Is WikiLeaks in the public interest?

WikiLeaks was launched in 2006, and within a year the website claimed to have 1.2 million different articles. Despite this, the website has only really come to the fore since it released 251,287 leaked diplomatic cables and documents on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from the US Government to various newspapers around the world, including the UK’s The Guardian, Germany’sDie Spiegel, France’s Le Monde, and The Sydney Morning Herald. Since then, the site’s prominent founder Julian Assange has been labeled as a terrorist and had calls for his assassination, or been hailed as an activist for democracy and freedom of information (depending on who you ask).

While it’s supporters have described WikiLeaks as a way of opening up democracy, some have argued that WikiLeaks may actually cause governments to become more secretive and less open. Steven Aftergood, who writes the blog Secrecy News, writes:

“…instead of subverting secrecy regimes, Wikileaks appears to be strengthening them, as new restrictions on information sharing are added and security measures are tightened. (Technology can be used to bolster secrecy as well as subvert it.)”

Secrecy News, December 6, 2010

Indeed, the US Government on December 1 last year released a press release in which it stated that it would “…put in place safeguards to prevent such a compromise from happening again.”Aftergood argues that rather than forcing a government to become more open, as WikiLeaks claims, it has encouraged them to tighten security and secrecy – which defeats the purpose of the leaks.

Guardian journalist Timothy Garton Ash argues that WikiLeaks releases information that often shouldn’t be released because it’s not in the public interest. He uses two examples.

“[First,] there is absolutely no good defence for keeping secret the American helicopter gunship video. What it showed was… at worst a war crime. It should have been investigated and published. On the other hand, when it comes to the details of secret peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli representatives… you could argue that there was a genuine public interest in keeping those secret. How else can negotiators have the confidence to explore the publicly unsayable, in the pursuit of peace?”

The Guardian, March 30, 2011

Thus, while freedom of information may be beneficial to the public interest, ‘overleaking’ can eventually become harmful to it and lead to closed governments. As Ash concludes in his article, “[d]igileaks change democracy as graphite rackets changed tennis. Whether they make it better or worse will depend on the rules, the umpires and the players.”