Is Whistleblower Website, WikiLeaks, Helpful Journalism or Harmful Hacking?

Whistleblower website, WikiLeaks, has been a controversial topic of news and discussion for some time now for its release of over 1 million documents, many secret and private documents from the U.S. military and government. Many of the recently released documents include U.S. diplomatic cables concerning German politicians and much more. So far, none of the released documents have done too much harm but they were all illegally taken and are causing some problems for U.S. relations with numerous other countries.

Australian-born Julian Paul Assange founded the WikiLeaks website in 2006. He is considered a journalist, publisher, and Internet activist. He frequently speaks about freedom of the press, censorship, and investigative reporting and has won three journalism awards for WikiLeaks.

In recent weeks, WikiLeaks has lost its relationship with Amazon.com, its Web host provider had to drop its services due to excessive computer hacking, and lost its PayPal account, where it received donations, due to PayPal considering it as engaging in illegal activity. There are several warrants in Europe for Assange's arrest for several reasons, such as alleged sex offenses.

Some of the documents released by WikiLeaks include documents about Guantánamo Bay procedures, Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account contents, internal United Nations reports, Congressional Research Service reports, 9/11 pager messages, U.S. Intelligence reports, Baghdad airstrike video, Afghan War diaries, Iraq War logs, and most recently the diplomatic cables.

Hackers' Purpose

Assange started as a computer hacker when he was a teenager and most hackers say that they only do it to see if they can, not to do any real damage. But is this always the case and how do we know their true intention? I think many of them do it to show off to the world that they are great hackers and some do it to make a profit off of the information in some way.

Some people may think that the information provided by WikiLeaks is harmless, other than to tell us the truth. This is not always the case because some of the leaks have caused financial losses. One example is that when WikiLeaks talked about some documents concerning Bank of America, the price of the stock plunged for a short time. Just the notion of negative information about a company can greatly affect the stock price and hurt many investors.

WikiLeaks Purpose

Assange describes the purpose of WikiLeaks as being "To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not."

This sounds all well and good but is it meaningful and honest or just a bunch of words thrown together to sound good? Maybe it's just an excuse to hack information by any means necessary and gloating about it to the world just to brag? I can picture a nerdy hacker bragging about all of the information he found for no other reason than to show the world he could do it.

My Opinion

I understand that no one should be punished for telling the truth but at the same time governments or any organizations, for that matter, need to keep a level of secrecy for many reasons. Intergovernmental relationships are based on trust or a pretense of trust if they are to make crucial decisions and employ activities that benefit all parties involved.

I'm really on the fence about this WikiLeaks issue because it's a very complicated subject. Contrary to what most people are saying, it's not a simple black-and-white issue by a long shot. You need to look at the whole scope of things.

Take AC for example. I'm sure that many of us AC writers wouldn't want content managers and editors to see every single thing we say or think about them because you never know when one of the powers that be might start making our articles take just a little bit longer to publish or rejected. And vice versa, I'm sure AC employees say a lot of stuff that we wouldn't want to hear.

In a perfect world, truth would take precedence over everything but we do not live in a perfect world and, as such, sometimes the truth can cause many more problems than not telling all the truth or sometimes lies. None of us would want certain people to hear everything we are thinking. Our thoughts are like the governmental documents that were stolen and we wouldn't want someone taking that sensitive information and making it public, would we?

Is Assange and WikiLeaks journalism? I'm not sure I would consider him a journalist but just a hacker who got lucky with some important information and is using it as a new form of hacking real data for online release to the public. The information is useful for the public to know but can also be damaging.

Governments should not hide all of their information but at the same time not be expected to release everything. This risks the chance of one government getting the upper hand on another. It does need some secrets. You never show the enemy your hand. There needs to be a balance between what the government should tell the public and what it should not.

Some military information can also put the lives of soldiers at risk. This is something anti-censorship supporters often fail to recognize or understand because they are only looking at it from a freedom of speech perspective and harp on that fact. They should be looking at the larger scope of things and understand that some information can kill innocent people.

Most people do not believe that Assange engaged in the alleged sex offense charges against him but he did come into possession of documents illegally. He should have expected this when he first started releasing the documents on his site. Some governments kill people who leak classified documents, so he probably does have a hit out on him by now. That's the price you pay for hacking/stealing important documents illegally. Is it really worth it?

It's always interesting to see some people do something for the wrong reasons and then try to cover it up with excuses that sound good philosophically but really mean nothing; it's kind of like abstract art. I think this is the case with Assange -- just a nerdy hacker who wants his 15 minutes of fame and nothing else. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

What do you think?

Source: Wikipedia