Thursday, December 02, 2010

Mixed Feelings about Wiki Leaks

I am a fan of Wiki Leaks and I believe very much that information wants to be free.
The work that they do exposing suppressed information is phenomenal and disturbing.

This CNN video montage shows the US killing innocent civilians including 2 reporters.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/12/02/natpkg.wikileaks.role.assange.cnn?hpt=C2

And that's very important information that should be released.

However, honestly I have very mixed feeling about releasing diplomatic cables.  We need to provide a place where our diplomats can speak freely, and to have that compromised is worrisome.  This isn't military information that someone is trying to hide.  It's diplomatic opinions on the stability of leaders and regimes.  While I will no doubt read them, I'm not sure how that helps us, but I can guess how it hurts.  We already know China and Iran and North Korea are difficult to deal with.  Maybe releasing this information is just going to make things harder for our diplomats and I'm not sure I think we're better off knowing that the diplomats agree that those countries are a pain.

1 comment:

Elf said...

I also wish that they showed some discretion. As in: it's important for people to realize that some bad things are going on in our armed occupations. Versus: Let's take everyone's dirty laundry, snarky emails, and revelations of undercover operations and share them with the world.