Why WikiLeaks Is Bad for Scholars (Chronicle of Higher Education)

[struggle4progress]

December 5, 2010
By Daniel W. Drezner

... As confused as the early analysis of the WikiLeaks cables has been, it is in the long term that their effect will be most negative for political scientists and diplomatic historians. In his public statements, the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has evangelized for transparency. In July he said, "We are transparency activists who understand that transparent government tends to produce just government. And that is our sort of modus operandi behind our whole organization."

Assange's hypothesis may or may not be true, but his belief that WikiLeaks will lead to greater government transparency is blinkered in the extreme. Governments do not respond to security breaches by surrendering themselves to the fates. American foreign-policy bureaucracies have and will continue to respond to WikiLeaks by clamping down on the dissemination of information.

That means more compartmentalization, to make sure that someone like Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst suspected of disclosing documents to WikiLeaks, can't download classified files from multiple agencies. It means that more cables will be classified, reducing the number of people who can access them and delaying their release to the public. Most important, a lot less will be written down. State Department officials will opt for telephones over e-mail. As a result, future data dumps from WikiLeaks or its imitators are less likely. The cumulative effect of these measures will make it much harder for political scientists and diplomatic historians to piece together how decisions were made.

Julian Assange and other true believers in transparency argue that they have discovered the very crowbar to pry open the U.S. government. Unfortunately for them, WikiLeaks will be more like a boomerang—and the next generation of scholars are the ones who will be hit on the head.

http://chronicle.com/article/Why-WikiLeaks-Is-Bad-for/125628/

[RandomThoughts]

1. That is a bit spinny.

Not sure about the wikileaks guy, but on thoughts of transparency.

Hard to find an analogy with wiki leaks, since there are parts that are wrong in the analogy.


However if they tighten up on security, they will have less information to operate with.



Basically he is making the 1984 argument that wiki leaks purpose is to help the 'system' plug its own holes.

That is despair based that believes power is bad, or existence is bad.

I though a long time on that concept before ideas of transparency, and realized that 1984 concept is to get people to not talk, just like pictures of people with finger over their mouth, or many other false doctrines try to tell people not to express what they think.

They need secrecy to operate, if they had any power they would not have to push for secrecy, instead they have to convince people to be secret by many systems and threats.


In my belief the more that express the better, and it wont help them plug leaks, because you make the assumption they are stronger or more powerful then those that believe in getting the information out.


there is an argument that many TV shows were actually people putting out the true history of what is going on, that they wont tell people. So Sg1, and History channel documentaries, and many other shows were the real news. (like said in men in black) There even was an SG1 episode about that very thing.

His argument is that leaders were putting what was going on in metaphor in many shows to give information to future historians, and those with eyes, since the news is so inaccurate, and only for the main population as kiddie shows.

It is based on a few doctrines, and not accurate, but many believe that. It ignores the supernatural, ignores many things. Although there have been leaks in many shows, they are from a perception where some person thinks that idea, and is not the same as it being what the population wants, or even those in control, but instead is just showing what a few that have tv shows, or make movies think are metaphors.

Although he is discussing the concept of 'scorching the sky' where information in literal form was removed from public, so it went to metaphor, he is saying that will be removed also.

Note how this entire topic is discussed with the wiki thing as metaphor.

[Igel]

5. People have a long history of adapting and reacting.

If you look at laws, for instance, you find that many laws have consequences that weren't intended. Some of them aren't serious. There's a problem in assuming that the reaction obtained is the reaction desired, of assuming that the law as an instrument is fine-tuned and effective.

There's no need to consider Wikileaks as a tool for tuning secrecy provisions. Or, as a later poster assumes, part of an orchestrated conspiracy because anything else would have led to a Assange's disappearance. Sometimes things really aren't as bad as we like to think they are. However, that's not the simplest way to understand the post given the text.

All that's needed is to assume that the diplomatic corps and those they talk to find the Wikileaks dissemination of cables and written memos painful in some way. This seems to be the case. Then the question is, What is the expected reaction to the pain? Avoid the possibility of a repeat: There's no need to assume that the reaction goes beyond the same kind of reaction an amoeba has when confronted with an unpleasant stimulus, i.e., avoidance and withdrawal. That would mean greater compartmentalization, to reduce the number of people and increase the reliability of the people who could release scammed copies; fewer written sources, to reduce the number of things to steal copies of; less information, reducing the information that could be embarrassing. This isn't spinning very much, to be honest. If you're going to posit the minimal response, that's pretty much it.

[EmilyKent]

2. That's the most absurd excuse yet.

:rofl:

[struggle4progress]

3. It's a reaction from someone who professionally studies declassified cables

He's saying that twenty or thirty years from now, when people look at cables from 2011 and after, they'll find a lot less written down

It's not an "excuse" -- it's a professional assessment of one effect of the current massive release

[soryang]

4. Wiki leaks is filtered in so many ways

First, the views expressed are those who are inside the most cloistered establishment in the world. The authors are very limited in perspective. The view inside government is very cloistered and misleading.

Then it is censored or filtered by the intelligence agencies and other government agencies governing the release for propaganda purposes. It doesn't hurt the US, it hurts all the nominal enemies, Iran is doing this, Karsai is doing that, this is happening in Pakistan... Did it hurt Bush or Cheney? Does it go into the lies that got us into these wars? Do it discuss our torture program in detail? It minimizes the civilian casulties in these illegal wars to get the mass mind off the million number in Iraq.

It is cognitive infiltration.

Let's face it. Assange could have been killed or kidnapped and send to Egypt for torture and execution many times over by now. If the CIA or other agency such as the joint chiefs wanted to get rid of him, he would already be gone. This is part of a psychological warfare program. Assange could be summarily executed right now under the provisions of Obama's executive order.