The Case of Wikileaks, Part I—The Hacker’s Treehouse

This is the first of a two-part examination of Wikileaks. Part II, “The New McCarthyism” will be posted on Thursday morning. 

GL.

It’s only when you poke the beast that you get a sense of its true nature.

The American government, media, and corporate establishment are all in a tizzy over the latest poke from Wikileaks:

The “whistleblowing” site (it really isn’t, but I’ll get to that in a minute) is releasing excerpts from a cache of some 250,000 diplomatic cables and other documents. These cables were sent from various American embassies back to the State Department between 1966 and 2010. The leaks have been dripping out since November 28, revealing a whole host of tawdry but so far trivial tidbits of American diplomatic behavior.

None of the “secrets” revealed by Wikileaks are really secrets: They’re mostly confidential appraisals of the U.S.’s allies and rivals; much of it is gossip, or merely pedestrian—demonstrably so:

Of the 251,287 documents Wikileaks has obtained, 134,000 are outright unclassified; 102,000 are classified “confidential”; and 15,652 are classified as “secret”. Source is linked here, confirmation is linked here.

None of these documents are classified “top secret” or higher—anyone claiming that they are “top secret” or that they “put lives in danger” is at best exaggerating, and at worst lying.

Read more »