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i find the whole area incredibly difficult. On the one hand it’s protection of sources who might be endangered and on the other it seems like an impossibility for any organisation – (even with 30-40 people working on it according to the frontline discussion with deputy editor of guardian) to go through 250,000+ documents in any reasonable time sphere.
One early calculation posted on wikileaks twitter site some time back suggested it could take 28 years! If you were to go along with that you then have the question whether exposing the truth earlier in some cases might save more lives and there would be less wars. It’s an impossible conundrum.
Yes, the answer to the question of what will yield fewer casualties will depend on many things and must be provided on a case-by-case basis.
The next area is that Assange & co obviously initially felt that the mainstream media were not reporting the truth properly, were gagged by governments and big business and needed to be much more ethical. All that has seemingly happened now is that the distribution and analysis of the cables and others has now been given back to the mainstream media once again.
True, the cables are given to the mainstream media but they’re also bing given to everyone else. So if The Guardian or NYT is gagged, then someone else won’t be. Truly independent media organizations are now able to coveer parts of the cables that no one else will.
So it is kind of back to square one all round, in certain ways, and maybe some of the idealism of the original idea has been lost.
I don’t see how this follows. The cables, once released in raw form (post harm-minimization), are there for everyone to see. The cables are not only for the media, which Wikileaks distrusts, but for everyone.
However it also seems impossible that Assange’s own team, which I believe is quite small (ten or twenty?), could handle this kind of epic task either.
The team is growing. Media experts and experts in several areas are being asked for help, and people are responding. There is a media form on the main Wikileaks site (Wikileaks.ch) for anyone to submit who believes s/he can help.
You kind of end up throwing your hands in the air in frustration!
Look, there are only 2 options. Minimize harm or don’t minimize harm. That amounts to the choice between redaction (and other minor edits) and indiscriminate leaking. Neither option is perfect but the latter seems reckless.
The only good thing we can see is that new and revealing information has been published and has inevitably got a lot of people out of bed, in more ways than one.
Ain’t that the truth.
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not long ago the wl spokesperson reminded via frontlineclub how “black markets of information” may jeopardize freedom of information and press freedom.
That sounds compelling but what does it mean? What is a black market of information?
I have to admit that the sphere wikileaks is acting in now, behaving more like an infodealer company concentrating on exclusive contracts and the “power” over the media, a “power” you can play with if having the chance for such contract deals does not look different than quite dark dark grey. as a market colour.
If you have evidence that I am committing a crime, you have power over me, yes. How is this your fault? That’s just how the power structure works. It’s easy to say that you “could” abuse that power. But that’s too easy. I can raise a concern about whether you will abuse your power (to cause public panic, for instance), but unless I have evidence to show you will, I have nothing. If you don’t trust Wikileaks, the burden of proof is on you to show that they have ever abused their power.
Please note that media in Germany already caught attention to cases where the exclusive access of SPIEGEL lead to obvious misinformation, may this be accidentally or less accidentally, e.g. a case where there were some efforts needed to get the SPIEGEL finally release a formerly misquoted cable (gysi-case).
Example?
In sum, it baffles me that one would argue that going back to the old, more naive format, should even be considered.
wn030
“What is a…” – I think you also have links to the fronlineclub streams, feel free to review. – “Example?” – mentioned in brackets and described detailed in the link (sentence after the quoted one in first answer)
“…that going back to the old, more naive format…” – you can call it “more naive format”, I would call it a format more in line with the self-announced original aims of wikileaks. (btw re “power” plays – I was not talking about possible abuse like trying to cause panic. Was talking about decision taking, which paper gets exclusive access, which one not this time as a reaction to what etc.)
“True, the cables are given to the mainstream media but they’re also b(e)ing given to everyone else.” – yes, after quite a time, isn’t it? quote from the taz article about the complaint at Presserat: the newspaper editors with exclusive access have, for many months, a pawn in their hand that they play with, deliberately. “So if The Guardian or NYT is gagged, then someone else won’t be.” – they don’t have to be gagged, enough they misquote. that “someone else” won’t be un-gagged for a long time.
jj22
I suppose my main point is that “we” only get access “second hand” – very few can search the whole database.
It will take a long long time for all the cables to come out for secondary analysis by others. Of course I am in favour of more people being involved, maybe another two thousand!
I felt it would make sense to distribute them in batches to those with a particular interest eg by country or region. Even then you can easily miss something which might be important contained in a cable from another embassy. I suppose a university department or faculty would make a good job on specific specialised areas.
Interesting that even the Guardian has slipped up on it’s Zimbabwe exposures re redaction and maybe causing harm although I believe others doubt whether it could have made much difference in the end. Redaction is highly subjective as we know.
It’s interesting that at the moment it is only the “highly respected” Western media who are in control of all the data.
Whether you think it is “reckless” or not, what do think is the likelihood on the balance of probabilities that they are all going to be “blown” anyway? Since other papers seem to be already getting their hands on them without permission nor agreement from Wikileaks, it seems just a matter of time.
If it happens I suppose Wikileaks will end getting the blame again, as with seemingly everything else.