Danger in leaks of secret state papers

The deluge of secret state documents pilfered by the self-appointed global whistle-blower WikiLeaks and unloaded into the ocean of  information in the guise of “creating open governments” has at last swamped our shores, causing turmoil in our society and  international relations.

No event has wreaked more havoc on civilized relations among modern nations than this great flood of leaks of diplomatic documents since the barbarian invasion of Europe (400-800 A.D) in the transition from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. These leaks reveal the communications of diplomats negotiating treaties that have governed relations of nations and determined war or peace.

The sad and frightening part of this massive leakage of state secrets is that it has been inspired by the goal of a group of computer hackers to change the world.  Julian Assange, described by the magazine “Democracy Forum” as “Australia’s most famous ethical computer hacker,” has defined the philosophy behind WikiLeaks thus:

“To radically shift regime behavior, we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed.

“We must think beyond those who have gone before us and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forefathers did not. The more secretive or unjust an organization, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie… Since unjust systems, by their nature, induce opponents, and in many places have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.”

With this philosophy, Assange sought to justify  the scheme of pilferage of information from secret state documents  by a group of people who are using their expertise in digital age technology  to do a job no less nefarious than the piracy of buccaneers during the golden age of exploration and discovery in the 13th and 14th century.  When a group of people, no matter what their vocation and what tools they use, get ideas that they can change the world,  they become self-appointed messiahs and cannot be trusted with power. They become as dangerous as mad scientists.

It is hard to say if Assange and his group are journalists or another form of gatekeepers of information with power to vet its contents and with the absolute power to censor like dictators of modern times.  Assange claims that WikiLeaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined. “That’s not a way of saying how successful we are,” he said, “rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media.”

No matter how effective his instruments are in pilfering information, Assange and his group belong to the category of whistle-blowers, a breed of social creatures despised for ratting on colleagues engaged in the same racket, sought by governments to aid them in breaking rackets, and loathed by those they have betrayed so that they end up with their heads broken with a baseball bat, the way the Mafia deals with squealers.

But WikiLeaks is different. It does not squeal on the pilfering activities of its small band of confederates, with the stated purpose of “creating open governments” (using the more popular language of the day for “good governance,” the favorite buzz word of the self-proclaimed honest government of President Aquino, who claims temporal sanctity without being embarrassed). What it does is pilfer information from confidential diplomatic files, exposure of which to the general public generates tensions between governments and damages the fabric of secret diplomacy in negotiations prior to the signing of treaties.

Assange is viewed with mixed reactions, ranging from the extreme of being a public and security menace and being an agent of open and transparent statecraft.

Counter Punch magazine called him “Australia’s most infamous former computer hacker.” The Age newspaper of Melbourne called him “Internet’s freedom fighter.”

In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing some of the 251,000 American diplomatic cables in their possessions, of which over 53 percent are listed as unclassified, 40 percent are “Confidential” and just over 6 percent are “Secret.”

Australia’s Attorney-General Robert McCleland has told the press that his government would inquire into Assange’s activities and WikiLeaks. “From Australia’s point of view, we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached by the release of this information,” he said.

The US State Department has launched a criminal investigation related to the leak.

The WikiLeaks revelations have been credited with sparking the Tunisian Revolution. What this suggests is that the wholesale revelation of secret diplomatic documents can provoke political turbulence in crisis-torn countries and cause a disruption of diplomatic relations between normally friendly countries, as in the case of the leaked dispatches of former American ambassadors to the Philippines. The diplomatic furor over the dispatches of former Ambassador Kristie Kenney that called former President Cory Aquino a “tarnished” and “weak” leader is a case in point.

Disclosure of secret diplomatic papers is a nemesis of stable diplomacy. It cannot be left in the hands of pilferers of state secrets.