Ever since a U.S. army counterintelligence report identified WikiLeaks as a direct threat to the 'force protection interests' of the military – a euphemistic term for the United States' ability to militarily dominate when, where and against whom they choose – the organization has been in the Pentagon's crosshairs. For those of you who have been living under a rock, WikiLeaks runs a web portal dedicated to publishing government and corporate secrets online. It is, essentially, the new intermediary for potential whistleblowers and many of the 1.2+ million documents it has made public in its four year history have concerned various branches of the U.S. Government.
The propaganda war that is being played out between the Pentagon and WikiLeaks has become increasingly bitter in the last year and a half, first with the release of the notorious helicopter video and most recently in relation to the Afghan warlogs and the arrest and prosecution of Bradley Manning, an army intelligence analyst thought to be one of Wikileaks' primary sources . Although Julian Assange, WikiLeaks co-founder and its most visible spokesperson, described the organization as primarily concerned with justice, it is the ideological acceptability of whistleblowing that is being fought over here.
However, the genie is out of the bottle in terms of the ability of state agencies to contain these secrets. If WikiLeaks were to disappear tomorrow, the data it has made public would remain (mirrored by an increasing number of webhosts around the world) and, more importantly, whistleblowers would still be able to publish information through alternate means. Online journalists, security researchers, tech activists and others interested in issues of privacy and security occupy an important position in this regard. Certainly, though, none of the other existing intermediaries (investigative journalists, media outlets, certain online forums dedicated to the purpose, 'sympathetic' hackers--- we all saw how well that worked out for Manning) have quite the brand recognition that WikiLeaks seems to have achieved - ironically, by virtue of the U.S. Government's attempts to discredit it.
WikiLeaks is now something of a misnomer. Originally, it was a wiki, with an open submission and publication process. John Young, the respected architect and activist behind Cryptome (a site that predates Wikileaks by a decade), was invited to be its public face. Young parted ways with WikiLeaks only a few weeks after, citing philosophical differences. Ironically, over time WikiLeaks itself has become much less transparent in its practices, ostensibly to protect the anonymity of its sources, and has published fewer and fewer documents – most of which have been classified United States military files. As Young has noted, this is a clear shift in policy and mission for the organization, which is to “expose oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East”. This, along with questions about the money trail (WikiLeaks claims to have received substantial amounts in donations but no one really knows how or to whom the money has been allocated) and the character of Assange serve to undermine WikiLeaks' credibility at the same time as the organization has become synonymous with government accountability. This is, needless to say, an enormous problem with potentially serious implications for the future of whistleblowing.
Nevertheless, for all it's faults (and there are many potential grounds on which to criticize the sustainability of the WikiLeaks model) WikiLeaks currently represents the desire of information to be free. On the other side institutions like the Pentagon and Executive branches of government represent the desire to control it. Between them lie a vast number of individuals who work within the global security apparatus, numbering in the millions in the United States alone. At stake are the loyalty and sense of ethics of these workers. But the excessive debate surrounding WikiLeaks' position as the primary vector for publishing secretive data may only serve to detract from its ability to do so. We should not let this happen.
