WikiLeaks Raises Key Issues of Media Collaboration, Nature of Internet, Rights Groups Say
While it’s too soon to judge the impact of WikiLeak’s publication of thousands of diplomatic documents, the affair shows a healthy collaboration between new and traditional media, said Lucie Morillon, head of new media desk for Reporters Without Borders, in an interview Wednesday. RWB bashed the whistleblower website over the summer for posting information naming, and possibly endangering the lives of, Afghan civilians, but recently strongly denounced efforts to shutter it. European Digital Rights (EDRI), meanwhile, said the issue isn’t so much the leaks as whether the world wants the kind of Internet that makes WikiLeaks possible.
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Since RWB’s criticism, WikiLeaks has taken several measures, including redacting names, to address the issues, Morillon said. The way the site has handled the diplomatic cables shows a “good evolution,” she said. The U.S. claims the leaks put people’s lives at risk, but RWB hasn’t found any names of civilians or other identifying information, she said.
WikiLeaks has launched a revolution in information-sharing, Morillon said. “Cable-gate” isn’t just raw data; because of the website’s collaboration with five major traditional news outlets, the information is redacted and explained, giving the public a big-picture view of what it means, she said.
RWB condemned the “blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure” directed at the website, in a Dec. 4 statement. The organization said it’s also concerned about some of the extreme comments coming from American authorities about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. RWB criticized Amazon and EveryDNS for ousting the website, and the U.S. and several other countries for trying to censor it. The French government tried to stop Internet company OVH from hosting the site over the past week but two courts said they need longer to consider the issue, AP reported Wednesday. Any restriction on the freedom to disseminate the documents affects the entire press, RWB said.
Assange was arrested Dec. 7 in the U.K. on charges filed by Swedish prosecutors. In a letter to Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke, RWB urged the British government not to cave to pressure and to guarantee respect for Assange’s right of defense “despite the extreme tension surrounding this case.” The British legal system should remain impartial in examining the charges in the face of pressure from “certain countries” to convict Assange or prevent him from continuing his activities, RWB said.
This isn’t an easy situation for American diplomats, but calling for Assange’s arrest and, in a few cases, assassination, is “going way too far” compared to the danger the information actually poses, Morillon said. It’s too early to make a definite judgment about the situation because such a small percentage of the documents have come out, she said. But RWB doesn’t believe there’s any immediate threat of “people being killed tomorrow”, she said. This is more about embarrassment, she said.
EDRI declined to comment on the leaks. The issue is whether people want an Internet that enables a site like WikiLeaks, Advocacy Coordinator Joe McNamee said.
The Internet was designed to be resilient, so even if one point is blocked, data can route around it, McNamee said. If the goal is to guarantee that WikiLeaks can’t happen in the future, “you must shut down the Internet and replace it with fixed connections like analog telephony,” he said. But replacing the Internet with something less resilient means the company controlling each point has a monopoly; and the openness that encourages democracy, and the level playing field that keeps entry costs low for innovation, are lost, he said.
It’s “profoundly worrying” that some politicians want restrictions that are fundamentally incompatible with proper Internet functioning, McNamee said. Also troublesome is the growth of private companies acting as arms of the government and taking extra-judicial actions against WikiLeaks, such as EveryDNS, he said. Governments that welcome and encourage that behavior aren’t just undermining the democratic value of the Internet, they're undercutting “the rule of law that every democracy should hold dear,” McNamee said.