on Wikileaks

I love it. Duh.

Beyond that, there's lot to say, much of which has already been said. But you must know what I think, so here's a thought.

First, consider that many of these leaked documents are totally mundane and offer no new information about the foreign policy or military policy of the USG. But the fact that such material is classified in the first place DOES reveal something, a point made by Glenn Greenwald:

It is a "scandal" when the Government conceals things it is doing without any legitimate basis for that secrecy. Each and every document that is revealed by WikiLeaks which has been improperly classified -- whether because it's innocuous or because it is designed to hide wrongdoing -- is itself an improper act, a serious abuse of government secrecy powers. Because we're supposed to have an open government -- a democracy -- everything the Government does is presumptively public, and can be legitimately concealed only with compelling justifications. That's not just some lofty, abstract theory; it's central to having anything resembling "consent of the governed."

The alleged social contract is that we the people will allow the government to have insane amounts of power, as long as they let us know what they're doing with it. "Ok, we'll let you keep a few secrets in some special cases where secrecy is appropriate, but generally you need to be telling us what you're up to." Wikileaks come in and proves that the government is making a mockery of that social contract, by making EVERYTHING secret.

If the government isn't respecting the deal, why should we? And aside from what it is that Wikileaks is exposing, the fact that they're in the exposing business is also a problem. Wikileaks is being defiant, refusing to obey as Michael Smith points out, which might make other people less inclined to obey. Power has good reason to be pissed off at Wikileaks.

And so various high profile political and media figures, like good servants of power, are running around saying we should kill the Wikileaks guy. They're the more fringe crazies like Sarah Palin. What about the more "respectable" figures? Consider what Greenwald pointed out and IOZ emphasized about Wolf Blitzer: he was outraged at the idea that the government failed to keep secrets from him! This is a leading "journalist" and he demands that we all should know LESS about what our government does. Or consider that the Attorney General is running around threatening to prosecute foreign citizens, who aren't on US soil, for violating laws that don't exist:

"To the extent there are gaps in our laws... we will move to close those gaps, which is not to say . . . that anybody at this point, because of their citizenship or their residence, is not a target or a subject of an investigation that's ongoing."

This entire Wikileaks episode should reveal very clearly that the people who control the power of Government and of mainstream media have no respect for democracy (i.e. they want an uninformed citizenry) and have no respect for law (i.e. they break it or change it when it serves their interests). The entire power structure of government and media exists to serve certain interests - not yours.