Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau

While there are substantial differences between what Wikileaks does and what a newspaper does (e.g. Wikileaks does not provide much summary or commentary on the information that it uncovers), at its core Wikileaks is receiving information from sources and disseminating it to the public so that the public might be informed about the actions of the powerful.  If we value investigative journalism as a check on the state, then Wikileaks must be protected by law.  Yes, I understand the importance of secrecy in certain affairs of state, even affairs of a minimal state, and so I recognize the tension between freedom of the press and the needs of the state.  This same tension was recognized by people who had successfully fought a war on US soil against a more powerful adversary, and they wrote the First Amendment anyway.

So, legal protection for Wikileaks is necessary if we wish to continue (or resume?) being a free country.  Punish those who violate sworn promises to protect information, but do not punish those who disseminate that information if they have made no such promise.

However, while legal protection for Wikileaks is necessary for our freedom, legal protection for Wikileaks is absolutely, positively 100% incompatible with being an empire.  The state cannot succesfully occupy 2 countries, send flying killer robots to countless more, and generally meddle at whim and murder at whim if organizations like Wikileaks exist and enjoy the protection of the law.  If we are to have a state that does these things, then we cannot protect Wikileaks.

To any decent person, the choice is obvious:  Freedom of information has done far more for our individual liberty, for our wealth and well-being, and for our general happiness than anything done by a government employee with a gun.  The press is an instrument of freedom, the army is merely a (sometimes) necessary evil.  If legal protection for Wikileaks impedes the government’s ability to go and murder people who never did anything to harm us, well, it is blindingly obvious where our priority ought to be.

There are those who will say that the current orgy of state-sponsored killing in Muslim countries is necessary because someone, somewhere might seek to set off a bomb.  Well, first, let me note that in the past year we have seen two bomb attempts from Yemen, the first by a loser who was foiled by his own incompetence and vigilant airplane passengers, and the second via inkjet cartridges that were found with the help of informants.  Flying killer robots didn’t do shit to stop those attacks.  Moreover, flying killer robots inflame people and ensure a continuing stream of recruits willing to fight murder with murder.  We often heard in 2001-2005 of “the failed law enforcement approach to terrorism.”  There was zero evidentiary basis for this, but there is ample evidentiary basis for “the failed military approach to terrorism.”