Written by Maziyar Karimian | 01 December 2010
Posted in Comment - Politics

After having shot to worldwide prominence due to its release of around 250,000 American diplomatic cables, Wikileaks is fast proving to be the Marmite of new media journalism: you either love it or you hate it.

Founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, a former computer hacker from Australia, along with an assortment of Chinese dissidents and journalists, Wikileaks claims to be living out the meaning of the old Jeffersonian mantra that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

But after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s condemnation of the website’s releases as an “attack on the international community”, the question must be asked: is it really worth it?

Opposition to this latest phase of Wikileaks’ mission is widespread and variegated. Unsurprisingly, diplomats from all over the world over have criticised the disclosures. They claim that international negotations require a degree of confidentiality in order that national security and good diplomatic relations may be properly maintained. One Economist blogger even went so far as to say that Wikileaks is spreading gossip for no good reason.

It is undoubtedly true that the publication of certain US cables written about foreign leaders – such as the unflattering description of French President Nicolas Sarkozy as an “emperor with no clothes”, or the labelling of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi as “feckless” – will strain diplomatic relations to some degree, and that the benefits of disclosing said cables are difficult to discern. But Wikileaks is a publisher, not an editor: its primary goal is to make information free – nothing more, nothing less.

For what is the alternative to full disclosure? By definition, it is partial disclosure – a synonym for censorship. Who can legitimately claim the right to judge what information is and is not suitable for public consumption? Wikileaks claims no such right. In fact, Mr Assange insists that governmental transparency is a vital component of democracy.

So, is Wikileaks securing the future of our political freedoms, or merely engaging in idealistic vigilantism? Max Boot, of Commentary magazine, plumped for the latter, calling the Wikileaks initiative “journalism as pure vandalism”. He complains that Mr Assange and his band of self-avowed “transparency activists” are needlessly endangering both lives and diplomatic relations by releasing the cables. Implicit in the remonstrations of bloggers like Mr Boot is the assumption that there are certain things that a government may say or do that its people shouldn’t know about – and that ignorance of these words and actions is for the people’s own good.

Yet if the cost of security is the sacrifice of a little liberty – that is, your right to know what your elected officials are doing in your name, whether it be pressuring another state not to prosecute CIA torturers or secretly gathering the DNA, encryption keys and email passwords of UN officials – what happens if you refuse to make the sacrifice? What if, like Mr Assange and his supporters, you regard the preservation of your individual liberty as too sacred to be compromised by any security measure? After all, in a democracy, isn’t liberty what we are striving to secure?

The instinctive response to that question is, of course, that we elect governments to ‘know what’s best’ and lead us accordingly. Western systems of representative democracy rest upon the fundamental conception that ‘the people’ – despite having the inalienable right to be free, and to freely pursue their own interests – do not necessarily know what is the proper path for the nation to follow in order that their freedom and interests may be preserved. Thus, the people must examine and elect representatives who will decide what is best for their country. Consequently, Wikileaks’ actions run counter to the interests of the American people insofar as they have gone against the plans of the officials entrusted with keeping the United States safe.

But our systems of democracy also rest on the assumption that the public, in choosing its national representatives, is adequately informed about the men and women offering themselves for public service. It is clear that transparency on the part of the electoral candidates is vital to any legitimate democratic process. So what do we need to know to make the right choice of whom to trust with the power enshrined in our votes? On what basis do we, the people, give authority to our representatives?

The simplest answer is that we seek to elect those who we believe will act in accordance with both the nation’s interests and certain moral principles. Indeed, in a democracy, it is generally agreed that these two priorities overlap. For example, if equal rights are in the national interest (as they surely must be, in a democracy), then the denial of basic human rights (such as the right to a fair trial) to terror suspects contradicts the values upon which the nation is founded and violates the national interest.

Therefore, the importance of our leaders’ moral fitness to rule cannot be overestimated. And if a candidate’s moral standing is determined by their actions, then the electorate must be informed of the actions of its (would-be) representatives if it is to be genuinely free in making its decision of whom to empower. Would former Prime Minister Tony Blair have been re-elected in 2005 if the British public were aware that, two years earlier, he had ordered the invasion of Iraq despite knowing Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction? Did Britain’s leaders have the right to send their people to war on a pretence that they knew to be untrue? Regardless of whether you would answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to those questions, it is difficult to argue against the right of the British public to know that their servants in Westminster were deliberately withholding the truth from them.

Organisations like Wikileaks represent the revival of journalism. A free press – and the well-informed, politically-aware populace which is its natural consequence – is one of the cornerstones of a democracy. The larger the number of citizens know about their governments’ actions, the more accountable those governments will be to the citizens they have been elected to serve. Wikileaks, therefore, is only an enemy of the state where the state is an enemy of the people.

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