WikiLeaks

[Viking-Sensei]

You're all a fairly diverse, international crowd of smart people. </flattery> I'm curious what your opinions are on the giant global spinning wreckage of a PR situation that WikiLeaks and "Cablegate" have become. I personally subscribe to the George Carlin theory - I root for entropy, and it rarely fails to disappoint, and if we're going to suffer through politics, they might as well be entertaining, but I'd like to see if that's more of an American (or possibly just cynical bastard) point of view, or if the rest of the people "on the ground" are more-or-less behind me on this.

[Graybeard]

You're all a fairly diverse, international crowd of smart people. </flattery> I'm curious what your opinions are on the giant global spinning wreckage of a PR situation that WikiLeaks and "Cablegate" have become. I personally subscribe to the George Carlin theory - I root for entropy, and it rarely fails to disappoint, and if we're going to suffer through politics, they might as well be entertaining, but I'd like to see if that's more of an American (or possibly just cynical bastard) point of view, or if the rest of the people "on the ground" are more-or-less behind me on this.

Because of where I work and what I do, I probably have to avoid comment on the content of these things. However, a couple of comments on context, rather than content:

These shenanigans kind of leave the United States screwed, in my opinion rather unfairly. On the one hand, the administration's position that these kinds of "candid" messages are exchanged all the time is spot on. I mean, how is a diplomatic service, let alone a fact-finding (and there are many kinds of fact-finding outfits other than the CIA) organization, supposed to communicate an observation that they make regarding the integrity or competence of officials in the country where they're posted? Making that kind of observation is one of the things those people are for, after all, and not just for super-spooky goals of overthrowing or even influencing governments. Foreign policy is never formed in a vacuum (although we may change that in the 2012 elections...), and I'd much rather see it informed by real observations from the front lines, even "candid" ones, than relying 100% on political doctrine.

On the other hand, having all this stuff out there hands a big diplomatic advantage to other countries that do the same thing -- they all do -- but didn't see any of their messages compromised except the ones they sent (knowingly or otherwise) to the US. They can play innocent, express outrage, etc., while doing exactly the same thing. The corresponding messages describing contacts between, say, Britain and Russia, or France and China, or India and Saudi Arabia, or Israel and Iran (how's that for a thing they wouldn't want to see the light of day? and yet they could have happened...), and originating in the countries in question and therefore not having been in this traffic, will not evoke public outrage, even though their content is undoubtedly comparably pungent in places.

I have more to say on this, and particularly on the comparison to Climategate (which IMO is a pure tempest in a teapot), but am interested to see other opinions first.

[Sareth]

This is purely my opinion, so people can disagree with me very legitimately.

Personally, I feel that the Wikileaks fiasco is the act of highly irresponsible people. On the part of whoever leaked the information (I won't prejudge if the U.S. caught the right person or not, I don't have the evidence on hand) it is, quite frankly, treason. On the part of Wikileaks itself, it is inflammatory and potentially extremely dangerous, and thus makes them liable to lesser but still very serious charges.

Allow me to explain. Wikileaks justifies this as not harming any legitimate interests or persons, and that in fact they are performing a service by creating openness where skulduggery has been the norm. This is, frankly, an excuse.

As Graybeard has already explained, there is information that needs to be passed between people and agencies with brutal honesty in order to truly understand what is going on in international relations. Because of this leak, this honesty no longer exists. Key leaders will no longer be given frank evaluations they need in order to make decisions, because now people will have to worry about embarrassing information getting out. This will result in far greater tension and misunderstanding in the world as key leaders make uninformed decisions, confusing and frustrating their equivalents in other nations.

Further, a good percentage of this correspondence refers to tension points and vulnerabilities in the security structure of the world. I've worked counter-terrorism ops in the past. As a part of that, it was a professional requirement that I be able to put myself into the heads of terrorists in order to anticipate them and plan ahead. Let me tell you, the information I've been seeing coming out because of this release is exactly the sort of stuff I would love to get my hands on if I were up to no good. Not only is there the much talked of list of "vital security locations" that we've been hearing about, but the discussions of people and national relationships give me a good idea of which security partners are wavering, and why... which gives me the info I need to figure out WHY to attack things. A vulnerable target in a staunch ally might do fiscal and physical harm if hit, but if I know that an ally is wavering because of a specific fear, I can find vulnerable targets that specifically plays to that fear and possibly shatter that alliance altogether.

Of course, our friends at Wikileaks deny this, claiming that they are promoting a better world through openness, but just like I don't want my medical records in the hands of scam artists, I don't want my national vulnerabilities in the hands of terrorists.

[Graybeard]

So no discussion on this? Is the position that Sareth and I generally share (from very different political starting points, note) so obviously right that there's nothing to talk about? I'm surprised; things are never that simple...

[Tiamat]

So no discussion on this? Is the position that Sareth and I generally share (from very different political starting points, note) so obviously right that there's nothing to talk about? I'm surprised; things are never that simple...

I'll come back to this in two weeks. Right now I'm about to start law exams and all of my free non-law headspace is taken up by my friendly argument with ChunLing on the meaning of GENOCIDE!. Busy, busy, busy...

[Drannin]

So no discussion on this? Is the position that Sareth and I generally share (from very different political starting points, note) so obviously right that there's nothing to talk about? I'm surprised; things are never that simple...

I for one am hesitant to speak on this topic because it's so far removed from my regular experience. Having never been involved in this subject matter, I don't think I can really understand what diplomats have to go through on a regular basis, and therefore am in no position to judge either their actions, or those of wikileaks. I realize that this sounds like a cop-out. I just flat-out don't know what to make of this situation. Though, I do wonder why wikileaks seems to be focusing so heavily on the US. Why not some other country? There has to be something leak-worthy there.

In the end, I'm not sure whether to condone or condemn wikileaks, whether to consider them as promoting transparency, or endangering international relations. It's just too far away from me.

However, in the interests of promoting discussion, allow me to play devil's advocate a little bit: how much damage has this leak ACTUALLY caused. Was anything really important or surprising leaked? And will this merely cause an increase in security for the future?

[Graybeard]

Though, I do wonder why wikileaks seems to be focusing so heavily on the US. Why not some other country? There has to be something leak-worthy there.

This is really the point. If this release targets the nominally secure communications of one particular country -- any country -- while involving others only in their interactions with that one, then it is a malicious attempt to harm that country, period, rather than a muddled appeal to "openness and transparency" or anything like that. I will cease to see malice in this only if every other country's cables are compromised and reported as thoroughly as the obvious one's.

Of course, if the leaker had done the same with the diplomatic services of Russia or China, he'd probably be wearing concrete overshoes at the bottom of the nearest river by now.

[Sareth]

I want to agree with you that it's specifically targeting the U.S. It probably is. But we cannot automatically conclude this. Unfortunately, because the materials appear to be leaked by a U.S. source, Wikileaks may be limited in what it can show owing to the source. A U.S. source would provide U.S. specific material.

I suspect that it is deliberate and maliciously targeted, but we can't just assume that.

[Kaigen]

Well, I suppose I could have kept lurking on this board forever, but I've just been getting in the loop on this Wikileaks thing, and this looks like a good crowd of people to discuss it with. Full disclosure: I am a US citizen with no connection to the US military or intelligence community. My knowledge of these things is pretty much limited to a couple of Poli Sci courses I took in college. Grain of salt and all that jazz.

I agree that diplomatic officials need the ability to say brutally honest things in confidence, and that some of the worst fallout from this is that a lot of, as Tim Bray puts it, intelligent people who are "saying the right things to the right people" are going to be axed over this. On the other hand though, the oft-discussed list of "vital security locations" has me wondering if some of these people in the State department aren't going a bit too far with this. Forming informed decisions on who is and isn't corrupt in a foreign government is one thing, checking out "vital security locations," and commenting on their vulnerabilities seems to be quite another.

The flip side of this, though, is that I'm awfully tired of my government lying to me. I don't like finding out that my government is knowingly supporting corrupt governments and telling me they're not. And I'm sick and tired of the "if we reveal this it will endanger our troops!" line because I strongly suspect that it, like executive privilege, is an empty excuse that only protects officials in my own government from having their misconduct revealed. If Wikileaks does lead to greater transparency, that's something I'd be glad to see.

Of course, if the leaker had done the same with the diplomatic services of Russia or China, he'd probably be wearing concrete overshoes at the bottom of the nearest river by now.

As opposed to the US, who is just asking for someone to do this. Well, we'll see what happens with Mr. Assange being arrested and handed over to the Swedish government. If he weren't already such a public figure, I wouldn't be surprised if he made his way to Gitmo (along with all the detainees staying there for the foreseeable future because the Ahmed Ghailani trial turned out to be a fair one instead of a show trial that would vindicate our policies).

[Graybeard]

First of all, welcome to Errant Threads!

The flip side of this, though, is that I'm awfully tired of my government lying to me. I don't like finding out that my government is knowingly supporting corrupt governments and telling me they're not. And I'm sick and tired of the "if we reveal this it will endanger our troops!" line because I strongly suspect that it, like executive privilege, is an empty excuse that only protects officials in my own government from having their misconduct revealed. If Wikileaks does lead to greater transparency, that's something I'd be glad to see.

Thing is, though, it won't lead to greater transparency. In fact it will have quite the opposite effect. That's an easily verifiable observation, not merely a prediction. Steps are already being taken in the US to reduce the number of people who have access to information like what got leaked, and not just the classified stuff; that's been in the news. You can bet that similar steps are occurring elsewhere.

As for whether the "it will endanger our troops!" line is legit, yeah, there's probably some fraction of the time when it's not. There are other times, however, when it definitely is, particularly if the definition of "troops" is expanded to include "intelligence sources and methods living in other countries and not subject to the protection of the leaking country." One need only look at the Aldrich Ames affair, particularly the aftermath part, to get a sense of how "leaks" -- in that case, explicit espionage -- did "endanger" people we would consider "troops" by that expanded definition. "Endanger," as in, "get them snuffed or worse." And yet there is little fundamental difference between what Ames did and what Wikileaks did, except the greater difficulty a counterintelligence service will have with Wikileaks in separating the wheat from the chaff. They'll still do it, and I predict that people will die because of this leak. I hope I'm wrong.

So do you trust Wikileaks to make the judgment call on when the "endanger our troops" line is legitimate and when it's bogus? Sorry, but I don't. An open, an interesting, question is: just who should be trusted to make that determination? More accurately, why are the bodies with statutory responsibility for making it -- and they do exist, there are explicit regulations against classifying things simply because they'd be personally embarrassing to some politician, and not everything proposed to be classified actually becomes classified -- not trusted as they currently exist? And what to do about it? There is an interesting topic: the erosion of trust. But doing what Wikileaks did is definitely not the solution, IMNSHO.