The Story Behind Wikileaks

In 2012, Julian Assange and fellow workers of WikiLeaks decrypt sensitive military video, which revealed a 2007 incident in which an American Apache military helicopter fired on two innocent U.S. citizens in Iraq. This was a first big fruit of Assange’s year project on releasing confidential information, and shortly after disclosing the decrypted video of military attack, the group of WikiLeaks published thousands of classified information of not only the United States, but many other countries of the world, on their website. The United States government alarmed that this massive disclosure was pursued by military personnel, Brad Manning (Hester, 2011, p.187-188).

Brad Manning was punished as violation of Espionage Act of 1917, which criminalizes or prohibits dissemination by those with or without lawful possession and access to the information. This broadly imposes criminal sanctions on disclosure, but it is limited in its application by First Amendment protections for free speech and a free press unless there are clear and present dangers (Fenster, 2012, p.787).

Unlike straight punishment of Brad manning, there are many controversies regarding to the punishment of the WikiLeaks as they have released classified information of each nation without permission. Some scholars discuss about legitimacy of punishing WikiLeaks as it is considered as media press. Kenneth L. Wainstein is not one of them; he argues the purpose of WikiLeaks is considerably different from ordinary public media (Wainstein, 2010, p. 41-47).

Unlike other papers, Wainstein clearly explains in which aspects WikiLeaks possesses different characteristics from other public media. He argues that WikiLeaks is different from public media in three aspects; the purpose of establishment, contents and relevance. WikiLeaks exists solely on disclosing official secret information, while the media is generally dedicated to deliver diverse information to public. The media screen or proof-read the contents beforehand, to decide whether the news is beneficial or critical to citizens, whereas the WikiLeaks specifically focuses on disseminating sensitive classified information. The relevance of information that the WikiLeaks is holding and ordinary media also varies; the news would typically report relevant issues with current events, however, the WikiLeaks would leak materials with little to almost no relevance for current issues.

As there are lots of challenging issues on whether the released documents could cause actual damage to national security or simply embarrassing or awkward for foreign nations, it is challenging to practice prosecution over WikiLeaks as punishment of disclosing classified information (Wainstein, 2010, p. 46). However, another interpretation could have been answered in this paper would be an explanation of the standard he is mentioning by ‘general media’; because there are a lot of media that the government is censoring, or lobbing in the matter of contents or amounts. Moreover, the specifications of type of media; radio, newspaper, TV news, or even social media (SNS), would be suggested to make readers to understand much better when comparing WikiLeaks with general media. He only depicts the difference of WikiLeaks in conclusion; however, it would have been a stronger conclusion answer a question of then what are the barriers of persecution of WikiLeaks while this paper proves clear differences.

As a result of this disclosure by WikiLeaks, general public’s attitude toward government has slightly changed; the public started to distrust government. Regardless of the fact that whether the distrust have been existed and only revealed on the surface of the water by WikiLeaks’ case, or recently created, the public’s distrust against government is not a pleasant phenomenon to government, of course, however, eventually to publics or citizens themselves.

The interesting aspect is that what so-called ‘harm’ the government is asserting as ‘threat to national security’ actually connects to public’s trust and this trust is a fundamental factor of being healthy federal government. Once they lose trust, this will eventually leads to real threats on national security and this actually will harm not only the country itself, but also the citizens, as a result.

Analyzing the public losing trust in government through WikiLeaks case, there were two major streams; first, disappointment at government with leaked information itself as asserting that the government is not transparent enough to own citizens, and maybe further believe that government is rather concealing information, second, disappointment at incompetence of government in national affairs and further to international affairs as a result of disclosures.

Geoffrey Stone found constant demand on free speech of public throughout U.S. history (Stone, 2012, p.479-480). In his paper, he argues the tension between individual liberty to speak out and national security was more intensified during wartime. During the civil war, the government shut down the ‘disloyal’ public media and imprisoned ‘disrespectful’ citizens against the president’s policy. This phenomenon exactly applies in the World War period, that the federal government enacted the Espionage Act of 1917, which made a justification for government to imprison critics against government, president policy, the military or the war as unlawful actor.

In his paper, he draws a conclusion that the government cannot practice its power over speakers even in the name of national security without clear and present explanation of real danger of grave harm to the national security (Stone, 2012, p.478). Moreover, he argued that the public will constantly demand the government to be clear and transparent to citizens, as they have been doing throughout history, so that these participation of citizens create debates and discussion to help government to take better action for all (Stone, 2012, p.489-490).

Although in his short paper, it was difficult to find linkage between free speech and transparency of the government (why these two are relevant), however, it was understandable that his logic came from Brad Manning’s free speech of disclosing a classified information to WikiLeaks that shows unlawful action of the government and this created a huge public debate on whether government has over-classified information or not.

The government’s over-classification was one of the criticisms of public against federal government as a result of WikiLeaks case. The classified materials are classified presumably because it may be embarrass to someone rather than it readily relates to national security (Lowell & Will, 2010, p. 27). However, it is assumable that majority of arguments are based on questioning government’s authority on classification. There is a remaining burden to prove in this paper on who decides that information is over classified in what extent.

In contrast of Stone’s burr line, Lowell and Will presented very clearly that there should be different laws applied in spying (or real espionage), disclosure of National Defense Information (NDI), and mishandling of classified information, because each of these clearly addresses different issues (Lowell & Will, 2010, p. 25-38). Moreover, this paper presents clear loopholes on Espionage Act of 1917 with an issue of over-classification, while Stone would not tackle the range of Espionage Act of 1917 as he only presented the effect and controversy of Act itself.

The limitation of Espionage Act in this paper describe is the clarity; because of its broadness and vague language, it can be applied in a manner that infringes on proper Frist Amendment activity (Lowell & Will, 2010, p. 30). They also believe that courts have twisted the Act’s language to engraft various evidentiary requirements to conform it to both the First Amendment and Due Process Clause (Lowell & Will, 2010, p. 31). It is also assumable that in this paper, they are highly doubting and devaluating government’s ability. Although this paper may seem as slightly biased paper, however, they presents clear criteria by questioning why WikiLeaks cannot be prosecuted, which should have been proven by previous source by Wainstein.

In larger scope of government, the public lose trust not only the leaked information shows the government’s unlawful or illegitimate actions, but also the exposed information affect international relations or diplomacy.

According to Stone, sometimes the government may want secrecy because that disclosure might expose their wrong doing, foolishness of their own incompetence (Stone, 2012, p. 480). When the WikiLeaks disclosed the government’s clear wrong doing; exposed the video of U.S military attacking innocent citizens at Iraq. The public outraged at the fact that first, the government was committing crime of killing innocent citizens, and second, the government was concealing the fact (Fenster, 2012, p.800). This is exactly why the line of classification was debated in above paper. However, in this paper, he challenges Stone’s argument that increased transparency does not automatically increase healthy public debate because the argument about the beneficial effects of transparency is truly based on the assumption that the public will pay attention, understand, and act or threaten to act on the government information they receive (Fenster M, 2012, p.798). However in conclusion, he argues that setting the assumption that public will react on released information and open active debates, the transparency of the government will be beneficial and necessary.

Fenster also presents the harms in U.S. diplomacy. The WikiLeaks exposed the evidence of U.S. government have been collecting information of each country’s government institution, and information even hiring native person to ‘spy’ on each government’s behavior to have world’s dominant power. The level of collecting information is way above the solely ‘information’ of country, like demographics, GDP, GNP and etc. The U.S. government can be criminalized by this fact, and so do the person hired as ‘spy’ (Fenster M, 2012, p. 789-790).

Given the examples of how the public losing trust in government, Araiza presents how the public trust distorts the nature of democracy and how this will lead to threats to national security (Araiza, 2003, p. 48-53). If people lose trust in government, the people tend to easily turn into ignorance and this might bring an end of less participation of the government activities, for instance, voting, feedback, discussion or debates and etc. Once the public would not participate these activities, the fundamental nature of the democracy will be harmed; participation and accountability (Araiza, 2003, p. 44-57).

Harmed democracy as a result of lower government trust will decrease government motivation (Bella, 2012). In order to protect the people within the nation, the government needs to feel obligation or motivation. If the public do not have feedback or healthy debates, the government’s motivations or justifications on protecting nation will fall and this will eventually result on threat on national security (Bella, 2012).

This harm on national security will eventually make vicious cycle because once government shows demotivation on public affairs, citizens’ distrust will aggravate.

However, the book Enemy of the State WikiLeaks: How a group of hackers is challenging the most powerful nations on earth by Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark challenges WikiLeaks’ credibility. In this book, it is more serious that minority of people started to recognize WikiLeaks as more credible than their federal government, while there are still controversial issues on rights of WikiLeaks holding confidential information or amount of information. WikiLeaks might become another power of the world that hinders national trust of citizens (Rosenbach, 2011, p. 240-252).

Behind the controversies of Espionage Act of 1917 or WikiLeaks, it was able to extract three possible conclusions; First, the low government trust will eventually make vicious cycle and the final actor that will receive harm would be the public, themselves. Second, the government has remained burden of making balance between transparency and national security, and lastly, the remained burden of public is to understand real credibility on WikiLeaks.