{"id":3071,"date":"2010-12-06T19:53:18","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T02:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/?p=3071"},"modified":"2010-12-06T19:53:18","modified_gmt":"2010-12-07T02:53:18","slug":"wikileaks-and-the-long-haul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2010\/12\/06\/wikileaks-and-the-long-haul\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikileaks and the Long Haul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Shirky<\/a><\/p>\n

Like a lot of people, I am conflicted about Wikileaks.<\/p>\n

Citizens of a functioning democracy must be able to know what the state is saying and doing in our name, to engage in what Pierre Rosanvallon calls \u201ccounter-democracy\u201d*<\/a>, the democracy of citizens distrusting rather than legitimizing the actions of the state. Wikileaks plainly improves those abilities.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, human systems can\u2019t stand pure transparency. For negotiation to work, people\u2019s stated positions have to change, but change is seen, almost universally, as weakness. People trying to come to consensus must be able to privately voice opinions they would publicly abjure, and may later abandon. Wikileaks plainly damages those abilities. (If Aaron Bady\u2019s analysis is correct, it is the damage and not the oversight that Wikileaks is designed to create.*<\/a>)<\/p>\n

And so we have a tension between two requirements for democratic statecraft, one that can\u2019t be resolved, but can be brought to an acceptable equilibrium. Indeed, like the virtues of equality vs. liberty, or popular will vs. fundamental rights, it has<\/em> to be brought into such an equilibrium for democratic statecraft not to be wrecked either by too much secrecy or too much transparency.<\/p>\n

As Tom Slee puts it, \u201cYour answer to \u2018what data should the government make public?\u2019 depends not so much on what you think about data, but what you think about the government.\u201d*<\/a> My personal view is that there is too much secrecy in the current system, and that a corrective towards transparency is a good idea. I don\u2019t, however, believe in total transparency, and even more importantly, I don\u2019t think that independent actors who are subject to no checks or balances is a good idea in the long haul.<\/p>\n

If the long haul were all there was, Wikileaks would be an obviously bad thing. The practical history of politics, however, suggests that the periodic appearance of such unconstrained actors in the short haul is essential to increased democratization, not just of politics but of thought.<\/p>\n

We celebrate the printers of 16th century Amsterdam for making it impossible for the Catholic Church to constrain the output of the printing press to Church-approved books*<\/a>, a challenge that helped usher in, among other things, the decentralization of scientific inquiry and the spread of politically seditious writings advocating democracy.<\/p>\n

This intellectual and political victory didn\u2019t, however, mean that the printing press was then free of all constraints. Over time, a set of legal limitations around printing rose up, including restrictions on libel, the publication of trade secrets, and sedition. I don\u2019t agree with all of these laws, but they were at least produced by some legal process.<\/p>\n

Unlike the United States\u2019 current pursuit of Wikileaks.*<\/a><\/p>\n

I am conflicted about the right balance between the visibility required for counter-democracy and the need for private speech among international actors. Here\u2019s what I\u2019m not conflicted about: When authorities can\u2019t get what they want by working within the law, the right answer is not to work outside the law. The right answer is that they can\u2019t get what they want.<\/p>\n

The Unites States is \u2014 or should be \u2014 subject to the rule of law, which makes the extra-judicial pursuit of Wikileaks especially nauseating. (Calls for Julian\u2019s assassination are even more nauseating.) It may be that what Julian has done is a crime. (I know him casually, but not well enough to vouch for his motivations, nor am I a lawyer.) In that case, the right answer is to bring the case to a trial.<\/p>\n

IIn the US, however, the government has a \u201cheavy burden\u201d for engaging in prior restraint of even secret documents, an established principle since New York Times Co. vs. The United States<\/em>*<\/a>, when the Times published the Pentagon Papers. If we want a different answer for Wikileaks, we need a different legal framework first.<\/p>\n

Though I don\u2019t like Senator Joseph Lieberman\u2019s proposed SHIELD law (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination*<\/a>), I do like the fact that it is a law, and not an extra-legal avenue (of which Senator Lieberman is also guilty.*<\/a>) I also like the fact that the SHIELD Law makes it clear what\u2019s at stake: the law proposes new restraints on publishers, and would apply to the New York Times and The Guardian as it well as to Wikileaks. (As Matthew Ingram points out, \u201cLike it or not, Wikileaks is a media entity.\u201d*<\/a>) SHIELD amounts to an attempt to reverse parts of New York Times Co. vs. The United States<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think such a law should pass. I think the current laws, which criminalize the leaking of secrets but not the publishing of leaks, strike the right balance. However, as a citizen of a democracy, I\u2019m willing to be voted down, and I\u2019m willing to see other democratically proposed restrictions on Wikileaks put in place. It may even be that whatever checks and balances do get put in place by the democratic process make anything like Wikileaks impossible to sustain in the future.<\/p>\n

The key, though, is that democracies have<\/em> a process for creating such restrictions, and as a citizen it sickens me to see the US trying to take shortcuts. The leaders of Myanmar and Belarus, or Thailand and Russia, can now rightly say to us \u201cYou went after Wikileaks\u2019 domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations, all without a warrant and all targeting overseas entities, simply because you decided you don\u2019t like the site. If that\u2019s the way governments get to behave, we can live with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the long haul, we will need new checks and balances for newly increased transparency \u2014 Wikileaks shouldn\u2019t be able to operate as a law unto itself anymore than the US should be able to. In the short haul, though, Wikileaks is our Amsterdam. Whatever restrictions we eventually end up enacting, we need to keep Wikileaks alive today, while we work through the process democracies always go through to react to change. If it\u2019s OK for a democracy to just decide to run someone off the internet for doing something they wouldn\u2019t prosecute a newspaper for doing, the idea of an internet that further democratizes the public sphere will have taken a mortal blow.<\/p>\n

Nice burn, Wikileaks.<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Shirky Like a lot of people, I am conflicted about Wikileaks. Citizens of a functioning democracy must be able to know what the state is saying and doing in our name, to engage in what Pierre Rosanvallon calls \u201ccounter-democracy\u201d*, the democracy of citizens distrusting rather than legitimizing the actions of the state. Wikileaks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3072,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071\/revisions\/3072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}