Wikileaks. This is exciting. Well, exciting if you are interested in a truly free grassroots press dedicated to exposing the secrets, lies and video tape of oppressive regimes (including ours) and spanking the muzzled lap dog faux journalists supporting them. You know. All that stuff. Here's a bit from Wikileak's About page. See for yourself:
The ruling stated that "paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."Should the press really be free?
In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." We agree.
It's easy to perceive the connection between publication and the complaints people make about publication. But this generates a perception bias, because it overlooks the vastness of the invisible. It overlooks the unintended consequences of failing to publish and it overlooks all those who are emancipated by a climate of free speech. Such a climate is a motivating force for governments and corporations to act justly. If acting in a just manner is easier than acting in an unjust manner, most actions will be just.
Injustice concealed cannot be answered. Concealed plans for future injustice cannot be stopped until they are revealed by becoming a reality, which is too late. Administrative injustice, by definition affects many.
Government has ample avenues to restrict and abuse revelation, not limited to the full force of intelligence, law enforcement, and complicit media. Moves towards the democratization of revelation are strongly biased in favor of justice. Where democratized revelations are unjust they tend to affect isolated individuals, but where they are just, they affect systems of policy, planning and governance and through them the lives of all.
Europeans sometimes criticize the freedom of the press in the United States, pointing to a salacious mainstream media. But that is not democratized revelation, rather it is the discovery by accountants that is a lot cheaper to print celebratory gossip than it is to fund investigative journalists. Instead we point to the internet as a whole, which although not yet a vehicle of universal free revelation, is starting to approach it. Look at the resulting instances of, and momentum for, positive political change.
Wikileaks reveals, but is not limited to revelation. There are many existing avenues on the internet for revelation. What does not exist is a social movement emblazoning the virtues of ethical leaking. What does not exist is a universal, safe and easy means for leaking. What does not exist is a way to turn raw leaks into politically influential knowledge through the revolutionary collaborative analysis pioneered by wikipedia.
Sufficient leaking will bring down many administrations that rely on concealing reality from their peoples. Daniel Ellsberg calls for it. Everyone knows it. We're doing it.
Comics forth coming. I promise.
