NewsTrust - Government Transparency - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

WikiLeaks Exposes Internet's Dissent Tax, not Nerd Supremacy

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Zeynep Tufekci - Dec. 22 (Opinion) - Jaron Lanier's recent lengthy essay about Wikileaks is not really about Wikileaks; thus, it is unsurprising that he misses the central lesson of this affair. From the beginning, he makes the fundamental conceptual mistake of conflating individual human beings and powerful institutions, like governments and corporations; he then takes off on a dystopic vision of a world dominated by an imagined "nerd supremacist" ethic of complete transparency, collapse of private life, and unrestricted information flow, in which humanity is the slave of the machine.

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Julian Assange's Great Luck

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By Jack Shafer - Dec. 07 (Opinion) - Although a stay in stir and the prospect of Swedish prosecution might not sound appealing or even advantageous, it's actually a lucky break for Assange. I don't expect him to express his gratitude publicly, but I'll bet he's gamed out how to turn the Swedish arrest warrant, the extradition hearing, and beyond to his benefit.

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WikiLeaks cables are dispatches from a beleaguered America in imperial retreat

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Neal Ascherson - Dec. 04 (Opinion) - There's more to the WikiLeaks dispatches than leaks. Look behind them, at the writers, and you see the loyal rearguard of America: an imperial power in retreat.

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The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By David Samuels - Dec. 03 (Opinion) - [The] fact that so many prominent old school journalists are attacking him with such unbridled force is a symptom of the failure of traditional reporting methods to penetrate a culture of official secrecy that has grown by leaps and bounds since 9/11, and threatens the functioning of a free press as a cornerstone of democracy.

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Julian Assange answers your questions

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Julian Assange - Dec. 03 (Interview) - The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, answers readers' questions about the release of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables.

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WikiLeaks could kill the goose that laid the golden egg

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Ivor Roberts - Dec. 01 (Opinion) - WikiLeaks may be a bonanza for historians now, but diplomats will be reluctant to leave traces of their dealings in future"Open covenants openly arrived at" wrote President Woodrow Wilson nearly a hundred years ago. Well, his aspiration seems to be coming true as a huge amount of US diplomatic activity is laid bare in the media. A goldmine for the media of course and every diplomat's worst nightmare. But despite the understandable glee in the media at this unprecedented and unexpected windfall the consequences go much further than the embarrassment associated with for example the publication of MPs' expenses which are a clear example of justifiable public interest not least in publicising wrongdoing. The embarrassment caused a few years back by the publication of my description at a private conference of President Bush as "al-Qaeda's best recruiting sergeant" remained just that.What is at issue here is the ability of nations to conduct business with each other in a way which enhances international security. Diplomacy despite the many opportunities it offers for parody (Ferrero Rochet adverts and the like) is basically not a game for the mandarin class but a worthwhile exercise in trying to resolve conflict usually but not always between states. Al-Qaeda have after all triggered more conflict than anyone else in the past 10 years despite not being a state.The ability to handle these conflicts rests very often on, yes that dirty word secret agreements. How was the Vietnam war brought to a close? a secret agreement between Le Duc Tho the north Vietnamese negotiator and Henry Kissinger. The Good Friday agreement would not have been reached if the negotiations had been taking place in public. Even President Wilson's avowed preference for transparency didn't survive his experience of the Versailles peace conference where all big decisions were taken by Lloyd George, President Clemenceau of France and Wilson himself. Even allies were left in the dark.The real loss here is that hard to define or quantify factor, trust. Once gone it's very hard to regain as people find in their private lives. So in diplomacy, a leader who tells a US ambassador that he hopes the US will follow a particular course of action, will have offered that advice with the confidence that his views will not be played back to a third party.King Abdullah's views on the desirability of decapitating the Iranian snake will of course worsen relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two key regional countries, raise the level of suspicion between them and quite possibly lead to conflict, pulling in other regional actors including Israel and the US itself. And is it a coincidence that two Iranian nuclear scientists were murdered this week in Iran? The finger of suspicion would normally point at Mossad but thanks to WikiLeaks we know now that Israel is one only one of several countries in the region terrified at the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.Whoever is responsible, the Saudis and many countries around the world will think very carefully before volunteering frank views about other countries and their leaders to US diplomats, just as I never spoke again to the journalist who, in printing my comments on Bush, had betrayed the trust shown in inviting her to a not-for-attribution private conference.It beggars belief that a disaffected 22-year-old intelligence analyst could have stolen so prolifically from the state department archive. It is larceny on a grand scale but a consequence of a lax system in which millions (2.3 million? nobody seems to know) have access to cable traffic classified secret and above. While we have to assume that Hillary Clinton will take appropriate measures to ensure that from now on the circulation of sensitive rather than embarrassing information is suitably restricted in the interests of national and international security, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle: US diplomats may find future pickings from their diplomatic contacts rather meagre.And while some have seen the WikiLeaks as a bonanza for historians, historians of the next era of history may have cause to curse. Diplomats who gain access to or are given a particularly valuable or sensitive piece of information will be extremely reluctant to record it given the blow to confidence in the security of confidential messaging systems. Such information may well be passed predominantly orally by secure phone with no transcribed version kept. Inconvenient perhaps but safe.We could be entering a period of history as in the ancient world where people relied on the oral tradition and eventually wrote down some time later what they thought people might have said or thought. Did Thucydides actually hear Pericles' funeral oration or was he repeating what others had told him about it? Through a process of Chinese whispers messages can be transmogrified beyond recognition: one can imagine that the injunction to neutralise Iranian nuclear capability might have emerged as a piece of advice on dealing with poisonous snakes in the Middle East.The US embassy cablesWikiLeaksUS foreign policyUnited StatesIvor Robertsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect power from embarrassment

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Simon Jenkins - Nov. 29 (Opinion) - It is for governments – not journalists – to guard public secrets, and there is no national jeopardy in WikiLeaks' revelations Is it justified? Should a newspaper disclose virtually all a nation's secret diplomatic communication, illegally downloaded by one of its citizens? The reporting in tomorrow's Guardian of the first of a selection of 250,000 US state department cables marks a recasting of modern diplomacy. Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing's snake-oil salesmen claim. No organisation can treat digitised communication as confidential. An electronic secret is a contradiction in terms. Anything said or done in the name of a democracy is, prima facie, of public interest. When that democracy purports to be "world policeman" – an assumption that runs ghostlike through these cables – that interest is global.

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Answers to Readers’ Questions About State’s Secrets

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Nov. 29 (Interview) - The New York Times is publishing State’s Secrets, a series of articles about a trove of more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables that were originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing official secrets. The cables reveal the daily traffic between the State Department and more than 270 diplomatic outposts around the world and offer a secret chronicle of the United States’ relations with other nations in an age of war and terrorism.

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We are the Tea Party

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By John Mark Reynolds - Sep. 21 (Opinion) - Americans have never been fond of taxes: ask the British. Parliament passed a tiny tax on tea and touched off a titanic tax rebellion. Americans may like some government social programs, but they don't like paying for them. Ronald Reagan once summed up our attitude by saying: "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree."

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Big Government in Russia

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Public Radio International - By Marco Werman - Apr. 21 (Interview) - Russia ranks 120th on a World Bank list of attractive business climates – that poor standing is due to low transparency and impenetrable bureaucracy, mostly left over from Soviet times. But Vladimir Putin today pledged to free Russian businesses from excessive paperwork. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Nikolas Gvosdev at the Naval War College.

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Sunshine online

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Washington Post editorial board - Mar. 28 (Opinion) - If government information is not posted online, Mr. Israel asserts, then it should not be considered truly "public." Or, in the words of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit good-government group that helped Mr. Israel with the legislation, "public equals online."

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Closed-door government lacks key ingredient: us

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

First Amendment Center - By Gene Policinski - Mar. 26 (Opinion) - I've little doubt that the nation's founders preferred a knowledgeable, informed and engaged public. They had plenty of firsthand experience with the alternatives -- Star Chambers and Privy Councils that secretly conducted trials, advised royalty and set policy out of public view... Democracy is a messy, conflicting, argumentative, occasionally inefficient, and certainly challenging form of government. But civility, expediency and ease of operation are gravy, not goals, for our system of government. Still, across the country, local government units like city councils and school boards have attempted to tidy up the process

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