03 Dec WikiLeaks Hypocrisy Watch: Library of Congress Edition
The Library of Congress is preventing its employees or visitors using its wireless network from accessing WikiLeaks. It released the following explanation:
The Library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.
Nothing says freedom quite like a library blocking access to important evidence of government misdeeds. And, of course, the Library of Congress is not blocking the websites of any of the newspapers that have also disclosed classified documents without authorization — even though “unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.”
Technology, such as internet, mobile and satellite phones, satellite television etc. has in the last 100 years started to shift the power from the powerful to the powerless. Bloggers exposed the use of white phosphorus in Iraq and the CIA-flights. We see live on youtube what’s happening in Gaza, read live twits from the Iranian revolution. And now Wikileaks. It is cheap to inform and be informed, search for information, organize, protest, join forces with individuals scattered around the world, that otherwise be isolated. We should therefore expect that the powerful will try to do something about it, such as trying to control the internet.
What “serious misdeeds”? If anything, the difficulty finding the so-called “war crimes” Julian Assange claimed would be found in databases merely underscores the fact that U.S. forces have almost universally conducted operations professionally. Furthermore, as a more general matter, the release of classified U.S. diplomatic material is plenty reason for the LoC to block access to Wikileaks. Pursuant to various statutes, the LoC plays a role in the release of previously-classified executive materials. Blocking access is a statement that the LoC recognizes the balancing interests between free access to information and the need for secrecy in order to permit unfiltered thought and analysis in the realm of diplomacy and foreign affairs.