Wikileaks - our friend or foe?

WikiLeaks, the international new media non-profit organisation launched in 2006, consitently causes hot debates over the good or bad of an open and transparent society at all costs.

Within a year of its launch, the site's database had published over 1.2 million documents of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources.

The organisation has described itself as having been founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from all over the world. 

Julian Assange, generally described as its director, and Wikileaks have won a number of awards The Economist's 2008 New Media Award and Amnesty International's UK Media Award in 2009 to name a few.

But the critique is as common as the praise.

The good or evil of total transparency

The thought of a medium that reveals crime, corruption and breaches of human rights is very attractive.

In July 2007, the public could for example see the disturbing images from a secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad.

After launching an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, the US soldiers were laughing at the dead.

But where do we draw the line between providing citizens with their rightful information and letting out in the open what could be used by terrorists to serve their purposes?

Some information has after all been classified as secret for a purpose, and sometimes even to save lives. For example hiding the identity of threatened people and organisations.


Assisting the enemy

About a week ago, WikiLeaks released a secret list of infrastructure-related facilities and topics, from pipelines to smallpox vaccine suppliers.  

The list had been developed for the purpose of protecting the most vulnarable parts of  infrastructure worldwide. Now, with public access the information provides a goldmine for terrorist networks.

One might wonder if publishing this really can be defended, and regarded as relevant information for us all, especially when in the wrong hands it could lead to devestating effects.


Walking the talk?

And the important question remains who within Wikileaks ultimately decides what information to publish, and what the structure of power and responsibility is within the organisation.

How can rest assure that this power will not be cunningly misused by the wrong people with a hidden agenda to leak certain information at the right time - causing devastating effects that could put us all at great danger?

The Wikileaks people strongly speak for transparency in society, but do they really live up to this in terms of their own organisation?

The consequenses of the launch and widespread attention of Wikleaks remains to be seen in the future to come.