daft idea. For example, there were many diplomats working in German occupied territories in WWII who were issuing visas to Jewish refugees despite the fact that their governments instructed them not to. (For example, Ho Feng Shan, Raoul Wallenberg, etc). Would it be a good thing for these cables to be released to the public? What about secret negotiations with a government who doesn't want to publicly take actions to pressure a rogue state (say, China and North Korea?). There's a lot of discreteness that is needed in diplomacy that must be done in secret. The mentality that any secrecy is inherently wrong is counterproductive, to say the least.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
No it's not Wikileaks that is negative impacting journalism protection... That is like saying, it where the jews that negatively impacted Nazi-German war-crimes. It really are the bastards trying to prosecute Wikileaks and Assange that are negatively impacting free speech and journalism. Make no mistake about that part.
Since no one ever RTFA, the gist is that Wikileaks sees things in a very simple, black and white universe. Everything must be open at all times. With the leak of the Pentagon Papers, not all of it was leaked initially. In fact, portions of it were held back for years because the leak would only cause harm to diplomatic relations and it had no bearing on the purpose of the leak (to expose the fact that the US government lied to its people about Vietnam).
The latter part of the article is the important part. It suggests that Wikileaks may force the government to come down hard in its enforcement of laws, and hurt journalism in the long run.
To the former, I personally have no respect for Wikileaks simplistic view of total transparency when they are shrouded in secrecy themselves. As for the latter, I really hope that isn't the case.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
WikiLeaks is different. It revels in the revelation of "secrets" simply because they are secret.
The article misses one huge fact - Mr. Ellsberg is an American, Mr. Assange is not. While Ellsberg leaked information people needed to know, he was doing so to show how his country was lying to the population. Assange shows other countries places where their governments have lied to their people due to US pressure.
Who is served by the release of these cables is a huge difference between the two situations.
Except Wikileaks didn't release all the cables at once (most still aren't released, we're only about 3% into it), and redacts a lot of information (some 15,000 war reports from Afghanistan, for example).
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Taken as a whole, however, a leak of this elephantine magnitude, which appears to demonstrate no misconduct by the U.S., is difficult to defend on any basis other than WikiLeaks' general disdain for any secrecy at all.
Just off the top of my head
Wikileaks has revealed that:
security contractor DynCorp (who were commissioned to train the Afghan police forces) paying for drugs and (pre)teen party boys
"appears to demonstrate no misconduct by the U.S." ?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Exactly. Last sentence in WSJ article says: If he is not charged or is acquitted of whatever charges may be made, that may well lead to the adoption of new and dangerously restrictive legislation. The way I understand ths: You live in a free speech state, but if you actually practice free speech, we will hit you with restrictive legislation. Therefor,e with practicing free speech, you are being responsible for it's destruction. So in god's name, don't do it if you want to live in free speech society.
I'm confused, because TFA states "Taken as a whole, however, a leak of this elephantine magnitude, which appears to demonstrate no misconduct by the U.S., is difficult to defend on any basis other than WikiLeaks' general disdain for any secrecy at all." Did the author even look at them, or just accept this fact from others, because I've heard of several examples of misconduct. I've also heard of a ton of stuff that's innocuous or laudable, and I personally am uncertain this leak was overall a good idea, but to say that the release brought no evils to light is disengenuous at best.
The most notable that I recall is funding of companies that support child sex slavery. That's a pretty serious charge that was suppressed for political reasons. I don't really follow all the furor over the leaks, but I know there were other similarly damaging issues brought to light, and you cannot truthfully state that there was 'no misconduct' found.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Some asshat brought those damn Pentagon Paper shit on the table and we can't really say that it was wrong to disclose them, because in hindsight it was a good thing. Can't argue about that. And that Wikileaks problem looks stunningly the same. Dammit!
We need some spin that disconnects them, the last thing we need is that it becomes public opinion that they are the same and someone makes the connection "If A is good and A is B then B is good".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
>>There's a word for that: hypocisy.
>No, there's another word for that: diplomacy
Tom-ay-to, to-mah-to.
"Phrasing something diplomatically" in ordinary speech means telling the same truth but using the softest wording. You may be told "we just can't afford an engineer of your caliber in these tough times" rather than "you're fired", but you still leave the meeting understanding you don't show up tomorrow.
Hypocrisy, on the other hand, generally involves lying.
When "lying" is mixed up with "diplomacy", the diplomacy suffers in the long run because people won't trust what you say.
And, by the way, as much as I admire the courage of Morgan Tsvangiri, and concede he's way, way, WAY better than Mugabe, I'm not sure that Zimbabwe will ultimately be served best if he makes it into office on top of a pile of lies. They have a way of coming back to bite.
[Ellsberg didn't release four volumes on the] diplomatic efforts of the United States to resolve the war.
Yeah, because undermining an effort to stop a war is a bad thing. That's a diplomatic action that's, you know, doing good in the world. These recent cables on the other hand, reveal the shady underhanded diplomacy of the USA.
-Shoving USA-style IP laws onto Spain
-Bribing, threatening, and then withholding millions in aid to Ecuador and Bolivia so they'd agree to the Copenhagen Accord. But Saudi Arabia gets a free pass, because we need their oil.
These cables were not about stopping a war. Getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't hinge on Russia or China. It's mostly just saving face for politicians in the USA.
I like America. It's a nice place. But we're supposed to be the good guys. That's WHY I like America. If the USA is being shady, then we need to fix that. And the first step is to know that it's being shady. So simply because these cables are "diplomatic", doesn't mean that they get a free pass.
TFA:
[the leaks] which appears to demonstrate no misconduct by the U.S
Floyd apparently hasn't read much of the actual leaks. In addition to the above, there's also:
-DynCorp, funded by USA taxpayers, bought young male sex slaves for Afghan cops in a "batca bazzi" party. It's a tradition over there apparently.
-They're moving prisoners out of Guantanamo to foreign prisons.
-Under reporting deaths in Afghanistan. It's not going nearly as well as they've said it has. That's lying to the American people.
-Diplomats know that the Saudi Arabians are the primary donors to Al-Queada. Aren't they an ally? Isn't our "strong military presence" in the area supposed to stop that sort of thing?
-The CIA pressured Spain into dropping investigations into the killing of José Couso, a Spanish journalist, in Iraq by American troops.
Plus there's plenty of examples of the USA knowing that others are doing blatantly illegal things, like
The Shell Oil Company claimed it had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to every movement of politicians. Ann Pickard, then Shell's vice-president for sub-Saharan Africa boasted that the Nigerian government had "forgotten" about the extent of Shell's infiltration and was unaware of how much the company knew about its deliberations.
Or that China was indeed behind the attacks on Google. Which, of course, most of slashdot was aware of. And here's the thing. Even though we-in-the-know would bet good money that it was China, the ignorant masses would tell us to prove it, and say our claims were unsupported gossip. Which it was. But now we have evidence.
Please, Mr. Abrams, go read the wiki page on the actual content of the cable leak. (and all the fractured sub-sites that hopefully isn't some ruse to hide away the information)
I'm sure he won't mind me pointing out that he works in a United States government intelligence agency. This should really be pointed out at the top of this discussion, which is why I'm hijacking this stupid first post. Dave, how come you never mention this salient fact when you are pushing government propaganda?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Chomsky noted twenty years ago that discussion of the alleged dangers of unrestricted free speech was already occurring openly back in the mid-1970s:
"...the issue debated is whether the media have not exceeded proper bounds... even threatening the existence of democratic institutions in their contentious and irresponsible defiance of authority. A 1975 study on "governability of democracies" by the Trilateral Commission concluded that the media have become a "notable new source of national power," one aspect of an "excess of democracy" that contributes to "the reduction of governmental authority" at home and a consequent "decline in the influence of democracy abroad." This general "crisis of democracy," the commission held, resulted from the efforts of previously marginalized sectors of the population to organize and press their demands, thereby creating an overload that prevents the democratic process from functioning properly." [Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, South End Press, 1989, available online at chomsky.info]