Slate offers a compelling counter-argument to wikileaks

Slate has a very good case as to why Wikileaks is not as awesome as some think. Not because of the bluster about ‘secrets that could kill someone’ and the lame posturing via those about to be embarrassed, but because it points out that the Wikileaks is only able to do what its doing because its targeting already open societies. Wikileaks will start being more of a force for openness when it starts going after repressive governments as well.

Quote:

In fact, the world’s real secrets—the secrets of regimes where there is no free speech and tight control on all information—have yet to be revealed. This stuff is awkward and embarrassing, but it doesn’t fundamentally change very much. How about a leak of Chinese diplomatic documents? Or Russian military cables? How about some stuff we don’t actually know, like Iranian discussion of Iranian nuclear weapons, or North Korean plans for invasion of South Korea Korea? If WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange is serious about his pursuit of “Internet openness”—and if his goal isn’t, in fact, embarrassing the United States—that’s where he’ll look next. Somehow, I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t.

I think its a very good point to be considered.

Filed under the topic Uncategorized on November 29th 2010 at 8:31 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.