Why I will not analyze the new WikiLeaks data
drewconway.com
drewconway.com
The value of Wikileaks is that it makes secrecy more difficult for governments. Period. What Wikileaks publishes is dependent on what is leaked, and so far (in my opinion) Wikileaks has done much to gain credibility as an institution. Notably, it has moved away from journalistic interpretation of the leaked info and has left that to established papers. Instead, it has focused on its role as conduit and trusted intermediary.
Ironically, Wikileaks will enhance the credibility of government in a good way b/c it helps the public view its government as fallible, corrupt, and absurd, all of which help rein in the scope of government action so that what is actually undertaken stands a chance of being accomplished honestly.
Sadly, much of what has been leaked shows simply that the government is putting on a show for the American people and that much of what is kept secret is done so for propaganda reasons, not security reasons.
I guarantee you the NYT INFOSEC budget is lower than you think. : )
More importantly, lots of the information is compromising in a way that is not in the best interests of the public. For example, it embarrases the Yemeni president, along with many other countries. Will that make these people more or less likely to work with the US (or anyone else for that matter) in the future?
The main consequence will be (in my opinion) the diminished ability of the US to take security so lightly... Which is exactly the goal of wikileaks, to make it harder for governments to use secrecy. Sure there will still be some secrets, but ideally they'll be used for important things rather than political propaganda or manipulating allies.
I agree. That's definitely a plus of these releases. (Though I think on the whole they are still net negative.)
Now to some of the things I personally disagree with..
> The forces that lead to large scale geopolitical action are not impacted by the small gravitational pull of these leaks.
I can disagree with this, in at least one instance, using the data from wikileaks. From the NYT article: "[The cables] reveal that Colonel Qaddafi was so upset by his reception in New York that he balked at carrying out a promise to return dangerous enriched uranium to Russia."
It's kind of a funny example, but I think the implications are more broad than embarrassment or showing government failures.
As daniel_levine said, "The expectation of privacy in diplomacy can be an extremely powerful tool in creating honest and helpful dialogue."
To use a metaphor, imagine trying to run a big company wherein everything the CEO hears (!) or says is published to the world. Sure, it'd be harder to keep secrets, but it would also be harder to get anything done.
Government secrecy has always been weakened by potential leakers, etc., so I think the main difference here is that Wikileaks' technology has provided a buffer to allow journalists to write about things they had previously been afraid to write about.
As a corollary, an organization of a particular size can only obtain a finite amount of secrecy. When the organization's size is > 5 people, the amount of secrecy is quite low and has always been so.
Wikileaks certainly has an agenda. There's a good New Yorker piece [1] from back before a lot of this stuff broke about how Assange edited the 'Collateral Murder' video to maximize emotional impact. I personally do not view Wikileaks as a trusted intermediary.
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_...
Corroboration, in other words.
"Frago 242" (short for Fragmentary Order 242), was a high level dictat to troops to ignore torture by Iraqi forces, or at least not to intervene directly. This was a key expose for that release, and Assange talks of a story actually getting killed by the editors -
140 results Guardian.co.uk http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&...
And buried in some community comment section a solitary 1 result at NYTimes.com http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&...
You are not being fair to Wikileaks.
This is in agreement with the author's assertion that "WikiLeaks’ motivation is that of a court jester, to mock and ridicule the contradictions of a state."
What the author is saying in the post is that this is not what his motives were for doing analysis on prior leaks.
The character that simply looks and acts ridiculous for the amusement of others (your definition) is properly called a buffoon.
If Drew hopes to be taken seriously by the US Government and keeping his security clearance (probably highly valuable in his career path) he can't exactly cheer about Wikileaks. This sort of measured, slightly negative review is essentially a bow to power (and there seems like little reason for him to write such an article other than to bow conspicuously before authority).
Drew is also a Homeland Security Fellow, whatever that is.
As a thought experiment, assume these documents were from (say), Iran, China or Russia (miraculously translated to English , hey this is a thought experiment)- fundamentally any power opposed to the United States. For even more fun, throw in Pakistan, North Korea or (really stretching here, because they don't do formal nation state like diplomacy or maintain records thereof) the Taliban or Al Quaeda.
I suspect a good portion of the people who decry WikiLeaks today would be analysing this data, or otherwise using it to draw insights to further US interests and lauding Assange as a hero, while the Chinese (or whoever) would be making the "this endangers our people/troops" and "Wikileaks is irresponsible" argument.
I doubt US citizens would be doubting Assange's "agenda" or saying things like "many of the documents being leaked contain information that was exchanged under the assumption of privacy." and so they shouldn't be public and so on. I suspect people would laud Assange as some kind of heroic figure for exposing an enemy regime at great personal risk.
Is Assange a US citizen? If not why should he care about the impact on the USA? Would an American care about the impact on say Chinese diplomacy before he exposed any records he had on their thinking?
Nothing wrong with being nationalistic/patriotic as long as you are aware of your biases (if any) therefrom. Most HNers are Americans and the discussion here is somewhat biased in that direction of whether this is good or bad for the USA. That is just one possible perspective of many and hardly universal. Just something to be aware of.
As an outsider (not a USA citizen though largely pro American), I think this is all to the good in the long term.
I believe that our government should be more transparent and that its primary purpose is to serve its citizens.
That said many of the documents being leaked contain information that was exchanged under the assumption of privacy.
Just as it is sometimes necessary to defend anonymity on the Internet and a citizens right to privacy, the same right should be granted to many of these documents. The expectation of privacy in diplomacy can be an extremely powerful tool in creating honest and helpful dialogue.
It can also be abused and has been in certain instances to keep information from the public but I do not think it is the right of Wikileaks to rectify that mistake. Especially at the cost of individuals' safety or diplomatic relations.
To your point, though, I do not think the government has a general expectation of privacy. On the other hand some of these cables might have been private in nature or might have been sent with an implicit expectation of privacy, so this is a difficult area.
Still, I'd rather have us err on the side of transparency.
Supporting or opposing wikileaks is tweaking the level of secrecy available. Secrecy is always doubtful. There is always a chance a secret will get out. Wikileaks increases those chances.
This will have negative effects. For example, diplomats will have a harder time using secrecy to do good things. This will also have positive effects. Diplomats will have a harder time using secrecy for things their constituents think are bad.
The primary effect of wikileaks and leaks in general is unseen. People must take into account a higher chance their secrets will come out. This affects their actions. The effect is not really measurable. It will affect the next war more than this one. Overall, I think it'll probably be for good. People behave better in public.
Governments desire and need privacy for a great many reasons, and IMHO unless this privacy is used to abuse governmental power or commit a gross injustice, the government ought to be entitled to it, just as we are entitled to our privacy unless a crime (legal or moral) is suspected.
Don't get me wrong, I think whistleblowing organizations are a fundamental part of a healthy democratic process, but this indiscriminate "the US is not allowed to have secrets" thing is unproductive, nor is it fighting any injustice or abuse of power.
Let's be clear: What Assange and WikiLeaks are doing is incredibly irresponsible. They're uncovering important channels that are going to close up if neither side can trust that what's said won't become public (this is especially true of critical Middle Eastern relationships). Even worse, they're outing confidential informants and information critical to national defence. I hope they're prepared to have blood on their hands.
These documents will undoubtedly reveal some important stuff that the public should know about, and I'm not saying that everything that the government does is automatically good, but I think that most experts in the field would agree that Assange is doing way more harm than good here. There are important trust-based relationships and sources, nurtured for decades, that have just been utterly ruined, if not severely damaged.
Diplomacy is incredibly complicated and nuanced, and this naive belief that indiscriminately releasing thousands of documents and cables is automatically going to make the world a better place is totally out-of-touch with reality.
My theory (and sorry if this sounds mean) is that the same personality traits that make geeks great at visualizing logic and data comes at the expense of being able to understand nuance. You see it with the tech press' bizarre, highlanderistic insistence on everything being a something killer, you see it in the anti-government streak that is rampant on HN, and I think you're seeing it here.
I think good programmers value simplicity and clarity more than the average person because they have more experience with and a better understanding of complexity and nuance. It's easy to build incomprehensible software: just don't make an effort to keep it simple.
I would think the same is true of diplomacy. Without a strict policy of honesty and open dealing, national embarrassment is practically inevitable. It's unreasonable to believe that you can build sound foreign relations on lies and deceit.
Diplomats, like lawyers, are effective because they are persuasive. Not because they are good liars.
If public release of this information is damaging to US interest, the answer should not be to suppress this information, but rather to behave in an agreeable way in the first place.
I think the issue is more nuanced than it first seems to most people.
So, yes. I do say that governments should have no secrets.
None?
Seriously?
Think about this:
Let's say we gave the government permission to keep EXACTLY ONE secret. They could change their mind about what that one thing is at anytime. In order for them to choose a new secret, all things must be kept secret by default (otherwise, the Streisand Effect holds). A grace period must be allowed for the government to review the new things before deciding whether they want to publish that new information or change their choice of one secret, publishing the old secret.
Since everything is secret by default, they could just not tell us about the new information. They could cheat to keep TWO secrets. If one secret leaked, they could easily say "Oh well, that was our one secret! Damn." and we'd have no way to prove that they weren't keeping another secret.
The only way to prevent bad secrets is to disallow all secrets. We must systematically uncover sources of secrets and shine a spotlight on them. In the event that a secret is uncovered, there must be immediate and stern repercussions.
There is no way to prevent bad secrets. Bad secrets will remain secret as long as everyone who knows about them is dedicated to keeping them secret, regardless of what's legal or required, or what sort of repercussions you threaten.
Missile launch codes?
People are really laying into wikileaks. Do not forget that they are just the messenger. A near boy has been held without trail for 8 months I think now, and for what? To risk his life by highlighting fraud and corruption, only for people to be still to stupid or too embedded in the system to realise. If Wikileaks had a cache of embarrassing Chinese data, you wouldn't be able to hear anything above the "Amerkah Fuckyeah". You live in a democractic society (probably), enjoy the freedom of information, then realise you actually live in a kleptocracy and the US is a pathological state.
[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco...
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable...
Talk about forcing a response.
You're petitio principii is showing please put some pants on.
Shouting "this can be nothing but a good thing" [wake up sheeple!] and claiming that this is blatantly obvious to anyone of modest intelligence doesn't make it true. Only if it's an obvious answer and I were reacting to that would it make this "meta-contrarian".
>There's the launch code; what use is it to you?
With no secrets I know where the bases are, all the computer schematics, all the cable connections whether or not remote launch is enabled, where to dig to jack into cables, which satellites to tap, what the guard rotations are on bases, what the secret service have found out about military personnel that foreign powers might use to blackmail them, etc., etc.. To me, now, those codes are useless - so is the knowledge of how to build a nuclear bomb though as I don't have the resources to act on it. There are plenty of people who do have the resources and who would be interested in holding America to ransom using their own nuclear arsenal.
IMO to consider that this sort of information isn't harmful to the security of a country is naive in the extreme.
Yes, if no one in the world were greedy or lusted for power then there would be no need for the final remaining human to keep secrets from himself.
How about a tamer example: if the government can't keep secrets then anyone can log in to Obama's email account and send an email that appears to be from him. Suddenly no government entity can be authenticated online. Iris scan, well yeah but the output of the scanner is public knowledge and the signing key is too.
At the very least I hope you can concede "well of course some secrets have to be allowed". Now define the boundaries.
To me, your response sounds like the knee-jerk reaction of a rebelling teenager. Do you think that Iran's closest neighbours want them to be invaded because they doubt that Iran will use nuclear weapons?
Your 100 informants getting murdered sits well with you? If it does it can only be because whilst you see that as saving thousands of Iranians you don't consider the billions that would most likely die if Iran initiate WWIII.
The world is not black and white. Unless it was physically impossible to keep secrets (which would likely mean zero privacy for any of the citizens, as well), people in power will keep secrets whether they are "official" or not. You will still never know about what you don't know about.
Of course some things need to be secret for practical reasons. The problem here would be secret nuclear weapons (Israel) not the codes that protect them from misuse.
Edit: Hell, let's just take this at the lowest levels, too: this kind of policy means everyone's medical and tax records become public, there would be no Witness Protection Program, and routine criminal justice might end up being impossible.
Let's not even go into the fact that this would prevent the government from using RSA, even for benign purposes such as authentication or something.
I'll go along with this IMHO naive utopian view, but you're still forgetting that holding the US government to a no-secrets rule means the USA has no secrets while everyone else does. This sounds like a real winning combination for becoming the world's greatest defenseless sitting duck.
I remember Fareed Zakaria talking about how transparency hurts good governance - basically using a tyranny of the majority / anti-democratic type of argument. I think the example of ancient Greece having more war under democracy than "tyranny".
However, if everyone did see all the info we had on us, and the dirt on everyone else as well, perhaps it would lead to more outrage universally / less war. Then again, there'd be ALOT more gov't PsyOps going on to decisive the public.
Then you won't have any leaks. Problem solved!
Of course, you won't have any information other than what the government tells you, but them's the breaks...
However, the government needs to spend its resources keeping the "real/important" secret stuff under-wraps and opening up the rest(via low-level leaks).
A system like I proposed would lead to a better allocation of intelligence/security resources by the government and increased transparency for us - without removing all barriers to secrecy, which is highly unrealistic.
It's much safer IMO to have blanket protection for leaking/whistleblowing.
A similar thing happens with FOI requests here in Australia - there's an exemption for material which is 'commercial in-confidence'. Now pretty much everything that the government produces is marked as commercial in-confidence, and it's back to the old system of suing the government to release information.
Far better to have people leak stuff and then be protected under whistleblower / freedom of the press laws if it's in the public interest (with presumption that it is in the public interest, so the government has to bring a case to prove that it's not).
That's a lot closer to the truth than governments having no secrets.. yes, there's probably at least 1 secret worth keeping at any given time, but don't keep your mind so open that your brain falls out :) We're talking degrees, here.
Meanwhile the immediate effects of breaking down secrecy are potentially volatile. For example, Iraeli papers are currently running stories about Israel coordinating with the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. Anyone following ME politics knows that (a) this is almost certainly true. (b) proof of its truth will play to the hands of the anti-compromise, theocratic elements in that region.
Similarly, Arab States (eg Saudi Arabia) supported US invasion of Iran. Similarly unsurprising. Similarly bolstering of anti-compromise, theocratic elements.
My reading is that both of these are bad.
The long term effects are more difficult to gauge. But I think they will be positive. Basically, governments will have to align their private policies more closely to their public ones.
The choice of which documents to leak, when, and in what context is in itself a form of commentary. Drudge is a master of this: his website consists of nothing but headlines and a few pictures, and yet he is constantly accused of various biases.
I don't think the politics are immaterial. They may influence in exactly that way. Reporters, news shows and everything else has biases. When it's an opinion article, that bias is the central component. When it's fact based reporting the bias is a smaller component.
The context here is "WikiLeaks’s continued and reckless pursuit of classified document disclosures seems to have much more to do with the proclivities of the organization’s founder, and very little to do with building knowledge or improving democratic discourse." and "by continuing to analyze new disclosures I am tacitly supporting this."
I think that the above is somewhat of a red herring considering that we are talking about source documents released verbatim. How could wikileaks' bias come in to play? Withholding documents where people sound good? Withholding documents where the "other side" sounds bad?
Those are two really good examples. Is he doing this? I really can't tell. For every "bad" or "good" docment he releases, there could easily be others that are event "better" or "worse."
More importantly, he choses whose documents to leak. Lots of classified U.S. documents in there. Where are the classified documents from other nations?
As I mentioned, there are other factors besides which documents are released: the timing and context of the releases also matters greatly. The mere fact that highly sensitive diplomatic wires were leaked will have a negative impact on all of our current diplomatic efforts, regardless of the actual contents. Diplomats who don't feel confident of confidentiality will be much less likely to speak frankly. Is it that hard to imagine that this release was timed to derail a particular diplomatic effort?
In relation to your quote from OP, I think that the single biggest indicator to support OP's position is Assange himself: he has a history of making provocative remarks which demonstrate a clear hostility towards the United States, or at least the U.S. government. It's hard for me to believe that this animosity isn't having a profound effect on his priorities. If nothing else, I get the definite vibe that this latest batch was released primarily for the reason of jabbing his thumb in Washington's eye.
I will say this, though: it is entirely conceivable that "document X" provides context that completely changes the significance of "document Y." Deliberately withholding that context is therefore a form of dishonesty.
Meanwhile our allies and enemies alike will have no such handicap.
WikiLeaks can potentially shift the balance of diplomatic power drastically - and not in a particularly good way at that. It would be a difference story if they could get leaks out of every major government - but a few seem particularly problematic: China and Russia come to mind.
In the US, Pfc. Manning faces court martial and jail time for leaking this information. In China they'd just put a bullet in your head without any kind of process, and then in your families' too just for good measure. This is information asymmetry, and is downright dangerous.
Drew knows perfectly well that if he even touches this data with a 10-foot pole, he'll be persona non grata in the intelligence community. So my cynical view is that his decision to not analyze this data has more to do with future employment prospects than with the methods of WikiLeaks or the contents of the data...
Now, if I had to form an opinion about something related to this (but that I don't exactly know anything about), I might consider my baseline the fact that any nation that continuously exerts offensive military activity outside its own borders should not in the first place have the slightest expectation of any "rights" to remain private.
It's indeed the U.S. whose "secrets" on the stake here; however, I'm not pointing particularly to the U.S.
Can anyone elaborate on that?
--Neil Gaiman
See also: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging