Wikileaks Smackdown
By Kyle Kubo
Not since al-Qaeda's alleged early 2000s plot to kidnap Russell Crowe have U.S. foreign relations had such a monumentally "Wait…what?" moment centered on a well-dressed Australian man. Im talking about, Julian Assange, the Wicked Snitch of the East, and his merry cabal of loose-lipped ship-sinkers at Wiki Leaks, who are cracking the nuts of every red tape measure and spoiler alert from here to the Watergate complex.
Not to say that opposing troops of chest-beating meta-guerrillas swarming the servers of their opposition is the worst of WikiLeaks problems. There are many aters of both the game and its principal playa — who's currently facing Swedish rape charges, which anyone will tell you is almost never good for PR. In addition, legality that's shaky at best and a major frowning upon from Hillary Rodham Clinton all suggest the volatile nature of the company's robbing the secrecy-rich to give to the information-poor.
So far leaks have ranged from the innocuous — the jury's still out on whether or not President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan's fondness for warm weather is a threat to our very way of life — to the disturbing — a U.S. government contractor training police in Afghanistan paid for the prostitution of young boys at a party for the trainees — and according to Assange there's more where that came from.
In the subsequent watershed we are all left to wonder if and where we should draw the line between long overdue transparency and giant robot fight-esque reckless endangerment.
It's tempting to envision Assange, his multinational mystery team of meddling adults, and the anonymous sources spilling their guts like overcooked hotdogs simply as purveyors of truth and fair play, if only because they're at least offering up something different.
If there's one thing we can take away from "High School Musical" it's that the status quo is mean and lame and won't let the basketball player bake cookies. Thus, when the File Hunter shows up with his status quo-altering leaks at the ready it can easily seem like a good idea, particularly if you're already aboard the train for a more accountable, less spooky government, which even Obama's happy to ride. That being said, most people don't like having all of their dirty laundry — or even the dirty laundry of the last tenant of the house — exposed by some dude they don't even know, especially in the pages of The New York Times.
The President, his Cabinet, and whatever other furniture comprises our government can stand some egg on their face if the breakfast is a service to the people, but in this case that is far from assured.
Apart from some swearing, little has been done on the part of Assange to address concerns of human rights groups, who fear for those foreign civilians whose involvement in U.S. intelligence gathering is now laid bare. He cites a lack of evidence that people have been greatly harmed in the release of this data, but the same could be said about the harm done by seven foot tall evil unicorns.
The point there should be obvious: WikiLeaks is no more the arbiter of what we should and shouldn't know than our boring old government, and a no-leaks-barred see-for-all carries its own risks, for better or worse.
Kyle Kubo is a freshman English major.