Maybe this is true, I don't know how much of this is sensationalist. But something to learn from previous experience. Right before the release of Apache video, Julian claimed in his twitter that his men are being followed and being watched by government agents then went silenced for 24 hours only to come back and say that everything is fine. As we now know that nothing happened to them, no one was killed, no one from Wikileaks was kidnapped or arrested or attacked.
I think we need to show some healthy amount of skepticism towards Wikileaks as well, it is also in their interest to generate as much noise as possible before each release, they have successfully done so the last time and they will most likely use the same recipe over and over again.
While I agree that we should be skeptical towards the noise Wikileaks is making, we should always be skeptical towards the noise any government is making. Since Wikileaks is one of the best tools with which to take a skeptical look at the hype generated by a government's PR machine(s) I think it's great that news sources are rebroadcasting the noise being made by Wikileaks.
I think our level of skepticism shouldn't vary from one entity to other. If Wikileaks is intentionally lying about this incidents to drum of noise should it not have any effect in their credibility? My problem is not Wikileaks or Government, my problem is with treating entities and individual as if they are above all scrutiny and skepticism. They have previously lied about their board members (named Chomsky as a member, Chomsky says he doesn't know anything about it. Including few other high-profile board members). Refuses to release documents using cheap means like bit-torrent, but claims they need 600k/year to keep running; when they have lawyers working pro-bono for them or non-profit organization paying for some (if not all) legal costs. They removed the list of non-profit organization that is paying for legal costs after they came back online earlier last month, it might be still there, I couldn't find it.
Does the nature of their leaks makes them immune to criticism and valid skepticism of their intentions and motives?
The article keeps using the word "whistleblower", which I think may be inaccurate. A whistleblower is someone who breaks secrecy in order to expose something that's wrong. But leaking 260,000 state department cables just seems like leaking for the sake of leaking.
You can figure out the ethics by thinking about the question : "Does the leaked stuff pose a national security risk or does it pose a national security embarrassment over basic human rights violations, waste, carelessness and so on?".
> But leaking 260,000 state department cables just seems like leaking for the sake of leaking.
The original leak was probably just a leak for leak's sake. They already caught that guy. However if any of these cables point to any embarrasing stuff that is secret just to avoid the govt. from appologizing, and Wikileaks picks it up after it was already exposed, then this becomes a whilstleblower issue.
I know legally they've sent the dogs after him because "if it is classified it is classified and we are not the department to ask why it was classified", but everyone else should automatically side with the govt.'s point of view if the data points to some serious moral and ethical problems inside Pentagon.
"Does the leaked stuff pose a national security risk or does it pose a national security embarrassment over basic human rights violations, waste, carelessness and so on?"
I have no idea, I haven't seen the leaked stuff. But where diplomacy is concerned the line between "embarrassment" and "risk" is pretty thin, especially where the embarrassment is to another country. There could easily be things like candid discussions of personal weaknesses of foreign dignitaries, diplomatic tricks played to fool other countries into doing things, invoices for the hookers they hired to entertain the Saudi ambassador... if these sorts of things become public they could turn allies into enemies, and that's not good for anyone.
Sorry to reply to my own post. The edit window seemed to have expired, the last paragraph should say "...but everyone else should NOT automatically side..." .
This was also my idea..I would like to see more documents from totalitarian regimes like Iran, China, North Korea, etc. Maybe Russia.
On the other side, that guy is not American, and he is not responsible for U.S. national security. Is he obliged to cooperate with Pentagon? And if he refuses, can they do him (legally) something bad?
I think we need to show some healthy amount of skepticism towards Wikileaks as well, it is also in their interest to generate as much noise as possible before each release, they have successfully done so the last time and they will most likely use the same recipe over and over again.