Julian Assange, Internet Hero ?
"No one has been harmed, but should anyone come to harm of course that would be a matter of deep regret - our goal is justice to innocents, not to harm them. That said, if we were forced into a position of publishing all of the archives or none of the archives we would publish all of the archives because it’s extremely important to the history of this war."
Julian Assange, the man responsible for publishing 92,000 classified documents on the ongoing war in Afghanistan, has been hailed as a hero by some. But I very much doubt his purportedly noble intentions. The quote above informs me that he is rather cavalier about the lives which might be harmed as a result of his leaks.
"No one has been harmed" is his sweeping response to the question that the documents might contain sensitive information which may endanger lives. I don’t find that believable. He published 92,000 documents. He did not have the time to read every one of them, and identify the documents which contain sensitive information and withhold the publication of those or redact them. Is he now claiming that there is not a single document which might disclose sensitive information that would put the lives of soldiers or informants as risk ?
The Times of London claims that "in just two hours of searching the WikiLeaks archive, the Times found the names of dozens of Afghans credited with providing detailed intelligence to US forces. Their villages are given for identification and also, in many cases, their fathers’ names. US officers recorded detailed logs of the information fed to them by named local informants, particularly tribal elders. Among the documents is a report from 2008 that includes a detailed interview with a Taliban fighter considering defection. He is named, with both his father’s name and village included."
I can’t verify if the foregoing is true. But Assange’s retort is that "should anyone come to harm" appears to be "too bad — I would rather that people die, than miss this opportunity to gain notoriety". Which sounds a lot worse than the accusations which Assange levels against countries such as the US, of indiscriminately killing civilians in the course of prosecuting the (unjust) Afghan war.
Assange’s decision to approach three newspapers with the documents prior to the publication on Wikileaks also suggests that he was seeking a quick way to gain notoriety and to translate raw information which would otherwise be generally unintelligible to him.
In an interview, Assange suggested if any document "clearly jeopardised innocent people" that document would be withdrawn from disclosure and added to a store of 15,000 documents which he has withheld from disclosure. Which sounds awfully helpful given that such information would already be circulating in the public domain.
I think that if Assange were truly responsible, truly devoted to the lofty ideal of transparency in Government, and truly concerned about the prosecution of a just war and the loss of innocent lives, he could have scrutinised the documents and picked out several samples for disclosure (with sensitive information redacted where necessary), to demonstrate his theory that civilians were being killed indiscriminately and that war crimes were being committed.
There was absolutely no need to publish 92,000 documents in order for Assange to achieve his objective (I’m assuming this objective to be the lofty pursuit of transpanrency in Government, protecting innocent lives and a just war). Just a few particularly incriminating samples would have sufficed.
Alternatively, Assange can travel to Afghanistan and cover the war as a journalist. I’d very much like to see that.
Personally, I hope that he and his co-conspirators will be put away for a long time for his / their irresponsible acts. Or maybe they should just all be shipped to Afghanistan.