Earlier this week, Tim Berners-Lee, the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and inventor of the World Wide Web, expressed some of his views on WikiLeaks, putting them in context with his efforts on open government and open data.
Embedded below is video of his answer to a question from the audience at the 2010 Information and Communication Technologies and Development Conference at the Royal Holloway University of London.
When you look at government, there is a huge amount of information in that category," he said. "If you are working on open data in your government, you can work on a huge amount of data. All the mapping data out there, where the potholes are...there's a huge amount of financial data, for example, which you put out there." It may be "touching anything which is military...the money that is spent on the Army, the Navy and Air Force, and yes, after a certain point, you don't say how many bullets have you bought...but the vast majority of that data is data which is valuable to everybody in the country, it's public, and it's not the sort of thing which is embarrassing to people particularly, though if it is embarrassing [unintelligible -- maybe "you're going to find people are embarrassed about it].
In the context of open government and WikiLeaks, Berners-Lee's position appears clear: the data that constitutes the Iraqi War Logs, Afghan War Diaries or "Cablegate" does not represent open government. WikiLeaks could, perhaps, be said to have opened government data, but not to be a host for open government data.
What happened recently on WikiLeaks was that somebody stole information, somebody had privileged access to information, betrayed the trust put in them in their job, and took information which should not have been, according to their employer, released, and they released it.
Berners-Lee also addressed the question of the radical transparency WikiLeaks represent, which has proved to be a contentious issue:
When we talk about transparency, we're not talking about breaking confidentiality, breaking state secrets or military secrets. What's funny is that people have focused on one individual who is part of the crowd of people involved in WikiLeaks as though they make the leaks. They didn't make the leak. WikiLeaks, despite their name, do not make leaks. They just provide a service of putting things on the Web.
The presence of WikiLeaks also introduces a larger issue of anonymity online, which Berners-Lee considered:
There is an interesting question, which I don't know the answer to at the end of the day, as to whether it is very, very important for somebody to be anonymous, or at the end of the day, it's just very, very important for society as a whole to be able to remove somebody's anonymity. I think both thing's true...and they'll...battle up eventually to occasionally ending up in the Supreme Court because both things are important.
Berners-Lee did not provide the audience with a clear way forward, driving home the complexity that free societies face in untangling how to preserve protections for the accountability that the press provides in the context of the disruption to institutions that the Internet continues to create.
The whistleblower idea is very important to democracy, for the overturning of repressive regimes. The idea that the press should be able to not reveal their sources, for example, is a very important principle, and the fact that people should be accountable for what they say, and that you can't just go out there anonymously insulting people, libeling them, creating havoc, which then spreads uncontrolled [?] damage across the blogosphere without any kind of accountability. That's an important principle too. Obviously these principles are in conflict. And we, as a society, have to work out rules which allow us to have norms on both sides of the line, which allow both principles to survive, and where they are in total conflict, have a way of resolving in each case. That's my feeling I've been asked that question a few times.
Last month, Berners-Lee wrote an important article in the Scientific American that called for support for continued open standards and neutrality on the Web that goes into many of these issues in more depth.
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Many of us who now know that the bogus nine torpedoes not fired at the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin that got us into the Vietnam war, and the bogus WMD crap that got us to invade Iraq, are tired of the professional liars getting us into wars, and look at WikiLeaks as a reasonable counter to expose those serious liars who keep creating unjustified wars.
If we are for "exposing" truths, then we have to ask ourselves, "who gets to choose what truth gets exposed?" and "to what end?" and "who's agenda will be served?" and "who will be held accountable to protect innocents?"
The problem that Bradley Manning allegedly saw was crimes being committed by the United States. The former head of the UN described Iraq as an illegal war. Indeed, the U.S. as a member of the UN agreed not to engage in wars of aggression. Both Iraq and Afghanistan fit in that category. If so, then everything done in those wars is a war crime. Even if these were legal wars, the way the U.S. is fighting them often violates international law. The American people need to know what our government is doing. We need to see reality so we can improve it. If Manning exposed reality and WikiLeaks published it, they are heroes. Transparency will result in less death, not more. If we had transparency there would be no lies about WMD, nor would there have been a Gulf of Tonkin that led to Vietnam and Americans would see what these wars are really about -- access to resources and positioning of military bases. Once the truth is out, the American people will no longer be ignorant, and will no longer act in ignorance. Isn't ending ignorance a good thing? Isn't much greater transparency an essential ingredient for effective representative democracy? Isn't following the rule of law a keystone of a democratic republic? Bravo WIkiLeaks, bravo Bradley Manning -- they are heroes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower
Obviously, that's not the normal process for the government to declassify data. Wikileaks has been consulting with media organizations which do cooperate with the government in order to use their policy for redacting sensitive information.
Wikileaks cooperation with respected journalistic institutions makes it clear their intent to be responsible as whistle blowers. Wikileaks cannot be accused of complicity for merely making available some encryption software for people in oppressive regimes to use for their own anonymity.
Wikileaks will continue to act responsibly, unless Julian Assange is nailed on these false charges, faces espionage charges and gets canned. Then Wikileaks will probably conceal the rest of the important data, and will become a sock puppet of the CIA will no longer be a trusted source of information. Don't believe those who say WikiLeaks will still be effective without Assange.
How deep does the rabbit hole go?
I am,
The Hollywood Republican
'What happened recently on WikiLeaks was that somebody stole information, somebody had privileged access to information, betrayed the trust put in them in their job, and took information which should not have been, according to their employer, released, and they released it.'
I think where Tim Berners-Lee gets it wrong, in the statement above, is his dispassionate outlook toward circumstance. He takes a very black and white view of events. This leaves no room for patriotism, anger, compassion and other 'mitigating factors' that a person might take into account when making their decisions. The term employer may take a back seat to liar, thief, murderer or other strong descriptors that are more accurate.
Each individual circumstance is different and will, in the end, be decided by individuals. The power is back in the peoples hands now, Tim, right where the Founding fathers meant it to be. Live with it.
You know it!
That's okay; I'm sure most of them are intelligent enough to assess the situation accurately. Without WikiLeaks, Americans have no way of holding their government accountable. If people want to continue to be surveilled 24-7 and have their tax dollars spent on covert wars, let them go on saying that Julian Assange should be arrested or assassinated or what have you. If they don't want to be kept in the dark any longer, they have a friend in WikiLeaks.
It really IS that simple.
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If the state is allowed to be the ultimate arbiter of public access to information, then the state will abuse that discretion.
"And we, as a society, have to work out rules which allow us to have norms on both sides of the line, which allow both principles to survive, and where they are in total conflict, have a way of resolving in each case."
That is "we as a society". That means you, me, the courts, the media, all of us, each in our own ways, by discussing it, debating it, reading about it, listening to other people's points of views, finding better reasons, trying to think new things, and so on.... These issues can only be solved through discussion between all members of society. It can't be and should not be just decided by "government"
I THINK we said the same kind of thing in our posts (or close enough).
It's a good sign.
Noone stole information. Someone made information available to the public. To claim otherwise is to operate from the premise that governments were acting in good faith on behalf of their citizens. As we see from the released documents, governments have not, are not acting in good faith on behalf of their citizens. Long live WikiLeaks.
I think he is saying that Bradly Manning can be considered to have stolen the information. He might be granted protection under whistleblower status if you are correct, and if it is indeed him - Wikileaks cannot know that it is him. In any case he should not be tortured as he is.