This clip captures Julian Assange’s recent release on bail from British prison — and I must say that I’m very impressed by how he is managing his public profile.
While I am not one wildly enthusiastic about the release of documents showing American infrastructure vulnerabilities — and in fact, have strongly condemned the Wikileaks release of a particular Homeland Security document, I support the right of Wikileaks to pursue classified and sensitive documentation on national security matters and to release these to the public.
We have had too much growth of official secrecy in our government — and too much of what we are seeing in the Wikileaks material, particularly in what we have learned on Afghanistan and Iraq, is the government covering up its mistakes and errors or hiding the misbehavior of contractors and the like. So much of what we are reading should never have been held back from the public.
I see Wikileaks increasingly as a natural market reaction to the sprawling intelligence apparatus that Dana Priest described earlier in the Washington Post.
And until government gets its act together (don’t hold your breath), I support Wikileaks being part of the public response to defend the rights of a free and open civil society.
— Steve Clemons
32 comments on “On Wikileaks, the US Government is also to Blame”