The Curious Questions of WikiLeaks

I'm not sure what I think about WikiLeaks. On one hand, I'm all about transparency, and I applaud WikiLeaks for the palpable good it's instigated in publishing the operating manuals for employees of the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, which revealed that the U.S. had a policy of hiding inmates from the International Red Cross and using dogs to intimidate prisoners. In its litany of other meaningful publications, WikiLeaks also made public the documents that exposed former Kenyan president's Daniel Arap Moi embezzelment, causing a shift in the elections. I admire WikiLeaks' commitment to primary sources--something that many of us citizens have far too little access to.

On the other hand, as this Wired article makes clear, the good work of WikiLeaks is tempered by its habit of publishing confidential documents from unconventional religious groups, such as the Church of Scientology. The public good is a lot less clear to me here, and I worry about the ability for relgious groups that don't adhere to mainstream codes of conduct beind pressured merely for their difference. It's part of what Wired reports as a growing trend for WikiLeaks to publish a number of things without apparant news value--like, say, a tax bill for actor Wesley Snipes that included his social security number. As one critic of WikiLeaks points out in the article:, "They think all secrecy is an evil to be opposed and that is just a juvenile point of view."

Comments

[Russell Hyland]

Anything that is bad for Scientology is all right with me. Those are some real toxic folks.