Julian Assange

"A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." -James Madison




This was Julian Assange's opening remark at the event "Too much information? Security and censorship in the age of Wikileaks" hosted last night by City University and Index on Censorship.

The Oliver Thompson Lecture Hall was packed. Writers and reporters came from all over to hear Julian Assange debate David Aaronovitch a correspondent from The Times in London. Alongside writers in the area, I met journalists that had traveled form Japan to cover this debate, and later found out that the Associate Press had even covered the event.

The stage was set. On one hand you have Julain Assange, the founder of Wikileaks responsible for the leak of 90,000 Afgan war documents(its most recent and well known disclosure) that has spurred opposition from writers like Aaronitch who respect the public's right to knowledge but believes that those like Assange need to become accountable for information that can put society at risk.

I found the entire debate extrememly interesting on many levels. Not only was the subject matter engaging but the passionate anger and excitement of the audience, speakers and journalists kept the night an interesting one.

Personally, I understand Assange's philosophy, if only in theory. For journalists, factual information should be disclosed in order to inform an educated public. Yet this issue is way more complicated than that. This is a universal journalistic dilemma. Privacy, security and truth all walk a very fine line together and everyday we have to think about the consequences of what we write. Yet here is where things got fuzzy last night....

While Assange has been accused of potentially having "blood on his hands," he explained that the Pentagon has not found anyone who has been directly harmed by this information, and surely they do have the motive and means to hold him accountable. Yet my question is, what about obtuse consequences of the future? Now any country in the world can access this information and have intelligence on our military, where as we would not have the same information about them. Sure, we may never see a direct connection but there is an unfair advantage and danger with this information being released.

He claimed that his accountability was to the public that supported him financially. He exists because of donations by "us." Yet later in the evening we found out that for the purpose of remaining objective they do not actually know who their donors are, it is anonymous. What I wonder is, how do you remain accountable to a public that is not public? Couldn't it be possible for one large donor to simply give money in different avenues? If this were true, would you be accountable to one organization that would love to see secrets like these spill out?

There has also been recent information about a member of staff leaving because of not having enough time to work through the documents. Assange said this was untrue but that employee had been suspended before this, yet refused to tell why. When asked if it was because that member of staff had told the media about the screening process he was able to avoid the question without answering. He would also not directly answer questions about the screening process of the 90,000 documents. He described a complicated computer system but would not confirm if an actual human had gone through and considered the documents. Unfortunately, even if an actual human did go through each document (rather than the complicated computer system he spoke about) his refusal to answer the questions only caused frustration and anger in the audience. One man even yelled out, "Just answer the question!"

He was elusive and extremely hard to pin down on any burning issue. He did not speak highly of the media industry and while very openly speaking of the need to reveal secrets and information, he would not reveal any of his own.

Despite my opinion, his philosophy is shared by many and as I have discovered, this is just the beginning of a complicated future where disclosure of raw materials must battle a media industry that filters and acts as gatekeepers. The topic is new and I don't think many of us know how to deal with it yet. With this new power of global dissemination comes a great deal of responsibility and at this moment, there is no international law that forces accountability. Therefore, by being the first of its kind it is opening doors and in some cases closing others.

Like I said, the entire experience and atmosphere was wildly fascinating!