Wikileaks is irresponsible

After the last post, I feel the need to flesh out my overall position on Wikileaks. While I think that our government and many in the punditocracy are overreacting, I do think that Wikileaks' carpet bombing approach to exposing government secrets is irresponsible. It releases mountains of classified data, most of which has little to no public interest (and is extremely boring) and some of which has put lives in danger (which isn't to say that some of it isn't within the world's right to know: that the Saudi's have been lying about their oil reserves has consequences for the entire world). This flies in the face of the cost-benefit analysis that has traditionally gone into publishing state secrets.

Worse than that: it makes the environment more hostile for leaks in the future. Journalists and leakers are free to publish not just because the courts protect free speech, but because the overall climate allows it. Traditionally, leaks against an administration could depend on support from the opposition, or at least on the opposition saying the harm to freedom of speech and of information incurred by going after the leakers was greater than the benefit of plugging the hole. Wikileaks has taken leaking to such an anarchistic extreme that the whole political establishment is turned against it. If Julian Assange does eventually end up in the US charged with something, it will be a chilling precedent. This is also significant as far as the courts are concerned: judges are not immune to public opinion and public passions. Why do you think they tread on eggshells when National Security is at stake?

Don't get me wrong: leaking classified information, even if it is against our national security interests, can absolutely be justified. The people who leaked the details of Bush's Official Torture Program "Enhanced Interrogation Program" are heroes as far as I'm concerned. That is something that the American people had a right, and a duty, to know. So did the rest of the world. Publishing the kitchen sink just because you can is another matter entirely.