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I don't agree. The traditional news outlet that broke this story (The Guardian) has a lot of advantages over WikiLeaks. It has experienced reporters who underst

I don't agree. The traditional news outlet that broke this story (The Guardian) has a lot of advantages over WikiLeaks. It has experienced reporters who understand the issues involved. It has a well-known and respected editorial process that can weigh the consequences of a leak versus the potential value to the public. It has a process through which the public can contact the organization and correct errors. When WikiLeaks put out the cables I noticed that there was one cable where they redacted the names of people who had met with US diplomats from the body of the document but not from the title of the document. I looked very hard for any way to contact WikiLeaks to get the matter fixed and found nothing - their website suggested that people interested in providing feedback contact human rights organizations or a couple of law firms in the UK. On the other hand, traditional journalists typically post their email addresses and twitter handles and will often respond to queries. Yes, the administration is aggressively challenging leakers, but newspapers have a long, successful history of defending their first amendment rights in the courts. Nor is it clear that a UK-based newspaper such as The Guardian would be subject to Justice Department subpoena's or prosecution. WikiLeaks, particularly under Julian Assange, has demonstrated a complete lack of transparency and biased reporting (c.f. the Collateral Murder video). I have a lot more confidence in, say, The New York Times or The Guardian than Wikileaks.

ThomPete 13y ago
Wikileaks is not interested in confidence nor is it trying to compete with "the media". It's interested in obstructing the ability of governments and organisations in power to "conspire" against it's populations through technology. It should be judged on that, not on the aesthetics of it's delivery.
Sven7 13y ago
It is not black and white. Both models have their flaws. By and large most reporters of The New York Times towed the line before the Iraq invasion and the Wall Street melt down. When you get called into a room by very important people, and are told do it for the sake of the country, few people are going to push back. That's where overly paranoid folk like Assange have a role to play. They force the system to reevaluate the status quo.
- foobarqux 13y ago
  > and are told do it for the sake of the country Or for the sake of advertisers. And they usually don't need to be told.
enraged_camel 13y ago
>>It has experienced reporters who understand the issues involved. You mean it has experienced reporters who editorialize the leaks. Because that's one of the many benefits of Wikileaks: you get the data in its raw form and can reach your own, independent conclusions if you choose to do so. >>It has a process through which the public can contact the organization and correct errors. This is well and good, but the process is not efficient enough to deal with the sheer volume of leaks in a timely manner. Just as an example, Wikileaks released 400,000 leaked documents in October 2010. How much time would it have taken for The Guardian to process them, and would the information still be relevant by the time they were released?
- cobrausn 13y ago
  OP pointed out the editorializing on the 'Collateral Murder' video as evidence that you can't avoid this.
  - commandar 13y ago
    Seriously, I have a hard time accepting a lack of editorializing as a serious argument in favor of Wikileaks. Collateral Murder was editorialized to the point that it hurt Wikileaks' credibility, if anything. Yes, we got the raw information as well, but often after highly publicized, deeply editorialized publicity stunts. I agree with the premise of the headline: an organization like Wikileaks is incredibly valuable to a functional and transparent democracy. Wikileaks itself, however, suffers from far too many fundamental problems to serve as anything other than a vague outline of what such an organization should be.
    - noblethrasher 13y ago
      To be fair, Assange advocates what he calls “scientific journalism”[1] in which the editorialized piece is presented along with the raw and unedited primary source(s)†. He also acknowledges that Wikileaks is an “activist organization” that uses “transparency as its method”[2]. I do not necessarily agree with the editorial voice of Wikileaks but the style of journalism that it promotes is obviously a Good Thing. [1] http://goo.gl/GGJWz http://goo.gl/GGJWz [2] http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/04/logan-symposium-explores-new-models-for-investigative-reporting108 http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/04/logan-symposium-explor... † Redaction to protect the life and/or livelihood is an exception. EDIT: I meant “kind of journalism” rather than “style of journalism”.
zwegner 13y ago
Well, FWIW, Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who broke this story, has been a staunch supporter of WikiLeaks. See: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/4/29/glenn_greenwald_on_why_he_strongly_supports_wikileaks_bradley_manning?utm_m http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/4/29/glenn_greenwald_o...
baddox 13y ago
Well, the article says "an entity like WikiLeaks," and appears to be referring to its statelessness and ability (or at least willingness) to stay online despite governmental efforts to take the service down. You may be right that WikiLeaks itself is a low-quality or irresponsible example of such an entity, but I still think it's a valid point that these types of entities are beneficial.
- commandar 13y ago
  Absolutely. I'm completely on board with the concept of an organization acting as an information clearing house for leakers; I just feel that Wikileaks is the wrong organization to be doing the job. Whether it's intentionally making releases dripping with spin or the inability to function internally (e.g., resulting in the destruction of the Citibank documents), it's clear to me that Wikileaks just isn't up to the job of serving as that sort of clearing house in a credible manner. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anyone else stepping up to the plate to take up that challenge at the moment.
btilly 13y ago
FYI the redactions of the cables as originally published were done with the assistance of several established news organizations. One of which was The Guardian. Therefore the result you criticize was the result of the same editorial process that you extol. (As for Wikileaks itself, they eventually released all of the cables without redaction.)
- GabrielF00 13y ago
  One difference is that I can email or call the Times and they are generally responsive. I couldn't contact Wikileaks. Yes, at first journalists from reputable publications guided the redaction process. However, Wikileaks also gave access to unredacted documents to some very dodgy people, including Israel Shamir, who may have shared documents with the Belarusian dictatorship, leading to arrests of activists (c.f. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/why-i-had-to-leave-wikileaks http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/why-i-had-to-lea...) Of course the unredacted documents were ultimately released. This was done, as I understand it, by a combination of a Guardian journalist revealing the password to a file that he thought was not public and WikiLeaks putting that same file on a server. To quote from The Guardian: >>The newly published archive contains more than 1,000 cables identifying individual activists; several thousand labelled with a tag used by the US to mark sources it believes could be placed in danger; and more than 150 specifically mentioning whistleblowers. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/julian-assange-arrest-australia-wikileaks http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/julian-assange-a... I'm not suggesting that The New York Times or The Guardian are perfect - they aren't - but they have decades of experience balancing the costs and benefits of leaks and overall they do a good job (from the Pentagon Papers to today's report). By comparison, what have we learned from the leaks of the diplomatic cables that was worth people getting arrested by dictatorial regimes or getting killed?
  - btilly 13y ago
    By comparison, what have we learned from the leaks of the diplomatic cables that was worth people getting arrested by dictatorial regimes or getting killed? Historians will argue that one for decades. However I've seen it claimed and argued by knowledgeable people that learning what the US thought about their local dictatorships was a major contributing factor that made the Arab Spring possible. Contributing to the freeing of over 100 million people from dictatorship is a pretty good counterbalance to the ways in which some dictatorships have been able to abuse the information released. See http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/wikihistory-did-leaks-inspire-arab-spring http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/wikihistory-did-l... for information on how wikileaks contributed to starting the Arab Spring.
foobarqux 13y ago
> It has a well-known and respected editorial process that can weigh the consequences of a leak versus the potential value to the public. It is neither well known nor respected. The process is not public and there is a great deal of self-censorship that has nothing to do with public safety. There were examples of this even in the publication of the Wikileaks cables.
- GabrielF00 13y ago
  The New York Times and other media organizations have an independent public editor whose job is to examine and explain how the paper has handled a particular issue and to provide criticism if they feel it is appropriate. They also publish letters to the editor and op-eds by people who disagree. Again, I'm not saying that the New York Times is perfect, but its a lot better than Wikileaks.
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    Those are weak checks and balances and are essentially ineffective for those most important problem: Stories which are never reported. There are serious systemic faults that the NYT cannot solve. For example, 1. Corporate influence 2. Government influence 3. NYT management self-interest 4. NYT institution self-interest. I'm not saying Wikileaks is perfect, but it certainly plugs those holes. Finally, you needn't choose between NYT and Wikileaks, both can co-exist. But the world certainly could use more Wikileaks-like organizations than NYT-like ones.
znowi 13y ago
> I have a lot more confidence in, say, The New York Times or The Guardian than Wikileaks So do governments. It's much easier to deal with a newspaper :)
AnthonyMouse 13y ago
>newspapers have a long, successful history of defending their first amendment rights in the courts. They are also dying. Newspapers make their money from advertising. The price you pay for the paper barely covers the cost of printing and delivering it. But print advertising has fallen off a cliff in the face of the web. You can hear all the old hands complaining about how it's all Google's fault (or whatever), but it isn't anybody's fault, it's just a fact. It's a fact that leaves newspapers without the level of resources they had thirty years ago to fight against government overreach. And it's another fact that most of those "missing" advertising dollars have gone to the tech sector. Which means we have a responsibility to pick up the slack, one way or another.
lotharbot 13y ago
I'm with you. The article assumed that making leaks easier is a good thing. I contend that it should be hard to leak stuff -- you should, at the very least, have to convince an editor whose own credibility (and potentially their job) could be on the line. That sort of process makes it less likely that you'll recklessly endanger people over minor issues.
- analog 13y ago
  Ironically the unredacted release of the diplomatic cables was caused by the Guardian journalist David Leigh, when he published the password as a chapter heading for his book about Wikileaks. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/09/unredacted_us_d.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/09/unredacted_us_... http://www.amazon.com/WikiLeaks-Inside-Julian-Assanges-Secrecy/dp/B0057D9LJG http://www.amazon.com/WikiLeaks-Inside-Julian-Assanges-Secre...
weland 13y ago
> It has a well-known and respected editorial process that can weigh the consequences of a leak versus the potential value to the public. Unfortunately, the well-known and respected editorial process isn't transparent to the public. I'm not implying this is bad; just that it is vulnerable to being used for hushing up stuff, dusting important (but inconvenient) information under the "not important" carpet.

ThomPete 13y ago

Wikileaks is not interested in confidence nor is it trying to compete with "the media". It's interested in obstructing the ability of governments and organisations in power to "conspire" against it's populations through technology. It should be judged on that, not on the aesthetics of it's delivery.

Sven7 13y ago

It is not black and white. Both models have their flaws. By and large most reporters of The New York Times towed the line before the Iraq invasion and the Wall Street melt down. When you get called into a room by very important people, and are told do it for the sake of the country, few people are going to push back. That's where overly paranoid folk like Assange have a role to play. They force the system to reevaluate the status quo.

foobarqux 13y ago
> and are told do it for the sake of the country Or for the sake of advertisers. And they usually don't need to be told.

enraged_camel 13y ago

>>It has experienced reporters who understand the issues involved. You mean it has experienced reporters who editorialize the leaks. Because that's one of the many benefits of Wikileaks: you get the data in its raw form and can reach your own, independent conclusions if you choose to do so. >>It has a process through which the public can contact the organization and correct errors. This is well and good, but the process is not efficient enough to deal with the sheer volume of leaks in a timely manner. Just as an example, Wikileaks released 400,000 leaked documents in October 2010. How much time would it have taken for The Guardian to process them, and would the information still be relevant by the time they were released?

cobrausn 13y ago
OP pointed out the editorializing on the 'Collateral Murder' video as evidence that you can't avoid this.
- commandar 13y ago
  Seriously, I have a hard time accepting a lack of editorializing as a serious argument in favor of Wikileaks. Collateral Murder was editorialized to the point that it hurt Wikileaks' credibility, if anything. Yes, we got the raw information as well, but often after highly publicized, deeply editorialized publicity stunts. I agree with the premise of the headline: an organization like Wikileaks is incredibly valuable to a functional and transparent democracy. Wikileaks itself, however, suffers from far too many fundamental problems to serve as anything other than a vague outline of what such an organization should be.
  - noblethrasher 13y ago
    To be fair, Assange advocates what he calls “scientific journalism”[1] in which the editorialized piece is presented along with the raw and unedited primary source(s)†. He also acknowledges that Wikileaks is an “activist organization” that uses “transparency as its method”[2]. I do not necessarily agree with the editorial voice of Wikileaks but the style of journalism that it promotes is obviously a Good Thing. [1] http://goo.gl/GGJWz http://goo.gl/GGJWz [2] http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/04/logan-symposium-explores-new-models-for-investigative-reporting108 http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/04/logan-symposium-explor... † Redaction to protect the life and/or livelihood is an exception. EDIT: I meant “kind of journalism” rather than “style of journalism”.

zwegner 13y ago

Well, FWIW, Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who broke this story, has been a staunch supporter of WikiLeaks. See: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/4/29/glenn_greenwald_on_why_he_strongly_supports_wikileaks_bradley_manning?utm_m http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/4/29/glenn_greenwald_o...

baddox 13y ago

Well, the article says "an entity like WikiLeaks," and appears to be referring to its statelessness and ability (or at least willingness) to stay online despite governmental efforts to take the service down. You may be right that WikiLeaks itself is a low-quality or irresponsible example of such an entity, but I still think it's a valid point that these types of entities are beneficial.

commandar 13y ago
Absolutely. I'm completely on board with the concept of an organization acting as an information clearing house for leakers; I just feel that Wikileaks is the wrong organization to be doing the job. Whether it's intentionally making releases dripping with spin or the inability to function internally (e.g., resulting in the destruction of the Citibank documents), it's clear to me that Wikileaks just isn't up to the job of serving as that sort of clearing house in a credible manner. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anyone else stepping up to the plate to take up that challenge at the moment.

btilly 13y ago

FYI the redactions of the cables as originally published were done with the assistance of several established news organizations. One of which was The Guardian. Therefore the result you criticize was the result of the same editorial process that you extol. (As for Wikileaks itself, they eventually released all of the cables without redaction.)

GabrielF00 13y ago
One difference is that I can email or call the Times and they are generally responsive. I couldn't contact Wikileaks. Yes, at first journalists from reputable publications guided the redaction process. However, Wikileaks also gave access to unredacted documents to some very dodgy people, including Israel Shamir, who may have shared documents with the Belarusian dictatorship, leading to arrests of activists (c.f. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/why-i-had-to-leave-wikileaks http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/why-i-had-to-lea...) Of course the unredacted documents were ultimately released. This was done, as I understand it, by a combination of a Guardian journalist revealing the password to a file that he thought was not public and WikiLeaks putting that same file on a server. To quote from The Guardian: >>The newly published archive contains more than 1,000 cables identifying individual activists; several thousand labelled with a tag used by the US to mark sources it believes could be placed in danger; and more than 150 specifically mentioning whistleblowers. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/julian-assange-arrest-australia-wikileaks http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/julian-assange-a... I'm not suggesting that The New York Times or The Guardian are perfect - they aren't - but they have decades of experience balancing the costs and benefits of leaks and overall they do a good job (from the Pentagon Papers to today's report). By comparison, what have we learned from the leaks of the diplomatic cables that was worth people getting arrested by dictatorial regimes or getting killed?
- btilly 13y ago
  By comparison, what have we learned from the leaks of the diplomatic cables that was worth people getting arrested by dictatorial regimes or getting killed? Historians will argue that one for decades. However I've seen it claimed and argued by knowledgeable people that learning what the US thought about their local dictatorships was a major contributing factor that made the Arab Spring possible. Contributing to the freeing of over 100 million people from dictatorship is a pretty good counterbalance to the ways in which some dictatorships have been able to abuse the information released. See http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/wikihistory-did-leaks-inspire-arab-spring http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/wikihistory-did-l... for information on how wikileaks contributed to starting the Arab Spring.

foobarqux 13y ago

> It has a well-known and respected editorial process that can weigh the consequences of a leak versus the potential value to the public. It is neither well known nor respected. The process is not public and there is a great deal of self-censorship that has nothing to do with public safety. There were examples of this even in the publication of the Wikileaks cables.

GabrielF00 13y ago
The New York Times and other media organizations have an independent public editor whose job is to examine and explain how the paper has handled a particular issue and to provide criticism if they feel it is appropriate. They also publish letters to the editor and op-eds by people who disagree. Again, I'm not saying that the New York Times is perfect, but its a lot better than Wikileaks.
- foobarqux 13y ago
  Those are weak checks and balances and are essentially ineffective for those most important problem: Stories which are never reported. There are serious systemic faults that the NYT cannot solve. For example, 1. Corporate influence 2. Government influence 3. NYT management self-interest 4. NYT institution self-interest. I'm not saying Wikileaks is perfect, but it certainly plugs those holes. Finally, you needn't choose between NYT and Wikileaks, both can co-exist. But the world certainly could use more Wikileaks-like organizations than NYT-like ones.

znowi 13y ago

> I have a lot more confidence in, say, The New York Times or The Guardian than Wikileaks So do governments. It's much easier to deal with a newspaper :)

AnthonyMouse 13y ago

>newspapers have a long, successful history of defending their first amendment rights in the courts. They are also dying. Newspapers make their money from advertising. The price you pay for the paper barely covers the cost of printing and delivering it. But print advertising has fallen off a cliff in the face of the web. You can hear all the old hands complaining about how it's all Google's fault (or whatever), but it isn't anybody's fault, it's just a fact. It's a fact that leaves newspapers without the level of resources they had thirty years ago to fight against government overreach. And it's another fact that most of those "missing" advertising dollars have gone to the tech sector. Which means we have a responsibility to pick up the slack, one way or another.

lotharbot 13y ago

I'm with you. The article assumed that making leaks easier is a good thing. I contend that it should be hard to leak stuff -- you should, at the very least, have to convince an editor whose own credibility (and potentially their job) could be on the line. That sort of process makes it less likely that you'll recklessly endanger people over minor issues.

analog 13y ago
Ironically the unredacted release of the diplomatic cables was caused by the Guardian journalist David Leigh, when he published the password as a chapter heading for his book about Wikileaks. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/09/unredacted_us_d.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/09/unredacted_us_... http://www.amazon.com/WikiLeaks-Inside-Julian-Assanges-Secrecy/dp/B0057D9LJG http://www.amazon.com/WikiLeaks-Inside-Julian-Assanges-Secre...

weland 13y ago

> It has a well-known and respected editorial process that can weigh the consequences of a leak versus the potential value to the public. Unfortunately, the well-known and respected editorial process isn't transparent to the public. I'm not implying this is bad; just that it is vulnerable to being used for hushing up stuff, dusting important (but inconvenient) information under the "not important" carpet.