Re: Clay Shirky's nuanced position on Wikileaks

On Dec 6, 2010, at 4:27 PM, Karl wrote:

> But the reason I am conflicted is that the guys actions were illegal,

they were?  What law did he break?  Other than apparently having sex  
without a condom in Sweden?

> and could seriously endanger people’s lives.

did they?  Who's lives were endangered?

> His pure transparency statement does not work for me.

I can certainly grant that he may have blatant anti-American motives,  
but you can't deny our government has become overly secretive.  Any  
light shed on them is welcome in my opinion.

regards,
-Lance
>
>
>
>
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]  
> On Behalf Of Johne Cook
> Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 1:25 PM
> Subject: [DADL-OT] Clay Shirky's nuanced position on Wikileaks
>
> http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/12/wikileaks-and-the-long-haul/
>
> Wikileaks and the Long Haul
>
> Like a lot of people, I am conflicted about Wikileaks.
>
> Citizens of a functioning democracy must be able to know what the  
> state is saying and doing in our name, to engage in what Pierre  
> Rosanvallon calls “counter-democracy”*, the democracy of citizens  
> distrusting rather than legitimizing the actions of the state.  
> Wikileaks plainly improves those abilities.
>
> On the other hand, human systems can’t stand pure transparency. For  
> negotiation to work, people’s stated positions have to change, but  
> change is seen, almost universally, as weakness. People trying to  
> come to consensus must be able to privately voice opinions they  
> would publicly abjure, and may later abandon. Wikileaks plainly  
> damages those abilities. (If Aaron Bady’s analysis is correct, it is  
> the damage and not the oversight that Wikileaks is designed to  
> create.*)
>
> And so we have a tension between two requirements for democratic  
> statecraft, one that can’t be resolved, but can be brought to an  
> acceptable equilibrium. Indeed, like the virtues of equality vs.  
> liberty, or popular will vs. fundamental rights, it has to be  
> brought into such an equilibrium for democratic statecraft not to be  
> wrecked either by too much secrecy or too much transparency.
>
> As Tom Slee puts it, “Your answer to ‘what data should the  
> government make public?’ depends not so much on what you think about  
> data, but what you think about the government.”* My personal view is  
> that there is too much secrecy in the current system, and that a  
> corrective towards transparency is a good idea. I don’t, however,  
> believe in total transparency, and even more importantly, I don’t  
> think that independent actors who are subject to no checks or  
> balances is a good idea in the long haul.
>
> If the long haul were all there was, Wikileaks would be an obviously  
> bad thing. The practical history of politics, however, suggests that  
> the periodic appearance of such unconstrained actors in the short  
> haul is essential to increased democratization, not just of politics  
> but of thought.
>
> We celebrate the printers of 16th century Amsterdam for making it  
> impossible for the Catholic Church to constrain the output of the  
> printing press to Church-approved books*, a challenge that helped  
> usher in, among other things, the decentralization of scientific  
> inquiry and the spread of politically seditious writings advocating  
> democracy.
>
> This intellectual and political victory didn’t, however, mean that  
> the printing press was then free of all constraints. Over time, a  
> set of legal limitations around printing rose up, including  
> restrictions on libel, the publication of trade secrets, and  
> sedition. I don’t agree with all of these laws, but they were at  
> least produced by some legal process.
>
> Unlike the United States’ current pursuit of Wikileaks.
>
> I am conflicted about the right balance between the visibility  
> required for counter-democracy and the need for private speech among  
> international actors. Here’s what I’m not conflicted about: When  
> authorities can’t get what they want by working within the law, the  
> right answer is not to work outside the law. The right answer is  
> that they can’t get what they want.
>
> The Unites States is — or should be — subject to the rule of law,  
> which makes the extra-judicial pursuit of Wikileaks especially  
> nauseating. (Calls for Julian’s assassination are even more  
> nauseating.) It may be that what Julian has done is a crime. (I know  
> him casually, but not well enough to vouch for his motivations, nor  
> am I a lawyer.) In that case, the right answer is to bring the case  
> to a trial.
>
> IIn the US, however, the government has a “heavy burden” for  
> engaging in prior restraint of even secret documents, an established  
> principle since New York Times Co. vs. The United States*, when the  
> Times published the Pentagon Papers. If we want a different answer  
> for Wikileaks, we need a different legal framework first.
>
> Though I don’t like Senator Joseph Lieberman’s proposed SHIELD law  
> (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination*), I  
> do like the fact that it is a law, and not an extra-legal avenue (of  
> which Senator Lieberman is also guilty.*) I also like the fact that  
> the SHIELD Law makes it clear what’s at stake: the law proposes new  
> restraints on publishers, and would apply to the New York Times and  
> The Guardian as it well as to Wikileaks. (As Matthew Ingram points  
> out, “Like it or not, Wikileaks is a media entity.”*) SHIELD amounts  
> to an attempt to reverse parts of New York Times Co. vs. The United  
> States.
>
> I don’t think such a law should pass. I think the current laws,  
> which criminalize the leaking of secrets but not the publishing of  
> leaks, strike the right balance. However, as a citizen of a  
> democracy, I’m willing to be voted down, and I’m willing to see  
> other democratically proposed restrictions on Wikileaks put in  
> place. It may even be that whatever checks and balances do get put  
> in place by the democratic process make anything like Wikileaks  
> impossible to sustain in the future.
>
> The key, though, is that democracies have a process for creating  
> such restrictions, and as a citizen it sickens me to see the US  
> trying to take shortcuts. The leaders of Myanmar and Belarus, or  
> Thailand and Russia, can now rightly say to us “You went after  
> Wikileaks’ domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your  
> citizens the ability to register protest through donations, all  
> without a warrant and all targeting overseas entities, simply  
> because you decided you don’t like the site. If that’s the way  
> governments get to behave, we can live with that.”
>
> Over the long haul, we will need new checks and balances for newly  
> increased transparency — Wikileaks shouldn’t be able to operate as a  
> law unto itself anymore than the US should be able to. In the short  
> haul, though, Wikileaks is our Amsterdam. Whatever restrictions we  
> eventually end up enacting, we need to keep Wikileaks alive today,  
> while we work through the process democracies always go through to  
> react to change. If it’s OK for a democracy to just decide to run  
> someone off the internet for doing something they wouldn’t prosecute  
> a newspaper for doing, the idea of an internet that further  
> democratizes the public sphere will have taken a mortal blow.
>
> Johne Cook
> | http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |
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