Rights Groups Agonize over WikiLeaks

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) last week put out a “tortured press release, because they couldn’t figure out what’s going on here,” Dalglish said sympathetically. “They thought they had to issue something, but they're as conflicted as I am.” The reporters committee has taken no position on WikiLeaks, she said. SPJ’s statement emphasized reminders that journalists should maintain their ethical standards in handling the disclosures.

SPJ sought to make it clear that “everyday, working journalists are aware of the implications of the WikiLeaks affair and that we're concerned the general public doesn’t reach conclusions about how we do our jobs based on what they perceive of what” WikiLeaks publisher Julian “Assange and company have done,” Society President Hagit Limor told us. “I respect Lucy and her right to her opinion. I also believe the post reflected the differing opinions not only within SPJ but within any gathering of journalists discussing this subject."

"The whole thing is upsetting,” Andrew Schwartzman, senior vice president of the Media Access Project (MAP), said of the WikiLeaks disclosures and the responses. “It’s troublesome in all directions. … WikiLeaks is claiming the mantle of free speech to engage in provocations that can clearly endanger the lives of some individuals.” There’s “no good answer,” he also said.

Other organizations usually vocal about Internet, media and other liberties were quiet. The Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Digital Democracy, the Center for National Security Studies, ColorofChange.org, MoveOn.org, the National Security Archive, People for the American Way and Public Knowledge declined to comment or didn’t get back to us. Media rights and public interest groups weren’t alone in declining to discuss WikiLeaks. USTelecom and the conservative Internet Freedom Coalition wouldn’t comment. The New America Foundation put out a written statement Tuesday to say that its “Open Technology and Media Policy Initiatives are taking a close look at the impact of WikiLeaks on the future of news and information."

The ACLU declined to comment and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) didn’t elaborate right away on pieces they've posted about WikiLeaks after the giant release of U.S. diplomatic messages last week but before many of the concrete actions in response. “We're deeply skeptical that prosecuting WikiLeaks would be constitutional, or a good idea,” Hina Shamsi, director of ACLU National Security Project, said in a written statement Wednesday. “Prosecuting publishers of classified information threatens investigative journalism that is necessary to an informed public debate about government conduct, and that is an unthinkable outcome. The broader lesson of the WikiLeaks phenomenon is that President [Barack] Obama should recommit to the ideals of transparency he invoked at the beginning of his presidency."

It’s “not just WikiLeaks that suffers from corporate policies that suppress free speech, here on matters of intense public importance,” said an EFF blog post Thursday. “It’s also readers, who lose out on their First Amendment right to read the information WikiLeaks publishes. And it’s also the other Internet speakers who can’t confidently sign up for Amazon’s hosting services without knowing that the company has a history of bowing to pressure to remove unpopular content.” Amazon last week cut off Wikileaks from its hosting service.

The EFF post said “it’s impossible to know” whether Amazon, which pointed to violations of its terms of service in its cutoff of WikiLeaks, was actually responding to questioning by aides to Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. But the piece concluded that “it’s especially disheartening to see Amazon knuckle under to pressure from a single senator.” The post was written by staff lawyer Marcia Hofmann and Rainey Reitman, whose title is activist and who’s a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network, seeking the release of an Army private in jail on charges that he leaked classified information to WikiLeaks.

Dalglish and Schwartzman expressed no qualms about companies like Amazon.com and eBay’s PayPal cutting off services of a kind that WikiLeaks needs to operate normally. The providers seem to have had “very strong business reasons to cut off” the dealings, Dalglish said.

Other advocates, leaders and analysts seemed less conflicted and reticent. Their characterizations of WikiLeaks’ disclosures of confidential information ranged from a severe threat to national security and to operatives’ lives that must be met with the full force of the law, to nothing more than political theater whose main practical lesson is that it’s past time to batten down U.S. secrets. The furor over the WikiLeaks’ releases is more about the possibilities that it discloses than about the information that has been revealed, Dalglish said. “People are freaking out mostly about the potential” that the affair has demonstrated for the instant worldwide distribution of sensitive information, she said. “I think there’s a lot of hysteria and a lot of posturing going on” among the “very sanctimonious” U.S. public officials and political figures that are speaking out most harshly, Dalglish said.

"The absence of any mechanism to thoroughly vet this stuff before it’s released is one of the great dilemmas of the digital age,” Schwartzman said. “The civil liberties community is going to face different dilemmas, one after the other."

The reality of the Internet as a “worldwide network” is that “this type of activity can’t be totally stopped,” said President Randolph May of the Free State Foundation. “The most important thing our government can do is go after the leakers.” But “I don’t think you just throw up your hands and say, ‘We are in the Internet age and can’t do anything'” about those who distribute information that isn’t supposed to get out, he said. Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow on technology policy at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, agreed. He stressed the importance of narrowly banning releases of state secrets that danger agents and operatives and not information that embarrasses the government.

There was broad acknowledgment among those interviewed that the activities of WikiLeaks and media organizations reporting its revelations probably don’t violate U.S. law. But Schwartzman said he’s worried that a dangerous prosecution may take place anyway. “If we don’t have laws on the books that address any potential harm to the national security interests, then I think we should consider enacting such laws, and I think we can do it consistent with First Amendment interests,” May said.

The biggest risk is in putting “draconian laws on the books that will grab somebody at some point but not be able to come close to solving any legitimate problem,” Dalglish said. Ordinary citizens and companies are those most likely to be hurt, and prior restraints could be imposed on the disclosure of sensitive information unrelated to state secrets, she said.

The episode rips a gaping hole in purist arguments for an open Internet, said Scott Cleland, who was deputy assistant secretary of State for information and communications policy under President George H.W. Bush. “It clearly shows there’s a dark side to openness,” he said. “In an open Internet, openness needs to be responsibly defined. Sharing information known to endanger people’s lives is not responsible. … Freedom of speech is an exceptionally important principle, but it is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for despicable acts.” Cleland said NetCompetition.org, of which he’s chairman and which opposes net neutrality rules, has no comment about WikiLeaks.

The disclosures are “really not a big deal,” said Jim Lewis, senior fellow on Internet policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The latest ones mostly just show what foreign leaders already knew about how they were viewed by counterparts, and they will blow over as quickly as the Afghanistan revelations that preceded them, he said. WikiLeaks and those responding most sharply are engaged in mere “political theater,” Lewis said.

"If we can indict” WikiLeaks’ Assange, “we should indict him, Lewis said. In any case, the U.S. can sentence convicted leakers to “300 years in jail” and adopt security practices “that can prevent this kind of thing from happening,” he said. Any changes in U.S. law should await the adoption of technical measures and study of their effectiveness, Lewis said. Brito also called emphasis on improving “security protocols” the first priority.