Wikileaks

Wikileaks is a non-for-profit media organisation officially launched in 2007 by Julian Assange. Wikileaks has been subject to much criticism and has caused an ethical debate over the past six years due to the manner in which the information they have released was sourced and if the information should have been released at all. 

But what has Wikileaks done and why does everyone have an opinion on it? According to the Global Post a brief history of Wikileaks includes publishing Sarah Palin’s emails after Anonymous had hacked into her account, publishing a video of a helicopter attack that killing civilians and journalists, publishing information supplied by Bradley Manning, publishing 91,000 documents about the United State’s involvement in Afghanistan and publishing war logs; over 400,000 classified documents.

Simply put, given that the information obtained by Wikileaks was all done illegally so this list in itself seems to show that Wikileaks and Julian Assange are bad people. But looking into what the publication of these documents has achieved is where opinion begins to divide. Opinio Juris lists why the benefits out weight the dangers.

Firstly the bad: Diplomacy- the effects on diplomatic relationships due to the fact that government documents have been released in the past. Safety: the first batch of Wikileaks documents published failed to remove the names of informants. Transparency: there is a view that ordinary American’s know more than they need to know about the day to day goings on about the US government and military.

Now the Good: We have learned a lot about what has gone on in the war in the Middle East, the death of over 109,000 people including over 66,000 civilians by Iraqi and coalition forces. Security has been increased in many governments throughout the world to prevent hacking and future publication of documents.

So what do you think?

Is WikiLeaks evil or good?

For me, as a former military man myself I understand the power and necessity of ‘Need-to-Know’ information and only informing military members and the civilian population of information that is relevant and necessary. There are many things that I was involved in that I only needed to know the bare bones of the task. However in terms of safety and security, governments being hacked into is a danger that should have never been made possible and the fact that security has been enhanced is beneficial for everybody.