At risk of taking bait, they explicitly don't believe in full transparency.
They've backed and associated with various privacy groups and suggested that individuals and groups not in the public interest deserve privacy. Assange has complicated that a little by releasing personal, unredacted emails, but it's been their stated intent at least.
Give that transcript another read: "organizations which are abusive and need to be [in] the public eye". That's not decrying privacy, its decrying use of privacy to hide abusive behaviors. I haven't seen Wikileaks accused of that; the usual accusation is that their public behaviors are politically motivated, which is very different than alleging internal corruption.
Wikileaks claims they use leaks to serve the public's interest. That makes them a public interest organization.
Being politically motivated can very much be a form of abuse. When you have the ability to significantly hinder or tear down public organizations through leaking, I think the public deserves to know how Wikileaks decided what to leak, how they are funded, and what interests they represent.
Simple hypothetical scenario: Wikileaks gets compromising information about a left-leaning and a right-leaning organization, but they only decide to make public one of those leaks because they're biased. Or they receive some damaging info, and use it to trade for political or personal favors in return for suppressing the leak.
Given that there are so many ways that Wikileaks could abuse the public's trust, their 'transparency' rhetoric very much should apply to themselves.
One reason why Wikileaks should not wish full public transparency is that they don't want to create any barrier for would-be leakers to start talking to them. Because then they won't get as many leaks.
This is exactly the rationale behind why reporters frequently wish to keep their own sources private, even while they are busy publishing things that other organizations wish they wouldn't.
Quite honestly, when wikileaks releases material such as the Podesta emails, undoctored (most Podesta emails are verifiable by checking google's DKIM signatures), it does not matter what wikileaks objectives and motives are and if they are ethically clean.
Corruption is still corruption, no matter if it is made public by a "good" organization or another corrupt organization.
The corrupt organization does not get a free pass just because their competitors might be even more corrupt (and wikileaks might know that and hold back that information).
The question is not whether we should give corrupt organizations a pass (we shouldn't), it's whether we should try to keep Wikileaks honest, given that its position gives it strong incentives to do shady things without any transparency.
Wikileaks' core activity forces it to walk a very very thin moral and ethical line. I think we the public have obligation to make sure they don't cross it, especially if we benefit from the leaks.
I'll note that in another context, it was for a long time not alright for prosecutors to use illegally obtained evidence, in order to discourage prosecutors and police from breaking the law, even at the cost of potentially letting criminals go free. Why doesn't that logic apply here?
Being politically motivated can very much be a form of abuse.
When you have the ability to significantly hinder or tear down public organizations through leaking [...]
If there is no (major) wrongdoing, you cannot just tear them down. The organization needs to be corrupt in the first place.
it's whether we should inspect Wikileaks itself,
given that its position gives it strong incentives to do shady things
without any transparency.
I don't see anything suggesting strong incentives to do shady things, can you elaborate please?
I see the opposite, however, they got strong incentives NOT to do shady things, because if they are caught even once doing shady things, their reputation is in the gutter and nobody will ever listen to them again.
That is not to say that they got no political bias and even political bias. When the emails you obtained contained Hillary asking why they cannout just "drone him" (aka Assange), you might take that a bit personally too. But political bias and personal bias is in no way evidence for "shady things" and wrongdoing.
But yes, wikileaks too should be scrutinized, and I think it is, by pretty much everybody, the government, it's agencies, the media.
Still, so far, after a decade of operation, there is no proof wikileaks did anything sinister, and the best attempts so far to discredit wikileaks was coming for their leader with rape charges instead of discrediting what the organization is doing.
And yes again, we the public should not stop to be vigilant and continue to scrutinize wikileaks.
> I see the opposite, however, they got strong incentives NOT to do shady things, because if they are caught even once doing shady things, their reputation is in the gutter and nobody will ever listen to them again
Quite the opposite happens even in this thread. Are you aware of [1] and [2] and [3]? Do you think that incident sent their reputation to the gutter?
> If there is no (major) wrongdoing, you cannot just tear them down. The organization needs to be corrupt in the first place.
I'm not so sure that's true. As the size of an organization grows, the probability that someone in it will write an e-mail that looks incredibly damning when leaked approaches 1. That's true regardless of whether there is any actual corrupt behavior, but the political damage is done regardless. IMO, the public is generally not great at teasing apart real misconduct from stupid private e-mails, because the public either lacks or chooses to ignore context.
I know in this day and age it's not very popular to say that things should be kept from the public, but I'd like to point out the example of the legal system. Judge often decide that evidence should not be shown to juries because the evidence is inflammatory and will cause bias. Sometimes showing more evidence leads to less truth, not more. Obviously, Wikileaks is not a court, but it does choose who gets to see what, and they have some idea of how the public will react to what is revealed. But we have no real idea how they internally make that decision.
> I don't see anything suggesting strong incentives to do shady things, can you elaborate please?
Sure -- this is an organization that often gets illegally obtained information from perhaps anonymous sources. Because the sources are by definition secret or inaccessible, and yet the information can be very damaging, there's always the temptation for illicit dealings. Here are some possibilities:
- Someone in Wikileaks uses the information to blackmail the target of a leak
- The target of a leak gets wind of it and tries to buy off Wikileaks
- Outside actors (e.g. the Russian government) effectively use Wikileaks as a 'neutral' channel to cloak their interference in the political affairs of another country. This may in fact be what is happening today, but we can't be sure because again -- Wikileaks is not transparent.
- A Wikileaks staffer is arrested or otherwise threatened by a government to do their bidding
Contrast this how major news organizations handle sources and leaks: journalists form a professional body with their own journalistic code of ethics and conduct. Leaks are evaluated for their newsworthiness and sources are scrutinized.
Obviously, traditional media organizations aren't perfect either, but they are far more open and transparent than Wikileaks is, because there are institutional norms developed over decades that constrain their behavior.
In a perfect world, Wikileaks would be open and transparent in their process of how they evaluate and pass on leaks, so we can be sure that they're not being unduly influenced or using it to advance a hidden agenda.
You talked about incentives to do shady things, but only provided examples of theoretical abuse (there is no indication any of which ever happened).
Of course there is a danger of abuse, but I fail to see how shadiness is being incentivized by the structure of wikileaks and the work they do.
All your examples apply to traditional journalists as well, by the way.
Wikileaks has their own code of conduct and ethics. I fail to see how their self-imposed code is any less valid than the self-imposed code of traditional journalists.
wikileaks claims it evaluates and scrutinizes their sources. So far it seems they actually did that, and did not fall for any hoax.
Traditional journalists also claim they evaluate their sources, and most of them did not fall for any hoax.
Both don't do so transparently, in fact journalists went to jail for not being transparent and disclosing their sources, so I fail to see how traditional journalists are any better or worse than wikileaks. The lack of transparency when it comes to sources is a feature and not a failure, protecting said sources, for both wikileaks and traditional journalism.
It's a bold claim to state that traditional journalists are more open and trustworthy simply because they have been around longer (the organizations, not the individuals of course).
Regular news organizations reported the Iraq had WMDs because the government sources said so, without any actual evidence. Or published fake Hitler Diaries. Meaning it's not all that rosy and checked and ethical as you make it out to be.
I don't see the "contrast" you claim exists. If anything, wikileaks has a better track record than a lot of traditional media organizations when it comes to publishing verified information, so far.
PS: The likes of Murdoch and Bezos prove outside influence in journalism is a real thing to worry about.
This is a very reasonable point, and I have some real questions about the recent failure to redact in the Wikileaks releases. That said...
> The question is not whether we should give corrupt organizations a pass (we shouldn't)
The majority of the criticism I've seen absolutely misses this step. It treats "Wikileaks is shady" or even "Assange might be a sex criminal" as a rebuttal to "this thing in this email you sent is incredibly unethical". Time and again, the discussion of Wikileaks ethics comes up only when they embarrass someone, as a defense for the person embarrassed.
I'm not sure what to do about that. Ideally, I think we'd do it the opposite way - the published emails that weren't ethical embarrassments are a way bigger violation of privacy. I'd like to see Wikileaks held to account for publishing harmless and personal messages, while seeing the leak subjects held to account where the things they did were actually bad.
Good point. I noticed that many of the people questioned about info in the leaks don't answer the questions, but just state that the info was obtained illegally. Q: "The email says you did X wrong thing. Is that true." A: "That email was obtained from Russion hackers!" Q: "Maybe, but in any case, did you do X?" A: "Russian hackers are bad!"
> Wikileaks claims they use leaks to serve the public's interest. That makes them a public interest organization.
That's some pretty intense equivocation from where we started. Acting in the public interest does not make you "a public interest". The details of Chelsea Manning's gender identity don't influence the ethical status of her leaks.
Assange's claim (which is not my claim) seems to be that groups with structural power and objective control over people's lives should be forced into transparency or inefficient secrecy. That's largely governments, and agencies like the DNC that shape them. It's also militaries, powerful investment banks, and other groups like utilities which can control access to credit or basic needs.
None of that is representative of Wikileaks. Their influence all happens at one remove, by doing things which the public reacts to. If their disclosures on X are accurate and the public gets mad about X, that can be a direct conversation between X and the public that need not involve them. "Abusive" here seems to mean groups that can take direct financial/legally/physical action on people.
Having said all of that, I understand how selective enforcement works. If you know that a disclosure will harm a person, and take that act to achieve your interests, it's a cop-out to blame "the public" if you're choosing what to disclose. But it's relevant that Assange has made it quite clear that he's disclosing to hurt Clinton; his political motivation is already public knowledge.
There's really no good answer here. You can explain how you make your decisions, but "not leaking a document" is inherently a secretive act. No one can be sure your choice was honest and public-spirited unless you do reveal the document, so all that's left is faith. That's part of why Snowden and other leakers have gone through respected news orgs, because if someone's judgement is the deciding factor you might as well choose well-regarded judgement.
I don't have much of that faith in Assange at this point. I think his leaks are probably selective and politically motivated. It would be interesting to know who funds them and what they say internally, but that couldn't possibly clear up the whole question. After all, if Assange reads one paper about Clinton and one about Trump, and says "the one about Clinton is worth leaking, but the one about Trump isn't in the public interest", how could you possibly evaluate that claim without both leaks?
But none of that means Wikileaks is equivalent to the groups he's demanding disclosure for. Ethical questions on our part do not amount to hypocrisy on his part, and it's still a distinction worth drawing.
Well, Wikileaks goes and does things like "leak" a bunch of Turkish emails containing nothing which "exposes" government action and which does put ordinary citizens -- many of them already vulnerable -- at risk.
At that point Wikileaks needs to be auditable to find out who decided that would be a good thing to do and why.
Fair point. I'm honestly horrified that Wikileaks did that, and it should probably make prospective leakers question their judgement with material that could endanger private citizens.
I was speaking the to larger claim that Wikileaks owes us transparency to avoid being hypocritical, which I still don't accept. But at this point, they might well owe some transparency not as a public establishment but as some people who screwed up badly with the power they were given.
There's no way to know if a powerful organization is abusive, anyway. I'm willing to bet my aunt's knitting group isn't abusing anyone outside its membership.
I'm being flip, but there's real substance here. A government, bank, utility, or military has direct power over people. They can cut people off from money, property, or freedom without any offering any recourse or external accountability, and that makes them potentially abusive to the public.
A private citizen, hobby group, or business with strong competitors is generally not at risk of abusing the public. They don't have the power, or couldn't sustain it while behaving badly.
So there is a narrative where we can decline "full transparency" while demanding transparency from public actors. The role of media (and Wikileaks) here is complicated, because they lack direct power but can still have predictable influences on the world; even so, we don't have to grant privacy as a totally symmetric right.
I agree that as a matter of policy, perhaps media organizations and Wikileaks shouldn't be held to the same standards as governments.
But that's not a distinction that Assange makes in his rhetoric, and I'm doubtful it's one he will make in practice either. Would Wikileaks really hold off on publishing if it came across a damaging leak about a news organization?
I feel Assange and his supporters do a great disservice to the public debate by oversimplifying things. Sometimes secrets are necessary for the proper functioning of our governments.
They've backed and associated with various privacy groups and suggested that individuals and groups not in the public interest deserve privacy. Assange has complicated that a little by releasing personal, unredacted emails, but it's been their stated intent at least.
Give that transcript another read: "organizations which are abusive and need to be [in] the public eye". That's not decrying privacy, its decrying use of privacy to hide abusive behaviors. I haven't seen Wikileaks accused of that; the usual accusation is that their public behaviors are politically motivated, which is very different than alleging internal corruption.