Wikicide
Err yes. Although government spokesmen should always be given a sceptical hearing when they say "revealing this information will cost lives", it's clearly not OK to just bellyflop a load of information about identifiable individuals onto the Web without checking through it to make sure you're not putting someone's life at risk. I frankly don't understand what Assange thought he was playing at and Charli Carpenter is right to say that the journalists working with him ought to have put their foot down. Nick Davies is usually a total mensch, but he really screwed up on this.
Yes, just what I was thinking.
ReplyDeleteQuite possibly Julian Assange will become the focus of the next campaign against extradition from the US to the UK. If he really did publish the names and identifying details of Afghan informants, he will be the least deserving Extradition Martyr so far.
As for Nick Davies and the Guardian, that Columbia Journalism Review article on the leaks (h/t Jamie K) had Davies patronising Assange for all he was worth- not a bad chap but they just used him as a source, etc. Except that Davies knew that Assange had a bunch of further documents that he was going to publish, and it really should have occurred to him that classified information from a guerrilla war just might have contained information that could get people killed.
The continuation of the war is putting more than a few lives at risk. And the idea that it is wrong to identify individuals assumes that the side they are on is the side of Good(would it seem that such precautions should have to be taken to protect those involved in what was beheld as a criminal enterprise?).
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, Assange did appear to claim that no such identification was possible and it will be interesting to see his response.
And the idea that it is wrong to identify individuals assumes that the side they are on is the side of Good
ReplyDeleteno, it makes much weaker assumptions. First "the side of Good" needs to be replaced by "the side of not-so-bad-that-they-literally-deserve-to-be-murdered". Second, the issue is one of negligence rather than malice - there's a positive duty to make sure you're not doing something really dangerous here, not a negative duty to not intentionally identify anyone. And third, what's on the other side of the cost/benefit calculation? However bad the war in Afghanistan is, what's the expected value of the number of lives saved per day multiplied by the expected value of the number of days nearer this leak brings the end of the war?
It's a total, very serious fuckup. I like the idea of Wikileaks existing, and am very suspicious indeed of the good faith of the people who want to pile on Assange and have him arrested. But it was a really bad thing to do.
I am slightly dubious about this. I haven't been through all 90,000 reports, but so far all the people named in the "Meeting" reports seem to be public officials - police chiefs, deputy governors etc - and I don't think naming them is putting them at any additional risk. After all, the Taliban presumably already know who the district police chief is, and that he meets with NATO troops every now and again.
ReplyDeleteIf there are reports in there which name civilians - non-government civilians - in a definitely compromising context, then that's obviously incredibly bad. (eg: naming them as informants, for example) But I don't know if this is the case or not.
I am taking the drunk driving approach to this one (I think it's more like drunk driving than calculated murder). I'm annoyed about the process, independently of the outcome - I hope it turns out that actually there were no new names in there and this is all a ginned-up government arse cover story. But even if it is, they didn't check and they should have.
ReplyDeleteActually they did check. Wikileaks didn't release 15,000 of the 90,000 documents it got because they contained information that would have harmed people in Afghanistan. (exact words: "as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source".)
ReplyDeleteSo it's more like a sober driving approach really.
Well, if Assange is prosecuted, one person responsible for the thousands murders in Afghanistan might finally be punished at least. There's that.
ReplyDeleteIt seems highly likely that you have been taken in.
ReplyDeleteThe whole story is based on a statement by an anonymous "former military intelligence officer" and a vague NYT article. Taking this at face value requires unseemly levels of credulity.
Assange didn't come across particularly well when asked to explain the screening process in interviews, and the "well, the US must have fucked up its classification hierarchy" line didn't help his case. If you want people to believe you've done due diligence, it helps not to sound like someone who, after reading out a tutorial essay, gets politely asked if he's read the set texts.
ReplyDeletenick s: very possibly. Still doesn't prove that he endangered anyone though, does it.
ReplyDeleteSince 'revealing this info will cost lives' isn't just a counterattack but a a diversion, I'd say there's a strong presumption in favour, not only (pace ajay, skidmarx) of doubt about the claim, but of a refusal to even discuss it or any of the issues that might arise subsequently (e.g. the fact that collaborators are themselves in the getting-people-killed game, the quasi-professional, outcome-insensitive nature of WL's commitment to publishing what it's given without gutting it, etc).
ReplyDeleteThe failure of US officialdom to meet the burden of proof, when so many resources must be dedicated to doing so, can itself be taken as evidence that the claims are unfounded (cf the zero fire/smoke rate of the campaign against Galloway.)
Assange has provided evidence for his claims - indeed mostly just evidence and relatively little in the way of claims. The converse is true of his accusers, but a successful news management campaign has everyone looking for evidence to support their conclusions, instead of deriving conclusions from WL's copious evidence.
Still doesn't prove that he endangered anyone though, does it.
ReplyDeleteTrue, though I wasn't making that claim.
I've considered the Wikileaks approach pretty shoddy for a long time, and Assange is setting himself up to be played like a harpsichord by whoever manages to serve up either a selective leak (perhaps one designed to identify a leaker) or outright false information
And that kind of attitude is obligingly setting him/WL up for a cruxifixion when that does happen - as it does to the MSM from time to time, though tending to be put down to experience, finessed (i.e. obfuscated), or just ignored.
ReplyDeleteAnd not sure about this 'selective leak identifying a leaker' - how is that supposed to happen and be WL's fault?
I'm ambivalent at best about wikileaks - their behaviour in Kenya has been pretty disgraceful for example. The the criticisms from the Cyrptome guy seem pretty reasonable.
ReplyDeleteHowever from what I've read so far, I'm not really buying the official response. Given that they approached the DoD and asked them for help in screening it for anything that endangered lives and the DoD refused, surely the DoD are responsible for any deaths resulting from this. This just seems like a very effective, and rather cynical, PR campaign carried out by the US (and one which has, incidentally, highlighted any possible sources just in case the Taliban missed them) to distract attention away from the actual documents. And its worked.
Yes. As with the recent flotilla raid, getting an agenda-setting story out quickly pays off handsomely, regardless if it;s subsequently 'discredited'.
ReplyDeleteWith suitable PR resources (lunches rather than conspiracies, as P Hitchens put it), a promptly delivered, simple, univocal story that is hard to refute quickly can ride the crest of transient media interest, providing an investigation sink and displacing alternative accounts, until the point at which refutations become old news.
It seems there may also be further, psychological, reasons why it's a winning strategy:
You can't not believe everything you read
Belief perseverence after evidential discrediting