I don't think I've made any arguments from the national security perspective. I've talked about how it would damage diplomacy and international relations. What the king of Saudi Arabia said might not put lives at risk, but revealing what he said in confidence could still be very damaging to the stability the situation in the Middle East. If governments can't speak frankly to US diplomats about serious issues for fear that their words will be leaked to the world then there's a dramatically lower chance that they'll cooperate with the US in any meaningful way to solve those issues.

For example, how could you ever find a solution to the status of the Palestinian Territories if the concessions Netanyahu and Abbas were willing to make to create a Palestinian State were leaked during the negotiations? The Israeli coalition would be brought down by pissed-off West Bank settlers and nihilist militants on the Palestinian side would drum up opposition to any concessions at all. When governments talk to one another they need to do so with an expectation of discretion, and internal government policy discussions need the same sort discretion.

I'm not damning Wikileaks as a whole (apparently they leaked damaging information on things from Scientology to BNP membership lists to Bilderberg Group minutes to Love Parade documents, and the whole let's-spy-on-the-UN thing by the US sounds outrageous and needs to be explained), but I question the wisdom of THIS particular leak since all it will do is grievously harm the confidence states have when they speak to one another. This has huge implications beyond the US.

Has Wikileaks "leaked" anything truly damaging to countries that act as a counterweight to U.S. hegemony? Russia leaks? China leaks (don't give me the Google crap)? Iran leaks? Al-Qaeda leaks?

This organizations seemingly uses Western freedoms to pursue an anti-American/Western Europe agenda to sabotage U.S. foreign policy efforts.

The funding of this organization needs to be looked into and dealt with not just the "leaker".

When this organization produces a damaging leak on Putin or China it will gain more credibility as an honest journalistic endeavor. Until then it must be viewed as an quasi-anarchist organization at best, and at worst has more direct ties to governments that are not friendly to the West.

I agree with strategos that this leak won't be a big deal in the long term, and seems to mainly be confirming what we already knew about US relations. Also I haven't really seen anything all that damning in anything Wikileaks has released, I've browsed through the Iraq war logs and that vast, vast majority of it looked like well kept data of important work done (and anything identifiable was censored).

That having been said I don't really see the point of this leak, this isn't about exposing the harsh reality of war or anything, it seems to just be a leak for the sake of a leak. On the one hand I think it's less likely to put lives in danger, on the other hand why do it?

@SpeakerToAliens: how dare you question the existance of insane conspiracies! ;)
I will now propose that Julian Assange is a US agent and this is all a massive deception operation that will finally get McDonalds into Iran.
Bravo US intelligence, bravo. (tho it was probably the brits idea)

By the way from an information security perspective it is stunning that one person was capable of leaking all this data, both this time and for the Iraq leak. Why do a large collection of people need access to so much data? If there are people prepared to leak it to the public what would happen if they got offered a lot of money for it? It really sounds like the US needs to get some proper security in place

@tj - Interesting. I'd thought of that side, but never really clarified the argument in my head. I think you have quite a point there, as I'm sure there's easily enough to say about Russia - "questionable" disappearances in Chechnya; invasion of Georgia; Putin's imperial reign.

That said, they have posted material about other nations, such as Peru and Kenya, its just these didn't get such massive press coverage.

Wikileaks aren't the first people to do something like this - the Bolsheviks released records of all the secret dealings that Tsarist Russia had been privy to, including the Sykes Picot agreement which showed how the allies had been planning to screw the Arabs. Quite a public service, I would say. So Assange is in good company!

fiedler+1.

That there are some thigns which will annoy people and weaken your hand when revealed, doesn't mean your being strong helps the world or is important to me - infact leaks reduce the abuse of power by the strong.

It is not neccesary to have a world where secrets are an acceptable neccesity, it is just the case that it has been possible up to this point, and there has been no way to guarentee all agencies acted with perfect transparency.

Technology clearly changes this. Well technology and numbers - the bigger your organisation -> the more people in the loop -> the more likely someone will leak something.

Nations are not like school children liking other kids, they do act like it sometimes but that isn't justification for such a behaviour. School kids ARE learning about what risks to take and how to act in their new and developing social enviroment, and so the analogy works for countries - they are learning how to deal with changing technologies and developing international relation.

Our rules are arbitrary and malleable - that secret services have exited and been useful in the past does not neccesitate their continued existance - that secret diplomacty is the current norm does NOT neccesarily mean public diplomacy is doomed to failure.

In fact, I would argue that public discourse between Israelis and Palestinians wouldn't be such a bad thing. The fact that 'secret' diplomacy has failed for so long really does show that it's not a great system to begin with...

This would make an interesting varient: the entire contents of a random person's chattbox made public at a random point in a diplomacy game.

But seriously, bad idea. Due to damaging diplomacy, this could make prevention of war harder, potentially putting lives at risk, making other lives of civilians more difficult in a more tense diplomatic situation. It would depend on the specifics contained therein.

I would think that the dissemination of such information, not just stealing it, would be illegal under the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" interpretation of free speach, but it doesn't seem to be (of course, he's not based in the US anyway).

@orathaic: quote: "Secret diplomacy has failed for so long" - has it? surely it works for some. What you are arguing for is essentially the complete elimination of privacy. I like privacy, you can prise it from my cold, dead hands :^)

Would you want the world to know exactly where you are all the time? How much money you have? What your true opinions are about people, races, gender? What your most bizarre sexual fantasies are?

Complete elimination of privacy is neither desirable nor at all possible, so let's get real eh?

'What you are arguing for is essentially the complete elimination of privacy. I like privacy, you can prise it from my cold, dead hands :^)'

Not personal privacy, only for nations.

In fact i think i claimed that it was possible to remove privacy from 'big enough' groups, (such as super-states or faceless multinationals) I also claimed that it weakened the hand of those 'strong' group - it is reasonable to assume this should apply only to those 'strong' and 'big' groups - however strong and big is defined.

'has [secret diplomacy failed]? surely it works for some. ' - at least in the Israel-Paelistine conflict, which i was vaguely responding to "how could you ever find a solution to the status of the Palestinian Territories if the concessions Netanyahu and Abbas were willing to make to create a Palestinian State were leaked during the negotiations?"

@McBry - I knew the "it's just a game" defense would come out, but that is a double edged sword. If releasing that info would cause you to lose "just a game" then how much more important is that confidentiality when lives are at stake? What if those plans to convoy that army leaked and it was bounced in an Omaha Beach style landing and thousands of soldiers lost their lives? Yes Diplomacy is just a game so leaking that info is far *less* damaging than in real life. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply an idiot.

But these leaks aren't some audit that says the government pays $80 for a toilet seat. It's about the dealings between states in an anarchic international system. You may not like that governments are less that forthcoming with their true opinions, but that's just the way it works. Revealing what people really say behind closed doors and in supposedly secure communications undermines the ability for important people to speak honestly. Indeed, it would discourage governments from even FORMULATING policies on possible controversial topics. It's fantastic that there's a plan to snatch up Pakistan's nukes in the event of a crisis, but there's no reason that plan needs to be public.

As for Palestine, if the Israeli public ever knew in the midst of negotiations that Jerusalem was up for inclusion in a Palestinian State then there would be total opposition. If the Palestinians knew the Right of Return was being dropped they'd burn down the West Bank. If these compromises are portrayed after the fact in the context of the larger deal they might be accepted, but those scenarios exposed in a tabloid would be disastrous.

Discretion in diplomacy is hardly like Watergate. Some sense of perspective in necessary, people.

@Draugnar-However, games constrict the motivations and actions available to the participants, and, as you have pointed out, have lowered consequences. To counter your Omaha Beach example, I need merely point to Unit 731 to highlight an instance where secrecy passed off as necessary to the accomplishment of the legitimate goals of the state yielded results of which I believe most would disapprove (and simultaneously avoid invoking Godwin's law).

Ok, but given that nations are made up of people, who have innate secrecy, plus their own political dynamics within that nation, how exactly would open-diplomacy work? I mean how would it occur? It seems like a oxymoron to me.

Also I think the reason a solution has not been found to the Palestinian question is because there ISN'T a solution! Both parties want soveriegnty over the same piece of land and are unwilling to compromise on that point. So the only possible solution would be to eliminate ALL of one party or the other.

Just watch, we will both be in our cold cold graves before that's ever resolved. I don't worry about anymore :^)

Draugnar +1 Mossad doesn't fuck around.

I don't think i'm claiming that releasing all information now will NOT cause damage and possibly loss of life, i'm claiming that if the governments/corporations of the world expected everything to leak out sooner or later (that freedom of information laws gave sufficient powers to journalists, and protection to whistleblowers) then perhaps they wouldn't abuse their power to begin with.

So, i am perhaps not an idiot, but an idealist, you know the most dangerous type of person, one who thinks they are right... How and ever, whether 'naive' or a 'fundamental misunderstanding' the world, i'd like some clarification - WHY is the world i can imagine unrealistic or worse than the world we live in today?

Cause you can tell me that wikileaks cause soldiers in Iraq to get killed (and apparently the pentagon disagrees, i think that memo was leaked too :) ) and you might be correct, but wikileaks didn't put those troops on the ground, and their lives were DEFINITELY put at risk before hand.

Some risk, loss of life and damage to society, infrastructure and institutions is acceptable to make the world a better place - whether that means you supported the war in Iraq or wikileaks - you are still willing to take risks to do what you think will improve the world. And isn't that what this is really about?

no they don't, and they have only really murdered a few innocent people accidentally.
Mossad: "Opps, I thought you were someone else! my bad. LOLZ"

"given that nations are made up of people, who have innate secrecy, plus their own political dynamics within that nation, how exactly would open-diplomacy work?" - open diplomacy in terms of international relations (as opposed to internal politics) - i think those things are distinct.

how would public discussions about in palestine/israel work? I've very little idea, but the point is everythign else has failed and the serious lack of trust at issue is not neccesarily helped by the fact that negotiations are secret.

Of course how to actually involve the public in such discussions/communal decision making is a very difficult question...

While Julian Assange has not yet been the victim of an assassination attempt, there has been at least one attempt to get him to shut up: a (false) rape accusation a few months ago. The charge was quickly dropped when police (I believe this was in Sweden) found the complaint to be more than a little suspicious - especially after they realized who he was. There's more than one way to 'get rid of' someone who is being a pain in the ass - see Gary Webb and Jim Hatfield, for instance.

I almost wish there was more than what I expected.

Frank discussions of world leaders. I'm sure everybody is shocked to find out Karazai is a weak, incompetent leader. Go figure.

If all these cables contain is various gossip and shit that we already knew... big whoop?

I have been reading about this a little bit, and I have yet to find any revelations that shocked me.

Julian is wanted for rape in Sweden, and has Interpol after him now, lol

Ignoring all replies, I am 100% in favor of what Wikileaks is doing. If the United States is being immoral or breaking international law, this should be brought into the light. Wikileaks censors out anything that is too dangerous anyway.

I just can't wait for them to leak some British government docs and then get arrested for treason. That'd make my day. This is no freedom of speech. Their sources are illegally removing government documents and releasing them to the public. I agree its partially the US governments fault, for there are way too many people with top secret clearance, and there are no bag checks or anything upon leaving government offices - although there are cameras everywhere. Still, I hate the idea of wikileaks for government docs and just wish that they would stop publishing this stuff. Corporate leaks on the other hand are fine by me.

Julian is Australian so the only country that could prosecute him for treason is australia no? the other members of wikileaks are spread over half a dozen European countries I think.

No. International arrest warrants apply everywhere. almost

Oh, I thought it was based in the UK, so that was my reasoning

So if he's Australian, same line of thinking, just Aussie docs and not British ones