03 Sep Former Media Partners Condemn Wikileaks
“We deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted state department cables, which may put sources at risk. Our previous dealings with WikiLeaks were on the clear basis that we would only publish cables which had been subjected to a thorough joint editing and clearance process. We will continue to defend our previous collaborative publishing endeavour. We cannot defend the needless publication of the complete data – indeed, we are united in condemning it. The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his, and his alone.”
~Joint statement of The Guardian, New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde, the former media partners of Wikileaks.
Diplomats, government, human rights charities, and media organizations all urged Wikileaks not to publish the full cache of cables, but he did it anyway. According to CNN, “A brief search through the cables shows that documents have not been redacted in any way. The names and other details of confidential diplomatic sources are on full display, despite being labelled with the instruction ‘strictly protect’, including cables classified as ‘secret’ or ‘confidential.'”
Unedited, unredacted disclosure to the world of confidential, classified government documents. Every name, every word of 251,287 leaked United States diplomatic cables now available for anyone to read.
Any defenders of Julian Assange now?
Anyone interested in the real story of what happened — which is that WikiLeaks decided to release the unredacted cables only after a Guardian reporter negligently released the password to the encrypted file containing the cables in his book, and only after WikiLeaks informed the State Department about the reporter’s actions — might want to read Glenn Greenwald’s post here. Funny how there is no mention of that in this post.
The fact that the Guardian would join a statement condemning WikiLeaks for what one of its reporters set in motion really says about all that needs to be said.
You can see the page of the reporter’s book with the password prominently displayed here.
In a remarkable act of hubris, the reporter in question has recently written an article for the Guardian entitled “WikiLeaks decides to make public all US state department cables.” Yes, the same reporter who made public all US state department cables by publishing the password to the encrypted file.
The mind truly reels.
But we were told that we were being alarmist, no real danger, blah blah blah by the Julianistas who gave us cavalier assurances that redaction meant no one would be placed in any real danger. Turns out, they were kidding.
If Leigh was negligent, Wikileaks was more so — for failing to change the password and for falsely assuring Leigh that the password would be changed after a couple of days. All quite predictable really; anyone with half a brain cell could see even then that there was a significant danger of the unredacted cables being leaked through malice or inadvertence.
Those who paid lip service to ‘redaction’ — Assange and the many boneheaded defenders of Wikileaks — haven’t got a leg to stand on.
Just to be clear, everyone, by Julianistas, John Tan means Julian Assangistas, not Julian Kuhistas.
John Tan, before this recent breach it did look like Wikilleaks was making a concerted effort to redact names.
That whole “WikiLeaks assured Leigh it was a temporary password” thing? Funny how Leigh didn’t mention that in his book, even though he provides a minute-by-minute account of convincing Assange to give him the password. Must have been an honest oversight. Couldn’t possibly have been an after the fact rationalization for his actions.
You can see the relevant passage here.
Roger’s entire line on this affair has been to aggressively defend the mainstream press’ monopoly over source cultivation and publication of state secrets, to appropriately safeguard identities and make decisions based on public interest.
So it’s just flabbergasting that he dodge even mention Leigh’s role in this, and the broadly shared culpability surrounding publication and access to the public archive, rather than the completely irrelevant issue of Wikileak’s publication of the cables after everything had already come out.
In terms of Leigh’s responsibility, even if you accept at face value that the password was given over with assurances that it was temporary, it is still grossly negligent to gratuitously publish it. Even redundant passwords can tell you a lot about password formation, and if you’ve taken an aggressive line painting Assange as unreliable, as Leigh and the Guardian have, then the excuse that you relied upon him is utterly incoherent.
The only motivation for including the password was the cheap titillation of the moment — which is not public interest journalism but rather just part of him cashing in on the story — something that directly contradicts the line Roger has been taking that the mainstream press are responsible intermediaries.
It is curious that Wikileaks’ defenders, who wish to place all the blame on David Leigh and the Guardian and none of the blame on Julian Assange, fail to address the united, joint condemnation issued by all the former media partners. Nor do they address the State Department’s condemnation of Wikileaks for continuing “its well-established pattern of irresponsible, reckless and frankly dangerous actions.” Is it their position that the State Department, the New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and El Pais are all wrong and Glenn Greenwald and his ilk are correct? I honestly don’t know what Julian Assange would have to do to secure the condemnation of his ever-faithful defenders. As for Matt’s suggestion that Wikileaks was responsibly redacting material before this latest episode, that’s simply incorrect. The mainstream media partners were doing all the redacting, and he was doing none of it. As for shared culpability, I’m more than willing to say that David Leigh at the Guardian should not have published the password. It was a mistake on his part and he deserves criticism too. But that only reinforces the danger of the Wikileaks’ publication model of encrypted technology with multiple individuals holding the… Read more »
Leigh and his editor(s) undeniably committed a colossal blunder in publishing the password. However, I do not wish to attribute no blame to wikileaks. I just find it obtuse that your post focused on the second order issue of wikileaks releasing the already-compromised cables, rather than the primary issue of the public archive. I suspect this is because the real story is complicated and reflects very poorly on Leigh and Daniel Domscheit-Berg – both people uncritically cited by wikileak critics due to their sour relations with Assange and their vocal attempts to seize the higher moral ground over wikileaks. The point is, the real story doesn’t fit this simplistic framework of MSM = good; wikileaks=bad, so naturally you avoided talking about until confronted. As for wikileak’s responsibility, it’s a complex issue. The encrypted and password-protected archive of the cables was obviously published via P2P in reaction to a coordinated denial of service attack on wikileaks servers, and the involvement of Daniel Domscheit-Berg in appropriating the cables from their server and announcing a policy of selective deletion. So, in a real sense you can argue the archive was a justifiable counter-measure for the organisation to take to secure the data. However,… Read more »
So why did WikiLeaks ever give anyone even an encrypted copy of the unredacted memos?
The media outlets should never have been passed anything that hadn’t already been scrubbed. It’s amateur hour out there.