WikiLeaks: The Hysteria of Those Exposed Is the Real Problem

WikiLeaks isn’t a threat to journalistic freedom. What we should worry about is the stupidity and hysteria of those powerful people now embarrassed by the leaks.

It’s a lot like a stage drama. The scandal doesn’t really get going until the director says it’s already over. What actually happened here? The Internet outing platform WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of diplomatic dispatches that were copied by a low-level employee of an American bureaucratic system that was protected by obviously amateurish security.

Touted as a ground swell of digital modernity, the contents quickly proved to be little more than a trickle of moderately embarrassing details. In any case, they weren’t anywhere near as embarrassing as the circumstances surrounding the indiscretion itself — for example, that such a thing could even happen. Now, a half-dozen diplomats are sitting in their offices with ears red from embarrassment or on the sofas of their hosts because they were caught snooping in friendly territory.

No new revelations

And great as well as wanna-be great giants of the world stage like Lukashenko, Berlusconi, Putin, Chavez and even little Gregor, ever willing to take heavy burdens on both his shoulders*, are reduced to stammering because everybody already sees their subversive activities showing through the hastily constructed hills meant to conceal them. What’s left is the recognition that there’s virtually nothing we didn’t already know or at least could have known.

But that shines a flattering light on what had been called “stone age television” and a clunky print media. Their investigations couldn’t have been so bad in view of the fact that the so-called “biggest leak in media history” didn’t bring out anything not already known.

Revelations shouldn’t cause panic

Even the idea that WikiLeaks — as advertised — is about to release even bigger news about the financial industry should be of no concern to either the evildoers or their victims. What are they going to tell us? That a multinational banking giant gives out advice on tax avoidance? That on the floors of stock markets one half the world is betting against the other half without regard to scruples or morals? And that politics also consists of the daily struggle against those forces guaranteeing their representatives and the entire free world survival, prosperity and freedom?

There’s no reason to panic

That the market is full of mystery and capable of misleading the sorcerer’s apprentices? With all due respect, that’s already been printed in the newspapers or seen on television. That’s a reason for panic? The threat of WikiLeaks taking over appears hardly credible. Aren’t there more reasons to believe exactly the opposite? On the one hand, yes.

But then signs of hubris strike the great powers. A game of communications neuroses develops: on one side, those presumably obsessed by enlightenment fundamentalism, and on the other, the great powers of the free world and their military hangers-on (including their diplomatic corps), who are now forbidden to read The New York Times.

Assange on the same level as Jack the Ripper

From the idyllic Swedish village of Bullerby and other cozy little communities of the far north, there now arises a putative smell of the perversion of justice. Up to now, not a single piece of paper or indictment has been produced by the Swedish justice system to support putting Julian Assange on the international wanted list.

Meanwhile — whether he’s a sex fiend or not — he sits in the semi-restrictive prison of British justice, singing the praises of European legal pluralism, while at the same time he appears on the “Most Wanted” list along with a string of Pakistani nuclear thieves and Jack the Ripper. Shouldn’t this be taken down a notch or two? No, on the contrary, it’s being constantly ratcheted upward.

Endangering freedom of the press

We should be less concerned about Assange than we are about the journalistic freedom this episode has put on trial — on trial not because of the contents of the documents leaked but because of the hysteria of those who wrote them. Those put on public display in nothing but their underwear by a motley bunch of volunteer information workers may understandably feel some discomfort.

But is that any cause for us to lose our nerve? And, by the way, what form would the retaliation take if the powers that be lost their tempers when retaliating against a release of truly sensitive classified information? What if the WikiLeaks documents had actually raised questions about the democratic underpinnings of the Western superpower America?

We don’t want to see a backlash

It’s the nature of enlightenment that its most powerful representatives are confronted with the most uncomfortable of questions. First and foremost with the question of how it will come to terms with it, even if it’s the least bit painful.

The kickback potential behind the WikiLeaks coup and its ramifications is immense and incalculable. And we haven’t yet seen the full extent — or should we say the full excess — of the possible counter-reactions. And for the sake of revealed truths, we should hope to never see them.

No need for emergency legislation

Whoever conflates modern technology and loopholes such as WikiLeaks concocted by its remarkable protagonists into a sort of digital apocalypse isn’t worthy of the name “enlightener.” Emergency information protection legislation need not be applied just because someone doesn’t follow publication guidelines near and dear to the hearts of executive decision-makers.

A somewhat similar event evoking talk of trivial-looking WikiLeaks-type traitors occurred some years ago. But that incident resulted in the destruction of the global music industry caused by the digital piracy of copyrighted music.

Keeping feet from tapping

When the technical ability to break the rules regardless of good intentions came on the scene, it was a foretaste of what was to come. “Those who leave the shop door open have to expect shoplifting,” said then-Minister of Justice Brigitte Zypries, when she was inundated by music industry representatives asking her to call on the entire constitutional cavalry to ride to the rescue of the recording industry with emergency legislation.

That’s how simple progress can be. Bar the doors and keep your feet still. Not bad advice these days. A suspected flasher shouldn’t be considered a folk hero and an Internet disclosure platform isn’t liberation theology. But a superpower should also be more than just a bunch of jittery basket cases.

*Editor’s Note: A reference to Gregor Gysi, whose anti-NATO remarks were leaked.