So the government can keep the identities of masses of WikiLeak victims a secret, but failed to prevent the leaks in the first place?
"Now, I’m suddenly bemused at the reaction both from the Democrats and the Conservative peanut gallery, who have rallied to condemn both Manning and Assange, and somehow compare the pair to terrorists.
Don’t get me wrong; I get the whole ‘putting people’s lives at risk’ thing. The first leak, which was too undiscerning in redacting the names of informants in Afghanistan, seemed the most imprudent. It’s only now, after the latest release — which seems to have much more diplomatic bickering and much fewer strategy reports — that the anti-Wikileaks fervor is galvanized. Only now is Wikileaks having its servers pulled and Paypal account dropped. Only now do Clinton, Huckabee, and Palin seem to care.
But if Julian Assange and Bradley Manning weren’t going to release this information, who was? How can we expect the American public to be able to informedly vote for elected officials if it has no idea what’s going on? If the threat of an ascendent Iran is grave enough to unite America, the Arabs, and Israel, shouldn’t the American public know that before they cast their ballots? Shouldn’t we get to decide whether or not our country cooperates with tyrants, or appeases degenerates? At the very least, let us know every four years, before elections are coming up.
And that is the true value of Wikileaks. The success of democracy depends on all parties involved being well-informed. If the U.S. government deliberately prevents the distribution of information that concerns who we, as citizens, should be electing to public office, it’s hard to blame us, the citizens, for electing idiots time and time again. Or perhaps their plan was simply to cut the American public out of the process entirely. And a poor democracy that would be indeed.
In this controversy there is an apt lesson for the politicians of today: there will be more leaks in the future, but citizens needs to know what is going on from the government directly. We need that information to vote, to do business, to know when to talk and when to fight. Reporters can only get so much out of interviews and press conferences. Former Wikileaks employee Daniel Dormscheit-Berg has left his former employer and plans to start a new incarnation of Wikileaks, sans dictatorial Assange-style leadership. But it would seem that Wikileaks is learning from its mistakes. Our elected officials and arm-chair pundits would do well to do the same."
http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N60/markson.html
