If you have nothing to hide, why not let us see?

[lightcastle]

It's interesting that this favourite line of the security state is in some way the core principle behind Wikileaks, according to Julian Assange.

Those essays are summarized here by
zungzungu and it boils down to Assange trying to make the conspiratorial bent of governments more difficult by making secrecy harder to maintain. Ultimately, Assange argues that "in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems". Therefore, make leaking easy and you promote open, just systems.

Meanwhile, the US news media has gone batshit over wikileaks, basically arguing the point that the news media exists to serve the government. As both Greenwald in that previous link and Digby here marvel, on the BBC we actually got to see an editor for the New York Times explain how he cleared all the Wikileak memos he published with the government, while a former diplomat argued for more transparency.

Simon Jenkins sums it up with an adage that was still being taught in journalism school when I got my degree, The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment.

Comments

[kino-kid.livejournal.com]

This is my basic problem with the PR smear campaign against Wikileaks. The rationale of the people whose information is leaked is that anyone who ever leaks information again is a terrorist. This is a nail in the coffin of investigative journalism, if enough people buy it.

[lightcastle]

Indeed.