The Future of WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange

A judge in London granted bail today to Mr. Julian Assange, the recently famous founder of the international anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, although he remains jailed currently pending the possibility of appeal.  Swedish authorities were given two days to lodge their case.

Mr. Assange is fighting a request from a Swedish judge for his extradition to that country to face sex abuse charges involving accusations made by two young female WikiLeaks volunteers.  No matter if Mr. Assange is freed today on bail, the extradition decision could take weeks or longer, the New York Times reports today.  His next court date is set for Jan 11.

Julian Assange                                                      photo:AP

He surrendered to British authorities and was jailed a week ago when a judge reviewing the extradition order declared Mr. Assange to be a flight risk because of his “nomadic lifestyle,” his lack of ties in Britain, his network of international contacts and his access to substantial sums donated by WikiLeaks supporters. From now until his Jan 11 court date, Mr. Assange has been ordered to wear an electronic tracking bracelet, live at a registered address in London and report to police every evening.



Today's decision is just the latest development from the ongoing scandal started when WikiLeaks began making classified US State Department documents available to news organizations, most of them in the form of diplomatic cables from overseas agents. The cables contained brutally candid views of international leaders and situations, a common practice in diplomatic reports from senior agents, but not usually available for public consumption.

To date, WikiLeaks claims to have access to over a quarter million classified State Department documents, but only about 1300 have been published. Mr. Assange's week in jail has not stopped the flow of information from an online archive that was made available to five major news organizations across the globe, and Assange has promised about 80 documents a day.

So, as freedom-loving Americans, should we thank Mr. Assange or jail him?

For his work, he has been duly congratulated. In 2008, Mr. Assange won the Economist's Freedom of Expression Award, and the Sam Adams Award, a recognition of an intelligence officer who has taken a stand for ethics, given by a group of retired CIA officers.  For his work uncovering extrajudicial killings in Kenya in 2009, he was awarded Amnesty International's Media Award.

And just last week, while imprisoned in London, Mr. Assange won the Reader's Choice for Time Magazine's 2010 Person of the Year, earning more than twice the votes of his nearest competitor.

WikiLeaks has previously released secret documents related to illegal toxic chemical dumps in Africa, Guantanamo Bay procedures, Church of Scientology policy, and more recently, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Diplomatic cables from overseas agents are not generally sought-after documents, but Mr. Assange believes he has uncovered State Department dealings over the last two years for which "Hillary Clinton should resign. [If] she was responsible for ordering US diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the US has signed up. Yes, she should resign over that," he said.

Clinton has said WikiLeaks' most recent document dump is "not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests, it is an attack on the international community."

I think most Americans would agree that if the State Department is involved in illegal espionage, we have the right to know about it. But when it comes to international diplomacy, just because documents are classified does not mean they should be uncovered just for the sake of transparency. In this age of instant universal access to information, nations must be able to retain the right to classified internal communications. Classified does not equal illegal.


Independent whistleblower groups are generally a good thing, in the tradition of activism for social justice and freedom. As with anything else, we seem to need checks and balances; just as the police need to be policed, our watchdogs need to be watched. But the very idea of being regulated is mutually exclusive with the nature of an independent group, right?

WikiLeaks has promised another "mega-leak" in early 2011 involving a major US bank, and Bank of America's stock instantly fell 3% as a result. I imagine the disclosure of secrets from corporate board rooms will prompt less of an outcry than the disclosure of embarrassing diplomatic reports.

Surely the silencing of any and all international watchdog groups is not the answer, and of course, is not possible. We need as many eyes on our governments and corporations as we can get, and those eyes need to be independent ones.  So maybe the best outcome is that this changes the way the State Department communicates internally, no longer assuming air-tight secrecy of its classified materials. If the age of the internet has removed the ability of individuals to keep secrets, the same must and will be true for our democratic governments.

Please share your thoughts and comments.