WikiLeaks, Transparency and the Right to Publish

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Readers to this blog know that back in October 2009 I wrote two articles commenting on the WikiLeaks organization.   As an auditor having been exposed to ethical issues in corporate America, and having seen cases where transparency in practice does not always follow documented policies, I felt that WikiLeaks could serve a valuable role in the corporate world, simply by being the place where whistleblowers could expose corporate wrong doing without fear of reprisals, specially when they exhaust normal channels.  Today, a year after having written those articles, I feel the same as I did then, but in this article I will venture to share some political and personal observations about the context  in which the planned release of over 350,000 reports, dubbed ‘The Iraq War Logs’, documenting the war and occupation of Iraq from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2009 is  taking place.   It is up to the reader to determine if any of my observations have current or future implications for their work in the corporate world.

Thinking about this recent WikiLeaks media extravaganza  brought me back to my childhood in Cuba, where there is no Freedom of the Press or Freedom of Speech and journalists are regularly jailed for criticizing the government or indicating dissent from the accepted socialist dogma.   In places like Cuba, the pursuit of the truth, the right to protect the identity of sources, the right to publish free of censorship and the ideals of transparency we take for granted in the USA can get you beaten or killed without any due process. This is reality, not fantasy or a hysterical right wing conservative scare tactic.   There are places in the world where things are actually worse, but the US media does not report on it for a variety of reasons that do not fit in this short article.   Because of my personal experiences regarding the value of speaking freely, and memories of the killing, jailing, intimidation, beating and exile of relatives for the simple reason of “political disagreement,” my support for publishing the leaked Afghan war documents and now the Iraq War Logs may be a bit more complex than the norm.

Let me begin by stating that as an American citizen, with various family members currently and previously in the US military, I support 150% the valor and sacrifices that our service members make on a daily basis.  And, if called to serve my country, I will go without hesitation.   Now let me also say that contrary to the support, admiration and respect I have for the military, I have almost none left for our political leaders and the political culture that (unfortunately) sends our military men and women to war.   The lies, cover-ups, corruption, greed and incompetence that have occurred during the last fifty years, from the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, the Middle East, Latin America, and within our own borders in our inner cities does not instill any confidence that this political culture is worthy of the benefit of the doubt.   From the left as well as the right, the interests of the average working class American seem to be trampled upon.   We have a political elite where many of its members spend their entire life in “public office” and often their children and grandchildren succeed them.  We have billionaires who spend 30, 50, or 80 million dollars in three to six month campaigns for offices that pay annual salaries of less than $225,000 a year and they tell us they do it for the love of serving the poor.   We have a two party system monopoly that plays musical chairs and gets elected by less than 50% of voting adults nationally, and at the state or local levels the figures are often less than 30% of voting adults.   We have a media that repeatedly reports on the same subjects 24 hours a day, from the same perspective and the same prejudices, by reporters that previously worked for or will work for, the very political elites they are supposed to provide unbiased coverage.   Our multinationals  conduct business all over the world  and when cases of corruption surface, our guys are always found to be ethical and within the law, while the foreigners are almost always found to be guilty of all sorts of ethical, criminal and fraudulent acts.    Our companies ship millions of jobs and capital overseas, with the help of our government, in the name of improving our competitiveness, but they do little to re-invest and create jobs here at home. And, because we are still an unchallenged military super power, we have no qualms about threatening or bombing those countries we decide do not meet our moral, ethical or human rights expectations (set by our political elites of the right or the left).  We live in this Hollywood inspired and promoted fantasy that costs billions a year to promote and hammer into our brains.   The Cowboys and Indians narrative has never stopped, except now it’s a high tech version.

In addition to the things noted above, we have a population that for the most part does not understand or is not educated in what happens in the rest of the world.   For this reason many believe that by magic the rights and protections afforded to US citizens by the US Constitution extend beyond our borders  to citizens of other countries and our foreign policy is conducted with the same care and respect for foreigners that we have here at home.   Many also want to believe that  we have no enemies and those that hate us should be treated as misunderstood children and cared for until they come to their senses, as if it was a Social Work type of Conflict Resolution problem, even when the “misunderstood” folks are pointing Bazookas at our heads.  And, we also have a huge segment of our population that  does not seem to care about anything but having a good time, and seriously believes the biased and shallow “information” they are fed by the entertainment conglomerates’ TV and cable shows.  Whether we like it or not, our awareness of what goes on in the rest of the world is tainted by our domestic prejudices, our ideological beliefs and our government’s ability to twist and control what we see and hear in the media.  The claim that we live in the most open society on earth may be true, but we all know that access is no guarantee for awareness, and information overload may be as bad as no access.

And so, in this environment and in this day and age, our political elites tell us that it is dangerous to have WikiLeaks publish the leaked Iraq war documents, because it will disclose important secrets that may put the lives of our troops in danger.   It is hard to believe this claim, since it has been used so many times before by the same political culture every time someone published or threatened to publish government wrong doing.   Remember the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate leaks?  What is more credible is that the danger is to them and not so much to our troops, because for a change there will be a media source that can be seen by the entire world, without their meddling.   The fear of showing the world and the American people the mistakes, incompetence, injustices, arrogance, bullying and waste perpetrated by our top level leaders is what is at the heart of this call to stop Wikileaks.   If we were living in a totalitarian regime like Cuba or North Korea, this sort of reaction would be expected, but aren’t we in an open democratic society?   How do we accept a conditional version of Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press and Transparency in government.   Are we saying that we have Freedom of Speech only when it does not offend the elites, that we have Freedom of the Press only when it does not challenge commercial interests and we have Transparency in government only when the government tells us its OK for our own good?

My view is that we are not in Cuba or North Korea, thank goodness.  Let WikiLeaks readers decide what it is they are reading, whether it is fact or fiction.  WikiLeaks is the messenger, not the message!  The focus of attention should be on the weaknesses in US Government security policies and systems that allowed these massive leaks to occur.   The questions should be centered around the competency of some of the very officials who are now attacking Wikileaks as a method of deflecting attention from themselves.   Notice how the US media followed the lead of the US Government in quickly focusing on the individual who released the classified information and to WikiLeaks for publishing it.   Not a word or question about who has top level oversight and responsibility over the classified information, was the information properly classified, what sorts of  security controls should have been in place, and/or failed, what types of encryption systems, normally used by the private sector, where not used on the laptop to prevent access to the classified data, what types of policies, guidelines and procedures where ignored (with or without approval from superiors), what sorts of Segregation of Duties breaches occurred,  who signed-off the laptop and information for use by the person who made the leak,  has it been a normal practice to have classified/secret information floating around in laptops, was there ever a Risk Assessment and Impact Analysis done along with a Crisis Management plan for this type of risk, what types of Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools where in use or not, when was the last time the organization / unit or department in question had an IT Audit and IT Security Assessment done, and what where the results?   Instead, as in most cover-ups, the focus goes to the bottom of the Totem-Pole, to those that can be easily crushed, while the smoke screen confuses the issue until the public tires and moves on to another crisis or media event.   In the end, the very ones with culpability go on television to announce that the problem has been solved and those responsible have been brought to justice.

I predict that these leaks will have long lasting negative effects not only for American diplomacy, but  for most other countries as well.   The days of secrecy as we used to know it are over.   What does all this mean for our government in terms of being able to convince others in the future that we can guard secrets?  What does it mean in terms of the vulgarity, disregard for international laws and norms and overall arrogance practiced by some of our top leaders?

In this age of Twitter, cameras in every Smart-phone, instant messaging, the Internet and millions of blogs, the existence of WikiLeaks is likely to have a controlling impact on the way irresponsible and/or corrupt politicians and corporate executives do business in every country.   And, hopefully our military will be put less at risk by these types of people.

As always, I welcome your comments and critiques about this and all articles in the blog.

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