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The pitfalls of transparency

by Luke Balleny | http://www.twitter.com/LBalleny | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 30 July 2010 16:50 GMT

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Did WikiLeaks' publication of secret records on the Afghan war inadvertently endanger civilians' lives?

Did WikiLeaks' publication of secret records on the Afghan war inadvertently endanger civilians' lives?

With the possible exception of BP, one name has dominated the front pages more than any other this week; that name is WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is a website that publishes sensitive material that has been leaked to them by insiders. The material comes from a variety of organisations that include government departments, the military, political parties, religions and corporations.

WikiLeaks states on its website that: “We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information.”

On July 25, WikiLeaks published 76,000 military reports, mostly deemed “secret”, which covered the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2010. WikiLeaks noted it had temporarily held back a further 15,000 reports because they contained details that might harm Afghan civilians.

When WikiLeaks Editor in Chief Julian Assange gave a talk at The Frontline Club, a journalists club in London, two days later, he was asked whether releasing these documents might endanger the lives of troops in Afghanistan.

He replied: “We are not an organisation that is about protecting troops, we are an organisation that is about protecting human beings. Western troops have extraordinary physical protection in Afghanistan, they are, to some degree … probably the most immune groups in the entire country.

“It is the civilians and the aid workers in Afghanistan that don’t have that sophisticated protection; those are the people that we are primarily concerned about.”

In deciding which reports to hold back, he said: “It was civilians on the ground that were our primary concern, innocent informers that don’t have any protection.”

But The Times newspaper subsequently reported that it took them less than 2 hours of searching through the 76,000 reports to find the details of ordinary Afghan civilians who would be put at risk by the leak because they had decided to co-operate with NATO forces.

In some cases, those details included not just the individual’s name, but also their father’s name, the name of their village, and even precise GPS locations of their village. The newspaper also pointed out that among the documents leaked was a transcript of a 2008 interview with a named Taliban fighter considering defection.

A senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying: “The leaks certainly have put in danger the lives and integrity of many Afghans.”

 

ACCOUNTABILITY


It seems that WikiLeaks may have inadvertently over-stepped a boundary that it had laid down itself. But so what? When WikiLeaks makes a mistake, who is WikiLeaks accountable to? The site may believe in the benefits of transparent governance but it appears to pay scant regard to its own transparency.

The group behind WikiLeaks is made up of current and former hackers who are used to living in the shadows. With the exception of Assange himself, the identities of those behind WikiLeaks are unknown. The WikiLeaks website uses military grade encryption and multiple mirror servers so that the site cannot be shut down nor can the webmaster be traced to a specific country.

Unsurprisingly, Assange has been questioned about this apparent lack of transparency. His answer is that WikiLeaks is accountable to the public as it relies on donations from the public to cover operational costs and also relies on the public to continue to provide leaked materials.

Some might consider this disingenuous. They would argue that WikiLeaks doesn’t publish its donors so it is unclear who funds it and to what extent. It could be funded by one very rich person/organisation or, as WikiLeaks maintains, by thousands of individuals.

Critics might also say that as long as insiders believe they can leak information without getting caught, there will always be people ready to do so, and that this is not the same as being accountable to the public.

Unsurprisingly, the backlash against WikiLeaks is beginning to take hold. It has found to its cost that sometimes transparency, or a lack of it, can be a double-edged sword.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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